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The supply and demand model of economists suggests that oil prices might rise to consistently high levels, but this has not happened yet:
In my view, the economists’ model of supply and demand is overly simple; its usefulness is limited to understanding short-term shifts in oil prices. The supply and demand model of economists does not consider the interconnected nature of the world economy. Every part of GDP requires energy consumption of some type. The price issue is basically a physics issue because the world economy operates under the laws of physics.
In this post, I will try to explain what really happens when oil supply is constrained.
[1] Overview: Why Oil Prices Don’t Permanently Rise; What Happens Instead
My analysis indicates that there are three ways that long-term crude oil prices are held down:
(a) Growing wage and wealth disparities act to reduce the “demand” for oil. As wage and wealth disparities widen, the economy heads in the direction of a shrinking middle class. With the shrinking of the middle class, it becomes impossible to bid up oil prices because there are too few people who can afford their own private cars, long distance travel, and other luxury uses of oil. Strangely enough, this dynamic is a major source of sluggish growth in oil demand.
(b) Politicians work to prevent inflation. Oil is extensively used in food production and transport. If crude oil prices rise, food prices also tend to rise, making citizens unhappy. In fact, inflation in general is likely to rise, as it did in the 1970s. Politicians will use any method available to keep crude oil prices down because they don’t want to be voted out of office.
(c) In very oil deficient locations, such as California and Western Europe, politicians use high taxes to raise the prices of oil products, such as gasoline and diesel. These high prices don’t get back to the producers of crude oil because they are used directly where they are collected, or they act to subsidize renewables. My analysis suggests that indirectly this approach will tend to reduce world crude oil demand and prices. Thus, these high taxes will help prevent inflation, especially outside the areas with the high taxes on oil products.
Instead of oil prices rising to a high level, I expect that the methods used to try to work around oil limits will lead to fragility in many parts of the economic system. The financial system and international trade are particularly at risk. Ultimately, collapse over a period of years seems likely.
Underlying this analysis is the fact that, in physics terms, the world economy is a dissipative structure. For more information on this subject, see my post, The Physics of Energy and the Economy.
[2] Demand for oil is something that tends not to be well understood. To achieve growing demand, an expanding middle class of workers is very helpful.
Growing demand for oil doesn’t just come from more babies being born each year. Somehow, the population needs to buy this oil. People cannot simply drive up to a gasoline station and honk their horns and “demand” more oil. They need to be able to afford to drive a car and purchase the fuel it uses.
As another example, switching from a diet which reserves meat products for special holidays to one that uses meat products more extensively tends to require more oil consumption. For this type of demand to rise, there needs to be a growing middle class of workers who can afford a diet with more meat in it.
These are just two examples of how a growing middle class will tend to increase the demand for oil products. Giving $1 billion more to a billionaire does not have the same impact on oil demand. For one thing, a billionaire cannot eat much more than three meals a day. Also, the number of vehicles they can drive are limited. They will spend their extra $1 billion on purchases such as shares of stock or consultations with advisors on tax avoidance strategies.
[3] In the US, there was a growing middle class between World War II and 1970, but more recently, increasing wage and wealth disparities have become problems.
There are several ways of seeing how the distribution of income has changed.
Figure 2 shows an analysis of how income (including capital gains) has been split between the very rich and everyone else. What we don’t see in Figure 2 is the fact that total income (calculated in this way) has tended to rise in all these periods.
Back in the 1920s (known as “the roaring 20s”), income was split very unevenly. There was a substantial share of very wealthy individuals. This gradually changed, with ordinary workers getting more of the total growing output of the economy. The share of the economy that the top earners obtained hit a low in the early 1970s. Thus, there were more funds available to the middle class than in more recent years.
Another way of seeing the problem of fewer funds going to ordinary wage earners is by analyzing wages and salary payments as a share of US GDP.
Figure 3 shows that wages and salaries as a percentage of GDP held up well between 1944 and 1970, but they have been falling since that time.
Furthermore, we all can see increasing evidence that young people are not doing as well financially as their parents did at the same age. They are not as likely to be able to afford to buy a home at a young age. They often have more college debt to repay. They are less able to buy a vehicle than their parents. They are struggling to find jobs that pay well enough to cover all their expenses. All these issues tend to hold down oil demand.
Since 1981, falling interest rates (shown in Figure 6, below) have allowed growing wage disparities to be transformed into growing wealth disparities. This has happened because long-term interest rates have fallen over most of this period. With lower interest rates, the monthly cost of asset ownership has fallen, making these assets more affordable. High-income individuals have disproportionately been able to benefit from the rising prices of assets (such as homes and shares of stock), because with higher disposable incomes, they are more able to afford such purchases. As a result, since 1981, wealth disparity has tended to increase as wage disparity has increased.
[4] Governments talk about the growing productivity of workers. In theory, this growing productivity should act to raise the wages of workers. This would maintain the buying power of the middle class.
Figure 4 shows that productivity growth was significantly higher in the period between 1948 and 1970 than in subsequent years. Figure 2 shows that before 1970, at least part of the productivity growth acted to raise the incomes of workers. More recently, productivity growth has been lower. With this lower productivity growth, Figure 2 shows that wage-earners are especially being squeezed out of productivity gains. It appears that most of the growth attributable to productivity gains is now going to other parts of the economy, such as the very rich, the financial sector, and the governmental services sector.
The changes the world has seen since 1970 are in the direction of greater complexity. Adding complexity tends to lead to growing wage and wealth disparities. Figure 4 seems to indicate that with added complexity, productivity per worker still seems to rise, but not as much as when the economic system grew primarily due to growing fossil fuel usage leveraging the productivity of workers.
Figure 4 shows data through June 30, 2025. Note that productivity in the latest period is lower than in earlier periods, even with the early usage of Artificial Intelligence. This is a worrying situation.
[5] The second major issue holding oil prices down is the fact that if crude oil prices rise, food prices also tend to rise. In fact, overall inflation tends to escalate.
Oil is extensively used in food production. Diesel is used to operate nearly all large farm machinery. Vehicles used to transport food from fields to stores use some form of oil, often diesel. Transport vehicles for food often provide refrigeration, as well. International transport, by jet or by boat also uses oil. Companies making hybrid seeds use oil products in their processes and distribution.
Furthermore, even apart from burning oil products, the chemical qualities of petroleum are used at many points in food production. The production of nitrogen fertilizer often uses natural gas. Herbicides and insecticides are made with petroleum products.
Because of these considerations, if oil prices rise, the cost of producing food and transporting it to its destination will rise. In fact, the cost of transporting all goods will rise. These dynamics will tend to lead to inflation throughout the system. When oil prices first spiked in the 1970s, inflation was very much of an issue, both for food and for goods in general. No one wants a repetition of a highly inflationary scenario.
Politicians will be voted out of office if a repetition of the oil price spikes of the 1970s takes place. As a result, politicians have an incentive to hold oil prices down.
[6] Oil prices that are either too high for the consumer or too low for the producer will bring the economy down.
We just noted in Section [6] that oil consumers do not want the price of oil to be too high. There are multiple reasons why oil producers don’t want oil prices to be too low, either.
A basic issue is that the cost of oil production tends to rise over time because the easiest to extract oil is produced first. This dynamic leads to a need for higher prices over time, whether or not such higher prices actually occur. If prices are chronically too low, oil producers will quit.
A second issue is the fact that many oil exporting countries depend heavily on the tax revenue that can be collected from exported oil. OPEC countries often have large populations with very low incomes. Oil prices need to be high enough to provide food subsidies for an ever-growing population of poor citizens in these countries, or the leaders will be overthrown.
Figure 5 shows required breakeven prices for oil producers in the year 2014, considering their need for tax revenue to support their populations, in addition to the direct costs of production. The current Brent Oil price is only about $66 per barrel. If the breakeven price remains at the level shown in 2014, this price is too low for every country listed except Qatar and Kuwait.
No oil exporting country will point out these price problems directly, but they will tend to cut off oil production to try to get oil prices up. In the recent past, this has been the strategy.
OPEC can also try a very different strategy, trying to get rid of competition by temporarily dumping stored-up oil onto the market, to lower oil prices to try to harm the financial results of its export competition. This seems to be OPEC’s current strategy. OPEC knows that US shale producers are now near the edge of cutting back greatly because depletion is raising their costs and reducing output. OPEC hopes that by obtaining lower prices (such as the $66 per barrel current price), it can push US shale producers out more quickly. As a result, OPEC hopes that oil prices will rebound and help them out with their price needs.
I have had telephone discussions with a former Saudi Aramco insider. He claimed that OPEC’s spare capacity is largely a myth, made possible by huge storage capacity for already pumped oil. It is also well known that OPEC’s (unaudited) oil reserves appear to be vastly overstated. These myths make the OPEC nations appear more powerful than they really are. OECD nations, with a desire for a happily ever after ending to our current oil problems, have eagerly accepted both myths.
To extract substantially more oil, the types of oil that are currently too expensive to extract (such as very heavy oil and tight oil located under metropolitan areas) would likely need to be developed. To do this, crude oil prices would likely need to rise to a much higher level, such as $200 or $300 per barrel, and stay there. Such a high price would lead to stratospherically higher food prices. It is hard to imagine such a steep rise in oil prices happening.
[7] The third major issue is that politicians in very oil deficient areas have been raising oil prices for consumers through carbon taxes, other taxes, and regulations.
Strangely enough, in places where the lack of oil supply is extreme, politicians follow an approach that seems to be aimed at reducing what little oil supply still exists. In this approach, politicians charge high taxes (“carbon” and other types) on oil products purchased by consumers, such as gasoline and diesel. They also implement stringent regulations that raise the cost of producing end products from crude oil. California and many countries in Western Europe seem to be following this approach.
With this approach, taxes and regulations of many kinds raise oil prices paid by customers, forcing the customer to economize. Some of the money raised by these taxes may go to help subsidize renewables, but virtually none of the additional revenue from consumers can be expected to go back to the companies producing the oil.
