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The world economy is at a major turning point, which is why we should brace for rapid changes in the economy. The world is moving from having enough goods and services to go around, to not having enough to go around. The dynamics of the economy are very different with not enough to go around. The hoped-for solution of higher prices doesn’t fix the situation; after a point, adding more buying-power mostly produces inflation. Other solutions are needed. The world economy is reaching what has been called “Limits to Growth.”
Economies throughout the ages have grown until their populations grew too large for resource availability. Researcher Peter Turchin has studied the general pattern of overshoot and collapse scenarios. The chart shown in Figure 1 is based on analyzing eight such cycles in the book Secular Cycles. The fossil fuel age began over 200 years ago, and it now seems to be reaching its end.
I doubt that President Trump thinks in terms such as secular cycles or overshoot and collapse. But tariffs and government cutbacks engineered by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seem like they might be approaches that will allow the world economy to contract in a way that could be helpful in keeping the collapse from taking place excessively fast.
In this post, I will try to explain the situation further. The issue we are facing is really a physics problem. Governments can print money, but they cannot print resources, especially energy resources. Our bodies are accustomed to having a certain amount of cooked foods in our diets. This, by itself, encourages population growth and eventual overshoot of the resource base. The self-organizing system somehow chooses its own downward path, not falling further or more quickly than necessary, under the Maximum Power Principle. This is what we are encountering now.
[1] In physics terms, the economy is a dissipative structure. Dissipative structures are self-organizing structures that require energy to grow but are only temporary.
The universe is filled with dissipative structures. Humans are dissipative structures, as are all plants and animals. Hurricanes are dissipative structures, as are star systems. Ecosystems are dissipative structures. All these things are temporary. Even economies are temporary, but no one tells us this detail.
The kind of energy that is required varies with the dissipative structure. Green plants use sunshine. Animals require plant or animal food. Humans have evolved to eat a mixture of cooked food and raw food. While a few raw food enthusiasts can get along using a blender to break up food into small particles, the general pattern is that our modern brains require the nourishment that cooked food can provide. Thus, humans need both food and some type of fuel for cooking at least a portion of the food. Fuel is also helpful for heating homes, ridding water of pathogens, and providing transportation.
Many things that we think of as man-made are dissipative structures. Governments are dissipative structures. Governments grow and often become too expensive for their citizens to support. The energy governments use is indirectly obtained through the use of taxes. A little of the energy used by the governments is purchased directly by governments to power their vehicles, and to heat and light their buildings.
Much more of the energy required by governments is indirectly consumed. For example, a portion of the taxes collected goes to pay public officials. This pay is used for things the public officials use, such as food, transportation, and housing. All three of these things require energy at many places in their “lives.”
- Food – Sunshine to grow; oil to cultivate and transport it to the store; electricity for refrigeration; natural gas or electricity for cooking; human labor for many tasks.
- Transportation – Fuel to make the metal and other materials used in making the vehicle; human labor to construct the vehicle; fuel to operate the vehicle.
- Housing – Diesel to prepare the lot where the house is built; energy of many kinds to create and transport materials such as lumber and wiring; human energy to put the pieces together; electricity for lights after it is built; natural gas or electricity to heat the home after it is built.
In fact, every part of GDP requires energy. In some cases, this is “only” human energy. Of course, human energy requires food, some of it cooked (or broken into tiny pieces with an electric blender).
Businesses in general are dissipative structures. So are international organizations of any kind. Cities seem to be dissipative structures. Religious organizations are dissipative structures. Any organization that seems to grow, pretty much on its own, is a dissipative structure.
[2] If the energy sources needed by a dissipative structure become scarce, this can badly disrupt the dissipative structure.
Hurricanes that pass over warm water tend to maintain their strength, but if they go over land, they quickly dissipate. If an animal is deprived of food, it will become weak and eventually die. If a government is deprived of revenue (and the energy sources that this revenue indirectly buys), it will no longer be able to provide the services it has promised. It may default on its debt or collapse.
[3] Many dissipative structures seem to be programmed to eventually go downhill and collapse, even when plenty of energy seems to be available.
Obviously, running out of energy isn’t the only way a dissipative structure comes to an end. Most humans don’t starve to death. Instead, when humans get to be 70 or 80 or so years old, they lose some of their strength. They more easily succumb to illnesses. Other animals are similar. Tomato plants in our gardens seem to be more prone to infestation by pests after a month or two of bearing fruit.
[4] Even economies seem to be programmed to go downhill and collapse.
Economies have a problem with their populations becoming too large for available resources. For many years, it appears that added debt (money supply) can be used to temporarily work around a resource problem. For example, a dam purchased with debt may allow irrigation so more food can be produced for a given population.
The problem with this approach is that the benefits of added debt reach diminishing returns. At some point, an economy discovers that adding debt doesn’t add much energy supply; instead, it simply leads to inflation (and, indirectly, higher interest rates to compensate for this inflation). Also, for governments, the interest on debt becomes a greater and greater burden.
The US government seems to have reached the point of having too much debt. The US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently published this chart related to US debt:
US taxes need to keep rising, as a percentage of GDP, just to repay US government debt with interest. This is a path that can lead to hyperinflation. This seems to be the underlying reason for DOGE and the tariffs.
Adding infrastructure such as roads, pipelines, and railroads can be helpful in the beginning. The additional infrastructure enables new businesses to be built that make use of this infrastructure. Initially, the tax revenue from new businesses makes it easy to repay the debt with interest.
But additional roads, pipelines, railroads and other infrastructure are not nearly as helpful. They may add capacity, but they don’t materially change the transportation options. The tax revenue added is less.
At some point, simply maintaining and replacing all the infrastructure becomes burdensome. Adding debt for the replacement of infrastructure becomes burdensome because the new replacement infrastructure adds no new functionality. It just maintains the old functionality. The interest on the debt must come from somewhere, but it is not built into the system the way it was when totally new infrastructure was built. Today’s approach is simply to increase the debt level and hope that the revenue will come from somewhere else.
A related issue is that old factories tend to be less productive than newly built ones that benefited from the latest advances. This allows new factories (perhaps in another part of the world) to make goods in a more cost-efficient way. An older factory is likely to lose out in price competition against a newer, more productive factory elsewhere.
[5] The analysis of Turchin and Nefedov in Secular Cycles suggests that economies often go through the pattern shown in Figure 1.
Economies discover a new resource. Perhaps they have conquered a new land, and they have eliminated the old inhabitants. Or they have cut down trees, allowing more area for farming. At a given level of technology (and fuel for the technology), a given area of arable land can support a particular number of inhabitants. If the population gets too high, the size of farms tends to fall too low to support the farmers and their families. This pattern happens if families allow multiple sons to each inherit a share of the family farm.
Alternatively (and more likely), if the population gets too high, the younger sons don’t inherit any farmland. They start working in services and or on crafts of various kinds. But these alternatives to farming generally don’t pay very well. The many workers with low wages become less able to pay taxes, creating a problem for government funding.
As the population rises, wages of these lower-paid workers become increasingly less adequate to cover the necessities of life. With inadequate nutrition, populations become more subject to epidemics.
According to Secular Cycles, as these problems arise, debt is increasingly used to work around the problems. Slow population growth and increasing debt are characteristics of the Stagflation period shown in Figure 1.
Eventually, economies fail. Governments can fail due to a lack of adequate tax revenue or by being overthrown by unhappy citizens. Alternatively, they may lose a war against another country with better weapons (made with energy supplies). All governments, as dissipative structures, can be expected to eventually fail, one way or another.
[6] The world economy now seems to be headed on a path similar to that shown in Figure 1.
The world economy now seems to be reaching the end of the age of fossil fuels. I believe that the world first entered the stagflation era in 1973, when oil prices first rose dramatically. At that time, it became clear that oil must be used more sparingly. To help economize on oil, smaller, more fuel-efficient cars began to be imported from Japan and Europe. In some places, oil was being burned to generate electricity; this electricity could sometimes be replaced by electricity from nuclear power plants.
In the 1980s, added debt became more important. Companies were told to use “leverage” to become more competitive with producers around the world. Instead of fearing credit, it should be embraced. Computers were increasingly used, and world trade was expanded. World trade very much facilitated the production of complex goods, such as automobiles and computers, because it allowed a very wide array of raw materials to be used in manufacturing.
Figure 3 suggests that world trade stalled in 2008. There has been a slight downward trend since that date. With tariffs, world trade will likely fall more quickly in the future.
One of the underlying problems facing the world economy is the fact that major types of energy supply have been falling relative to world population for a long time. The high points seem to have been in 2004-2007 for oil, in 2011 for coal, and in 2001 for nuclear (Figure 4).
Middle distillates (diesel oil and jet fuel) are particularly important in world trade. Middle distillates are plentiful in heavy oil, such as that found in Russia, the oil sands of Canada, and Venezuela. Diesel is important for operating farm equipment, large trucks and ships, and construction equipment.
Middle distillates are in short supply because it is hard to get the price up high enough, for long enough, to compensate for the high cost of extraction, distillation, and transport. If the price of diesel rises much, the price of food tends to rise. Voters don’t like high food prices. This seems to be a major reason that both Russia’s oil exports and Venezuela’s oil exports are subject to sanctions.
Without an adequate supply of middle distillates, world trade needs to be scaled back. I believe that this shortfall is the physics reason underlying the push for increased tariffs. The fact that these tariffs are particularly high against China means that long distance transport across the Pacific Ocean will be scaled back. Shelves in US stores will increasingly lack goods made with Chinese inputs.
[7] Modeling of the overshoot and collapse problem has been done since the 1950s. A recent model suggests that world industrial output is likely to fall quickly, about now.
In 1957, US Navy Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover gave a speech explaining the importance of fossil fuels to the economy and to the military. He then explained that we could not expect fossil fuel extraction to last very long:
It is an unpleasant fact that according to our best estimates, total fossil fuel reserves recoverable at not over twice today’s unit cost are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050, if present standards of living and population growth rates are taken into account.
Much modeling has been done since that time. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology did a series of analyses which they published in 1972 in the book, The Limits to Growth. The most recent update to this analysis shows the following summary exhibit.
The 1972 model and its update both look at the world economy from an engineering point of view. The analyses ignore the roles of governments, debt, and many other things important to the economy. The original authors of the 1972 Limits to Growth analysis said that they didn’t have much confidence in the accuracy of their forecasts after the decline had begun because of the many omitted factors.
The disturbing thing from the 2023 analysis is that it shows industrial output dropping about now. This is what I would expect to happen if there is a big drop in world trade.
[8] The world economy is self-organizing. It doesn’t seem to depend on the actions of any one person or group.
The Universe keeps growing and expanding. Many people believe that the Universe spontaneously sprang out of nothing and began to grow. I believe that there was a Creator.
An intricate system of evolution is taking place, with new dissipative structures arising and old dissipative structures coming to an end. The dissipative structures that last are the ones best adapted to the Earth’s ever-changing environment at that time.
Somehow, the world economy (and other ecosystems) maximize the total output of each part of the system, under the Maximum Power Principle. This isn’t dependent on any one system being more efficient or working better than another. Instead, the world economy tends to maximize the total output of the system, given the energy supplies (and other resources, such as water) available. Thus, the world output of goods and services is unlikely to fall so catastrophically that it quickly wipes out most of the world’s human population. For example, if industrial output is limited, it may be concentrated especially on replacement parts for current machinery and on machines needed for food production.
The intricate nature of evolution and the many dissipative structures formed, together with the Maximum Power Principle, leads me to believe that the Creator is still active today.
It seems to me that the self-organizing economy utilizes whatever leaders are available. They don’t need to have good motives for their actions. It isn’t that Donald Trump is a better leader than others, or that his ideas, as promulgated, will take a hold. The system works through many leaders of various political parties. Each leader is somewhat replaceable by other leaders. The underlying physics of the system is what leads to the changes that take place.
Religions seem all to be created by the same Creator. They seem to have many functions, including binding groups together, teaching “best practices” regarding getting along within a group here on earth, and (when resources are short), fighting against other religious groups. Religious organizations seem to be part of the self-organizing economy, as well.
[9] What I see ahead.
(a) Recession seems likely, starting out as being barely perceptible, but getting worse and worse over time.
(b) World output of physical goods and services will begin to decline almost immediately. In particular, products manufactured in the US using inputs from China will become difficult to obtain, as will goods imported into the US from China.
(c) I expect that commodity prices will fall. Deflation seems more likely than inflation. If inflation does take place, I expect that it will take the form of hyperinflation, with central banks issuing huge amounts of money, but there not being very many goods and services to purchase with this money.
(d) I expect that many banks, insurance companies, and pension plans will fail. I expect that governments will not be able to bail them all out. If governments do try to bail out all these failing institutions, the result is likely to be hyperinflation, with not much to buy.
(e) Many governments have plans for digital currencies to replace the currencies we have today. I am doubtful that these plans will work. For one thing, intermittent electricity is likely to become an increasing problem. For another, government organizations, such as the European Union, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the United Nations are likely to start falling apart. Even the United States is likely to become less “united,” or it may comprise fewer states.
(f) I do not see gold as being very helpful for the long term. It seems like small silver coins will be much more tradable in the future. What we will really need is food, water, and shelter. I expect that these will go mostly to workers producing these essentials, rather than to hangers-on to the system.
(g) A few businesses may do well. Figuring out how to produce food in quantity, locally, may be helpful. Converting unused buildings to shelters for poor people may also be helpful. Private “protection” services may also do well.
(h) The stock market provided great returns for US investors in the 2008 to 2024 period, but this cannot be expected to continue. A likely result is that returns will fall very low or will turn negative.
(i) Borrowing is likely to remain challenging, or get worse. Lenders will increasingly recognize the default risk. Some lenders may go out of business.
(j) Over a period of years, trade will change to be more local. The US will lose its status as the holder of the reserve currency. It will no longer try to be the policeman of the world.
[10] There are a lot of things we really don’t know.
The Creator may be creating a religious ending that we are not aware of. In fact, such an ending could come very soon.
Otherwise, dissipative structures are very often replaced by other dissipative structures. New economies may gradually grow up in different parts of the world. Perhaps the new economies will figure out new energy sources that we are not aware of, or make better use of declining energy types. According to Physicist Eric Chaisson, the long-term trend is toward more complex, energy-intense dissipative structures being formed.
“Societies” in Figure 7 seem to be similar to today’s economy.
About MG’s remark of having no meat,
few people ate meat regularly prior to 1914.
I cannot read German so I don’t know how the people of Pressburg ate back then, but
https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/food-and-nutrition-austria-hungary/
According to this graph an average citizen of Vienna was rationed 29 calories of meat per day in 1914, which was reduced to 18 calories of such in 1918.
29 calories of meat is about 10 grams, or about 0.35 ounces.
Per Day.
Assuming that is half of what the Viennese usually ate per day, the Viennese ate about 20 grams, or 0.7 ounces, of meat .
Per day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption
Slovaks eat 76.4 grams of meat per day.
In Normal Mailer’s Naked and Dead , the General orders the officer in charge of the officer’s mess to NOT send any good cuts of meat to the soldiers, and keep everything in the officer’s mess.
The officer, an ideal Ive League Student, opposes the General, with some more complications, orders the officer where he got killed by a ‘friendly fire’ from a soldier who hated the officer just because the latter was well educated.
Norman Mailer worked in a mess hall during World War 2 so it is partially from his own experience.
The General justifies himself that officers deserve to have the good stuff, fresher vegetables and better meat, and the soldiers are lucky to have SPAM and other cheaper cuts of meat if any, and he said it was important to establish order.
(And the irony was that the Japanese they were fighting against usually thought they hit a gold mine whenever they found a spam, since the Japanese did not have a system of sending meat to the battlefield at all.)
A lot of things were messed up because of Gabby Princip and Chucky, and peoples who had no business eating meat, let alone driving a car or using smartphones, consumed too much resources and some people, still clinging to the cult of abundance which is becoming more and more distant every day, propose unrealistic and infeasible scenarios to try to avoid the doomsday..
But the time to pay the piper has arrived, and time is up for the unnecessariats eating meat, driving a car or using a smartphone.
It is probably worthwhile to eat some eggs and some milk or cheese, but I will agree that eating meat is not necessary. Eating meat for occasional feasts, or as flavoring in soups is OK, but more than that is too much. Eating beans instead is a good idea.
I have eaten very little meat for 30 years, and my health is very good. I do eat a little fish, also (but not a lot). I had read way back then that the American diet didn’t work, health wise.
I am planting “švábka” bean popular in the Slovak diet. The name švábka is from the German word “Schwabe” (Swabian). This name for this big bean is used in my western part of Slovakia.
https://www.zahrada-sk.com/images_forum/gallery/14773/24566-svabka3.jpg
https://narecie.sk/%C5%A1v%C3%A1bka
There is no doubt that the 1918 flu would not have been so disastrous, were it not for the population being nutrient depleted forced vegans.
‘These people are disposable’: how Russia is using online recruits for a campaign of sabotage in Europe
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/may/04/these-people-are-disposable-how-russia-is-using-online-recruits-for-a-campaign-of-sabotage-in-europe
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’d been wondering about all these fires in recent years. Notre Dame, the Copenhagen Stock Exchange, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam.
Interesting! Article says,
The map where suspicious activities have taken place shows that the operations are pretty much in northern Europe. Nothing in Italy, for example, and very little in Spain. Nothing in Greece, either.
” ‘These people are disposable’: how Russia is using online recruits for a campaign of sabotage in Europe ”
So what’s new ? This is a war of NATO vs Russia . All is fair in love and war . Oh yes the 40 million Ukrainians are entirely disposable to save the City of London , Crap propaganda . VVP never promised you a ” Rose garden ” .