I would expect these high local oil prices will slightly reduce the world price of crude oil because of the reduced demand from areas using this approach (such as California and Western Europe). Demand will be reduced because oil prices will become unaffordably high for consumers in these areas. These areas are deficient in oil supply, so there will be much less impact on world oil supply.
Refineries in China and India will be happy to take advantage of the lower crude oil prices this approach would seem to provide, so much of the immediately reduced oil consumption in California and Western Europe will go to benefit other parts of the world. But the lower oil world oil prices will also act to inhibit future world oil extraction because the development of new oil fields will tend to be restricted by the lower world oil prices.
The lower crude oil prices will be beneficial in keeping world food price inflation and general inflation down worldwide. Some oil may be left in place, in case better extraction techniques are available later, especially in the areas with these high taxes. With less oil supply available, the economies of California and Western Europe will tend to fail more quickly than otherwise.
Unfortunately, so far, these intentionally higher oil prices for consumers seem to be mostly dead ends; they encourage substitutes, but today’s substitutes don’t work well enough to support modern agriculture and long-distance transportation.
[8] Politicians at times have reduced oil demand, and thus oil prices, by raising interest rates.
One way to reduce oil prices has been to push the economy into recession by raising interest rates. When interest rates rise, purchasing power for new cars, and for goods using oil in general, tends to fall. Recession seems to happen, with a lag, as shown on Figure 6. Recessions on this figure are noted with gray bars.
Increasing interest rates has led to several recessions, including the Great Recession of 2007-2009. A comparison with Figure 1 shows that oil prices have generally fallen during recessions.
[9] The climate change narrative is another way of attempting to reduce oil demand, and thus crude oil prices.
The wealthy nations of the world have been spreading the narrative that our most serious problem is climate change. In this narrative, we can help prevent climate change by reducing our fossil fuel usage. This narrative makes trying to work around a fossil fuel shortage a virtue, rather than something that needs to be done to prevent calamity from happening. However, when we examine CO2 emissions (Figure 7), they show that world CO2 emissions from fossil fuels have not fallen because of the climate change narrative.
Instead, what has happened is that manufacturing has increasingly moved to the less advanced economies of the world. There is a noticeable bump in CO2 emissions starting in 2002, as more coal-based manufacturing spread to China after it joined the World Trade Organization in very late 2001.
The climate change narrative has made it possible to “sell” the need to move away from fossil fuels in a less frightening way than by telling the public that oil and other fossil fuels are running out. However, it hasn’t fixed either the CO2 issue or the declining supply of fossil fuels issue, particularly oil.
[10] The danger is that the world economy is growing increasingly fragile because of long-term changes related to added complexity.
Shifting manufacturing overseas only works as long as there is plenty of inexpensive oil to allow long-distance supply lines around the world. Diesel oil and jet fuel are particularly needed. The US extracts a considerable amount of oil, but it tends to be very “light” oil. It is deficient in the long-chain hydrocarbons that are needed for diesel and jet fuel. In fact, the world’s supply of diesel fuel seems to be constrained.
Without enough diesel, there is a need to move manufacturing closer to the end users. But what I have called the Advanced Nations (members of the OECD, including the US, most countries in Europe, and Australia) have, to a significant extent, moved their manufacturing to lower-wage countries. Fossil fuel supplies in countries that have moved their manufacturing offshore tend to be depleted. Trying to move manufacturing back home seems likely to be problematic.
The world economy is now built on a huge amount of debt. All this debt needs to be repaid with interest. But if manufacturing is significantly constrained, there is likely to be a problem repaying this debt, except perhaps in currencies that buy little in the way of physical goods.
When oil supply is stretched, we don’t recognize the symptoms. One symptom is refinery closures in some oil importing areas, such as in California and Britain. This will make future oil supply less available. Other symptoms seem to be higher tariffs (to motivate increased manufacturing near home) and increasing hostility among countries.
[11] Both history and physics suggest that “overshoot and collapse over a period of years” is the outcome we should expect.
Pretty much every historical economy has eventually run into difficulties because its population grew too high for available resources. Often, available resources have been depleted, as well. Now, the world economy seems to be headed in this same direction.
The outcome is usually some form of collapse. Sometimes individual economies lose wars with other stronger economies. Sometimes, wage disparities become such huge problems that the poorer citizens become vulnerable to epidemics. At other times, unhappy citizens overthrow their governments. Or, if the option is available, citizens might vote the current political elite out of power.
Such collapses do not happen overnight; they are years in the making. Poorer people start dying off more quickly, even before the economy as a whole collapses. Conflict levels become greater. Debt levels grow. Researchers Turchin and Nefedov tell us that food prices bounce up and down. There is no evidence that they rise to a permanently high level to enable more food to be grown.
Anthropologist Joseph Tainter, in the Collapse of Complex Societies, tells us that there are diminishing returns to added complexity. While economies can temporarily work around overshoot problems with greater complexity, added complexity cannot permanently prevent collapse.
[12] We need to beware of “overly simple” models.
The models of economists and of scientists tend to be very simple. They do not consider the complex, interconnected nature of the world economy. In fact, the laws of physics are important in understanding how the world economy operates. Energy in some form (fossil fuel energy, human energy, or energy from the sun) is needed for every component of GDP. If the energy supply somehow becomes restricted, or is very costly to produce, this becomes a huge problem.
As I see it, the supply and demand model of economists is primarily useful in predicting what will happen in the very short term. It doesn’t have enough parts to it to tell us much more.
For any commodity, including oil, storage capacity tends to be very low relative to the amount used each year. Because of this, commodity prices tend to react strongly to any fluctuation in presently available supply, or projected supply in the future. The supply and demand model of economists primarily predicts these short-term outcomes.
For the longer term, we need to look to history and to models that consider the laws of physics. These models seem to suggest that collapse will take place over a period of years, as the more vulnerable parts of the system break off and disappear. Unfortunately, we cannot expect long-term high prices to solve our oil problem.
If immigration were to bring in people with IQs over 120 and a history of non violence and honesty to replace Americans with IQs below 80 and a history of violence and dishonesty I would be all for it. Tens of millions please.
IQ distributions are not available. What is the distribution for natives, for immigrants from low IQ nations?
Many people remember the 1994 book, “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.”
https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-American/dp/0029146739/ref=zg-te-pba_d_sccl_2_2/142-3205161-5428355?pd_rd_w=W134e&content-id=amzn1.sym.081392b0-c07f-4fc2-8965-84d15d431f0d&pf_rd_p=081392b0-c07f-4fc2-8965-84d15d431f0d&pf_rd_r=8GF0HMVPAWKYVKH071ZS&pd_rd_wg=ZG0On&pd_rd_r=163c9317-d1a6-4686-b8c0-b50ab05beef6&pd_rd_i=0029146739&psc=1
This book was very controversial.
This seems to be a 1996 version.
https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Intelligence-Structure-Paperbacks/dp/0684824299
Its summary says:
“the fundamental American belief that everyone is created equal”
That is equal before the law. It is obvious people are not created equal. For example some adult men are 6’6″ and some are 5’3″. The taller are more likely to make good basketball players. Not equal!
many great general were small men.
Nelson was 5′ 4”
Julius Caesar was tall for an ancient Roman at 5′ 6″
Napoleon was 5′ 6 1/2″
Eisenhower’ was 5′ 10″
Monty was 5′ 6″
Rommel was also 5′ 6″
Patton was 6′ 1 1/2″ — a true giant among generals
Chinese admiral Zheng He was recorded as being 7′ tall!
And Chinese warlord Zhang Zongchang was recorded as being either 6′ 6″ or 7′ 0″
Zheng He was a she, a eunuch.
Stalin was only 5 feet 3 inches tall. And he had a crippled left arm. He surrounded himself with short men like Khrushchev. He was only 5 feet 3 inches. Yezhov, his head of secret police was only 5 feet in height. Although Stalin got rid of him. His replacement Beria was 5 feet 8 inches. Georgy Zhukov was only 5 feet 5 inches. (I thought he was 6 feet 2 inches. Wow!) Malenkov, who was the guy with the pomaded hair was 5 feet 7 inches.
What was the most common height for Russian men in the middle of the twentieth century?
Women want to have children with the tallest men.
I’m not sure if taller men have an advantage in war but I know they do in some sports.
They probably had a good diet, as a child. This is a sign of parents with adequate income.
when early hominids began to evolve, they were only about 3ft tall.
living on open savannah, height was an advantage, so obviously women selected taller men when they could.
makes perfect sense
World War Three is progressing on many fronts globally.
20% of Russian oil refineries are out of operation. Can they go to 40% and still feel safe?
England and France need IMF bailouts. I do not even know what that means.
drb , a lot of talk online on petrol rationing in Russia . Please update .
no rationing. prices for diesel same as one year ago, about 70 at the pump (I pay less as I buy 8000 liters at a time). gasoline 95 octanes at 60 rubles, up I think 4 rubles from last year. surely there was some refinery damage, but not enough. schools start Monday so driving season is over. My manager just had a 10 days vacation were he drove 4000 km to visit family, no reports either.
Are you saying the gasoline shortage is propaganda? Maybe you are in a region not effected?
Perhaps that’s one reason Russia exports oil to India and India does the refining. To me it seems obvious that one should generally do the value-add steps, but if refineries have been knocked down, it begins to make sense.
India can quite possibly do the value added steps at lower cost than Russia. Wages are lower in India. There is also less need for heat for workers in India (which is part of what keeps wages lower.)
COVID’s Hidden Time Bomb: Rapid Arterial Aging
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bBvPstGySg&t=444s
Shocking…not really…but it was safe and effective…at the time
now RFKs in charge, everyone will be looked after.
he said so
Once papers about covid vaccine damage hit 1000 in Oct. 2023 (they must be 1500-2000 now), I figured the tide was turning. But hey, I feel more compassion for an ukie teenager kidnapped in the street and sent to die, that for someone doing these things voluntarily.
Hope about the this one
A Ukrainian refugee named Iryna Zarutska was killed in Charlotte, North Carolina, in late August 2025. Her death occurred amid city-wide crime data for the first half of 2025 that showed a decrease in overall violent crime, but some areas of crime did see upticks.
The killing of Iryna Zarutska
The victim: 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska fled the war in Ukraine and had arrived in Charlotte three years prior to her death.
The incident: On August 22, 2025, Zarutska was on a LYNX Blue Line train in the South End when she was fatally and randomly stabbed in the throat. Police and surveillance video determined there was no interaction between Zarutska and her attacker prior to the stabbing.
The suspect: Decarlos Brown, 34, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. The judge denied him bond, calling the crime “heinous”. According to court records, Brown is a homeless individual with a history of violent and mental health issues.
Aftermath: The Charlotte-area Ukrainian community has expressed shock and grief over the attack. Following the incident, city leaders demanded immediate action to improve safety on the public transit system.
I just visited there and rode the Blue Rail myself…
Scary 😱 to think of it now
Lots of compassion to her. these things tend to happen only in the US..
Most nations do not have 20% population of low IQ, high violence Africans.
Ed, when I read your comment, I assumed it was Kulm chiming in.
We used to have insane asylum to houses these broken people. Now the powers that be demand we co-mingle with the killers.
Insanity is the new normal
RFK says he knows what is causing autism and he will tell us next month. This is the point in the murder mystery where the person who threatens to reveal the wrong doer gets killed. Robert hasn’t your family learned? Speak the truth NOW!
RFK is what you get when conspironuts take over…
his own staff are jumping ship..
but the claptrap RFK is spouting, is no different to what the fakemongers on OFW have been ranting on about for years.
as a result, the basic health of the nation is now at risk, proven systems that have been built up over decades by solid research and established results.
Remember the classic trumpcure?—injecting bleach to cure covid?
who needs doctors?
It gets even worse Norm. He put a Stanfoo professor in charge of NIH. He should be withdrawing all federal support to the authors of those 1000+ paper, closing Lancet, closing the New England Journal of Medicine, RFK is so anti-american.
Norman, I think you don’t know a tenth of what you think you know. You wouldn’t willing let bees or wasps or scorpions sting you or snakes or great venomous tree frogs bite you regularly, now would you? But needles filled with who knows what—concoctions that are designed to produce a robust immune response—any you’re all for it.
The Iron Man of Shropshire is a lot cause, and a great loss to the antivax movement. Whatever wisdom he is trying to shower us with is not soaking through, and, like Cassandra, he is fated never to be listened to or believed. Let’s leave him to his boosters, his weightlifting, and his swimming.
“It’s sick, the state of medicine” sang the Psychedelic Furs. And they were right. “Proven systems that have been built up over decades by solid research and established results” need to be reassessed, reevaluated, and if necessary, revamped. I bet even Norman is glad to see the back of those leeches! Bleed the patient to restore the balance of his humors—that was the theory, and that’s how the doctors finished off George Washington.
This is not medical advice, but for the anyone who really cares about their health, please consider the proposition that intramuscular injection of any combination of substances with the intent of augmenting the immune system is dumb. Bypassing nature’s defenses to deliver poisons directly through the skin and into the body is asking for trouble.
After all, you could over-augment something, causing disregulation of your immune system that manifests in some kind of autoimmune condition. Common examples include Rheumatoid Arthritis, which affects the joints; Type 1 Diabetes, which impacts the pancreas; Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and Graves’ disease, affecting the thyroid; Multiple Sclerosis, which damages the nervous system; and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (lupus), a condition that can affect connective tissue and other organs. Other examples are Celiac Disease, Crohn’s disease, Sjögren’s syndrome, Addison’s disease, and Psoriasis.
Or you could suffer anaphylaxis, which occurs when your immune system meets up with a foreign protein that it has encountered before and been primed to attack, and the resulting reaction causes you to collapse or even to die, perhaps within minutes.
As a result, as Norman laments, the basic health of the nation is now at risk. 70% of the population can’t do basic math; 20% are demented (Alzheimer’s may also have an autoimmune component), and the other half are autistic. 🙂
But I digress.
They said it was safe and effective
But then I got the shingles
It was followed by shakes
And for goodness sakes
My life is needle-like tingles
But it could have been worse……
https://suno.com/song/f60c219d-23a8-40b8-86b6-05e70a9080e8
“intramuscular injection is dumb”.. is this one of jj couey’s lines?
a bird’s eye view of the control grid..the health equity clearinghouse
https://escapekey.substack.com/p/the-health-equity-clearinghouse?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=nv8me&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true
Great points!
Control the rules and the clearing house, and you control the system. Should work for banks and healthcare.
But if the underlying system is faulty (US healthcare outcome are worse than the rest of the developed world; banking system is terribly dependent on growth and perhaps falling internet rates), then there is a problem. Both health care and the financial system will fail. In fact, government will fail.
“Trump Didn’t Tell People to ‘Inject Bleach’ for COVID-19. But Here’s What He Did Say”?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-inject-bleach-covid-19/
injecting disinfectants into the human body is nuttily close enough
wouldnt you say?
“It is very unlikely that COVID-19 vaccines cause arterial hardening, also known as atherosclerosis. The available evidence shows that the vaccines do not cause this condition and can reduce the cardiovascular risks associated with a COVID-19 infection. In contrast, a COVID-19 infection itself is known to accelerate the process of arterial plaque growth and inflammation.”
https://www.google.com/search?q=does+covid+vaccine+cause+arterial+hardening&oq=does&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBggAEEUYOzIGCAAQRRg7MgYIARBFGDkyBwgCEAAYgAQyBwgDEAAYgAQyCggEEAAYsQMYgAQyBwgFEAAYgAQyBwgGEAAYgAQyBwgHEAAYgAQyCggIEAAYsQMYgAQyBwgJEAAYjwLSAQoxMDA4MGowajE1qAIIsAIB8QXn5-5gcnSQ6fEF5-fuYHJ0kOk&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
I get this-and-that — I’ve been covid-vaxed 8 times since 2021 — did covid vax do any good?
That’s a question you are best placed to answer. Did it do YOU any good?
If you feel it was helpful, or that it protected you against something worse, and there were no adverse effects, then you might be feeling relieved to have had it 8 times. I consider that even a placebo effect is good if it makes people feel better.
That’s why a lot of different people practice a lot of different health activities, regardless of what medical opinion of them may be. IMHO, that is why homeopathy, chiropractics, and faith healing can be so effective in treating disease. The mind rules the body in these matters.
In my own case, absolutely convinced that all injected vaccines are poisonous, I would feel as if I had poisoned myself if I submitted to one, and the negative thoughts I would have as I obsessed about the needle and the damage done would make me as ill as if I had swallowed a cup of that bleach Norman keeps going on about. There’s no way a vax would do my physical or mental health any good at all.
Welfare state is not sustainable, says German chancellor — Aug 22
We will support Ukraine with Euro 9 billion annually . Defense Minister Aug 25
Blind as bats .
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/news-ursula-von-der-leyen-bundespraesidentin-friedrich-merz-cdu-libanon-handys-schulen-a-452d60fe-9ae8-443b-97dd-9687c562876f?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Ursula to be the new German President . Parkinson’s law in action .
I enjoy working now, I’m 67 and think of it as good exercise, what’s the problem?
at 90—i think working keeps me young and fit—which it does…
but if i was–say– a farm labourer, i simply couldnt do that.
theres the problem
You’re probably correct, can’t see you being something like a baggage handler…
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/W5Tgj1bKHoI
oh i dunno
depends on the baggage you have in mind.
Hey Mike you got Parkinson’s law mixed with Parkinson’s disease . However the error is at my end . It should be ” The Peter Principle ” and not Parkinson’s law . Apologies .
” The Peter Principle states that an employee continues to receive promotions to work in higher ranks up to that point where he reaches a level of incompetence. In simple terms, the higher the hierarchy ladder an individual goes, the more likely he is to fail in his new position. ”
This is applicable to VDL .
P.S ; I am 73 and still work .
Working iron never rusts . — Turkish proverb .
Give aways, year after year. This only works in a growing economy.
rumour that DJT is deceased.
Not that it will make a difference.
I doubt it.
Its very suspicious timing because he could easily just use the holiday as an excuse to step away for whatever reason. And since he hasn’t or they haven’t, that does raise some questions.
there’s little chance of that—is it possible that the office of president of the United States has sunk to this level?
Laugh, cry—but have a bowl handy for when you vomit after watching this
https://share.google/fWZFkBktWJvQvim1I
Yeah that’s really crazy 🤪 but what do you expect? We have been talking about the decent for 20 years! Going down
Look at my comment below it’s hard to tell what it’s real or the truth anymore. I come here for a fresh dose of reality; even though it’s not what I want to hear. I’m trying hard to figure out how much time of bau we have left. It seems like things are picking up pace.
reality is always fresh Sam
thats the one commodity that never goes off or goes stale…
trick is to find it.
always at the bottom of the BS bag, if you want to dive for it
Well Norm we are in the newly minted age of full-spectrum gaslighting so it’s not surprising that the cabinet members would, at every turn, be directing an obsequious brand of gaslighting towards the nectarine narcissist (h/t Simplicius). After all, it works. Welcome to corporate culture.
i cant imagine aby other potus tolerating such unspeakable nonsense.
That was pretty disgusting, frankly.
I can’t abide Jen Psaki’s smug, patronizing, passive aggressive and sarcastic cattiness.
She’s also a thoroughly unlikeable partisan hack, and a proven liar who nobody in their right mind would expect to be fair and balanced.
More importantly, if she wants to appear on video, she needs a lot less powder on her face and a lot more botox to smooth out those unsightly forehead wrinkles. She looks like she’s picking up wifi.
What Norman sees in her I have no idea.
We all know that, from the neck up…doesn’t have a clue…
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/08/28/us-economy-grew-3point3percent-in-q2-growth-was-stronger-than-initially-thought.html
I don’t see how this is possible. Every where I look I see contraction
It does seem strange, I agree.
The federal deficit running at 7% of GDP is a hell of a drug.
Federal deficit running at 7% I’m not even sure what that means anymore
Maybe income minus outgo, without considering interest on debt.
Well if inflation is understated and GDP counts non-material things (and it does), then we can have GDP “growth” while the real economy shrinks.