I’d been wondering about all these fires in recent years.
Yes not to miss the Iberian peninsula blackout . VVP did it . VVP is the master of the world . ROFL .
Yes, those Russian no-good-niks are up to their usual mischief – obviously in preparation for their imminent invasion of Western Europe.
LOL….
Excellent. We can see how well lots of F-16s do in Ukraine against Russia. What is the point of having lots of kit if you do not have a war to use it in? Popcorn time. If Belgium and Holland want to get rid of their F-16s then that is up to them. Hopefully we will get some quality footage of what comes of them. USA wants to get rid of some of its old cr/p too and Ukraine is willing to pay. Fair enough.
Did anyone really think that Trump would fix anything? Biden was screwing us from the bottom up re: illegal alien invasion, handouts money printing, sponsoring UKR, etc in exchange for votes. Now Trump is screwing us from the top down.
“Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.”
F 16 ‘S . Pakistan used them against India in the 1971-72 war of Bangladesh . 50 years old technology . What is next catapults , slings and stones ?
AKITA—An elderly man died on May 2 after being found collapsed on the ground near a broken blade from a wind turbine here, police said.
Akita prefectural police are investigating whether the fallen blade caused the death of Takashi Shishido, 81, who lived in Akita city.
The fire department was notified about Shishido’s condition at the Araya seaside park in Akita city’s Araya district at around 10:20 a.m. He was taken to a hospital with a head injury but was confirmed dead about an hour later.
According to the Akita prefectural government’s clean energy industry promotion division, the wind turbine at the park was installed by Sakura Furyoku, a company based in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward.
In December 2010, one of the three blades on a turbine in the same location fell to the ground, but no one was injured.
A strong wind advisory was issued for Akita city on the morning of May 2, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency, and a maximum instantaneous wind speed of 83 kph was observed at 7:52 a.m.
Such conditions make it difficult to walk against the wind.
The JMA said strong winds were expected to continue until the evening of May 2 in northeastern Japan.
The city-run seaside park, facing the Sea of Japan, features a pavilion for resting and paved walkways.
After the incident, police officers restricted access to a road leading to the park.
A woman who is a neighbor of Shishido, said: “He seemed to have a daily routine of taking a walk around his house in the morning. He was a neat and tidy person and often weeded his garden. I can’t believe this happened.”
A person involved in wind power generation in Akita Prefecture said it is possible that some of the blades on the turbine deteriorated due to metal fatigue.
“If maintenance had been done, such as inspections, it could have been prevented,” the person said. “If concerns about wind power generation spread, it will have a negative impact on the industry.”
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15743044#:~:text=AKITA—An%20elderly%20man%20died,who%20lived%20in%20Akita%20city.
The greenies never mention how many birds are killed each year from wind turbines. Save the Planet !
Holy shi$ I just had dinner with a guy who told me this and then proceeded to tell me North Dakota oil is profitable at $40 a barrel and that there is more oil in North Dakota than Saudi Arabia! You can’t fix stupidity
DOGE and the tariffs exist only because they are driven by the base desires of the two men responsible for them. Both of these men lack mature restraint in their desires, and are characterized by primitive greed, short-sighted selfishness, act with supreme arrogance and entitlement, as if they are above reproach.
This is not the time to coalesce around a herd-mentality based on which camp one identifies with. What we’re witnessing, deliberate or otherwise is accelerationism. There is nothing virtuous in accelerationism. Accelerationism equates to nihilism.
The status quo can and needs to be changed. The Democrats are fighting battles that were settled six decades ago. They’re not capable of transcending this. Turning away from the ineffectual Democrats does not mean one is obligated to affiliate with Trump.
The trade imbalance and federal budget can and should be managed much more efficaciously than how they are currently managed. Ethical conduct is always relevant in every situation.
A self-organizing economy works strangely. People don’t have to have good motives to be part of the leadership of the economy. Who is in charge seems to bounce back and forth. At this point, the economy is in perilous condition because of the huge amount of debt that has been put in place. The reason of this debt is largely to cover up the lack of availability of cheap energy to allow the economy to grow.
We cannot continue down the path of more and more debt to hide our lack of cheap energy. Cutting back seems to be the only option. Trump is following this approach, even though it is unpopular. He may overdo in some cases. But there are many others having their say, as well. I am sure that the Powers that Be are putting in their two cents, as well. The world is at a turning point right now, with or without Trump’s unpopular ideas.
The likely direction the economy needs to go is smaller government, fewer people with advanced education, and more goods produced locally. This likely means less complexity and a shift toward economic contraction. This will not be a popular outcome.
“Hideaway
August 2, 2024 at 10:13 pm
. . .
The problem now is we can’t go back in the economic environment that exists. What we’ve built is what exists and going backwards to a simplified local type of living would take an increase in energy use if it was to support the population we have.
To get a simplified local population relying upon the local environment only, like existed hundreds or even thousands of years ago, would take huge duplication of even the simplest of manufacturing. We would need hundreds of thousands of blacksmiths with their workshops making axe heads, and horse shoes. Whereas now we have just a few factories in the world making axe heads and horse shoes.
We’ve become so much more efficient in making each separate piece of modernity, but forgot we have multiplied up the number of different bits we manufacture overall by many magnitudes.
Take a simplified truck as a tool, the way we made them 70 years ago. They are are less efficient, and turning to this less efficiency right at the time we are getting less oil because we no longer have the tools to get to the ‘difficult’ oil. It doesn’t and can’t work.”?
https://un-denial.com/2024/07/29/book-review-the-end-of-global-net-oil-exports-by-lars-larsen-2024/
Yes – walking backwards has always been more difficult than walking forwards.
Show me an American man who who is ethically sound, maturely restrained in his desires, and not characterized by primitive greed, short-sighted selfishness, supreme arrogance and entitlement, and I will not just say a prayer but will arrange with my local vicar to hold a mass for them.
Among my admittedly small circle of American acquaintances here in Japan, I only know one such paragon personally—and he always voted for Ralph Nader. Such people are pretty thin on the ground these days generally as far as I can see. Their entire character is at odds with the ethos that makes the United States what it is, which can be summed up in slogans such as:
“Every Man for Himself,” “Land of Opportunity,” “In Diversity, Strength,”
“Liberty and Justice for All,” and let’s not forget “The Pursuit of Happiness.”
You say the status quo can and needs to be changed. How would you propose to do it? “Not like this” isn’t a valid answer.
You seem to be groping in the direction of MAMA (Make America Moral Again), but I suspect you don’t really want to go there. Are you expecting ethically upright individuals to magically or spontaneously come to the fore, take over the reins of government, and majestically steer the ship of state in the the right direction?
Tim I resemble the last part of that remark on Americans, though I didn’t have to tell you that. Fred is groping for MAHA minus the spontaneously coming to the fore, and he will get MAHA.
Fred we’re not witnessing accelerationism we’re witnessing decelerationism made to look to the controlled opposition like accelerationism. Which is clever because it provides political cover for peak oil which is the elephant in the room. Energy collapse requires dismantling the growth paradigm in a controlled fashion. If it looks uncontrolled to you then that’s also by design and for the same reason as above: providing political cover. Deception is the first and last art of psychological warfare. The only art, layered.
I am afraid you are right.
“we’re not witnessing accelerationism we’re witnessing decelerationism made to look to the controlled opposition like accelerationism.”
and
“Energy collapse requires dismantling the growth paradigm in a controlled fashion.”
It is not possible now to explain to people what is really happening.
No it’s not possible.:) You had to be there. Here.
We are aware that people can not live without moral tinted narratives Fred. No need to write 4 paragraphs about it.
Fred
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COVID vaccine linked to heart problems
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o3Kh99pZnn4
COVID vaccine linked to heart problems
The National Desk 7.3K Apr 29
A new study about the safety of the COVID-19 MRNA vaccines directly challenges public health officials’ claims and raises questions about transparency and trust.
READ MORE: https://thenationaldesk.com/top-…
“…raises questions…”
LOL…
Funny how things change. A few years ago, this video would have been disallowed on YouTube. Now, it’s shown both there (and without advisory warnings) and on TV stations across the US. Eddy is clapping gleefully somewhere.
>> 275,206 views Apr 29, 2025
No kidding! Some of us were reading these things four years ago, so this comes as no surprise.
The first official and reliable results and also researches about heart problems and eye problems for mRNA vaccines (Pfizer-Biontech and Moderna) were available in 2021.
Not to mention clot problems and Gulliain Barre’ paralysis for Astra Zeneca vaccine.
Later on arrived all the other results and researches about the other adverse events, that is strong correlation with autoimmune diseases, cancer, Parkinson, Alzheimer and other negative consequences for health, such as diabete and liver diseases.
It was also available for people to know in 2022 that the more one had an additional dose, the higher probability of negative consequendes increased.
Of course it was not possible to have these news on mainstream, but those results and researches were anayway published and available for anyone on reliable scientific magazines.
It is very sad that some people now need to get to know this only if it arrives from mainstream news.
But I understand that it may be a necessary process.
At least in US you have moved on, thanks to a new Administration, in Europe the perpetrators are almost all there.
And I could never say enough words of thanks to Gail for the opportunity to share and deepen this subject in a serious and reliable way during a terrible period of obscurantism occured in the western world in the years 2020-2023.
You are welcome.
Yeah real funny but not as in ha ha. Compleeeetly unexpected…how things ‘change.’ They ‘change’ from rinse to repeat, and back to rinse again.
Naw me and FE are both shouting limited hangout. And I’m also saying I told you so. Timing is everything.
Fast Eddie LIVES in his own bubble Stack world in which he rules what is to be believe with worship and 🙈 awesome. Norman, on your knees and bow to the Great One. His MAGNIFICENCE will show mercy and if you do so….
i can’t
i dont know any four number cusswords
i use real ones instead—–but never as cusswords
Too funny, we needed some comic relief here with all the dismal news.
I cruised his stack a few months ago. It looked like he had peeled off a few commenters from here, with Hubbs doing double duty. Got himself established. Good for Eddy, and everyone else lol. Me and Eddy have a certain je ne sais quoi in common. Certain being the operative word.
Glad Fast Eddie is not alone in the world and has someone besides Hoolio and an imaginary Mrs Fast.
I no longer need to worry any longer about good old Eddie
just like terminator……..
he’ll be back
Maybe a few people will start understanding some of the issues.
We understand, alright, but it won’t change any outcome.
Such is the tragedy of existence..Jiddu Krishnamurti
He spoke to crowds for decades and no one really “got it”,
Same as the Budda and Christ….whatever
even those who do understand the issues, are in the same position as those who buy a ticket on a rollercoaster, only to find that no one has finished building it…….
that small detail wasn’t made clear when you got on…….
so you see yourself going up and up that rising rail, and admire the view looking right and left…….
ignoring the screams from the people in the car in front that something is wrong…..
while you insist that ”someone will fix it”’………because that is your only option.
Meat becomes unsustainable.
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1081303
As there is a lot of human meat, there is little space for animal meat. Either we or them.
I’ve been around for a long, long time. I remember this book from the 1970s.
Diet for a Small Planet
Book by Frances Moore Lapp
Frances Moore Lappé’s 1971 book Diet for a Small Planet argues that a plant-based diet is better for both people and the planet. It highlights the environmental impact of meat production, including its contribution to food scarcity and deforestation. The book also explores the idea that small farmers growing diverse crops have the knowledge and tools to feed communities while protecting soil and water health.
Celebrating 50 years of ‘Diet for a Small Planet’ with Frances Moore Lappé and daughter Anna Lappé
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/10/11/diet-for-a-small-planet
MG, It’s not like it’s something new. This book was very well reviewed and popular….no matter…nothing was done but just the opposite
It’s “dog eat dog” out there now.
The maximum (non-beef meat) is given as 255 grams per week, which is equivalent to 9 ounces total of meat per week.
Plus it is chicken breast, which is just about the least nutritious of all meats.
I suggest these people read ‘Meat: A Benign Extravagance’ by Simon Fairlie, 2010. Full of facts and figures, especially from the UK which makes more use of grass-based livestock than most countries (except Ireland).
Humans can’t eat grass or leaves. Ruminants can convert indigestible material to meat and milk … and of course, cow manure. On small farms, manure is an asset, not a liability and permits some horticulture or arable farming to be carried on.
Fairlie is a small farmer. I think he keeps three or four dairy cattle in Devon.
This Zerohedge post shows an interesting chart comparing the median incomes for the world’s largest economies, at 1994 and 2024. The comparison is (supposedly) adjusted for inflation and differences in the cost of living in different parts of the world. These are in 2017 international dollars, so are somewhat lower than today’s dollar costs.
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/how-daily-incomes-have-changed-top-economies-over-past-30-years
This is direct link to the chart:
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Daily-Median-Incomes_WEB.jpg
Based on this chart, China, India, and Indonesia all had median incomes of $2 per day in 1994. These amounts have moved up to the following amounts in 2024:
China $12 per day
India $4 per day
Indonesia $6 per day
Brazil has moved up from $6 a day in 1994 to $13 per day in 2024.
Russia has moved up from $10 per day in 1994 to $17 per day in 2024. This is still very low compared to most European nations, which seem to be in the $50 to $60 range in 2024. I would not blame Russia for wanting to fight, if it has energy resources to do so. It is not getting paid enough for its resources, in some sense.
Not getting paid enough for resources — whether mineral or human — is what grants you entry into global neocolonialism/neoliberalism. That’s life as a late-entrant, peripheral economic colony. Mao wasn’t internationally recognized as the leader of China until 1971. Until then it was Chiang Kai Shek. Mao had to go all-in on selling out if he wanted priority access to oil inputs. Conversely, Gorby and the Putin had to play ball if they wanted Russian access to oil markets, and if they didn’t play ball Russia would be isolated and remain noncompetitive and vulnerable to regime change throughout the remainder of the industrial age. If you can’t beat em join em
Still, at the end of the industrial age, when the rising tide that floated all boats now ebbs, organic chips on shoulders can be rekindled with manufactured consent — authorized — in the names of the new, necessary nationalisms. Even the American worker at the core who got the most siphoned spoils of all of the global working and middle classes, gets to play that political game, however hollow it really is.
I don’t trust these numbers at all. China has ~4x population and ~2x the car purchases. So they buy cars at 1/2 the US rate. You can’t do that on $12 per day.
This is median income. You can have 20% of your population fairly well off, and a lot of them doing terribly.
You can see that China is doing a lot better than India. China and Mexico are about at the same level in 2024, if you believe this chart.
Gail is correct . I had posted earlier that in India it is 140 million people out of 1400 million that drive growth . They consume the refrigerators , a/c . cars , scooters . 800 million survive on free rations from the govt the rest are ” hand to mouth ” existence . Daily wagers , small retailers , food truck owners etc ,
Always 80/20. Strongly suspect rule of the universe seen on earth in biology. Yes, I see you are at 10%, close enough.
Dennis L.
every time I see this I have to say this again
There were no 80/20 rule until Vilfredo Pareto talked about it around 1900 and Joseph Juran popularized it in 1940
Nature/s law is more like 1/99
Russia has got a harsh climate, big distances: all that makes higher population density unsustainable there.
There are many places around the world where the people live in the areas that require a lot of additional energy for survival. Russia is one of the worst, like Canada. Most parts of these countries are not suitable for living, unless subsidies are provided.
And the warmer countries reject to sustain higher populations there, unless they have any benefits of that.
Efficiency.
One should not forget purchasing power, what one can get for those dollars. For example, gasoline and natural gas are at least 3x cheaper in Russia than Western Europe.
The PPP comparison is supposedly adjusted for purchasing power. But I don’t know how good the adjustment is. The Soviet Union provided a lot of services for citizens, and these have continued to some extent under Russia. There is a very nice subway system in Moscow, for example. And it was the custom in the past for citizens of Russia to have plots of land, outside of Russia, where they could have a large garden. (Large gardens were usual inside Moscow, too.) Citizens contributed much of their own labor in building homes, partly because mortgages were (are?) not usual.
Can A.I. truly inspire?
*This is our true human value.
AI and inspiration should not be used in the same sentence
No peace talks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQnyPIBwNlo&t=15s
Time to ramp up the war.
Simultaneously picking a fight with Russia, Iran, China, while alienating all allies. Not smart.
When the global accord to decommission the nuclear power industry is reached a couple few years from now then you will know that MAGA was a manufactured crisis in service of the manufacturing consent for shifting the Overton window again, to MAHA, just like the Great Reset headfake was a manufactured crisis in service of the MAGAMAHA shift.
Neolib/neocon clown-lite
MAGA clown-lite
Neolib clown show on steroids in service of controlled demo
MAGAMAHA maga-driven clown show on steroids contr demo
MAHA promised land to everyone’s great relief in a time of existential need
Maximum power principle.
Psychology 101.
It’s a lot more satisfying to cotton to the herding scheme while it’s still going on. You manage your affairs intelligently. So do they. As above so below.
A global accord to decommission the nuclear power industry? I will certainly be on the look out for that.
But I was thinking that after what just happened in Spain and Portugal, that maybe there would be a revival of “safe and effective” nuclear power generation to provide stable base-load power for the electric-vehicle-and-control-grid-cashless-15-minute-city-utopian society our masters have planned for us without having to burn so many hydrocarbons.
Sometimes it’s difficult for me to tell if you’re being sarcastic, and I assume that you are being sarcastic in this case because my feeling is that you now generally can see what I see whether or not that sight has become native to you. We’re all different though so the important thing is just to be able to see it enough so as to be able to act upon that line of sight if and as necessary.
The Hand is just like us because they know what we know. Or rather, we know what they know. As much as they would like to put existing nuclear to use to help break the fall, they know it’s the last thing they can afford to try, which is why the 5 year old Non-Public Degrowth Agenda can reasonably said to be all about decommissioning the industry. The industry is the only thing that surely threatens the lives of the members of the Hand – it’s as simple as that. And the Hand don’t take kindly to being threatened, so it’s on mission til the job is done. After that, Collapse becomes just a garden variety one again with the uncontrollable, looming black cloud that makes this planet inhospitable, gone.
If the Iberian outage was in fact the Hand laying groundwork for the DA, then it raises the specter that they may not use engineered war cover after all, as the vehicle for the Big Nuclear Scare that becomes the impetus for the global decommissioning accord, but instead use an extended grid blackout that finds political cover (from peak oil) in climate change and/or renewables, just as with the Iberian blackout. Four Spanish plants went to backup power during the blackout. Or maybe the Hand will go with the combo and have multiple blackout related moves to backup power, multiple near-meltdowns and rising fuel pool temps, and maybe an actual regional war cover disaster in the best possible location of their choosing. Either an accumulation of a larger number of civilian, non-catastrophic, eye-opening problems in fairly quick succession that set a clear pattern of untenability, or a couple war catastrophies, or a combination of war-cover and civilian.
Apropos of us knowing what THEY know, and also of my comment yesterday on Mao selling out to the then-still-maturing Hand out of necessity, the reports by our friend John Day that Mao read the Limits to Growth when it came out are a no-brainer really. One might say that Nixon’s visit to China in early ’72 was several months before the release of the book that summer, but the Limits to Growth team had already given two major international presentations of their findings during the summer of ’71, in Rio and Moscow. Some might say that Chinese economic liberalization didn’t happen til Mao died and Chiang Kai Shek properly took the reins, but they need to look deeper. Things take time. The Nixon visit was the watershed act of public, bureaucratic political cover (for the non-public, Elite negotiations) that saw Mao let go of his Marxism in exchange for seeing China become a nuclear powered franchise. The MPP ultimately prevailed over his ideology.
Do check out the page-long introduction section starting on page 3 of this PDF. It features both M King Hubbert and the Limits to Growth, whom and which were common knowledge within the bureaucracy.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://brill.com/view/journals/joah/6/2/article-p131_2.pdf%3Fsrsltid%3DAfmBOopH4xSCzYCkrbDJlW4PJVCEpso0uEMva6DHPBYUVMMc55kAwAr2&ved=2ahUKEwi-zOvPmIqNAxUxJDQIHe6xMaAQFnoECCYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0QhDodVfXcltfvoKflj5Z2
I’m not sure Canadian Prepper would be my go-to source for news, but he does have a point about peace talks crumbling, both in the Russia-Ukraine sphere and in the Iranian sphere. Things don’t seem to be going well with China either. And tariffs against current allies don’t go over well.
I wonder if TPTB have a role in the direction that these talks are going. We are not ready to settle things, the way things are. Trump cannot go very far from the influence of TPTB.
Does the cosmos ‘aim’ at anything?
> Christian Wolff was the very prince of pedants. As a mathematician, he brought the study of the calculus into German university teaching. He brought the hypothetico-deductive mode of thought to bear on the subject of astronomy, too, with intriguing results. Arguing from a fundamental principle of nihil frustra (“nothing happens to no purpose”), he concluded that the moon, other planets, and even comets were populated by plants, animals, and humans. He even went so far as to calculate the bodily size of the inhabitants of Jupiter. They must have larger eyes than their terrestrial counterparts, he wisely surmised, given that the sunlight reaching them would be less intense. Let it never be said that the patient application of reason does not broaden one’s horizons.
This seems to be an early use of a model.
Today, using models is popular. They seem to be the foundation for a lot of what passes as science today.
The future will be like the past is a very popular model. If things have generally gotten better, this will continue. This is true for a while, but not permanently.
EROEI is a model. I don’t think it works very well, as it is applied.
All of the climate science is based on models.
The statement, “All models are wrong, but some models are useful,” is attributed to statistician George E. P. Box. Models are useful for supporting narratives, but they may or may not provide predictive power for long.
“The map is not the territory”.
Darwin would have agreed with Christian Wolff. The environment shapes and influences your body and its genetics.
Jupiter is so big that over 1,300 Earths could fit inside of it. So just imagine how strong the gravity is there. Any creatures living there must have enormous muscles.
and be able to swim in scalding liquid hydrogen. they already knew Jupiter’s mass, they could calculate surface gravity, so Wollf seems to be a third rate scientist.
This is a history lesson that is made even better for being 7 years since the speech was made. Provides details of the Yalta conference, Churchill and the Cold Way
https://player.odycdn.com/v6/streams/ef49b6b26566c06c2d772ee5ff18fcf0632e498e/6e8db9.mp4
The speaker starts out talking about the idea of American exceptionalism. The idea is widely believed inside the US, but it is laughable outside the US. In this view, the US is not greedy; it just wants to spread freedom and democracy in the world. US narrative forgets history, and the role that military violence has played.
Also, the special relationship between the US and Britain. Somehow, it is believed that this special relationship is also spreading freedom and democracy. After WWI, Woodrow Wilson declared, “Now the world will know America as the Savior of the World.” Churchill was another world leader at that time. Churchill had a visceral hatred of Communism. Churchill said, “Bolshevikism should be strangled in its cradle.” It was Churchill who tried to get America to join the UK in intervening in the Russian Revolution.
Many more details after this in the video. This overview is still relevant today.
This is an update on what’s happening in Australia regarding the path that it (the powers that be) is taking regarding energy (oil and electricity), the decarbonisation agenda and the politicalisation of the CSIRO
Working to get all of our energy was what we did where we were poor. It has been a miracle of modern technology that energy costs, as a share of household budgets, have come down as much as they have.
The emphasis on wind and solar has been based on bad models. Oil prices were expected to rise to $275 per barrel by 2025. The fact that wind and solar were intermittent was overlooked in assessing their value. [An EROEI issue, I would note].
Looking at the titles along the bottom of this 1 hour, 19 minute video, topics include:
Relationship between cost of living and energy
The financial cost of decarbonizing electricity
Copying countries with failing systems
Failures of the integrated system plan
The broken system of renewables
How renewable are renewables?
Authorities taking power from the citizens?
Distrust in the experts
The problem of demonizing nuclear power
We will never reach the projected targets
Je crois que le problème du nucléaire ce n’est d’avoir pas pu atteindre la surgeneration à temps .
En france on a réussie à démontré l’EROI et le fonctionnement des reacteur phenix et superphenix ce qui en théorie pouvais prétendre à brûler l’uranium 238 et d’autre isotopes issue des déchets pendant 2000 ans.
On aurait pu utiliser le très fort EROI de 100 pour économiser les ressources pétrolière et gazière dans chaque partie de l’économie.
Cependant le nucléaire souffre du fait qu’il faut une industrie lourde et donc des ingénieurs et techniciens pour la maintenance des installation et le suivi du cycle du combustible.il faut donc une économie forte sur le système d’éducation des masses.
Il y a un problème également avec les technologie de surgeneration qui utilise des caloporteur au sodium ce qui diminue la sûreté ( sauf pour les russes qui utilise du plomb).
Il ya aussi le problème qu’il faut produire suffisamment de plutonium pour les autre centrale ce qui augmente énormément le temps de déploiement de ce type de centrale .
Maintenant nous avons rédiriger l’économie vers plus d’extraction minière vers les énergies propre qui cannibalise les énergies stable comme le nucléaire , le gaz etc..
Il est maintenant impossible de relancer de tel programme en terme de ressource physique ( donc économique) .
Le nucléaire souffre d’une trop mauvaise image car on a surtout en france comparé les prix du nucléaire pilotable avec celui des enr non pilotable . Alors que dans la réalité les enr créé des prix négatif quand il ya du vent et du soleil et des prix prohibitif quand il y en a pas .
Il n’ont jamais comparé les prix si ajoutait du stockage journalier et saisonnier au ENR ce qui aurait multiplier leur prix ..
Maintenant nous aurons de l’instabilité énergétique et de la destruction de demande par sur production ou sous production .
Translated by Google Translate:
I believe the problem with nuclear power isn’t that it hasn’t been able to achieve supergeneration in time.
In France, we’ve successfully demonstrated the EROI and the operation of the Phenix and SuperPhenix reactors, which, in theory, could burn uranium-238 and other isotopes from waste for 2,000 years.
We could have used the very high EROI of 100 to conserve oil and gas resources in every part of the economy.
However, nuclear power suffers from the fact that it requires heavy industry and therefore engineers and technicians to maintain the facilities and monitor the fuel cycle. Therefore, it requires strong economics in the education system for the masses.
There is also a problem with supergeneration technology, which uses sodium coolants, which reduces safety (except for the Russians, which use lead).
There’s also the problem of having to produce enough plutonium for other power plants, which greatly increases the deployment time for this type of power plant.
Now we’ve redirected the economy toward more mining and cleaner energy, which cannibalizes stable energy sources like nuclear, gas, etc.
It’s now impossible to relaunch such a program in terms of physical (and therefore economic) resources.
Nuclear power suffers from a very poor image because, especially in France, we’ve compared the prices of controllable nuclear power with those of non-controllable renewable energy. In reality, renewable energy creates negative prices when there’s wind and sun and prohibitive prices when there isn’t.
They never compared the prices if daily and seasonal storage were added to renewable energy, which would have multiplied their prices.
Now we’ll have energy instability and demand destruction due to overproduction or underproduction.
” We could have used the very high EROI of 100 to conserve oil and gas resources in every part of the economy. ”
Could have , should have , would have etc . As Billary said ” What difference does it make ” . Thanks for your post Entropie . Newcomers always welcome especially if in EU . Only a few here .
P.S / I like your post because it underlines the problem and also why the solutions could not be implemented . Very few can do that , Kudos . Merci .
(Reuters) – Iran has to ‘walk away’ from uranium enrichment and long-range missile development and it should allow Americans to inspect its facilities, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday as a round of nuclear talks was postponed
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iran-must-walk-away-from-all-uranium-enrichment-rubio-says/ar-AA1E4cpi?ocid=BingNewsSerp
The Trump administration has to know Iran will not agree to that. I don’t see how we can avoid war with Iran if these are the demands of the United States, Iran will never agree to be disarmed that way.
I don’t see how the US can fight a war with Iran, given its dependence on China for raw materials for bombs, and given all of its other ongoing problem areas.
I agree with you that Iran would never agree to be disarmed that way.
US policy on Iran is rudderless .
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/05/trump-tops-tariffs-on-china-with-sanctions.html#comments
Be careful what you wish for, Ravi. Trump may be completely ineffectual (militarily), but that is because he is under constant attacks to start a war. The next president could well start that and also facilitate Belgium’s declaration of war on Russia.
Where does China sell its “stuff” to get money/currency to pay its workers? The US has had the advantage of printing money, guess is that has something to do with velocity.
Dennis L.
William Scott Ritter Jr. ‘believes’ that the US is ‘ready and willing’??
“go back to the JCP one
8:29 year Window Guys breakout window one
8:32 year Iran today is literally one
8:36 week one
8:39 week that is
8:43 unacceptable . . .
the
11:00 Iranian program as it currently exists
11:03 is a weapons preparation program there’s
11:05 no other way to describe
11:07 it . . .
15:54 you know who did that Donald
15:56 Trump Donald Trump actually built a
15:59 employment plan to launch preemptive
16:01 nuclear strike against
16:03 Iran we built weapons especially for
16:06 this purpose . . .
16:31 big bombs didn’t work which is exactly
16:34 why Donald Trump has made low yield
16:37 ground penetrating nuclear weapons that
16:39 do
16:40 work . . .
if we’re going to say we’re going
16:53 to take out the Iranian nuclear
16:55 capability then we will take it out
16:56 using the weapons that are designed for
16:58 that
17:00 purpose . . .
17:50 if Iran thinks that the initial attack
17:53 against it is going to be a very limited
17:55 strike they’re wrong if the decision’s
17:58 made to take out Iran’s nuclear
17:59 infrastructure then we will also take
18:01 out the political component of that
18:03 nuclear program the weaponization aspect
18:06 of it which is a regime we believe is
18:08 prepared to either issue the order or
18:10 has already issued the order to create
18:11 nuclear weapons this will be a regime
18:13 change
18:15 operation . . .
because if it gets to
18:55 the point where Iran does this or
18:57 attempts to do this Iran will no longer
19:01 exist . . .
these are
20:50 confessions made by very Senior People
20:53 by policy makers by decision makers by
20:56 members of the Iranian government um
20:59 and it is condemned Iran because now the
21:02 United States has every justification
21:04 under international law to take a
21:06 Hardline stance
21:09 against the Iranian nuclear
21:11 program um and that’s that’s where I
21:14 stand on
21:15 this“?
we all know that nuclear is finished so do the elders that is why this is all smoke and mirrors.2025 was the date that the Elders knew that cheap oil would be exhausted by.
It is currently $58.38 per barrel.
The $58 oil price is below the cost of production. The low price is why oil production is in danger of rapid collapse.
The selling price is based on what the economy can afford, based to a significant extent on people’s wages. If there is a great deal of wage disparity, as there is today, oil prices can be lower than the cost of production.
Poor people are finding themselves unable to indirectly buy energy products. They need to economize. They do not drive to restaurants as much. Or, in poor countries, they eat less meat.
Disarm yourself so that we can attack you!
I am so looking forward to the pi-phone. I expect it will be 100% robot made. No Indians, no Chinese, no Africans, no Americans.
Where does the buying power to buy the phone come from? Someone needs income to buy the phone.
This is an important topic for discussion. Not sure OFW is the right place for this discussion.
I am for a sovereign wealth fund to own America and support Americans.
Admire your optimism but prepare for disappointment. What would that sovereign fund be? the federal reserve? the concept of an altruistic fund violates the MPP, so it can not happen.
Ed , sovereign wealth funds are with nations having a trade surplus . Check KSA , Norway , UAE , Malaysia , Taiwan , Japan , Kuwait etc. Nations that have a trade deficit cannot have a Sovereign Wealth fund .USA is a trade deficit nation so it’s wealth fund will be just money printing and more debt . Orange man is crazy .
The US sovereign “wealth” fund will just be another scam – containing intrinsically worthless, fake “assets” like bitcoins.
Good point!
Intel outfit ZH pushing the left national syndicalist (national socialist) future:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/beef
I wonder how this will work out in practice. Will the flash freezing, and keeping the meat cold work? Will there be delivery vans for all of this? How much will this cost consumers? Can it be scaled up?
The meat sticks, wrapped in plastic, require some processing, I would think. Can this be scaled up? Is this kind of processing safe?
The delivery man will leave 10 lbs of frozen meat on your porch while you are out shopping. What thawing will not ruin the raccoons will get.
You said you guys are gonna start butchering. I assume that means commercially, and presumably for direct sale. What are the current regulations like there? In the US a USDA certified slaughterhouse has to cut and wrap them in order for you to sell them legally. It costs at least 100K to build one yourself and get it certified. I think that the regulations here may not change but enforcement will go away. None of which is relevant to my homesteading operation.
Here a certified small slaughterhouse costs 50K. You need to have AC to keep the temperature at 12C, a bandsaw, vacuum packer, and metal tables with various knives, plus a meat grinder. white ceramics on floor and on the walls up to 2m. you need a rail for the carcasses of course and a bleeding area.
but it is russia, and there are ways to cut corners which would be imprudent to describe, and anyway if you sell to local butchers you only need to produce a clean carcass, so no tables, no vacuum and no ceramic. These are needed only for making nice cuts for direct sale.
Once I get to 3000 lambs a year, selling to large processors in Moscow, i will need all documents, but you can start without all paperwork and instruments.
Thanks. So in the near-term you’re installing your own slaughterhouse because at your current production level that is how you can maximize profits, but for the longer-term you’re planning to scale up to the bottom end of the national production scale. Are you concerned about the government ties that bind that come with getting to that level or do you welcome them because, as I said to Gail, it may make you eligible for prioritized resource allocation? Get you out of kulak status and into made man status.
How many acres and men and women you got working for/with you?
It is more to have a simplified business. Taking the animals to a slaughterhouse 40+km away, then back, then to moscow, is painful. we have not yet decided whether we need direct sale or just take all carcasses to Moscow. events will decide what the final business looks like. I have 520 hectares, but some 230 are not yet in use. we patiently clear them of small trees. we have 7 workers plus an accountant working part time with us.
Copy that drb. Lotta space. Interesting to see how you’re surfing collapse with pasture like me but generating income doing so, and keeping your options open. I do sell firewood but otherwise I just don’t have the mind for that. Must be fun to have seven of you getting after it. Easier to have help when there’s a business model. Nice for you with the young forest to have room to grow and plenty of wood.
Expensive meat by mail is pretty popular these days. I think they must use dry ice. Could move to butcher paper and no plastic. I don’t expect this particular business model to last too long into the depression, not at the interstate level anyway unless they get partly nationalized in exchange for guaranteed resource inputs.
EIA has posted a figure for world crude oil for last January (82.184 mb/d) — this is 1.0% below their current monthly figure for post-covid world crude oil production (83.016 mb/d, in December, 2023), & 2.8% below their current monthly figure for peak world crude oil production (84.592 mb/d, in November, 2018).