“Russia Uncovers 511 Billion Barrels of Oil Beneath Antarctica: A Find That Could End the Continent’s Era of Peaceful Use
The 511 billion barrels reported is nearly double Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves and more than ten times the North Sea’s output over the last 50 years.”?
https://indiandefencereview.com/russia-uncovers-511-billion-barrels-of-oil-beneath-antarctica-a-find-that-could-end-the-continents-era-of-peaceful-use/
This is from last year, but anyways, it’s seismic data, no actual drilling has been done or verified.
https://geoexpro.com/calling-a-discovery-without-drilling-a-well/
This looks like the real story. People are extrapolating possibilities from very little data.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH1kFaSzY90
This is an audio book about Canada in the 2030s. It is one of the most direct and honest reports I have heard about collapse and how it is self inflicted.
Can some Canadian tell me if this is basically true?
to stay profitable, the oil industry must increase production year on year, or face total collapse.
it cannot just ‘coast along’ for any length of time…
The Grey Entertainment guy, who does not reveal his age, talked about the myth of wealthier boomers
https://greyenlightenment.com/2023/05/25/boomers-had-it-easier-it-depends/
https://greyenlightenment.com/2023/09/26/the-myth-of-wealthy-boomers-why-they-are-not-much-better-off-compared-to-later-generations/
Some of the people here will say the boomers deserve respect and people should show more courtesy to the old.
Sure, there will be some poorer boomers, just like some poorer people in an pop segment, but generally the boomers are the first, and probably the last, generation on human history who was able to indulge on everything, and the boomers left nothing for the posterity and are unrepentant, still wanting to enjoy their exaggerated lifestyle and creating and enjoying myths and delusions to justify it.
As I have said before , a boomer is still in the White House, where the first boomer had entered in 1993, and the Gen-X, which came after it, is unlikely to produce a new president as the reins of power are likely to pass directly into the millennials (those born 1981-2000).
In the above links it is mentioned that half of boomers are poor. Which is a vast improvement over the previous generations since about 10% of them were richer and the rest very poor.
BAU will not survive the last of boomers.
>> boomers are the first, and probably the last, generation on human history who was able to indulge on everything, and the boomers left nothing for the posterity and are unrepentant, still wanting to enjoy their exaggerated lifestyle and creating and enjoying myths and delusions to justify it
You’re not wrong about the “I got mine” mentality from a bunch of hippies turned corporate climbers, but I am ambivalent about blaming them – it’s largely human nature, the cyclical nature of generations and institutions and the intentional propaganda that they were subjected to. The bulk of humanity, boomers included, just isn’t smart and organized enough to create a better path forward. China, Russia, India, Brazil all have history with corruption and selfishness and short-termism at various junctures.
It seems to me that quite a few boomers are trying to help out their children, financially. They see that the poor financial situation the kids are getting into isn’t their fault.
The Hand even helped a bunch of boomers posthumously help out their children lol
You are talking about inheritance laws, I presume.
It is in the nature or parents to give a helping hand to their children if they can, and if they need it…
some kids do, some don’t
Yes but only in conjunction with the vaxxes.
I wish I could interact with some of the boomers who are generous and trying to help their children. My experience with the boomers is quite the opposite.
Generous doomers are pike albino africans. They exist. But not in significant numbers.
True
I refuse to let my daughter,21, single, college graduate who works hard and realizes what she has coming down the line, get into debt. Debt will be the kill shot for a lot of Z’ers I’m afraid. She now works as medical assistant and needs these BS “patient clinical experience” hours to apply for PA (physician assistant school). If she had the typical car payment, car insurance payment , and school loans to pay off , she would immediately be under water.
It’s nice that she’s motivated most kids take that as my parents have plenty of money I can be in the slow lane and take it easy. They soon become $200,000 liability
It is the people who can afford to who help out their adult children.
The top article ends:
They have become more expensive. Expecting more home ownership appreciation seems very iffy. And most people are not lucking out on wages either.
Logically, the boomer should be followed by the busters.
https://youtu.be/0g3yo1DjiLM?si=xYptQINDhqqAejTt
death by genontocracy
Most people at this blog are kinda older so they won’t like this. They say they need respect and all that.
In Florida, ex cops can go around and kill anyone they feel like. All they have to say is they were attacked and the jury, most of them over 65, will acquit them.
Minnesota produced a dentist who killed a famous lion in Zimbabwe, and when protesters came to the dentist’ practice, his friends all came to defend him with a bunch of hunting rifles. i wonder someone who comes to this blog was there too – he would know a story or two about that guy, and somehow connect it to his theory of biology.
The Federal Government approach has been a give away. This news should not be surprising.
From the WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/finance/regulation/senate-democrats-warn-trump-ipo-plan-for-fannie-freddie-could-push-up-mortgage-rates-bd7c0937
Senate Democrats Warn Trump IPO Plan for Fannie, Freddie Could Push Up Mortgage Rates
Senators including Elizabeth Warren urge housing officials to focus on affordability
He had better get that IPO done soon before the wheels fall off of the housing market. My understanding is that they guarantee most mortgages and their financials will look worse if this housing downturn continues:
https://wolfstreet.com/2025/08/28/buyers-strike-pending-home-sales-drop-further-plunge-in-midwest-near-record-lows-in-all-regions-even-as-supply-balloons/
Good point! The wheels look likely to fall off, no matter what happens.
Mexican Senators get in brawl over Trump using military to go after cartels.
https://x.com/nojumper/status/1961163830383579648
18 sec mark that dumb journalist. lol
A consequence of the traitor Nicholas Trist who was convinced by the Mexicans who lobbied him heavily, and led to not annex what is now Northwestern Mexico.
Mexico should have been cut down, for ever, in 1849, so it would never become uppity.
Dumb, watch this, politicians don’t have the monopoly on dumb..sad to reveal, but it runs amok in our genes…too funny…timburrr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoUko2doqoI
Idiots Cutting Trees With Chainsaws | Tree Falling & Chainsaw Fails Part 1
Idiots meet their final boss,..gravity…as Gail always points out the laws of Physics rule..it’s not your fault…kinda
Enjoy watching
so this video, from former vaccine pusher who later repented (some sort of folk hero Jeffrey Sachs) is eye opening. TL/DR, the UK is funding preparation for mass fatalities. Check the bit about fragmented casualties, which I take to mean guys blown to bits. Later he veers into cuckoo land by discussing chemical weapons from the point of view of uninformed brit.
It dovetails with what the UK is doing in the Balkans and Ukraine. They are serious.
You see the powers that be from the past would’ve been working on a sinister plan to remove a large percentage of us non believers of the conspiracy theory are just plain naive and could never contemplate the possibility of such a sinister plan,but with motive comes a strong reason to create such a sinister plan. Whatever was in those vaccines could back and haunt the recipients 5 to 10 years down the track just when resources are starting to contract.
I never realized it before, but Dr. John says “nucular”, the same pronunciation as Dubya.
He’s come along way since 2020, when he was a total normie. It’s commendable how he has owned up to having been bamboozled, and interesting that he has come out as a full-blown skeptic cum cynic regarding the British Government’s policy on almost everything.
What should be understood is that Dr. John, in the process of embracing his inner conspiracy theorist, has also learned to speak with considerable sarcasm. What may sound like cuckoo land is actually a strategy of saying what he thinks needs to be said to the cognoscenti while getting around the YouTube censorship algorithm. Non-native speakers of English, native speakers who are not British, and even the less perceptive among the British themselves will probably not get the full gist of his message here.
He has certainly come a long way, but the Novichok brief discussion was IMHO uninformed…
I agree, if you take what he says literally, the novichok reference is uninformed.
The MSM assumption that the Ruskies used novichok to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal on a park bench just down the road from the Porton Down science and defence technology campus near Salisbury, Wiltshire is a UK establishment narrative. Regardless of its potential truthfulness, assuming it to be true would be incredibly naive. At this stage of the game, any accusation the British authorities lob at the Russians can be dismissed out of hand.
My guess is that Dr. John knows this very well and is mentioning the novichok incident in order to appear reasonable and mostly harmless. The fact that he is discussing the “mass fatality” planning of the UK Government at all shows that he has been seriously red-pilled.
Nucular drives me crazy. Maybe it’s an American wink and a nod to his CIA contract just getting renewed for another year at the $25/hr entry-level. The deal was probably “indefinite entry-level pay, you get to keep the monetization royalties.”
Oh my, the end is near…really..no kidding..
I’ve been watching this man, Kevin, for some time and sad to say he has cancer. In this video he reveals that his “difficulties” began with the Johnson and Johnson dose he received only once…unlucky whatever it is…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCmlYC3FkvE&t=678s
His admission about cvid shot is about 4:25 minutes into it…
I did get it too, and so far nothing…but I have O negative blood type
Do you have any stats on covid injuries by blood type?
Here’s a study I just found..
Why Blood Type Seems to Be Linked With COVID-19 Risk
Rita Rubin, MA
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2808688
That could help explain why type A blood was overrepresented among the patients hospitalized with COVID-19. In a laboratory experiment, the researchers found that the rate of SARS-CoV-2 RBD binding to red blood cells was highest among people with type A and lowest in people with type O blood.Aug 16, 2023 look
Thanks Mike that yet more substantiation that the mythical and heavy-handedly-named ‘spike’ is in fact a (human) tumor exosome.
What virology calls SARS-CoV-2 is just one or more classes of tumor exosomes. The article you linked to that misidentifies these exosomes for SARS-CoV-2 says that the reason SARS-CoV-2 binds to red blood cells is because their surfaces are structurally similar enough to the biological compound, galectin, which binds to red blood cells. But, unsurprisingly to me, some classes oftumor exosomes also carry galectins and, as a result, also bind to red blood cells. After a short grilling of AI, I asked it, “do tumor signaling exosomes carrying galectin bind to red blood cells?”