In view of current world crude oil prices ( http://oil-price.net/ ), is the world oil supply permanently “over the hill”? ( https://davecoop.net/seneca )
https://www.eia.gov/international/data/world/petroleum-and-other-liquids/monthly-petroleum-and-other-liquids-production?pd=5&p=0000000000000000000000000000000000vg&u=0&f=M&v=mapbubble&a=-&i=none&vo=value&t=C&g=00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001&l=249-ruvvvvvfvtvnvv1vrvvvvfvvvvvvfvvvou20evvvvvvvvvvnvvvs0008&s=94694400000&e=1735689600000
Something to think about . The 2.8% is the decline rate for the total world production which includes 9 mbpd of shale where production is at plateau and will start a decline . As fast was the rise in production the same fast decline will be reflected on the other side of the curve . The decline has started in shale now we wait for the acceleration and a decline rate of 5% will be approaching very fast , Second 4 mbpd of shale oil is exported . When does somebody shouts ” fire ” and the govt imposes a bam on exports ? Suddenly exportable oil comes from 34 mbpd to 30 mbpd . ELM in motion . Hoarding and wars ? Where is my oil ? Who moved my diesel ?🤣
We saw some time ago that the EIA had been ‘massaging’ the figures and the ‘crude oil’ or ‘liquids’ output had become less energy-dense than a few years earlier, measured in kWh or GJ per litre. Has this trend continued?
‘Barrels’ are a unit of volume, not energy.
Indeed, and of course world population is continuing to rise, implying that oil per capita is falling even more quickly.
David it’s been 6.5 years since peak global total oil liquids. Why are you asking that question as if it’s a new and relevant one?
I don’t think so. Last I looked into it, total liquids continues to climb with natural gas plant liquids adding to the sum with all the fracking. We were at 102 or 103mbpd. Crude+condensate, however, peaked around 2018 IIRC, at something like 84mbpd.
OK I found it from Art Berman:
The relevant graph
https://www.artberman.com/wp-content/uploads/october-world-crude-condensate-production-was-7-mmbd-more-than-2004-11-plateau.jpg
The source webpage
https://www.artberman.com/blog/peak-oil-requiem-for-a-failed-paradigm/
Be careful to note the last three timepoints on the chart are projections and the current C+C has not exceeded the 84.9mbpd high mark, though it is projected to exceed it in the next year.
We are at the top. The exact tippy topis unimportant. The next question is when do we get to 10% down?
2028 I think.
Let’s ask Fast Eddie, he knows and was always correct ….we are in the midst of a die off of CEP but we just don’t know it yet.
Norman, is the last man standing here,
Too funny, forgive me please
PS what’s up with the weird weather, weird, weird, weird..
Fast Eddie where are you?
watever you do
dont rub eddies bottle
he might just appear
Norm, my hunch is he’s in an underground bunker like what Addie Hitter escaped to in 1945 Berlin.
He has a periscope scanning the horizon waiting for the right moment after the bottleneck to gloat that he was right all along and the losers are all dead now
@Mike Jones, you know he has his own substack, right? I bet Norm visits under a pseudonym just to give him shit.
i looked at his substack once—a while ago
it clearly states, ”that you are not welcome here if you believe the moon landing took place”
no arguing with that…..not that i tried.
at my advanced age, i no longer waste the few years i have left on repeticious clowns…..too busy doing conventional, non fantasy—life………
eddy, in venting his somewhat theatrical outrage at all and sundry, was merely repeating his own inadequacies, and …er… shortcomings.—-which is why i let him get on with it…..the more he vomited expletives….the more certain my diagnosis of his problems……
folks may have noticed, that we have no faux -obscenities on ofw since he went to try and sow his seed elsewhere.
Norman, your mastery of psychoanalysis is nothing short of astounding! Was it Freud or Jung you studied under, or was it R.D. Laing?
There is certainly a lot less lurid and sordid innuendo and salacious raconteuring now that FE no longer visits.
But don’t you miss the tales he told and the vicarious enjoyment we all reveled in at hearing them?
Thanks ivan but then you *do* think so, right? LNG is not oil liquids. And I ain’t buying that projection, as close to par as they may be getting. Also, on a purist level an average yearly decline rate is a better metric for energy collapse. Over the last 5 years what are we at now? 2pc average decline per year or something? To say nothing of declining EROEI.
Reante, no, the term “total liquids” includes NGPL, the heavier molecules that come out of natural gas. So “total liquids” is still increasing slowly, while crude+condensate has plateaued or in slight decline. “Total liquids” is the topline number, it’s a definitional thing.
Okay ivan thanks for noting that NGPL is more relevant to this conversation than LNG but NGPL (plant condensates) is 2-4 carbon atoms and not contributing to the gasoline and diesel supplies whereas the heavier lease condensates (5+ carbons) do contribute to those supplies, hence my use of the term “oil liquids” rather than “liquids.”it makes no sense to have non-oil liquids be part of a conversation on the timing of peak oil.
I agree with that take. Your terminology threw me for a loop; normally people would just say crude plus condensate. Anyway, yes, the good stuff appears to be in slow (for now) decline.
Whatever you look at, you need to look at it on a per capita basis. This is very often what I show in my charts.
Natural gas liquids sell for quite a bit less than crude oil. They are less energy dense. Adding them to crude oil was intended to hide the fact that crude oil was expected to peak and decline) and, in fact, did.
i agree
I don’t mind you pointing out world oil production each month. People are concerned about production falling greatly. So far, this hasn’t happened. But relative to population, it isn’t doing well.
This is an image I put together showing crude oil production per capita data through September 2024.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-admin/upload.php?item=52297
At several points, the world was at .46 gallons of crude oil per person per day. In September 2024, the world was at .42 gallons of crude oil per person per day. We clearly are far below . 46 gallons of crude oil per person per day now, but I haven’t taken time to recreate this chart through January.
////I don’t usually cut n paste comments, but this was too good to pass up.//////
*********
Billionaire MAGA megadonor Ken Griffin incinerates Donald Trump over his disastrous tariffs and says that America has “has become 20 percent poorer in four weeks.”
Even hardcore Republicans supporters are running for the hills now…
“The United States was more than just a nation. It’s a brand. It’s a universal brand, whether it’s our culture, our financial strength, our military strength …. America rose beyond just being a country,” Griffin said at the Semafor World Economy Summit. “It was like an aspiration for most the world. And we’re eroding that brand right now.”
Griffin, the founder and CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, said that it can take “a lifetime to repair the damage that has been done” to our nation’s reputation.
“If you think of your behavior as a consumer, how many times do you buy a product with a brand on it because you trust that brand?” he said. “In the financial markets, no brand compares to the brand of the US Treasuries — the strength of the US dollar and the strength and creditworthiness of US Treasuries. No brand came close. We put that brand at risk.”
Griffin compared America to a luxury brand dressmaker who destroys their company by sinking into scandal.
“You know, you can buy like a similar dress with no name for less money, but you want the dress that you think is going to not fall apart in two weeks,” Griffin said. “It can take a very long time — a very long time — to remove the tarnish on a brand.”
He went on to say that the deflation of the U.S. dollar coupled with chaotic and unpredictable economic policy and Trump’s attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is a recipe for disaster.
Griffin then directly criticized Trump’s destructive tariffs, saying that they will not lead to any kind of victories but will force those involved to “tread water and not drown.”
He also destroyed the absurd claim that the tariffs will somehow magically bring manufacturing back to the United States despite the Trump administration failing to incentivize such reshoring with robust subsides.
“I’ll tell you what’s not going to happen is, people are not going to raise [money] to build manufacturing in America because with the policy volatility, you actually undermine the very goal you’re trying to achieve,” said Griffin.
He went on to point out the damage being inflicted on our relationships with our closest allies—
“How does Canada feel about our country today versus two months ago? How does Europe feel about the United States today versus two months ago?” Griffin asked.
“And some people scream, ‘Well, it just doesn’t matter.’ But you know what? It matters for a very profound reason. The entire Western world is engulfed in a debt crisis,” he added.
This is what happens when you elect an incompetent egomaniac with no understanding of geopolitics or the complex economic systems that hold the world together. Donald Trump operates on instinct and his instincts are always wrong.
But nothing can move MAGA cult.
Norm your obsession with MAGA cultishness belies your own neoliberal cultish inclinations. “Treading water and not drowning” is a better energy strategy for civilization at this juncture don’t you think, than gassing-out and drowning from swimming as fast as you can and as long as you can, away from shore?
If we can all acknowledge that, intentionally or not, the plandemic demand destruction bought this civilization some time, then we should also be able to see that this tariffs feathering mechanism is doing the same.
when ”plandemic” comes into this discussion
i’m out of it
How convenient.nevermind the “intentionally or not” qualification for your benefit.
”plan” demic
plan means intention.
epidemics have appeared throughout human history—nobody plans them.
modern social media has given us the means to ferment such nonsense….
Correct Norm that plan means intention. I wrote plandemic for my benefit and included “intentionally or not” for your benefit, because it is not structurally relevant to my point whether or not the plandemic was intentional. You’re being evasive, but nevermind.
None of this matter, the world is crashing into collapse, everywhere.
This political nonsense is just trivial and a waste of time.
Norm, can you tell us how you really feel?
Dennis L.
all fluff, no? physics does not care about brand names, it is just one of many narratives that are bandied about to confuse people (we have to preserve america’s brand, you know?). the houthis are doing far more to destroy america’s brand, incidentally. would you rather be incarcerated in your own home for six months, then injected four times with something toxic? or the mighty UK military entering the Ukraine war? because those are the choices. they are all bad. and even you understand that supply chains need to be much shorter, and now they are getting shorter.
You do seem to have a bit of a bee in your bonnet about the Trump admin.
America isn’t a brand. It’s a country where people live – in communities hopefully; communities which have been grieviously weakened by decent-paying jobs being shipped off to places where workers are paid less, work longer hours, under worse conditions and with fewer rights and protections.
It doesn’t matter if rich people like the one quoted, or people in other countries are miffed. They’re not the people Trump was elected by or for. Indeed, it might be a good sign.
Whether or not tariffs ‘work’, the situation is clearly unsustainable.
///decent paying jobs///
the reality is that Americans wanted high paying jobs, and low priced goods….. (dont we all)??
sorry—but theres only one way for that to happen—find lowpaid workers to make the goods
and they are in countries other than the USA…
Unless you know another way to have your cake and eat it, that I havent heard about??
Norm,
Once read a comment where a financier was asked why he broke a business. Responses: “Because I could.”
A few have benefited greatly by destroying America’s companies, because they could and there was a great deal of money in it. After all, the former employees cold learn to code, n’est pas?
Dennis L.
my comment was not meant as a universal panacea
only making the point about high wages and cheap goods….
a worker will not by expensive goods just to keep folks in the next town/state in employment….
thats just the way things are.
Or watch infornercials and create a new world out og it
I am tired of the cheap crap made in China. It falls apart or breaks in no time and there is no recourse to getting it replaced or fixed on the supposed warranty.
I pay double or triple for replacing cheaply made goods from China. I vote for regional manufacturing where at least there is a possibility for replacement for cheaply designed/manufactured goods.
I’ll pay more gladly if an item is designed and made well. Made to last. China goods are a curse on our landfills and a thinly disguised racket for repeat buys.
you miss the point i think……
that if trumps antics take down the usa—we all go down with it
The whole of Eurasia, Africa and South America beg to disagree. I think you are talking about (excpet the US) some 150M people.
The big problem is not enough crude oil to ship goods around the world, in fact, multiple times, as they are being manufactured. Somehow, the amount of oil used for shipping has to be reduced. Putting tariffs on is one way of starting the long trek toward producing goods (including food) more locally.
but
if you produce goods in the USA—ie locally—-the workers producing those goods will still expect their wages to stay at current levels—or higher…….
while expecting the price of those goods to remain at current low levels
but the act of producing those goods under a high wage economic system, will mean that the price of those goods will inevitable rise to the point where they become unaffordable.
……or am i missing something here?
” But nothing can move MAGA cult.”
You call it ” cultocracy , I called it mobocracy ” What difference does it make ? I say ” color” you say ” colour ” . Here is Ella and louis Armstrong for you .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2wkO0DhpEY&ab_channel=EllaFitzgerald-Topic
> I say ” color” you say ” colour ”
But you can’t tell the difference between those two when spoken – unless one person pronounces the “r” and the other doesn’t.
Intuitively, tariffs are a dubious means of re-balancing the US economy.
That said, the variety of tariff rates for various countries, can create a ‘cascade’ effect that will not pan out in clarity, for several months. It may prove to be a bad idea, or a good idea, but the global economy will self organise to take advantage of these tariff rule mechanisms.
The psychology of finance, has no global loyalty. If making phones in China invokes a 40% tariff, and making phones in India, invokes a 20% tarrif, then US consumers will buy their phones from India.
A secondary issue is that BRICS have become a serious threat to the dollar. If India [with 20% tariff ], can steal the lunch of China [with a 40% tariff], how will their group BRICS solidarity stand up?.
My overall point is that tariffs might well be a *crazy grenade*, but it might instead, be a viable ‘tug on the leash’, on a global economy that is runaway and out of control. What we do know is that making stuff in sweatshops 6000 miles away, and using bunker fuel to bring those ‘bargains’ home to a mall near you, is coming to an end.
We cannot avoid Peak Oil consequences, and *soon*, stuff made 6 miles,.. 60 miles, or 600 miles, will beat hands-down stuff shipped from 6000 miles away.
Let’s give Trump tariffs time to prove their long term worth.
see above on high wages and low priced goods…….
doesnt work unless youre shipping goods in from low wage countries.
Norman, I don’t think you are factoring in the shifting psychology of consumers in the near future.
There was a time when people bought an overcoat, with a view to using that through 5 winters. Similarly with boots, cooking utensils, and tools for using on wood, metal and general life enhancements.
From the 70’s, due to the frivolous use of cheap oil, we adopted a lifestyle of *use for a season and throw away*. The lack of finance in the future to live that lifestyle will reverse consumerism into quality ‘long term use’ goods, over throw away crap.
I have a pair of cheap sports shoes that I use around the house. They are coming apart near the sole. I have a pair of Brasher walking boots that I have had for 15 years, and are still good for hiking.
Re-shoring industry will be very selective. We don’t need manufacturers of ‘leaf blowers’, patio heaters, cabbage patch dolls, finger spinners and Tamagotchies, what ever they are?
Consumers [in the West], will ‘get real’, because the purchase of throwaway crap will drift out of their increasingly limited wallets.
If you are still thinking about cheap made goods and long distant shipping, that is your lack of understanding.
throwaway crap—agreed
nevertheless, the wages and employment of all of us is intertwined with the wages and employment of everyone else……
such is the current network of humankind…..
disagree by all means—but dissect all you like—-you will find it so….
maybe except the bushmen of the kalahari—but thats about it.
Norman, I don’t think you are factoring in the shifting psychology of consumers in the near future.
There was a time when people bought an overcoat, with a view to using that through 5 winters. Similarly with boots, cooking utensils, and tools for using on wood, metal and general life enhancements.
From the 70’s, due to the frivolous use of cheap oil, we adopted a lifestyle of *use for a season and throw away*. The lack of finance in the future to live that lifestyle will reverse consumerism into quality ‘long term use’ goods, over throw away crap.
I have a pair of cheap sports shoes that I use around the house. They are coming apart near the sole. I have a pair of Brasher walking boots that I have had for 15 years, and are still good for hiking.
Re-shoring industry will be very selective. We don’t need manufacturers of ‘leaf blowers’, patio heaters, cabbage patch dolls, finger spinners and Tamagotchies, what ever they are?
Consumers [in the West], will ‘get real’, because the purchase of throwaway crap will drift out of their increasingly limited wallets.
If you are still thinking about cheap made goods and long distant shipping, that is the flaw in your thinking, which Peak Oil is screaming at you.
David , you read the headlines only . So let me clear the facts on the Apple story . Apple set up the plant in India under the PLI scheme of incentives . All components for the i phone are imported from China . 100% . India is assembly only .The total nett valuation added by Apple India is about 3-5 % of the COST of the i phone . Understand I emphasize the COST not the SALE price of an i phone . How Apple works ? All production is invoiced to Apple Ireland ( tax rate 13%) . Apple Ireland invoices other Apple subsidiaries worldwide for the shipments . All profits are booked in Ireland . Apple holds a lot of cash by this roundabout . However the PLI scheme is now suspended ( It did not bring much employment and the govt is bankrupted and cannot pay the incentives promised ) . How does Ireland have a surplus with the USA ? Beyond Guinness , Irish Lamb/ wool and a few call centres , can you think of anything else ?
Not me .
https://pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetails.aspx?NoteId=153454®=3&lang=1
In January 2025, United States exported $1.25B and imported $13.6B from Ireland, resulting in a negative trade balance of $12.4B. Between January 2024 and January 2025 the exports of United States decreased by $107M (7.91%) from $1.35B to $1.25B, while imports increased by $6.31B (86.2%) from $7.32B to $13.6B.
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/usa/partner/irl
When the tariff talk began a few months ago, the big anxiety in Ireland was tariffs on pharmaceuticals.
The figures bandied around by the Irish media:
Annual exports to US = 72 billion euros….of which 58 billion is pharma products.
It was news to me …I assumed that big tech dominated.
My former employer (a consulting firm) managed to get itself domiciled in Ireland by merging with an Irish company. The company is now Willis Towers Watson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Towers_Watson
So there are financial firms in Ireland, among other things.
Sorry Ravi, you have misunderstood. Nobody cares how much the ‘bits’ of a smartphone cost. If India can import the ‘bits’ from China, *and*, put those ‘bits’ together and export to US with 20% tarriff, instead of a 40% China tarriff, that’s all that matters to an American consumer. The economic machinations between India and China, are not on the radar of the US consumer.
////I don’t usually cut n paste comments, but when I do, you can bet it’s by someone incinerating Trump.//////
There, fixed it for you.
This is all “blah blah blah” plus I Hate Trump.
What is the value in this post?
“how do you FEEL”?
“luxury BRANDS”?
“destructive TARIFFS”?
I had held you in some esteem, Norm, but this is a nadir for you.
Pay no attention to “megadonors”, Trump or otherwise. They are a given, like the owners of sports teams: interchangeable and mainly jewish.
I don’t see any MAGA cult here on Gail’s site. This is your exclusive boogeyman.
“The entire Western world is engulfed in a debt crisis.”
Yes, because of the intrinsic nature of debt itself. It has virtually nothing to do with the Bad Orange Man.
We see this type of behavior in the recovery rooms.. newcomers who haven’t accepted their addiction problem or found a higher power. They are constantly blaming the higher ups, their co-workers and outside issues.. they may have a good handle on why they drink and how it disrupts their relationships/employment but they go to all lengths to rationalize, deflect from taking personal responsibility for their own matters or looking closer to home for practical solutions.
When others are to blame they take on a paternal role like an abusive father or all-seeing God, the same is true for us in conspiracy but we saw that when enough people refused the mandates, sifted through the data and formed power blocs the cockroaches scattered in the light.. the authorities moved on to something else.
On the the other side, old timers who have many years of sobriety will thump the book and use sarcasm to soften up the stubborn newcomer. With my parents who are on opposite ends of the political spectrum, there is nothing I can say to address the cat fight from an energy and economy perspective. They would rather use talking points and insult the other person.. generalizing when it comes to the mistakes of their own congregation and being very nasty and condescending when explaining the evils of the out-group.
An editorial from yesterday’s WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/fannie-and-freddie-may-foment-another-crisis-mortgage-interest-rate-housing-loan-1e383ea2
Fannie and Freddie May Foment Another Crisis
They now back more than 60% of new mortgages, versus roughly 45% before the meltdown in 2008.
If we add the housing mess to the commercial real estate problems, the likely bank problems, and the likely pension problems, the US has the potential for a major mess.
I remember talking to my undergraduate classmate, the former chief economist for Fannie Mae back at our 30th college reunion in 2006 when issues with Fannie and Freddie were starting to emerge. I asked him, Dave, so how’s Fannie’s doing? “Oh Fannie’s fine. No problem with Fannie. ” I remember his response as he dismissed my concerns.
2 years later, Fannie had its hand out for $800 billion per Hank Paulson’s request and Dave had already left for Nationwide Insurance.
Fast Eddie is right. There is more BS, lying, and thieving out there than we can even begin to imagine.
I went with a group of actuaries from the company I worked to Washington DC sometime in the 1980s to talk about the Savings and Loan problems. S&Ls were ultimately bailed out in 1989. In fact, our discussions may have had to do with banks as well as S&Ls.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/government-financial-bailout.asp
We discovered that the folks looking into the financial problems of these institutions were young people, barely out of graduate school. They knew a whole lot more about the problem than anyone would ever read about in the newspaper.
The problem they were concerned with was that institutions had no motivation to make reasonable investments with the funds they received because it was a “Heads I win; tails you lose” situation. With all of the accounts of individual depositors insured, the depositors would not pay much attention to how well the bank or S&L was doing. The officers of the organization would want as high returns as possible, so they would choose as risky investments as they could get away with.
They wanted to know if there was some charge that we as actuaries could add, to fix this problem. This issue was probably greater for S&Ls than banks, because depositors were mostly homeowners who might want loans. Their deposits were mostly under the insured limits.
We didn’t come up with a solution using this approach.
My ex-brother-in-law David Butler, had started the Bell Bank of Sacramento, CA back in the late 80’s, owned a fleet of SF-260 Sia Marchettis (Team America aerobatics) and a palatial estate until he got caught doing insider loans and other financial chicanery, eventually costing the tax payers to the tune of $123 million bailout in the 1990 S&L crisis. Chump change, even back then. He was an amateur compared to the banksters today. He pled guilty, served a few months in a country club prison, then high tailed it to FL.
“However, McMasters quickly became suspicious of Ponzi’s endless talk of postal reply coupons, as well as the ongoing investigation against him. He later described Ponzi as a “financial idiot” who did not seem to know how to add. ”
(from the wikipedia page on Charles Ponzi, who ‘s career the term “Ponzi scheme” is based off of.)
Imagine someone who can’t count out-earning you as an investor.
Legacy Oil Producers May Define Next Chapter of Global Supply
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Legacy-Oil-Producers-May-Define-Next-Chapter-of-Global-Supply.html
Global oil markets are entering a pivotal phase as exploration-driven reserve replacement lags. With only a few bright spots like Namibia and Guyana, estimates suggest that just 25–30% of the oil consumed each year is currently being offset by new discoveries. This growing shortfall, combined with forecasts that US shale production will peak in the 2030s, sets the stage for a tightening global supply outlook. If no major new discoveries are made, the world could face an 18 million barrels per day deficit by 2040, assuming demand projections hold. In this context, attention inevitably shifts back to countries with vast, proven and economically extractable reserves. In that category, two stand apart: Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, though their respective abilities to act as swing producers in the 2030s differ significantly.
a deficit that big will mean collapse of the enitire oil driven system.
you might run a viable , if reduced, civilisation on a 10% shortfall, but not a 25% shortfall.
our oil-economy is self supporting and self perpetuating…….rather like a 3 legged stool….remove 1 leg and it has no functional purpose..
If the price of oil could rise a lot higher, there is a lot of heavy oil that could be viable. Perhaps some oil from shale also.
It is the fact that price tend not to rise high enough, for long enough, that causes the problem.
if the price of oil rises significantly abouve median income, it will become an unviable source of energy for general use
The article is looking at the wrong parameter — discoveries . Discovery is not important what is important is FID ( First Investment Decision) . It takes 10-12 years from FID to bringing an oil field online to the pump . Guyana ‘s FID was made a long time back . Namibia is still in the infancy stage basically a little above exploration and estimation . The flow rate is not expected to be high . It is not the reserves that matter but the flow rate . No major FID ‘s have been made from a long time because most of the new discoveries are ” uneconomical ” . The situation is more perilous than projected . Wonder why the worldwide inventory of crude + distillates has been on a decline from several years ?
P.S : Money invested in EOR ( Enhanced Oil Recovery) technique to squeeze more out of the already squeezed lemon is not FID .
The way I see it, lower income people will get priced out of discretionary oil usage, taking the edge off the need for new discoveries, and so it will be a back and forth race to lower demand vs lower production, and yet the price may actually climb as the remaining elites can still afford them.
The producers know all too well that the marginal buyers, the elites, will gradually decline in number despite their ability to pay higher prices due to wealth concentration events/financialization, (fewer but richer) and thus I think big oil will instead just ride out its current production capabilities and adjust to the marginal cost of production, and not venture into new exploration or new wells.
In other words, the current oil production curve will be flatter, but extend out for a longer time period as the economy cools off as it cannibalizes from the other discretionary parts of the economy. No spikes in prices, but no drops either.
Because we are not in the traditional economics 101 of supply and demand vs prices anymore.
the elites exist through the labours of the great unwashed—ie you and me.
that how modern society is structured
Yeah but even if the nominal price did rise higher it could only do so by a decrease in the real price. That was implicit in the landmark realization made and charted by Steve From Virginia in his perfectly predictive Triangle Of Doom. Once we crashed out of the Triangle we damned if we do and damned if we don’t…print… but more damned if we do.
https://www.economic-undertow.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Triangle-of-Doom-100518.png
The last resort of State disinformation is pushing out the timeline of Collapse farther than it really is.
New boss same as the old boss. The war continues as Trump now owns this war. As Alexander Mercouris said in this video that Trump should have walked away but instead, he allowed himself to get pulled back in by the Neocons he brought into his cabinet. So $50 million in arms is going to Ukraine.
$50 million in arms is nothing.
They probably go through more than that in munitions in a single day.
$ 50 million ? Not enough even to wet my moustache . — My Irish tutor in school 🤣
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-quietly-walks-back-quarter-us-import-tariffs-amid-economic-crunch
Gail, is ‘ourfiniteworld.com’ blocked by the Great Firewall?
No, it is not blocked because the name of the site does not include “wordpress.” I had to purchase the name OurFiniteWorld.com.
Oui Amma . Oui Amma —- Help me Mama in Hindi .
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/apollo-torsten-sloks-shocking-trade-impact-timeline-begins
This is from the link. It does sound worrying!
I know I have been buying things that I am afraid will no longer be on the shelves in the near future.
There may be inflation on at least some kinds of goods that are still available. Of course, people cannot pay more than they can afford. Somehow this needs to work out. It seems like purchases of discretionary goods will fall.
People may not buy insurance, because trying to get replacement parts (for a home or an automobile) will become a major hassle. Insurance companies will have to charge a high amount for insurance. Customers will decide insurance isn’t worth the cost.
first Europe was sacrificed now its USA’s turn, so all this is planned you guys in the states better stock up.
Self-Inflicted Civilizational Collapse — An Ancient Climate Story
Controversial Lessons from the Ecological Disaster that Destroyed the Anasazi Civilization in the 12th and 13th Centuries
By JULIUS RUECHEL
Dotting the walls of the red sandstone canyons all across the Four Corners region of the southwestern United States (where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet), high up on the vertical cliffs, you can see the ancient ruins of countless cliff dwellings and granaries, big and small, perched on seemingly impossible narrow ledges, sometimes hundreds of feet up off the valley floor where the slip of a single footstep means certain death. No sane individual that loves their children would voluntarily choose to raise a family in a place like that.
And yet, for more than a century, the refugees of a failing civilization did just that.
And then they mysteriously disappeared from the region altogether, leaving behind a devastated ecosystem that even today, more than 700 years after their passing, still hasn’t recovered.
Their story is a lesson to us all — and not for any of the reasons that you typically hear on the six o’clock news…..
For centuries, the Anasazi or Ancestral Puebloan culture of the Southwest divided their time between the adobe pueblos and agricultural fields that they built among the pinyon pine and juniper woodlands up on top of the cooler mesas and growing crops and building pueblos alongside reliable water sources down on the hot canyon floors. But then, in the 12th and 13th centuries, all across the region, something big changed to cause these ancient people to start moving into these precarious stone hovels perched on the edge of certain death, half-way up between the canyon bottoms and the rim of the mesas above.
What made them abandon their earlier customs to adopt such a perilous new way of life?
The simplistic but only partially true explanation is that the climate changed. Two brutal multi-decadal megadroughts in the 12th and 13th centuries triggered a collapse of the cultures and traditional ways of life across the entire region…..
As the droughts took their toll, the entire previously relatively peaceful region was plunged into decades-long conflict, war, and extreme violence (there’s even archaeological evidence for torture, cannibalism (both ritual cannibalism and cannibalism motivated by starvation), and vicious attacks that destroyed entire villages), all of which led people to seek refuge in increasingly inaccessible places to stay out of reach of their hungry enemies.
https://juliusruechel.substack.com/p/self-inflicted-civilizational-collapse
The link is to a very long and interesting post by an archaeologist, with a number of photos.
I expect that the author, Julius Ruechel, wasn’t aware that all civilizations collapse, and that all ecosystems have finite lifetimes, as well. Some combination of causes brings them down, and they are eventually replaced by new ecosystems and new civilizations, to the extent that water and other resources allow. But he does make interesting observations.
After showing a graph of historical graph of droughts in New Mexico, he observes:
There are lessons here for us moderns to learn about living within our means.
There are plenty of regions that have unsustainably large populations today, where people can get by because there is a global system that supports widespread trade and which also chips in to help out when things get rough. Without this external support system, the four horsemen would be running roughshod over huge portions of humanity.
A rare Vermont Republican wrote this Substack about a month ago. I remember in Gail’s last post, commenters were discussing the cost-per-mile of EVs vs. ICEs. One thing that was missing, iirc, was the cost of down time. Diesel truck can do 800 miles/day, but an electric truck can only do 200. Reproducing the whole article since, while it’s a free post, you have to acquiesce to the SS app.
With the Clean Heat Standard in a political coma and the proposed Cap & Invest program dead in its crib, the last global warming agenda domino standing is the Clean Cars and Trucks initiative, which phases out the sale of new internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles by 2035 and starts limiting sales in 2026. And as that date rapidly approaches, another dose of reality is beginning to set in. Unfortunately, reality is a concept the majority party is unacquainted with.
According to this rule, 35 percent of the vehicles manufacturers deliver to Vermont dealerships must be electric. Last year the percentage of electric vehicles sold in Vermont was twelve. So, our delusional lawmakers think that they can — by decree – triple demand for EVs overnight and eliminate demand for new ICE vehicles in a decade. Just like when I was in first grade or so and sincerely tried my best to cast magic spells to make the answers on my homework sheet appear, this ain’t gonna happen. Most people don’t want these cars because for most people they are too expensive and totally impractical.
What’s going to happen is not three times as many EVs will be sold in Vermont next year, rather a lot more ICE vehicles will be sold to Vermonters in New Hampshire (a state not so stupid as to sign onto such nonsense), a lot of Vermont car dealers will go out of business, and the state will lose all the corporate and individual income tax revenue these businesses generated.
Mark Alderman of Alderman Chevrolet GMC and Alderman’s Toyota in Rutland explained that unless you have in-home overnight charging – and most people don’t – owning an EV is a logistical nightmare because the public charging infrastructure isn’t in place, public charging can be more expensive than gasoline, and the time it takes to charge (when you’re not sleeping through it) is often difficult to work around. He told this story to illustrate his point:
“I had a lady from Poultney, a mom, two kids, and she had a [Chevy] Bolt. Her concern was that it wasn’t charging as fast as it had been charging. Now this was about January, and, she had a fifty kilowatt charger in in the Poultney area — hundred percent dependent on public charging. But what we found was… she would take her kids and go and sit at the charger in January, and she’s got the heat cranked up in the car. So, for every kilowatt going into the car, there’s half a kilowatt going out. And this was like, her entire life was turned upside down.”
His warning to legislators was until the infrastructure is in place, incentivizing people to buy cars that aren’t functional in their daily lives is turning them steadfastly against the technology. “My firsthand experience with the people that rely on public charging and do not have access to overnight level two charging [is] these people are never driving an EV again and just the opposite. They’re campaigning against EVs and counterproductive to the movement, so to speak.”
The situation is quite possibly even worse where trucks are concerned.
Brent Dragon of Charley Boys Freightliner Western Star truck dealer in New York, which is one year ahead of Vermont in implementing Clean Cars & Trucks, warned that this is what Vermont dealers can look forward to:
“Basically, I have forty-two ICE engine [trucks], diesel engine orders that I could sell in New York State or would have already sold in New York State, but we’ve not been able to sell one electric vehicle. [The rule requires the dealer to sell one EV to open up eight diesel credits.] The cost of one of these trucks, just one tractor, is five hundred and sixty thousand dollars and then then to go along with it, you need a charger that takes three phase power. In a lot of these places, you can’t get three phase power into these jobs.”
Why can’t dealers sell the electric trucks to trucking companies? Because they are too expensive, and they don’t do the job. As Dragon explained, “A diesel truck will travel seven, eight hundred miles a day, whereas this electric vehicle, we’re lucky to get two hundred miles a day. So, so really, let’s say Pepsi Cola leaves Burlington. They can’t go to Newport and back without a charge, and there’s no place to charge these because it’s not the same charger as a car.”
Matt Preston, a truck dealer from Massachusetts, another state one year ahead of Vermont, described similar challenges. “It doesn’t work…. Two years ago we hired an EV [sales] specialist…. They were going out to see municipalities, private customers. Two years and we’ve sold two trucks [and] haven’t delivered one yet.”
Preston notes that a big obstacle is ironically, or more accurately hypocritically, or perhaps infuriatingly, and certainly tellingly that the politicians who passed the law in Massachusetts exempted the state and all municipalities from the EV mandates. The politicians know this is a stupid, expensive, impractical policy.
But unlike individual car owners who can simply buy ICE vehicles in another state and bring them back to Vermont, the trucking companies, due to registration requirements for trucks, can’t do that. Their only option if they want to purchase the kinds of vehicles they need to do business is to open up shop in another state and register the ICE trucks there. Again for Vermont, this will be a self-inflicted loss of jobs and who knows how much tax revenue.
Preston explained in Massachusetts, “And you just look at tax revenue…. You could count on one hand the amount of trucks that are on order for Massachusetts registration. And a typical year in Massachusetts [for] class six through eight — three thousand trucks. So, you know, rough math, it’s twenty-six million dollars in taxes paid.”
Matt Cota representing the Vermont Fuel Dealers chimed in here, “What Matt is experiencing in Massachusetts and Brent in New York, they’re one year ahead of us. That’s coming to Vermont unless something changes in model year 2026. We’re trying to be proactive here. This is what’s coming to Vermont.”
It doesn’t have to. There is a bill tacked to the wall in the House Energy & Digital Infrastructure Committee and another just like it in Senate Natural Resources & Energy that would get Vermont out of this California quagmire, but the Democrats who lead those committees, assuredly on orders from above, will not take them up.
https://robertroper.substack.com/p/clean-cars-and-trucks-heading-for
Electric trucks don’t work for long haul, simple as that. The fact that Tesla hasn’t released the weight for its e-truck speaks volumes.