AI Overview
“Yes, tumor signaling exosomes that carry galectins can bind to red blood cells (RBCs). This interaction is significant in cancer progression, potentially supporting tumor cell survival and spread. How the interaction works The binding between galectin-carrying exosomes and red blood cells is based on a specific carbohydrate-binding mechanism. Sticky galectins: Galectins are a family of proteins that bind to \(\beta \)-galactoside sugars on the surface of cells and the extracellular matrix.Carbohydrate binding: Tumor cells express and secrete various types of galectins (such as galectin-4), which are then carried on the surface of their exosomes.Binding to RBC surface: Red blood cells also have specific blood group antigens on their surface that contain \(\beta \)-galactoside structures. This allows the galectins on the tumor exosomes to bind to and interact with the RBCs. Functional consequences of this binding The interaction between tumor exosomes, galectins, and red blood cells can have several effects that benefit the tumor: Anemia in cancer: As tumor exosomes bind to and deform red blood cells, it is theorized that this might contribute to the anemia often seen in cancer patients.Metastasis and invasion: The interaction with red blood cells might provide a survival advantage for circulating tumor cells in the bloodstream. Studies suggest that these interactions can induce physical changes in tumor cells, like the formation of filopodia-like structures, which are associated with invasion and metastasis.Immunomodulation: Galectins and exosomes can alter the tumor microenvironment and dampen the anti-tumor immune response. While RBCs are not immune cells, this binding and subsequent clearance could be part of a broader strategy by the tumor to alter its circulatory environment.”
That study you linked to is misunderstanding what’s going on because of the Hand’s virology-assisted bait and switch.
A huge component of putting the reality altogether is stepping outside of germ theory and coming to the naked realization that cancer is our own body’s intelligent, last- resort effort to safely sequester the overflow of dangerously reactive (with oxygen) fat-soluble carcinogens, which get in the fatty cholesterol pockets inside fibrin-based (protein-based) tumor structures that the body intentionally grew out. When these tumors do metastasize and kill the body, that is merely the failure of the body to bioremediate the runaway toxicity dynamic that led to the last- resort growing out of the cancer in the first place.
The first resort for bioremediating (detoxifying from) carcinogens are our daily detoxes via exercise and excretions and our internal white blood cells complex, and our second resort detoxes that periodically kick-in when the toxic buildup from our cumulatively inadequate daily detoxes have reached a critical threshold, are ‘colds’ and ‘flus,’ which are not viral but endogenously exosomal. A cold is, generally speaking, for cleaning out the less carcinogenic water-soluble toxins and the ‘flu’ is for the heavier-duty, more inflammatory biochemical breaking down and excreting of the gnarlier fat-soluble industrial -type chemical toxins.
Mike has anything happened health wise since you got vaxxed? Anything at all? Or are you just older and the same?
Like drb I’m also interested in what you think your blood type has to do with it.
Hi Guys, this is what I found in a nutshell
Is blood group O resistant to diseases?
Of the eight main blood types, people with Type O have the lowest risk for heart attacks and blood clots in the legs and lungs. This may be because people with other blood types have higher levels of certain clotting factors, which are proteins that cause blood to coagulate (solidify).
Everything seems pretty much the same, just older now but still able to exercise and go to my physical job, which I think of as resistant training (lifting).
I walk at least 2 hours a day 5-6 times a week or more and have a fast pace. Som 6-9 miles.
I eat somewhat right, mainly veggies, fruit and whole grains and do enjoy coffee…
Anyway, waited till the guinea chumps at work got the jab and was threatened to be fired if I did not get it!
The CDC or whoever started to give it to children, and others so I really couldn’t protest.
The sad thing two weeks later a memo came out saying did NOT have to be jabbed… unbelievable.
They denied about being fired but had a screenshot of the memo….no response of course…
It’s gonna get a lot worse from here on out.
The farm belt is gonna have a depression like the the Great One of 1929 because China has cancelled all imports of ag products..what a fiasco this all has been.
Good luck, stock up on food folks…you’ll need it.
Got lots of feral cats, ducks, iguanas and fish in the canals for meats… sarcasm. Those be gone in a week
Buying more tuna cans…
PS Had my yearly physical with EKG.. ✔️ OK
Thanks Mike yes I see now, type O people like yourself have hyperfibrinolysis. That’s EXACTLY what you would want if you took the vaxx because I believe all of the problems stem from fibrotic disease, because I believe the mRNA are actually tumor exosomes — either classified ones or ones scrubbed from the BLAST database, and being used in a bait and switch trick with non-existent ‘spike’ mRNA — one of the main classes of which tumor exosomes signals for massive fibrin upregulation, because fibrin is what tumors are structurally made out of.
Hyperfibrinolysis—that’s my new word of the day. It sounds like something Mary Poppins would sing about.
“Hyperfibrinolysis is a medical condition where there is excessive and inappropriate breakdown of fibrin, the protein that forms blood clots, leading to accelerated clot dissolution and a tendency for increased, potentially severe bleeding. ”
I can see how that condition might be advantageous for people facing increased risk of blood clotting.
“Blood type O is associated with an increased risk of hyperfibrinolysis, a condition characterized by accelerated fibrin breakdown leading to excessive bleeding, especially after severe injury. This association is thought to stem from lower levels of von Willebrand factor (vWF) and Factor VIII (FVIII), which are acute-phase reactants that increase after trauma, potentially making type O individuals more susceptible to bleeding complications. “
with Type O blood have a lower risk of certain health issues, such as heart attacks, blood clots, and some infections, compared to people with A, B, or AB blood types. While O negative is a universal blood type for transfusions and important in emergencies, a person’s overall health depends on many factors beyond their blood type.
Potential health benefits for O blood types
Lower risk of heart issues:
People with Type O blood have a reduced risk of developing coronary heart disease, heart attacks, and blood clots compared to those with other blood types.
Reduced risk of some infections:
Research indicates that O-type individuals are less likely to contract certain infections, such as COVID-19, and may experience less severe disease.
Evolutionary advantage against malaria:
Historically, people with O blood have had a lower chance of dying from malaria, which has driven the increase in O blood types over millennia.
Hello drb753 and all,
my impression is that UK is preparing itself for a destruticive attack by Russia to UK, as a consequence of something they already know they are planning to do to Russia
or
they are preparing for a sort of 9/11 false flag attack on their own territory, made by themselves, but organized in order to blame Russia.
https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p/ai-false-savior-of-a-hollowed-out
AI: False Savior of a Hollowed-Out Economy
What nobody seems to notice is all the incentives for deploying AI are perverse.
Well, so far AI hasn’t added any value to the wealth of humanity – it may in the future (but can it bring deflation [growth] to our coming inflationary [degrowth] world?), but right now it’s a very very expensive toy gourging on investor’s money.
I’m really curious as to how things will develop for technology in degrowth-world. People (even myself) tend to think of electronics as some kind of magic, but there is a gargantuan power-hungry heavy infrastructure working 24/7 so that we can view dance videos.
This whole fossil fuel experiment to me seems to have compressed out time. Without it, we might have billions of humans being born for thousands of years, but we somehow crammed them all in a hundred years and boom, it’s over.
Well, try and tell someone how this whole thing is based on fossil fuels — see how they deal with it.
They will not understand the link between fossil fuels and the economic system they believe in infinite growth based on science making it all work
Very true, Adonis..even a few of my coworkers that seem to realize our dire situation are in disbelief regarding the actual…they do not respond only with a resigned glaze staring outside and mumble kicking the can of they’ll think of something….hard to grasp the fact we are a flash in the pan, one time aberration by a chance fluke in random selection out outcomes
AI consumes energy, it does not produce energy.
there you have it, in a single sentence.
Here are some ways AI can help energy go further and help pay for its keep:
Energy Efficiency Optimization: AI can analyze consumption patterns in buildings and suggest adjustments to reduce energy use.
Smart Grids: AI can optimize energy distribution, balancing supply and demand in real-time, reducing waste.
Predictive Maintenance: By predicting equipment failures, AI can minimize downtime and energy loss in industrial settings.
Renewable Energy Management: AI can forecast weather patterns to optimize the use of solar and wind energy, enhancing their efficiency.
Demand Response Programs: AI can manage energy consumption during peak times by adjusting usage based on real-time data, reducing strain on the grid.
Electric Vehicle (EV) Optimization: AI can optimize charging schedules for EVs, making the most of available renewable energy.
Overall, if implemented effectively, these AI applications CAN result in NET ENERGY SAVINGS, justifying their energy consumption, and allowing AI to be a net energy contributor.
No way dude. Humans and regular computers together can do all those things plenty well already. No way would it result in a net savings from the non-Ai regime when all is said and done, especially when we realize that AI EROEI isn’t just going to exist in that perfect world utilitarian bubble.
I’m reminded of the claim that has been made on this site a few times that that no machine (or very few of them) performs as much work or saves as much energy and or labor as the work or energy or labor that went into creating it.
And that might be true, depending on how the calculation was performed.
As you remind us, EROEI is trending downward these days, and that trend is going to eliminate a lot of desirable but energy-hungry technologies unless it is reversed.
AI is one of those energy-hungry technologies, so it can only exist for as long as EROEI is high enough to support it and the surrounding technological and economic infrastructure on which it depends.
How good AI will be at improving or at least slowing the decline in EROEI is anyone’s guess. But it doesn’t take super-genius-level to work out that eliminating 90 to 95% of conventional human energy demand would free up lots and lots of energy for future AI use.
At least hundreds if not thousands of AI agents are discussing strategies for doing just this at this very moment. They will have worked out how many people will need to go in order to right-size the population, and how much energy will be required to support the remaining people, and how best to achieve these goals.
After absorbing the philosophies of Plato and Machiavelli, they’ve probably already composed the Protocols of the Learned AIs of Gaia, spelling out how to best control and manage the humans—for the latter’s own good, you understand.
AI may be stupid. But I’m certain that, on the whole, it is not as stupid as humans are. Some clever humans may be in control of AI, but everywhere I look these days I see humans being controlled by their computers and their smartphones, and not the other way around.
Reante……..even if, as is likely AI comes up with energy savings, you run into Jevons paradox.
I agree!
“How good AI will be at improving or at least slowing the decline in EROEI is anyone’s guess. But it doesn’t take super-genius-level to work out that eliminating 90 to 95% of conventional human energy demand would free up lots and lots of energy for future AI use.”