Truck operators don’t care about 0-60 performance, they care about the payload, the cost of operation and the time it takes to get from A to B. This is one of the most competitive-driven industries on the planet and with electric trucks you lose about 5 tons of payload.
A class 8 truck can have a maximum weight (truck+payload) of 80.000 lbs or 36,2 tons. A typical class 8 truck like a Volvo VNL weighs around 8 ton so that means a useful payload of around 24 ton.
The Tesla semi should have around 1000 kWh of battery to obtain 500 miles with a single charge. With a net battery pack density of around 180 Wh/kg we are talking of about 5,5 tons of battery. Even considering the smaller weight of electric motors compared with a diesel engine (which it usually around 1,2-1,3 tons) we are still talking about losing at least around 5 tons or 20% of useful payload.
Btw the Tesla semi appears to still have problems, after 8 years from the presentation of 2017.
https://electrek.co/2025/04/04/tesla-semi-suffers-delays-dramatic-price-increase/
I did a comparison some time ago between diesel and electric trucks, used Copilot so some may object.
Electric looked pretty good, my guess is changeable battery packs and it looks like cars/buses/trucks will become self driving.
“For a Class A semi-truck, the maximum driving limit per day is 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty. However, drivers cannot drive beyond 14 hours after coming on duty, even if they take breaks during that time.
There are additional rules, such as:
– 30-minute break required after 8 cumulative hours of driving.
– 60/70-hour limit: Drivers cannot exceed 60 hours in 7 days or 70 hours in 8 days.
– Adverse driving conditions exception: Allows drivers to extend their 11-hour limit by up to 2 hours if they encounter unexpected bad weather or road conditions.”
That leaves ten hours of charging time. Per Copilot again.
Payload miles per day of autonomous truck is 50,400,000 pound miles /day, Diesel is 33,000,000 lb-miles per day.
Find a way to change the batteries, not unlike a power drill and it looks to me like an electric truck wins.
Now again maintenance costs for electric are about .05-.1/ mile, diesel .15-.25 per mile.
Sorry, the electric wins on maintenance and on miles driven. Maintaining a modern diesel engine is a nightmare.
Used tractors before extensive, modern emission requirements sell at a premium.
If you have corded electric tools and battery tools, if you have old battery tools and new battery tools, the corded sit in a drawer and more and more even the “heavy” tools are battery.
Needed a simple grinder the other day, nice selection hanging on the wall, next to the bench, outlets close by, no problem, but this need was on the other side of a machine. Ten minutes to untangle a cord, purchasing a battery drive grinder.
Also, all the doomers have been so wrong for so many years that for me it seems safe to fade them.
Dennis L.
Notice that Gian’s calculation says, “With a net battery pack density of around 180 Wh/kg we are talking of about 5,5 tons of battery.”
How do you swap out batteries of this size? In fact, how do you make them in quantity?
This is very good. It seems like that states of Massachusetts and Vermont would stop pushing electric vehicles so hard, if they figured out how counterproductive the results seem to be. Private passenger car owners simply go out of state to buy their new vehicles, driving sales businesses out of the state and reducing tax revenue. Requiring electric trucks for businesses seems to have even worse outcomes.
Looking for the cubic mile of Pt.
NASA is having problems with thrusters, incredible how efficient, incredible how little energy needed to travel so far, solar electric.
“Psyche’s main body is just 16 feet long. But its impressive solar panels, when unfurled, are over 80 feet wide and 800 square feet in area — the largest ever deployed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. These provide a steady source of power to the spacecraft’s scientific instruments and its four thrusters, which use electromagnetic fields to ionize the normally inert xenon gas fuel, forcing the charged atoms outward to produce thrust.
It’s a tiny amount of thrust — just 240 millinewtons, or roughly the force of holding a single double AA battery in your hand — but it’s incredibly efficient. And it needs to be: the spacecraft’s destination, the Psyche asteroid (sometimes referred to as 16 Psyche), orbits up to 309 million miles away from the Sun, or about three times the distance between the Earth and our star, sandwiched between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. ”
“With some dreaming of asteroid mining, that colossal payload of metal has led to estimates of the space rock being worth north of $10,000 quadrillion, though of course retrieving any of that cache would be unimaginably complex.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/nasa-spacecraft-runs-into-thruster-trouble-en-route-to-zillion-dollar-asteroid/ar-AA1E0lDb?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=4ba4ef65d5f64af09474e8f8eb8150bc&ei=14
Make the droids robotically, in space, on an Optimus-3 production line, send a thousand or more into space, prospecting. Find a cubic mile of Pt, refine in space, send it home, to earth.
It is current engineering, or near engineering; it will take time but biology seems to operate on long time scales and generally seems to accept close is good enough.
I don’t see man in space, but who knows?
Dennis L.
It was always ‘near’ for 60 years, but no closer.
It appears Dennis has become the new asparagus man.
??? no connection at all say water melon kitten
you might be new here. search asparagus oort cloud OFW.
i keep trying to put of the meaning of value
it never seems to work.
the price of a loaf of bread is £1—-which what i pay for it……..
it has no ”value” to me unless i consume it.—if i dont consume it, it dissipates into nothing.
the same applies to all materials—–they have a ”price”’……but no ”value” unless they can be consumed……
fetch as much star stuff as you like, at whatever ”price” you set….. it meansd nothing unless you can find consumers for it.
and there will be consumers at those prices.
sorry to destroy your cherished economic fantasy dennis, but that reality for you.
I enjoy “Uncommon Knowledge”, this may be of interest to some. China is perhaps not all we think. It is a manufacturing powerhouse, but a different capital structure. All the wealth is in the party from what I saw, the countryside is according to this session, well, country and the paved expressways end in gravel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goEU7C1xmis
Look forward to comments from those of you who have been there.
Dennis L.
From one of the commentators i learned Dikkota said the Chinese anti drug policy, more strict than those in the wesr, did more harm than good
I.e. he is upset that it is harder for CIA to set its drug operations there thsn other countries
That was all i had to know about him.
This video is called,”Empire of Illusion: Frank Dikötter on Why China Isn’t a Superpower”
Frank Dikötter makes the point that the state is rich, but the people (especially the peasants living outside of cities) are poor. The state has made certain that the cities look good, but this wealth doesn’t extend to the outlying areas.
There is a system of apartheid that doesn’t give the people living in rural areas access to services of the cities, even if they move to those cities. If they move to cities, they don’t get access to schools or healthcare. If the mother was a peasant, the child will not have access to city services, even if the child moves there.
The state makes a lot of decisions, but they don’t necessarily work out well.
When I visited China with my husband in 2011, we saw quite a few tourist sites, such as the Great Wall of China and Tiananmen Square. People would come up to me and want to photograph me in a picture with family members. Chinese people visiting these sites often had never seen a blonde person before.
On that trip, we heard many stories about the high level of graft in the country. Our tour guide would tell us, “Don’t worry if your luggage (for a short regional air flight) is overweight. I have cousins everywhere.”
This is a photo I took of a man plowing a field with a water buffalo in China, in 2011.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-admin/upload.php?item=3050
I wrote at that time:
You can read more about my trip in this post:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/05/30/observations-based-on-my-trip-to-china/
One thing I discovered in 2015 is that the people living in China did not consider the water potable. At the university where I taught a short course on Energy and the Economy, each department had thermos bottles that they took over to a central area. There, they were refilled with boiled water that could be used for tea. Students insisted on bottled water, it they needed water to drink otherwise. Photo shows row of thermoses.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-admin/upload.php?item=39718
This is one of the posts I wrote:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2015/03/25/gail-in-china-report-2/
Gail, your experience of the country fits with mine – in 2016 and 2019.
I wish we were talking face to face there is so much to be said.
I know nothing about the countryside. I know middle aged highly educated folks in Beijing. Being a Columbia in NYC grad I am at home. The folks I talk with have an interest in the search for meaning in life. They will travel half way across the country to group meetings with like minded folks. They are happy with their material standard of living. They have little interest in children just like my three sons.
The TV talk did not mention how much China and Chinese thinking is governed by history. The emperor is in charge and if you want to stay alive or employed you get along. Much like the US. Yes if one is a nobody in the US you can say what ever you want barring calls for violence. But we all know talk is cheap and does not lead to change.
On the 0.05% foreign; I was walking down the sidewalk with my son and his girl friend an angry man yells at girl friend “traitor”.
Traveling by train I think China is like California; there are city and farms/ranch and deserts (in northern China).
I mentioned Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Conscious in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. In the US that would just leave blank looks. In Beijing “Yes, our group read that book”. Not I but our group!
Julian Jaynes – born Newton, Mass. February 27th, 1920.
Last time I was there in 1993, saw Tiananmen Square, Guilin, Xian, HK, Shanghai, Beijing etc and cruised the Three Gorges just before the dam was started. Construction in the cities was still done with wired rebar like in the Philippines with wooden forms poured with cement by hand using ladders and wheelbarrows. Got videos of Chinese laborers offloading coal with the balanced sacks and the rod resting on their backs from the boats at Chongqing and Wuhan. Back and forth on the ramps reminded me of ants. Glad I saw it then.
“We’re bringing back religion in our country, and we’re bringing it back quickly and strongly. Because for America to be a great nation, we must always be one nation under God,” Trump said.
A group needs a common set of beliefs, they need not be perfect, not everyone need agree, but they must work and they need to be reinforced with a weekly reminder; a bit of music doesn’t hurt. Narratives are important to humans, they must for the most part agree with what each of our “lying eyes see.”
The secular humanists of the elite universities have tried their way, it does not work. The idea a professor can stand before a group of young minds and tell them HIS is the way and religion is a mere superstition while indenturing said students for $40K per year makes preachers of mega churches look like amateurs.
The US government is bankrupt which implies the soft jobs of being a bureaucrat will be few and far between. They can be hired, but there is nothing left to tax, thus a cat fight among said bureaucrats to be paid.
Biology to the rescue, billions of years of evolution to get us here; it is not nice to fool mother nature or something similar.
Dennis L.
maybe the don will use his rapture ticket
Get Out of Hell Free!
When there is little to hope for, people need socially cohesive constructs. Religion, when practised locally.. in churches, provides so much support in times of need, that it is probably an essential service.
Although I have had huge issues with the church when it comes to its command and control structure, the notion that its a huge benefit should no be overlooked.
The same applies to things like pubs. Yet, both these institutions seem to have been targeted by the looks of it. Anything to divide the population, and keeping it from a consensus … seems to be the plan by “they”.
bear in mind that the German army had ”’Gott mit unz” stamped on their belt buckles.
trump’s god-rhetoric is the clearest indicator yet that the ultimate intention is to create a theocracy…..
And that will be far more unpleasant than anything Hitler dreamt up.
Trump has no god-belief, but he recognises a vote ticket when he sees one
Norm,
Cynicism: ” “…emphasis on the negative aspects of Cynic philosophy led to the modern understanding of cynicism to mean a disposition of disbelief in the sincerity or goodness of human motives and actions.”
Much in life is manipulation, but looking only at things in that light will cause one to miss the 20% which will be most helpful. Unbridled optimist is probably foolish, expecting everything to be negative denies the reality of human progress.
Or, perfection is the enemy of good enough.
Dennis L.
5
” trump’s god-rhetoric is the clearest indicator yet that the ultimate intention is to create a theocracy….. ”
The order of progression — Theocracy>Mobocracy > Autocracy >Aristocracy . I am seeing this occuring in India where we are now in stage 3 .
The entire human experiemce is fooling nature. It is not my mother.
I don’t think that there can be a single religion. Religions allow groups to be bound together, but they also provide dividing lines for fighting, if there are not enough resources to go around. Religions are always changing, as the economic situation is changing, and as other things are changing.
Right. It is pretty much a scam. Catholicism and orthodoxy in Russia were for centuries the cultural framework for feudalism. Narratives are important to people and the narrative providers always always take advantage of that. Heavy bullshit ahead.
My experience of uni is more a study of the foundational text of our society with the students developing their positions with a professor providing guidance in fair debate/discourse. The point is for the student to think and develop their personal view of the world. Something AIs sadly miss.
Someone wrote this to me:
Russian recalcitrance and the US Treasury trading desk are cracking the oil market.
Time’s up for Putin. Next stop $45/bbl for Russian oil.
Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent cracked the British Pound from a trading desk with less capital. Marko Rubio announced the schedule. Putin did not heed the warning.
Low oil prices conveniently rescue USA from a recession. Green Europe may benefit less. Chinese industry has scant need for oil at any price.
This is in reference to this Oil Price article:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Saudi-Signals-and-Trump-Tariffs-Are-Cracking-the-Oil-Market.html
Bullets:
–Oil prices continue falling despite low inventories.
–Weak U.S. economic data and rumors of Saudi production increases weigh on market sentiment.
–Standard Chartered warns the price weakness may persist, citing Trump’s tariff policy, rising Kazakh and Iraqi output, and potential OPEC+ supply boosts despite tight inventory conditions.
One of the things the article says is
According to this, Russia makes up to ~0.7 billion per day or 255 billion USD annually from hydrocarbon exports.
https://energyandcleanair.org/march-2025-monthly-analysis-of-russian-fossil-fuel-exports-and-sanctions/
The Russian budget:
2024 Revenues 25.8 trillion rubles ($352 billion). Expenses 26.1 trillion rubles ($357 billion). Deficit 0.3 trillion rubles ($4.3 billion)
So yes, lower prices could hurt Russia, but it will boomerang and wipe out shale quickly, snapping prices back up and torpedoing all economies within a year and a half.
Russia has little foreign debt, and csm sustain the psin better than the Wesr
Per Copilot:
Next year demand for Cu up 2.4M tons, supply up 500K tons, that is real metal not paper money. So asked a question about the gap:
You can do your own search, my guess is EV production is going to slow dramatically, not enough CU.
Oil to mine Cu stays relatively constant, oil for economies may well decline in demand.
A sort of guess: we are looking at the wrong limiting material. Cu will determine how much oil is needed and will very possibly be the bottleneck.
If this is true, everyone is looking at the rare earth metals, without Cu demand for such metals declines or the rate of growth declines significantly.
it is going to be an interesting year.
Dennis L.
Copper could be a limit to EV production. I wonder what China and California will do.
How do you like me now?
Newsom BEGS Oil Companies To Stay After DESTROYING Industry | Taxpayer Gas Price NIGHTMARE
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mqvrIqf-kZA
Gavin Newsom’s latest flip-flop would be comical if it weren’t so pathetic. After years of battering California’s oil and gas industry with crushing regulations, carbon neutrality demands, and margin caps, Newsom is suddenly begging refineries not to leave the state. Why? His 2028 presidential aspirations can’t afford $8/gallon gas prices when Valero and Phillips 66 shut down their operations.
I want my MTV with a fill up tank of gas….add a whopper too and Im a happy camper
It is a strange world. The video says other companies, including Chevron, are planning to shut down their refineries, too. Mistreating oil companies can’t end well.
Isn’t California banning new gas powered vehicle sales by 2035?
One of today’s headlines is
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-gas-powered-vehicle-ban-house-votes-to-block-hjres88/
House votes to block California’s ban on new gas-powered vehicles in 2035.
So the US government is looking at rolling back this ban.
The article says:
I cannot see that California will have either the electricity or the oil to power very many vehicles, in the future. It is in bad shape. It will be depending on a lot of electricity imports and a lot of gasoline/diesel imports from elsewhere in the US.
Vermont is doing the same thing. I’m going to post a link to a recent article on the main commenting level.
US – Iran talks off, after the US attempts to “alter the framework”.
So usual playbook from the US and that just after the US extended the sanctions(incase anyone was stupid enough to take them seriously).
Add to that fridays EU – Iran talks have also just been cancelled.
War by the end of the week?
Raise oil prices? War is a usual way of raising oil prices.
I can’t make head or tail of it.
They are now saying rescheduling for logistical reasons.
Was the venue double booked for both friday and saturdays meeting?
Perhaps some necessary participant can’t come at that time. Or the building isn’t available, like you say.
From what i can make out, the US, despite agreement not to bring in new demands, has done just that and tried to add missile and drone tech into the talks, which is the real reason for Trump pulling out of the original nuclear deal.
i’m guessing Iran then threatened to walk and so the mediator(Omani foreign minister Badr Albusaidi) asked for time to try to get the US to play by the agreed rules.
Anyone follow Trump?
it would be interesting to see if he is saying anything on the subject.
Iran of 2025 is not Iran of 2019 . An analysis . Anas Analji .
https://open.substack.com/pub/anasalhajjieoa/p/trumps-enforcement-of-oil-sanctions-b1b?r=26quge&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
It is time to judge whether USA did a good job of stewarding the world.
My verdict is a firm ‘No’.
Some people blather words like “hindsight is 20/20”.
That is because most Americans don’t learn history and do not really think too much about consequences of an action.
Any person with analytic ability would have considered the consequences of actions for which not much time and consideration were applied.