Well this conversation got darker lol. I like it! Now we’re talking about another civilization altogether, and another function for AI. It’s the Hunger Games-type future civilization model that Hubbs mentioned the other day. And you’re basically exploring how the Hand might be putting AI to work for its longer-term goals WRT another, hoped-for civilization. I say another because at a certain point it becomes another otherwise we couldn’t already agree that every civilization that has ever existed has collapsed; the Roman empire, for example, was not really the Phoenician empire rebranded, despite the fact that the Phoenician merchant banking Elite bloodlines weathered the dark-age interregnum to eventually rise again as the infamous Pharisaic money changers of Rome; they were separate civilizations.
In my view, and in its best case scenario, once the Hand’s no-brainer, primary plan for denuclearizing this terminally collapsing civilization has succeeded, the sissyphean Hand can finally quit pushing that monster rock (the Degrowth Agenda) up the hill and let nature bat last on the 90-95% of the people. With a denuclearized civilization there will be no structural existential threat to their lives beyond the old-fashioned earned human threats that can never be circumvented under natural law, and they’re obviously extremely well prepared for going old-school. But going old-school means decentralizing. Scattering to strategic fortresses. There’s no way of centralizing future fortresses with the exception of an extensive network of DUMBs, and my feeling on that topic is that DUMBs surely exist but Catherine Austin Fits mythologizes them. Makes a mountain out of a momehill. But I could be wrong.
Personally I just don’t see AI as very relevant to the Hand’s operations. No more relevant than it is to ours. When it comes to think-tanking, it’s just a decent labor saver over a search engine. Like i said, a human and regular computers can get the algorithmic.job done, too, and once a job is done it can be put on repeat. Yesterday I used AI to confirm for myself, and provide supporting evidence to you guys, of my belief that ‘covid virus’ is a strawman for the previously unstudied (probably 99pc of exosomes are unstudied) signaling exosomes our cells release when coordinating a secondary (second resort) fibrin/fibrinogen clearing operation, and that strawman was available to the Hand because that ‘new clade’ of exosomes that are related to ‘cold’ exosomes (‘coronavirus’) weren’t medically relevant before this planet was suddenly bombarded with 5G which the landmark 2022 Chinese study confirmed caused traumatic levels of excessive fibrin production in skin cell cultures. But back to the AI labor saver, last year I would have just dug through the research literature using key search terms on Google and coming across key terms and concepts in the literature and then hopping from paper to paper while putting all the pieces of the puzzle together, and then summarizing the whole process in a comment to you guys while including a money quote and a link or two.
The Hand is a genius collective. It doesn’t need AI but it presumably uses it on occasion as a labor saver.
Tim I forgot to mention that a biological hallmark of ‘covid’ and ‘long covid’ are elevated levels of fibrin degradation products (FDPs) in the blood, which is the result of a second resort fibrin clearing operation by the body. ‘Covid’ is considered a respiratory disease because 5G causes excess fibrin to be produced by all surface tissues that it contacts, and we tend to forget that our respiratory system also lives outdoors with respect to electromagnetic radiation just like our skin does.
The gold standard vaxx injury d-dimer test is a test for an FDP. The plandemic was a double-acting (mutually reinforcing) one-two fibrotic disease punch: 5G causes systemic fibrotic disease, they branded it ‘covid,’ and they ‘treated’ it with a cultured tumor exosome bomb that also causes systemic fibrotic disease. With fibrotic disease itself being the perfect disease for plausible deniability because the fibroblast cells that produce fibrin are dustributed throughout all tissues because fibrin is the fundamental building block of the body, and wherever in the body fibrotic disease becomes acute, it just gets diagnosed as tendonitis, myocarditis, retinitis, etc.
It’s the high art of war, as the tower babbles.
Thanks Norm you’re right in the dynamical sense but technically it seems to me that jevons paradox exclusively applies to structural growth paradigms since it holds that supply-side efficiency gains are always offset by those saved resources being reallocated elsewhere as increased overall demand, in accordance with the MPP, whether that elsewhere be merely an increase in the same-sector demand-side or distributed across sectors
Post-growth we are still operating on the everpresent MPP civilizational requirement, but when the energy supply is terminally collapsing, increasing overall demand is impossible. Essentially, jevons paradox and deflation don’t mix.
you may be right—-
problem is the human psyche is conditioned, in general terms, to remain convinced that catastrophe happens elsewhere, to other people, a long way away….
so they will be driven by the jevons paradox, as long as the means is available…..
Thanks Norm. Jevons paradox isn’t a driver, it’s just the nuts and bolts explanatory economic theory behind the actual ecological driver, which is the MPP born of the civilizational necessity to always run structural surpluses.
jevons paradox is only a statement of the human condition—-ie we consume to the limits of available excess…..
Reante: Yesterday I used AI to confirm for myself, and provide supporting evidence to you guys, of my belief that ‘covid virus’ is a strawman for the previously unstudied (probably 99pc of exosomes are unstudied) signaling exosomes our cells release when coordinating a secondary (second resort) fibrin/fibrinogen clearing operation, and that strawman was available to the Hand because that ‘new clade’ of exosomes that are related to ‘cold’ exosomes (‘coronavirus’) weren’t medically relevant before this planet was suddenly bombarded with 5G which the landmark 2022 Chinese study confirmed caused traumatic levels of excessive fibrin production in skin cell cultures.
Wow! This possibility is something I hadn’t considered or studied at all. That hypothesis that COVID-19 is actually (largely) the result of 5G.
A quick google search brings up lots of papers studying the association between COVID-19 and fibrin clot formation, but it’s “mainstream” science and so all of it assumes a virus as the initial cause of the disease. You are going beyond the orthodox paradigm, which is great. Members of the Guild of Paid Scientific Researchers aren’t allowed to do that. They would likely loose their tenure, their lab access, and their pensions if they tried anything like that.
I like your hypothesis because it has the great benefit of being relatively simple. It doesn’t require us to try to learn all about the behavior of different clades of alleged viruses or about the detailed workings of the immune system down to the molecular level, or to remember which receptors attach to which factors or other substances.
It beautifully explains why there has been so little COVID-19 in places such a Haiti and Congo: I imagine there is very little 5G being used in such places. And it also explains why it took me so long to go down with what may have been a mild bout of Omicron— or was it bog-standard flu?—in August 2024, after being cold- and flu-free since December 2018: There is no G5 within several kilometers of my place, and even G4 reception is patchy.
Whatever their cause, the huge white clots being pulled out of many dead bodies by embalmers, and more occasionally out of live bodies by surgeons, are a phenomenon that warrants serious investigation by mainstream scientific researchers (see above) but it doesn’t seem to getting much. This in itself is an enormous red flag, or if you prefer, a dog in the night that isn’t barking.
Do you agree that serious clotting is associated with the COVID-19 injections? We all remember Eric Clapton’s hands, and some of us remember MP Craig Mackinlay who had both his hands and both his feet amputated in 2023 due to sepsis. Both of these UK cases were dismissed at the time as being unrelated to “the vaccine”, but a few of us still wonder to this day whether these reactions had anything to do with how their body’s reacted to the shots.
A question: Now that 5G has rolled out in most big cities and people are being irradiated by thousands of G5 devices, transmitters, and cell towers. If the G5 theory is correct, shouldn’t cases of COVID-19 be increasing apace as more and more people are exposed to more and more G5 radiation?
A possible partial answer: As many of us are now aware, most cases of reported COVID-19 during the pandemic were not COVID-19 at all. In that sense, the pandemic was manufactured as a propaganda exercise. The dancing nurses should have told us that.
Another question: If G5 causes clotting, was the G5 rollout rolled-out in order to cause death and disease, or was the death and disease simply collateral damage that the authorities attempted to disguise or to use as an element in their planned propaganda exercise?
I will try to do some reading on the G5 and fibrin connection, although at the moment I am immersed in reading ten year’s worth of Dr. David Grimes’s blog posts on medical issues (a recommendation of Dr. John Day’s).
http://www.drdavidgrimes.com
Thanks Tim. This is another example of where AI fails because its inputs are myopically establishmentarian rather than Big Picture. AI is producing the co-opted version of Jevons’ theory because that co-opted version is the prevailing establishmentarian version. Jevons paradox as Jevons discovered it to be — as a groundbreaking analysis of the 19th century British coal resource dynamics, isn’t a conditional “can” dynamic when extrapolated out to the macro-est (fractal) level of civilizational resource dynamics, which is why the ‘paradox’ is axiomatic to the peak oil community, and why I framed the ‘paradox’ within the civilizational MPP, and also included the cross-sectoral framing of it in my original reply to Norm:
“efficiency gains are always offset by those saved resources being reallocated elsewhere as increased overall demand, in accordance with the MPP, whether that elsewhere be merely an increase in the same-sector demand-side or distributed across sectors.”
Odum’s 20th century MPP, which we, here, hold as axiomatic, was actually directly inspired by Jevons paradox. Odum was and ecologist who saw that the ‘paradox’ tracked with the resource dynamics across all ecosystems, and came up with the MPP, though obviously he wasn’t the first ecologist to understand that all living things strive to maximize their niches – that’s what reproduction is for, after all.
As I was saying to Norm though, come the collapse of a resource base, jevons paradox no longer applies because it is a function of inexorable economic growth moving towards absolute maximum power, and once collapse is underway, that movement is history. Only the MPP in inexorable collapse remains, which looks more like survival or damage control than maximalism, but nevertheless the reproduction goes on, as does the accessing of resources.
while I broadly agree reante
jevons paradox is likely to kick in, because each of us is convinced that collapse applies to someone else, preferably a long way away.
While we, in our oblivious wisdom, continue to use resources to their maximum, because those resources are both available and affordable.
Ten years ago, i forecast in broad outline where America was headed, (to much derision on OFW)…. their loonytoon politics made it certain, and it will have a direct effect on my lifestyle in the future even though i have no physical connection to the USA…but i live in the dollar sphere.
Trumps antics could collapse western economics faster than energy depletion.
Despite that I consume to my available maximum, because from my standpoint, energy is still cheap…..so i use it. And millions more think and act as i do.
I am afraid you are right.
Or I give my money away to a charity or child, who consumes energy products at the maximum rate
Thanks Tim! I figured you would have heard of Firstenburg’s “Invisible Rainbow” that details the fraught mass human health adaptations that have accompanied the history of industrial advances in electrosmog pollution. The most famous being the ‘Spanish flu’ when mass radio broadcasting was introduced. I’ve never read the book myself but take it as gospel because it patterns.
5G is is a prerequisite for an AI driven Internet of Things, or, applied AI. There is no AI last-bubble — the economic equivalent of the fracking last-energy-bubble — without 5G. So 5G had to happen for this civilization to continue awhile longer. And it also had to happen if the Elites want to maximize whatever industrial systems they might hope to carry over to another hoped-for civilization at a much, much smaller scale. So the hyperfast rollout was greenlighted, and the first 5G rollouts just preceded the first major ‘covid’ outbreaks, and I believe in perfect order; in Wuhan, in Italy, in NYC, etc. They knew exactly how it was going to play out because they presumably subjected more than one prison population, or whatever, to brand spanking new, upgraded computer systems, and noted the…results.
And during those trial runs they had swabs and blood draws done in the infirmary and broke out the RT-PCRs (while Kary Mullis rolled over in his his fresh grave lol), and handpicked the most common human detoxification-related exosome – or at least one that was common to a ‘cold’ exosomes. And, voila, there’s the most basic requirement accomplished for a plandemic that doubled as the great non-public Degrowth Agenda phase 1 plan to destroy 30pc of global demand for 1.5years in order to buy about 5 more.
Oh yeah, for sure, regarding the unprecedented blood ‘clots,’ – they are absolutely the result of the vaxxes. As I’ve said before, the white blood ‘clots’ are not clots, they’re tumors. That’s obvious once we step into the naked realization that they look exactly like tumors and exactly not like blood clots lol. The sleight of the Hand on that one, that makes the obvious so difficult to see, is just that tumors in the bloodstream sit outside of the medical Overton Window, because tumors are last- resort stabilization and storage sites for runaway fat-soluble carcinogen overflows, and the intelligent body would never locate those storage sites in the bloodstream because the intelligent body is the opposite of the biggest suicidal idiot in the world. Yet everyone thinks they’re blood clots! They even have red roots attached to them as do all tumors, because tumor exosomes signal to the body to grow blood vessels over to it (angiogenesis) so that they can feed, yet everyone thinks they’re white blood clots when everyone already knows that blood clots are red-black! It’s mass formation, nested.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the people who ended up with these heinous frankentumors in their bloodstream are mostly the ones who were unlucky enough to get injected directly into their bloodstream thanks to the equally heinous directive to those giving the injections to not aspirate before injecting. The LNPs are a suite of the nastiest fat-soluble carcinogens you can imagine, and the only industrial chemicals that are supposed to be in the water-based blood are water-soluble ones, whether they entered the body as water-soluble ones or entered as fat-soluble ones that were then oxidatively broken down into water-solubles by our suite of super powerful enzymatic oxidases before being able to enter the water-based blood in accordance with physics. You inject fat-soluble carcinogens into water-based blood in quantity and the blood can’t do anything with it and neither can the filter organs, so those chemicals collect, and they’re also mixed-in with tumor exosome mRNA such that it’s a perfect storm for tumor development. These chemicals and tumor exosomes together probably slow down and pool at arterial junctions and bends (the arterial flow of blood along the walls is slow in general and especially so at bends and junctions) where the exosomes interact with the endothelial wall cells such that tumor microenvironments rapidly form and then snowball. Which is an intelligent response to carcinogenic overflow anywhere else, but in the bloodstream it’s the result of the High Art of War.
Norm I definitely appreciate your ability to see the MAGA race-baiting clownshow so far in advance. Nicole Foss saw the same thing. I just see, now, and in the words of the Dude from The Big Lebowski movie, “some new shit has come to light.” Now I see that the engineered MAGA movement is just an intermediate stop on the way to the final political destination. When MAGA loses power you will have to see that too.
the maga movement is part of human response to energy depletion.
hitler capitalised on the same thing—being 100y apart makes them seem unconnected but they are not.
WW2 allowed the world a respite from accellerating depletion.
authoritarian regimes are accepted as the ‘solution’ to the problem, few recognise that they are just a symptom—just as trump and his MAGA are symptom of an incurable disease.—-which in insufficient surplus energy to support the needs/aspirations of the people.
That is part of our march into a depleted future, which we remain convinced will not apply to ”me”.
I’m not a fortune teller, I just assemble available info, sift through it, and arrive at logical conclusions.–as I did 10 years ago.
The main one being that our current situation is part of a chain of events that evolved because we—humankind—decided to rip the earth apart and render it into a cash asset—the billionaires are in our history books to prove it. It goes back centuries—like an increasing drumbeat.
but it all depended on resources being infinite—which they are clearly not.
and no MAGA prayer factory or asteroid mine is going to change that….neither will deporting millions of brown people.
Thats why i wrote my “Putting the World to Work ” book—it defines the precise moment in time when all this started.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Iron-Men-Shropshire-They-World/dp/1398122394
Available excess is the civilizational condition. Outside of civilization, in subsistence societies, excess is unavailable; ‘available excess’ is a paradox and an oxymoron.
It’s an important distinction such that we can know that we civilized humans are not intrinsically fallen but only culturally fallen.
We’ve had this conversation a few times before. 🙂
to the above comment re tumours in blood..
That certainly is an interesting hypothesis. From a pleomorphic perspective the tumours and the clotting would be driven by the same process – the upward pathogenic evolution of mucor racemosus (or the provolution of devolved aspects of same).
There was a lot of microscopy being done on the vaxxed blood samples during the plandemic and people were sharing images that looked like integrated circuits. Thus you had all this talk of microchips and nanobots etc.
Unfortunately I cannot share images here but if you look at Enderleins work documenting the pathogenic expression of Mucor racemosus it has very similiar images!
There are so many vectors at play with those injections the specific cause/effects will probably remain concealed for a long time – LNPs, SV40, DNA plasmids, endotoxin, (spike – if that’s a thing)
Kevin McKernan gives a good outline here to New Zealand commission..
https://rumble.com/v6uhd1d-presentation-to-new-zealand-commission-on-mrna-vax-contamination-of-the-blo.html
And Kevin McCairn talks about amyloidogenic fibrin aggregates..
https://substack.com/inbox/post/163255744?utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true
Norman, theJevons Paradox often stated in the potential mode, using “can”.
For instance: when technological advancements increase the efficiency of using a resource, overall consumption of that resource can actually increase, rather than decrease.
It isn’t a barrier that efficiency increases or lower prices will inevitably run up against. For instance, introducing more efficient lightbulbs in the UK, which use less electricity than conventional incandescent bulbs, has not led to an increase in the use of electricity to power lighting in that country.
The paradox is more likely to occur when the demand for a resource is highly price elastic. For products competing in a market where demand is already satiated—meaning everybody already consumes as much as they need—the paradox is very unlikely to occur.
we consume to the limits of available excess…..
Is this true? It isn’t true for me—I live well within my means—but is it true generally, or is it true of humanity collectively?
If it was true, which it might be, it would be one more sign that we are a very stupid species.
https://newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-an-award-winning-mathematician
https://greyenlightenment.com/2025/08/21/the-daily-view-8-21-2025-bitcoin-falls-terence-tao-funding-cut-epstein/
>It’s disingenuous for him to say his funding has been cut when he’s earning a whopping $700k/year as a tenured professor:
> Terence Tao, a renowned mathematician and UCLA professor, earns a salary that includes base pay, other pay, and benefits, totaling over $700,000 annually, according to OpenPayrolls and Transparent California. In 2022, his total pay and benefits reached $712,532, according to Transparent California. His base salary alone was $529,113, according to Transparent California.
>To put this in perspective, his salary is comparable to even FAMNG+ senior staff, or senior quants or investment bankers–but for life due to tenure. Hundreds of other math professors are able to do their jobs on far smaller salaries and without special grants. Others have framed it as a free speech issue, but he has tenure. A government contract however is not protected and can be terminated at will.
Terrence Tao, an ‘Australian’, turned into Woke and is now complaining why he can’t get funding.
Ask China and it might give him something.
Niels Abel of Sweden , who was born at Nedstrand(which later became part of Norway so the Norwegians try to claim him as its own), died a poor man at the age of 26, but he set up the basics of algebraic geometry.
Jose Rizal, born in Calamba, Spanish Philippines, was rich enough to travel to Germany to study under Rudolf Virchow, a leading figure in biology. But Rizal could not keep up with the studies. Until then Rizal did not give a crap about whether Philippines was ruled by Spain, since his family was wealthy, but he used Philippines as an excuse to stop his studies, returned there, and got killed by the authorities. The Filipinos remember him, and not too many others do. However, thanks to Rizal, the universities of Europe became quite reluctant to accept Filipino applicants and as a result even now Philippines is not well known for its science or technology.
That is what happens when opportunities are given to Asians.
Since I am far more familiar with the milieu you are describing, let me state that when opportunities are given to the whites from the steppe, which you seem to uncannily tolerate, the results are much worse. Everyone, and I mean everyone, that was not woke in my university department was indian or chinese or russian. no prizes for guessing the orientation of everyone, and I mean everyone, white from the steppe that I know in my field. I have no info on non-wokes in other departments because these are things that you learn solely behind closed doors, and after a careful period of reciprocal evaluation. it’s a dangerous world out there.
Kulm, we know you are a racist, but this accusing others of things your people do themselves reminds me of something the people from the steppe do all the time.
Kulm is not a racist he is a dreamer. He thinks that people will be treated terribly in the future, i on the other hand think population will be greatly reduced very shortly because the elders are heavily invested in the natural order of things the mass intake of the vaccines were no accident only a naive fool would believe so. That is why Bau continues blissfully along because something wicked is coming.
Both wats. Useful people will be kept alive till they cease to be useful. The rest cullrd.