It is time to admit that USA screwed up the world, and turn its course and let the nature handle it.
nope
for 100 odd years the USA had more cheap surplus energy available, than amywhere else in the world.
so the rest of the world decided they wanted a piece of the action too……
unfortunately there wasnt enough to go round…..
so now everybody blames the USA for what they can’t have……
just as the USA is running out of it too!!!
concur. Its MPP all the way until there is no juice left. I was contemplating in the morning how the Chinese, with their government stocked solely with engineers and scientists, still allowed bubbles in real estate and got into industries like electric cars. Now they are running short of copper (as posted below by agamemnon), like the rest of the world but perhaps more. so you change from a government full of MBA and gender studies people (the US) to one of high quality STEM people (China) and you get approximately the same result.
in order to stay in office, politicians have to promise growth.
and preferably deliver it.
its slowing dawning that growth is finally over—the orange one is frantically lying to say growth is forever….
it isn’t.
things are going to get difficult
Yep, as Jean Claude Juncker said: “when things get serious, you have to lie”. Unfortunately, people want to hear a bedtime story, that everything will be fine and that everything will go on as usual. For a good decade I have tried to warn people that the party would be over very soon and today many of those I warned have finally accepted the dire future that will unfold. In reality, for many Western nations, the party has actually been over for a decade already in terms of GDP and energy consumption per capita. Add all this to the fact that many European nations are now heading towards demographic decline, and the cocktail becomes really explosive and many countries could really “explode” by 2035.
I think that China has pushed electric cars because they are well aware that if all 1.4 billion chinese wanted to drive a gasoline car, they would need another 10 million barrels per day compared to the current 16. Electric cars that we know are powered by coal, of which China is 90% self-sufficient.
Regarding the fact that they continue to build homes or even ghost cities, it is a typical phenomenon in almost all countries. In some European countries with an elderly and declining population for a decade now, they still continue to build new homes. For whom it is not given to know. We must also not overestimate the people who have STEM degrees, many of them are victims of brainwashing in believing in certain “new” technologies. The same goes for those who have a lot of money to invest, very often they are ignorant of many social and economic macrodynamics. The fact that their business has been going well for a long time does not mean that they can continue to do so in the near future.
neat and accurate summary
“The fact that their business has been going well for a long time does not mean that they can continue to do so in the near future.”
Perhaps, my experience is one can “feel” when things are changing; this is greatly helped by accrual accounting and accurate reflection of the depreciation, somethings are not worth book less book depreciation.
If you are good at business, that is real world, it is data driven in your books which done well reflect where things are going.
Dennis L.
A big fire in Israel .
https://x.com/IranObserver0/status/1917593260836483494
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-852084
I tried to find a MSM article on this. This was the only one published today.
https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/jerusalem-wildfires-largest-in-israel-history-netanyahu-125050100288_1.html
Huge wildfires hit the city of Jerusalem, largest ever in history of Israel
Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Italy and Croatia were expected to dispatch three firefighting aircraft to assist in battling the blaze
Lots of important buildings burning in recent years – Notre Dame, the Copenhagen Stock Exchange. Now we have this other deadly phenomenon, persons deliberately driving cars into crowds and killing people, which has happened in a few countries now. Just what is behind this?
Recent news says:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/israel-brings-fire-near-jerusalem-113533393.html
Israel brings fire near Jerusalem ‘under control’, reopens roads
It doesn’t sound like there were any deaths. Some smoke inhalation injuries.
There is lot of victims of the photos that paint the reality in rosy colors.
Dorothea Lange’s photos
Plenty of victims of the photos that paint the reality in black and white
https://youtu.be/yrODn0f1z0g?si=gwtJ-7lFb_ncSypb
A black and white photo is inbetween the color photo and the text: you have imagine the colors.
A collection of US black and white photographs from the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Ukraine signed the minerals deal. What I’m not clear on is whether the primary intent of Trump and US financiers is to:
1) make money on the resources, or
2) further insert themselves into Ukraine in preparation for continued conflict with Russia, or
3) use this “ownership” of Ukrainian assets to justify the non-return of Russian assets; they will say that Russia has stolen the joint Ukrainian-US assets when Russia takes over these regions, or
4) simply claim a win
No rare earths in Ukraine .
All BS promoted by NATO prior to war . Javier Blas “?
https://x.com/JavierBlas/status/1892136066175344831/photo/1
Not the point. The “minerals deal” covers iron, oil, gas.
The Trump mineral deal is silly.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 1 2025 10:20 utc | 531
As face saving cover, within the context of American politics it makes perfect sense. The whole point is to propose something unworkable, have it all fall in a heap and then say loudly, “We tried everything!”
The Ukrainians sign on, knowing perfectly well no minerals will be forthcoming, but that’s OK because they don’t care and have no intention of honouring it at any rate.
If a few of the left-leaning media start thumping the table and crying, “That’s exploitation” this merely adds undeserved gravitas to the whole farce … and gives Trump even more excuses to blame anyone but himself … “Do you know I nearly had the deal done, then they stopped me? I was saving lives and they said it was unfair, can you believe that?”
There’s no better bargaining chip than genuine indifference.
Posted by: Tel | May 1 2025 10:56 utc | 539
Moon of Alabama
In my view, 100% point one.
That is recover money from wrong and stupid Biden’s war and all the consequence of US money wasted.
Taking money from whatever is there, oil, iron, gas other minerals, call it rare earth, rare materials or fu…g and bl..y resources.
Maybe also taked in ways that are now no more allowed in US or EU, that is in bad ways with no safety for workers, in other words in the cheapest way possible.
It is a rough way for US to come out winner from a loser situation caused by others.
I gave you my opinion, but it must be in automatic moderation for some reasin or maybe I made a mistake in inserting the comment because I was not with my usual tool. I wait a little, in case I will retry.
Not recently, but on occasion my comments will get stuck in moderation for a few hours.
I retry, I must have done a mistake in inserting my previous comment which doesn’t appear.
Dear Ivanislav, essentially point 1, in my view.
It is a way of recovering wealth from a Biden’s war which was a bad decision according to Trump (I also think the same).
But, in my view, it is also point 4, but not in a way to ‘claim’ a victory, but directly to be a winner from a situation (war) in which the country (US) didn’t gain much till now.
Anyway, it is without advantage for me for US people to discuss about rare earth or critical minerals meaning, because whatever they are in detail in Ukraine, they anyway represent a way to recover wealth for US from a waste of wealth suffered by US itself.
Anyway this article explains in detail what are the resources involved and, above all, for what can be used.
Excerpt from Reuters article:
“WHAT ARE RARE EARTHS AND WHAT ARE THEY USED FOR?
Rare earths are a group of 17 metals used to make magnets that turn power into motion for electric vehicles, cell phones, missile systems, and other electronics. There are no viable substitutes.
The U.S. Geological Survey considers 50 minerals to be critical, including rare earths, nickel and lithium.
Critical minerals are essential for industries such as defence, high-tech appliances, aerospace and green energy.
WHAT MINERAL RESOURCES DOES UKRAINE HAVE?
Ukraine has deposits of 22 of the 34 minerals identified by the European Union as critical, according to Ukrainian data. They include industrial and construction materials, ferro alloy, precious and non-ferrous metals, and some rare earth elements.
According to Ukraine’s Institute of Geology, the country possesses rare earths such as lanthanum and cerium, used in TVs and lighting; neodymium, used in wind turbines and EV batteries; and erbium and yttrium, whose applications range from nuclear power to lasers. EU-funded research also indicates that Ukraine has scandium reserves. Detailed data is classified.
The World Economic Forum has said Ukraine is also a key potential supplier of lithium, beryllium, manganese, gallium, zirconium, graphite, apatite, fluorite and nickel.
The State Geological Service said Ukraine has one of Europe’s largest confirmed reserves, estimated at 500,000 metric tons, of lithium – vital for batteries, ceramics, and glass.
The country has titanium reserves, mostly located in its northwestern and central regions, while lithium is found in the centre, east and southeast.
Ukraine’s reserves of graphite, a key component in electric vehicle batteries and nuclear reactors, represent 20% of global resources. The deposits are in the centre and west.
Ukraine also has significant coal reserves, though most are now under the control of Russia in occupied territory.
Mining analysts and economists say Ukraine currently has no commercially operational rare earth mines.”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/what-are-ukraines-critical-minerals-and-what-do-we-know-about-the-deal-with-us/ar-AA1DYIuL
Now they appear both comments. Maybe second one could be more useful.
Have a nice weekend
today and next ones in Italy are holidays 🙂
I think it could be multiple items on the list. Europe certainly does need metals for their green plans and the US would like to benefit, but I don’t think any of it will come to pass. It will be interesting to see what does happen though.
Raising funds for their interest payments they are insolvent the world must pay or we collapse
Regarding the debt default situation, the deadline for at least some restructuring is close at hand. (April 25, 2025)
https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-fails-to-reach-deal-on-restructuring-2-6-billion-in-debt-faces-default/
Ukraine fails to reach deal on restructuring $2.6 billion debt, faces default
This means more GDP growth; more interest on debt.
Of course, if US is getting whatever minerals there are, this source of rebounding GDP would be gone, should it come to pass.
The Ukr deal is a nothing burger . Waste of time .
https://mishtalk.com/economics/us-and-ukraine-sign-a-minerals-deal-trump-grants-kyiv-a-few-concessions/
Hegeseth dodged the bullet but Waltz is going .
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/mike-waltz-and-deputy-deleted-after-signal-fiasco-report
UK deal adds to the narrative, however.
Too poor to have a decent tombstone?
“Pope Francis’s tomb is simple by design. Francis—a modest man who opted to live in humble quarters alongside his peers rather than in the Vatican’s official housing for the leader of the church—requested nothing more than his name and a cross to adorn regional marble (“the stone of Liguria, the land of his grandparents”). Vatican News goes as far as to position this stone, not the most premium, as “the people’s stone.”
It really is quietly beautiful. But atop that marble is a tomb inscribed with the name “Franciscus.” Or what—due to terrible spacing between letters, known as kerning—reads something more like “F R A NCIS VS.””
https://www.fastcompany.com/91324550/kerning-on-pope-francis-tomb-is-a-travesty
can you stop talking about celebrities?
I mention them as the examples of failure. That they lived on top of others in their successful years, but later they find out that it was just a dream.
is this the guy who had a food factory? I am getting confused.
Yes, the food factory producing the heavenly bread.
Deterioration of artistry, craftsmanship and taste are also symptoms of late stage civilisation.
You had one job. . .
Could have been intentional F-you send off; from the little I’ve read, his politics didn’t match those of many in the church.
Anton say global warming.
China’s copper stockpiles are on track to deplete to zero in just a few months, if not weeks, as the market suffers “one of the greatest tightening shocks” in its history, according to Geneva-based commodities trading giant Mercuria. This tightening is driven by unprecedented demand from both the US and China, a surge in trans-Atlantic arbitrage trade, and mounting fears of US tariffs.
Mercuria, one of the world’s top commodity traders, estimates that about 500,000 tons of copper are now on their way to the U.S
https://www.usfunds.com/resource/copper-and-gold-soar-as-trumps-trade-war-reshapes-global-markets/
Ok, it’s going to be tough for home builders.
Even tougher for green energy.
Maybe it’ll be good for energy delaying oil consumption for quite a while.
Maybe negative gdp will let the earth heal.
The charts look to me as if the IEA thinks that peak copper is being reached about now. This could be an additional bottleneck for electric vehicles (or any scale up of electricity).
Trading economics says:
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/copper
Oil Plunges On Report Saudis Bracing For Price War, Can “Live With Lower Oil Prices”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/oil-plunges-report-saudis-bracing-price-war-can-live-lower-oil-prices
Is OPEC+ really aiming on a price war? I’m not sure. Among other things, the article says:
I find it hard to believe that OPEC+ is holding back more than 5 million bpd. I expect such supply of oil would come only if oil went about $120 barrel and stayed there.
If the world heads into recession, oil prices and oil production may both drop. OPEC+ may change its story again.
>> after ceding ground to non-OPEC+ producers such as the United States and Guyana
Stupid article. Guyana has something like 11gba or a few months of global supply and produces less than 1mbpd. It cannot affect the big picture.
Just have to comment.
If the Starship goes out of control it has a flight termination system that explodes the ship into small pieces so that no one on the ground get hurt.
The Spanish power grid seems to work the same way. If the phase (timing of the 50 Hz) goes out of control everybody drops its connection to protect itself. Of course we can install devices to correct the phase at many points in the system even if it is attacked by the demons of air. In the 60s motor/generator sets were used in computers to convert high voltage from the electric company to low voltage needed by the electronics. To fix the phase on a transmission line we can install motor/generator sets to advance or retard the phase as needed. Yes, this will waste a small fraction of the power but well worth it.
What did we learn? Electricity needs big spinny things … that keep that heart beat to exactly 50 or 60 Hz. They had them all turned off, and the mega hydro dam was down for maintenance.
So, keep the gas powered turbines in neutral at all times… and hope it doesn’t happen again. I read somewhere the whole system failed in 5 seconds. There was not enough time to even think about booting up the turbines, let alone do it.
I suspect this was an experiment to go along with the 100% Green bragging rights. Perhaps 97% is more reasonable.
“Renewable power grids in Europe use unencrypted radio signals to add and shed loads. Signals from the Radio Ripple Control can be hacked with a Flipper Zero device. “?
https://dividedconquered.substack.com/p/was-the-blackout-in-spain-caused
If “they” want to reduce the number of people wouldn’t a nuke war between Pakistan and India be ideal?
If they wanted to overwhelm Europe, North America and Australia etc with desperate people looking for a new place to live…. just have a quick war between Pakistan and India. Lob a just few nukes… so that everyone knows it will happen again… and that ought to do it.
Thats your zombie apocalypses in full play. Starvation exported.
Turn on the light and the cockroaches scatter.
Gates has built bunkers under every one of his house’s so obviously it is a major possibility so the replacement for fossil fuels better become a reality pronto I have invested some money in white or natural hydrogen because I think that is our only chance and yes kulm it exists just whether we have enough time and courage to go for it.
I have said earlier the UK will be the next Spain but on a larger scale . As Norm said ” electricity does not fade — it just goes off ” . As usual no lessons will be learnt . Tim Watkins on the UK ” net zero” ambition .
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/04/30/the-problem-squared/
Tim Watkins has good insights:
Also:
And yet Bitcoin is still trading at $94,600 per unit.
One would think that an event such as this would have a negative impact on its price, but no sirree.
While the focus here tends to be on the human world, namely, confronting limits to growth and hopium, where the solutions to the problems created by technology are always more technology, there are numerous developments from the natural world beyond “climate change” that portend a dramatic collapse in our natural world supporting system. A recent scientific paper explores the conglomeration of factors producing the insect apocalypse (a 2017 paper described a 75% decline in insect populations over 30 years).
https://scitechdaily.com/the-great-insect-apocalypse-why-are-bugs-vanishing/
Left unexplored in the article – probably because it is impossible to tell – is whether it is simply too late to do anything about this and to what extent a near-complete insect extinction is already baked in.
I don’t think that a complete insect extinction is possible. There is too much diversity of insects. I understand that cockroaches have been around for a very long time. Self-organizing ecosystems take care of problems much better than that.
Yup, 75pc population crash sure ain’t pretty but not surprising given the war on bugs. Insects have ridiculously high reproductive rates. In general their population dynamics aren’t all that far removed from microbes. Species extinction numbers are infinitely more important. Mammals will go extinct before insects do. Last in first out.
I agree with “Last in, first out.”
The article didn’t mention “glyphosate” … which is the go-to for questions about insect losses … including bees (of course). Aluminium oxide aerosols are now a fact of life … unfortunately. That’s poison as well.
If you go to a place like Monte Verde in Costa Rica, you wont see anything flying… except for the occasional nectar seeking bird. Insects are dead due to spray on the fields below.
Will they all die world wide? Lets check in again on this in 5 years time… if geoengineering is determined to be “essential” for life on the planet. (( Looking at your Britain ))
What a mess.
I like Chris Martenson’s windshield indicator. When he used to drive across the state, his windshield would get caked with insects. Now when he drives, there’s hardly a splat.
Same here in NY state. Windshields thick with bugs 1970 now zero. Porch light in the 70s surrounded by flying bugs, now none.
same in uk
used to be like driving in a snowstorm at night, now there’s nothing.
this is a catastrophe for the critters who depend on those insects for food, that is the price they pay for our veg to be perfect and free of any kind of blemish.
the land is now given over to our exclusive use.
Sad!
I’ve said before, I think some of the health decline that’s been seen in forests may be due to the lack of insects’ manuring the leaves.
We apply fertilizers to garden crops with foliar sprays, after all.
every aspect of nature is linked to others, in ways we do not understand
When I arrived in Florida half a century ago an insect termed the love bugs would require a net protector while driving during a certain time of the year. Non existent now a days
They even marketed a product for them Bug and Tar remover
Also, don’t see lightening bugs like I used to back then. Only a few in the Charlotte NC area
Yeah, things are certainly not right
“The Holocene extinction, also known as the sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction, is an ongoing event characterized by a high rate of species loss due to human activities during the Holocene epoch. This extinction event is distinct from previous mass extinctions caused by natural disasters, as it is primarily driven by human impact on the environment.”
https://www.google.com/search?q=holocene+extinction&sca_esv=a84d165212cbafbb&ei=1yotZ-zTOsvx0PEPq6KI8Qs&oq=holocene+extinction&gs_lp=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&sclient=gws-wiz-serp
All we have to do is get rid of humans, and the problem is solved.
A reduction of 100X to 80 million would be enough.
if you reduce human pop to 80m…(say)….then the society of humankind would be at the level of what it was when the world had 80m inhabitants.
just a guess, but that was probably about 10k years ago.
i think you may have some kind of fantasy that 80m of us would be liviving a ‘modern’ existence, but with fewer of us sharing it.
sorry, but life doesnt work that way.
a stone age population would be living a stone age lifestyle.
Well, that may be the plan. Maybe FE will be vindicated.
“NEW STUDY — Mass mRNA Injection Campaigns Likely Fueling the Global Fertility Collapse
“Among ~1.3 million Czech women aged 18–39, those vaccinated against COVID-19 had ~33% fewer successful pregnancies compared to unvaccinated women.”
https://x.com/P_McCulloughMD/status/1918115833991315471
When they were about to release the poison in Britain, they offered 2 online guide books. 1 for the public and 1 for health care professionals. You would expect these to say roughly the same, although more technical for the HCPs. Unfortunately that that was not the case. the HCP booklet stated clearly that the poison could cause infertility, but the public booklet had no mention of this and so we can say beyond doubt that no one at all gave informed consent.
My thoughts . Trump’s administration will fizzle away by end 2025 or latest after the congress elections in mid 2026 .
Rubio and Gabbard are going to run for Presidential elections in 2028 . They will resign and go in preparatory mode . Hegseth is already targeted by DOD . Bessant and Lutnick will be the fall guys for the failed tariff policy . Tucker Carlson is already leaving and an exit for Musk is on the cards as Tesla falls behind . The first thing the Dems will do is bring impeachment articles against DJT . That will embroil him for the rest of the term . Of course as Norm says he can declare himself ” Emperor ” or as ” President for life ” a la Idi Amin or Bokkasa .
Looks like AOC will win in 2029
Hillary Clinton’s faction ran the Dems for a long time and it is time for them to sit back and this time Bernie Sanders will put his protege AOC in line
Kulm . ” from the frying pan into the fire ” . 🤣
as long as she keeps wearing that *uck me red lipstick she will win.
Talk about grid inertia. The political inertia is even worse, as a majority of people, including me (against my will) perform no useful or productive work and depend on the state. Eventually, like the power grid, the government largesse will collapse, even due to simple disrepair if nothing else. The governments will try to blame it on some rare “atmospheric phenomenon.” You see what happens when the electricity goes out. ATMs don’t work, truckers can’t fill their tanks, food can’t be delivered, the cell phone service and internet go silent. It will be blamed on the “terrorists.”
Solid Ravi I like it for the obvious reason but I don’t see Rubio surviving the Trump admin. He’s a warmongerer too. Gabbard was openly pissed when word came out that Rubio was being considered for sec state. I see the fall guy dynamic being broad based across both economic and foreign policy. Only MAHA and the other America firsters like the Pauls, massie, and Ramaswamy will survive MAGA imo. Kulm is straight tripping with his AOC call. It’s so bad I wonder if he’s just doing more Colbert-type cosplay.
The traditonal bakery in my district town is finished
They started baking bread after the revolution. Costs are unbearable, traditional bakery in Ilava is closing
The last bread was baked on 30 April.
Read more: https://mypovazska.sme.sk/c/23484681/piect-chlieb-zacali-po-revolucii-naklady-su-neunosne-tradicna-pekaren-v-ilave-konci.html?ref=mnt
You have to do it yourself…
Last year it was a chain retailer ” Blokker ” and now ” Casa” . Selling cushions and expensive crockery from locations were rent is eur 400/ sq metres never made sense . The fluff and the froth will be the first to go when TSHTF .
https://www.thebulletin.be/casa-begins-50-clearance-sale-ahead-closure
Meanwhile, the manual grain mill I bought back in 2010 for @$300 is now $765? Even with a discount, I mean WTF!
Told my daughter she had better get into making bread from scratch.
https://www.preparedirect.com/Country_Living_Grain_Mill_p/101.htm
The business in the food industry of a former Slovak hockey player Marian Hossa bankrupted:
https://index.sme.sk/c/23480950/podnikanie-mariana-hossu-konkurz-a-statisicove-dlhy.html
ChatGPT about Marian Hossa:
Hossa was drafted 12th overall by the Ottawa Senators in the 1997 NHL Entry Draft. He went on to play 19 seasons in the NHL, suiting up for the Ottawa Senators, Atlanta Thrashers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Detroit Red Wings, and most notably, the Chicago Blackhawks. Known for his combination of skill, speed, and defensive responsibility, Hossa became a key contributor on every team he played for.
Energy Poverty in Netherlands .
https://nltimes.nl/2025/04/29/dutch-energy-emergency-fund-closes-one-week-eu563-million-runs
According to the article:
This situation exists all over the world. Governments would have their hands out for funds too, if there were a source of funds for governments.
Other news.
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/china-us-container-volume-drops-45-amid-tariff-tensions/
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/ups-cutting-20k-jobs-due-fewer-amazon-shipments
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/mass-layoffs-in-trucking-and-retail-are-coming-apoll
Fewer jobs ahead is a likely reason for our upcoming recession, I agree.
Perhaps the UPS cutbacks are not as bad as they sound at 20,000, or 4% of the workforce. Last year’s layoff number was 12,000. UPS lost its contract for Amazon’s business in 2024. Perhaps a rise in Amazon jobs could make up for the loss of UPS jobs. Both companies are very large. Maybe we need to know more to understand what is really happening.
Couple all that with all the government layoffs and you have a depression that Trumpy will own. He is an idiot he should have gradually and quietly done this but Keynesian economics is partly correct. Everyone on here has been shouting Inflation for so long but it’s going to be deflation and depression.
Lol Sam with the woulda coulda shoulda gradually and quietly degrowth agenda for 2025. But why not wait to start it til ten years after peak oil though? Or 15 or 20 years after? What’s the hurry? The voters got impatient for Collapse?
This *is* slowly. Booooring!
Inflation and depression are not mutually exclusive.
I don’t remember you advocating for deflation, so if you did expect deflation, you weren’t very confident in that expectation, so you can’t really say anything.
Me? All I’m saying is that the transitory inflation was, evidently, about all the blood they could wring out of the stone. Not a whole lot of flexibility in the US despite all the fat. You can tummy tuck, you can lipo, you can ozempic, you can even staple that stomach if you have to, but out you can’t just use inflation to cut out the fat at the heart of empire or the central electrics go haywire. Afib, heart failure.
The Hand needs a mouth in order to start popping beta blockers which are for slowing the heart down so that it doesn’t blow up. So the Hand is using Trump’s mouth.
In a year or two a pacemaker (national socialism)will need installing, with installing being the operative word. Nixonian forced resignations are surgical procedures, as are military coups. Then the “America First” brand will finish the job of Collapse.
I want to believe that there is a “Secret Group” in power but there is not. There are just idiots in power elected by idiots. The Older I get the more I notice that most people are very stupid. I started following Austin Goolsbee back when he is was working for the Obama Admin….the reason I followed him was because he sounded so dumb and I wanted to know how he got his position. Yup you guessed it he a TrustFunder! That’s all folks just like Rome all the idiots are running the country….no Secret organization.
Thanks Sam. If the system is run by idiots then how has it survived for almost twenty years without any organic economic growth? Way longer than almost all of us thought. How has it survived for 6-plus years post- peak oil without breaking? The plandemic was just dumb luck on top of dumb luck (an alleged virus appeared with a negligible IFR and idiots shut down the global economy but the lucky unintended consequence was that the oil supply saw 30pc demand destruction for 1.5 years which bought us another 5 years)?
It’s a top down finance capitalist system and Im sure you agree that politicians and public bureacrats aren’t at the top. All corporations have non-public closed door meetings and public relations strategies.
Occam’s razor.
as has been pointed out before
our ”system” such as it is, runs no differently than riding a bike.
you use the pedals—ie energy input—-and carry on as normal
if the chain comes off your bike, (energy input ceases) ….you can choose to ignore the fact. and listen to all the maga people who say your bike is still rolling along just fine……
which is of course, quite correct…..you will keep moving forward….it’s called momentum.
but eventually your bike will stop moving…..
you therefore have 2 choices…….
1 get off the bike while you can
or 2….stay on the bike until you and the bike fall into the ditch at the side of the road.
>> I want to believe that there is a “Secret Group” in power but there is not. There are just idiots in power elected by idiots.
I agree with this. Our government structures do not develop capable leaders who think long-term with continuity of agenda and intelligent strategy. Oh well, reversion to the mean is the order of the day.
Norm that’s a false analogy. Which is a logical fallacy. You’re treating the bicycle rider like an empty headed three year old on training wheels instead of a functioning person with a tool bag under the saddle who can put the chain back on in 20 seconds flat.
Also, the chain hasn’t come off the economy yet, so you’re using unpowered inertia to explain a dynamic wherein powered inertia still exists.
Also, you are flattening the reality by reducing civilization to just physics. Civilization is culture directing physics. Culture has agency as does physics. We’re not doing algebra level work here we’re doing calculus.
I asked chatgpt “how would national socialism be a solution to severe resource depletion, unsustainable debt and uncontrolled immigration?”
The authoritarian path sounds like what the Neo-cons, Neo-libs and now Trump have been doing for the last 30 years.. war economy, appeal to patriotism, narrative control and censorship, off-shoring, colonialism and predatory lending to strip assets and destroy sovereignty, debt Ponzi, othering of dissidents, economic sanctions, propaganda to distract and demoralize the public.
The “realistic alternatives’ are exactly what the Dems and RINOS have been claiming they want to do regarding innovation/technology solutions, green energy, fiscal responsibility, sustainable growth and legal immigration but actually creating a culture of dependency and ratcheting farther to the Left.
The problem with asking AI that question is that AI has a biased, finance capitalist view of national socialism. Asking it in terms of strasserism, for example, instead of NS would hopefully be more interesting. But anyway, what did it say?
“Maybe we need to know more to understand what is really happening”
The US declared war on China and China accepted the fight, leaving the US in somewhat of a predicament, as the US was sure of a cascading collapse of opposition, but China and others have been preparing for a long time and are no longer prepared to bow.
https://cloudwoods1.substack.com/p/asean-chair-says-to-us-we-stand-with
A quick look at the language being used by Chinese officials as well as their media, shows beyond doubt that they have no intention of backing down and so in the months to come, US shipping, ports and haulage will start to fall apart, quickly followed by the rest of the economy, as the dollars dominance declines.
Real gold, payable within 2 days, or worthless paper?
https://www.gov.cn/lianbo/bumen/202504/content_7020211.htm
Gold(and other commodities/currencies) backed RMB will be the future and you can buy all you want, with usable commodities or gold.
They even joke about it.
“Three cheers to Ansarallah! Pssst…wanna to buy some DF21 missiles? All risks guaranteed or your money back, brand new, free with rocket fuel supply for 30 days, fully auto with free-installed satellite target guidance, just load and fire, ex-factory delivery in 10 days, CIF, payable at sight, in sorghum seed oil, no down payments, no hidden charges, no late fees. Sign and stamp here…”
If the US does not abruptly change course, then China and associates will cut them out. They are quite clear about this.
“The US declared war on China and China accepted the fight, leaving the US in somewhat of a predicament, as the US was sure of a cascading collapse of opposition, but China and others have been preparing for a long time and are no longer prepared to bow.”
That is what the boring ass history books would say were there a historical future such that the present could be looked back upon, but that is of course not what is going on. Enough of the political theater. Enough with the Cartoon Matrix. Trump would be long since dead if he wasn’t doing exactly what TPTB need him to do. Same goes for Xi.
“Enough of the political theater. Enough with the Cartoon Matrix”
You may be correct, or you may just be caught up in the theatre you(we) have been indoctrinated into your(our) whole life. A short lived theatre, that resilient civilisations have seen rise and fall before.
Conflating Trumps situation with Xi, seems preposterous to me.
The power that you look towards, i do not believe is as all encompassing as you think, but i’m happy to admit that i do struggle to shake the “all in it together” signs.
We will have to see how things go, but until then have some eyeliner
https://youtube.com/shorts/JmQoaSKnVyU?feature=shared
Yet you were expecting a Great Reset which requires encompassing power. Note that contradiction with your new belief. I told you ad nauseum that the GR was a misdirection play in service of, firstly, manufacturing consent for the currently emerging transitional national fascisms on the way to triangulating national socialisms and secondly, functioning as a disappearing act for the Hand/Illuminati. And lo and behold, the Hand has now disappeared from your sight, even with the advanced warning. That’s why being nonpolitical and not bargaining with collapse is so important.
As to these Chinese memes, they are no doubt instigated/started by the Chinese branch of the Hand (intel media services) and serve a dual function: simultaneous Chinese nationalism and Chinese mindfucking. They portray Americans as pathetic fat slobs while sublimating the fact that the Chinese factory workers are busting their asses in order that pathetic fat slobs can continue to be pathetic fat slobs, which makes the Chinese workers at least as pathetic in their own subconscious minds.
The Hand up in the back of your mind, too, Fritz? is it up in the back of mine?
🙂
Correct FF . The name of the game is ‘ R ‘ . Resolve and resilience . Ali was the GOAT because he had both . Trump miscalculated . He treats all problems as if it was a real estate deal where you had the backroom boys and the white shoe boys in your pocket .
All will love this . ROFL but true .
https://indi.ca/interview-with-donald-trump-1987/
Trump hasn’t changed much since 1987.
“Resolve and resilience”
Yes, you have the tone of the message they are sending.
Certain famous Mao Zedong quotes being repeated, from the lowly peasants(the very lifeblood of any functional system) all the way up to The Mandate of Heaven(self explanatory) to that effect lay it out.
The warnings have been coming for a long time, unfortunately we payed no heed then or now
https://youtu.be/LY15IutqFn0?feature=shared
Gail wrote “Trump hasn’t changed much since 1987” well he has rebranded himself as a wacko conservative. He was a liberal before. You cannot put a trustfunder in charge….show me a trustfunder that has ever accomplished anything and I will show you a lie…..Thanks Baby Boomers you sped up collapse a lot faster….
” As is often overlooked, electricity is not just about generating energy—it’s about timing and location too. Wind and solar technologies, while important, fail to meet the full operational requirements of a stable and affordable grid due to three fundamental challenges: (a) their intermittency, (b) their lack of inertia, and (c) their inability to provide reactive power. ”
https://www.thecommoditycompass.com/p/europes-largest-blackout-exposes?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3177130&post_id=162499296&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=26quge&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Also Quark in Spain .
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2025/04/el-gran-apagon-electrico-en-espana.html
Intermittency: Use on site, make hay while the sun shines. Perhaps different, perhaps inconvenient, perhaps cheaper, more profitable than the alternative with less capital in transmission and maintenance thereof.
Inertia: Yes a problem, there are inertial batteries, a pain but maybe can cover clouds going by.
Reactive power: Use DC, that problem is then moot. How do use DC? H.
The future will be different, look at what doesn’t work and look at otherways of doing things.
Dennis L.
How do use DC? H?
Hot Dog? Hamburger?
The future won’t be different. Computer simulations, better than your copilot, already simulated the solutions people like you could have thought about.
If they worked we would be using them now.
Hmm, maybe not. Don’t know if this is real or not, but H house.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMH1pBAYgYs&t=218s
Kul, it is always those damn engineers, some of us are builders and telling us something won’t work, can’t be done is what we need.
Now, off to find m cubic mile of Pt, left it somewhere?
Dennis L.
4 years ago. And no updates for 4 years so it did not pan out.
If you try to cite examples at least try to find out siomething more recent.
So what if?
What if I spend the last years of my life trying to make H from solar with Pt? What if I try and power a small, autonomous farm machine from H?
What is the worst that can happen? I die and I fail, but I have a reason to live, a reason to get up, a reason to get off the couch after a nap. If it works, great, if it doesn’t, will it make any difference to me? I think not. When I am gone will I hear anyone at my grave site saying, “I told him so.”
If I don’t try, all I can do is post about how certain I am that things will fail and do that until I fail.
I throw ideas out not to be right, but to have them torn apart. There are many mistakes in the world, share them, don’t hog all of them; corollary, learn from others’ mistakes.
For kicks, see if others change their opinions, who knows?
Dennis L.
400 years ago, a Miguel Cervantes, who was a sailor, a soldiee and a government official, none of them panning out, wrote a book for people like you.
It is called Don Quixote.
The first article is extremely good. It needs to be in editorials in Europe. This is an excerpt:
There is a lot of detail behind a paywall.
The second article by Quark has interesting things in it. For example:
He also gives some ideas of how artificial inertia could be added to the grid.
The blame game as usual .
https://x.com/JavierBlas/status/1917293017863500283
Sounds like a nuclear shill.
I’m just one of the hoi polloi but I think I get it. This reminds me of the divide between analog media storage and digital media storage. Vinyl records and VHS will still play if there is some damage to them whereas a tiny scratch on a cd will make the information inaccessible. Grids that have a high amount of electricity coming from renewable sources behave like a cd… if one thing goes wrong, that one thing has the potential to take out the whole grid.,
Another analogy is how solid state hard drives (all electronic) are much more sensitive to changes in electric voltage than analog hard drives (the ones that spin).
Guest:
Think of the population of vinyl records, hard drives. Graph the failure rate over time and compare that to solid state drives and CD’s. I don’t know.
I consulted my expert, Copilot.
“Over time, solid-state drives (SSDs) tend to have a lower failure rate than hard disk drives (HDDs). Studies have shown that SSDs have an annual failure rate of around 0.5%, while HDDs have a failure rate closer to 4.4% per year.”
Again per Copilot, “…vinyl under ideal conditions will play say 5K times until significantly degraded which implies loss of information.” vs a CD, “…No, an undamaged CD should not degrade over 5,000 plays under normal conditions.”
Nothing lasts forever, the limit for the listener is perhaps their hearing or end of lifespan at which time either may well still produce an acceptable sound. Now, if there is no one to hear it, is there an echo?
Dennis L.
Dennis, they are lying about the failure rate of ssds. Consumer grade ssds last just as long as consumer grade hhds.
All of the SSDs will die within a generation. They were not built to last.