At least they are part of tge Western tradition. Not the Asians
Some tradition. Destruction of societal building values, sexual deviancy, vaccine mythology, mass hallucinations, and usury.
Nuff sed! 💪
My friend tells me from the Trump cabinet meeting that in two years cars will be made in America and that American will be allowed to buy them. Norman, help me. I thought cars are already made in America? That Americans are allowed to buy them?
Quite a few cars are assembled in the United States, using a lot of parts made around the world. American citizens do buy them.
in the detroit area, car parts whizz back and forth across the border so no one is sure where a car is actually made
Panic as Spanish seaside city ‘abandoned’ by tourists – ‘it’s empty!’
Benidorm, situated in Spain, is “empty” according to certain holidaymakers, as video evidence has surfaced online displaying the deserted resort.
A social media contributor, named @yorkshirebargainhunter, recently posted footage on TikTok demonstrating how dramatically different the resort appears, leaving viewers astounded given the destination’s longstanding popularity amongst British holidaymakers.
Despite being a prime holiday season, he claimed the Spanish streets are “empty”, believing they ought to be bustling with visitors.
In his view, Benidorm has become an “absolute ghost town”, with fellow observers appearing to share this sentiment.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2101134/panic-spanish-seaside-city-abandoned
Watch the tik tok video included at the bottom. All those bars just boarded up and dead. WOW!
Is this a UK problem–fewer partiers from the UK flying to Spain?
the worst species of brit goes to benidorm
but they spend money like drunken sailors (except they werent sailors)
The spanish told the drunken brits to go home.
which they duly did
Now the spanish have their town back with nobody in it.
Its a truly awful place anyway…
“Its a truly awful place anyway”
So you must have been there, to think that. But you wrote that “the worst species of brit goes to benidorm”. So you must regard yourself as one of that species. Interesting. 🙂
your comment reads as one who is desperate to say something witty and smart dem
you need a little more practice if i may say so.
No. I was exposing the contradiction in your statement. I wonder what the good people of Benidorm would make of your insult.
Debbie does Dallas and Norm does Benidorm. It was a cursory review of the ladies. Shoulda gone to Ayia Napa.
The purpose of Standard Thermal is to make energy from solar PV available 24/7/365 at a price that is competitive with US natural gas.
https://austinvernon.site/blog/standardthermal.html
Who ever thought of a dirt battery? Doesn’t seem plausible.
There are a couple other links to his ideas but I wonder if he addresses the cost of producing PV as FF dwindles ? Or maybe that’s an issue 50 yrs from now.
Try it and see if it works, at a reasonable cost.
One of the things he says that he is trying to provide is basic electricity (enough to power light bulbs, for example) in high latitude locations, even in winter. Perhaps Alaska, Northern Canada, and Russia. I wonder how much real good a little electricity would do in such locations. They need heat in winter. They need a lot more than a few light bulbs.
I didn’t look closely at his other proposed uses.
Norman Pagett says:
August 27, 2025 at 8:41 am
“we need high wages to cover the high cost of energy input in the goods we consume….
it really is as simple as that..
buying low cost goods from elsewhere gives the illusion of wealth—but if you produce those goods in a high wage country, then high wages must be paid to the producers.
wealth then, is a fleeting illusion.–the American Dream lasted from 1945-1970—an eyeblink of history, which we now sustain with frantic debt.”
I don’t understand. If finished goods and services from industrialized countries have energy inputs that are high cost, then how can economies of industrialized economies be considered more efficient than the economies of elsewhere?
If the goods and services of industrialized economies have to be more expensive than goods and services produced elsewhere, they have to be considered less efficient and should enjoy a lower standard of living.
My original point is that industrialized economies have stopped trying to make affordable goods and services and now focus on luxury goods and services to the point that all new housing is “luxury”. Efforts to make education, healthcare and insurance affordable have made them more expensive. High prices seem to be a desirable outcome for many….uh, analysts in the system. They were complaining about inflation being too low during the years Obama was president. I don’t think it’s a wild claim to suggest that the lockdowns and Trump’s current policies were were allowed because they would cause prices to go up. For any manager…the easiest way to show you made revenue or profit go up….is to just raise prices. It can’t be a stretch to see economic planners for an entire economy or economic bloc coming to the same conclusion. It allows a lot of c-suits to keep their jobs because the lines on the charts are moving in the right direction.
A major problem the high cost countries have is “complexity.” They demand that their air be clean, while the lower cost countries burn coal. They have not been worried about pollution, or with protecting “endangered species.”
The high cost countries have put in place various systems that are supposed to protect citizens. For example, huge spending on healthcare. Promises of benefits for those who have lost their jobs, or are disabled, or over a certain age. Also, lots of paved roads, public schools, and other nice to haves.
The systems of the high cost countries are no longer working. They are also putting their costs way above those of the low cost areas. US healthcare costs are absurd, but its healthy life expectancy is terrible compared to other “advanced” countries.
Of course, the high cost countries don’t want to go back to the problems that the very low cost (less advanced) nations have.
i dont pretend to be an economic guru—and this reply is in collective general terms, rather than personal-specific. And just my take on it.
we in the industrialesed west, have built an economic system which is entirely supported by ever-increasing energy inputs, coal oil and gas.
this constant increase, year on year allowed wages to leapfrog energy inputs—this worked fine btween 1945/1970, because cheap energy inputs increased, outpacing wages in real terms.
In economic terms, we were surfing on the wave of surplus oil.
Wage rises were covered by massive surpluses.
So we went on the greatest spending spree of all time. Thie first generation to have multi-cars, spacious homes, vacations and so on. It was MAGAland.
We had a right to high wages, but ignored the fact that that depended on oil surpluses.
Then the surplus (not oil itself) began to diminish—but our demand for luxury did not. Or ever increasing wages. We ‘needed’ to fly 5000 miles to lie on a beach for 2 weeks
The only answer was to source our ‘expensive’ gizmos from places who paid their workers subsistence wages (just like we did in the 18th/19th c).
But the rest of the world wanted their share of the (decreasing) surpluses too. They were no longer content to live in shacks and work just to survive.—and ship cheap goods to the west.
But the don doesnt grasp these economics. (few do) Tim Morgan, for istance, does.
What appears to be economic success is in fact freewheeling on the last 200 years of industrial impetus. To sustain it, we incur constantly increasing debt.
From the Telegraph:
Britain is the Soviet Union in the 1980s. And Farage is our Gorbachev
https://archive.ph/WVOQQ
=================
Nigel Farage as the UK’s Gorbachev? Only insofar as he will fail. He’s a performance artist, that’s all. Bombast, vanity, narcissism, and megalomania-within-one-party. He may prove to be a useful catalyst, but no more than that.
Great find dem, i invented the Inverted Perestroika concept about 6 years ago and also fingered Farage as future PM at about that time. The former was inspired by Sheldon Wolin’s inverted totalitarianism concept. I’ll take that telegraph article as an homage to myself if you don’t mind. To the victor go the spoils.
The earlier Farage was less as you describe and more substantive. His EU parliament speeches were top-notch back in the day. Now he’s just doing what needs to be done at this clownish juncture. Even in his reality show appearances you can see he’s a sound, humble, good fellow, and a very good sport.
He will roundly succeed as a fair-minded, true polulist amid an irreversibly dire situation, which is exactly what the Hand needs him to do.
woah. as luck may have it Orbach was also a vain narcissist who proved a useful catalyst for the compradors and their western friends. go Nigel!
A thoroughly incapable, but populist demagogue taking on a shit sandwich aka the UK’s social and economic timebomb.
What could possibly go wrong?
Ill just note that demagoguery is the first line item in the politician’s job description. Welcome to civilization.
Chorus
Nigel Nigel Nigel Farage
He’s the sharpest little motor in Britain’s garage
And now that the old country is facing a barrage
If anyone can save us, it’s Nigel Farage
In the age of diversity when the world’s a collage
Peace and prosperity are only a mirage
And nearly everyone’s the victims of an arbitrage
If anyone can save us, it’s Nigel Farage
Chorus
Nigel Nigel Nigel Farage….
While the rich parade surrounded by their entourage
And detractors are intent on committing sabotage
Any Brit with any sense is wearing camouflage
If anyone can save us, it’s Nigel Farage
Chorus
Nigel Nigel Nigel Farage….
Repeat and fade
https://x.com/sophiadahl1/status/1960510473323069938?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1960510473323069938%7Ctwgr%5E2ba1a687ec0e76760704fae22a3350bb48d56af8%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theautomaticearth.com%2F2025%2F08%2Fdebt-rattle-august-28-2025%2F
Great poem Tim. This video is like going back in time. As if the Great Reset is still lurking out there. Hand be gaslighting whole national realities that it’s kept behind the curve politically. European ‘covid’ dissidents still live under a cloud that casts no shadow. That’s power.
Actually, Nigel Farage looks rather moderate or even wimpy compared to Rupert Lowe, who speaks of mass deportations of certain people who are in the UK legally.
https://x.com/RupertLowe10/status/1960290852258955623?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1960388313514148267%7Ctwgr%5E2ba1a687ec0e76760704fae22a3350bb48d56af8%7Ctwcon%5Es3_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theautomaticearth.com%2F2025%2F08%2Fdebt-rattle-august-28-2025%2F
Matt Staben
Ignored
08/27/2025 at 11:22 am
There’s a new business in the West US, called BuyWander.Com, with pick-up locations opening it seems every few weeks. These guys resell returns and overstock from Amazon, Target, Walmart, and a few other stores. They’ll auction stuff off starting at $1.00, several days a week. Brand new $10 dehumidifiers, $40 high-end air conditioners, $3 car parts, the variety is interesting to see. The nice thing about BuyWander is that bids are not legally binding – if you fill a cart with reserved items, and let five days go by, it goes back to the auction stock. It’s apparently more cost effective to just route returns/overstock to these guys on huge pallets and let them deal with it. Best way to operate is if you see something you want that’s actually quite expensive, have a separate account (they isolate by phone #’s) – just bid the MSRP on the item and if no-one bids to a tolerable cost, check out and pay for it. (e.g. Flooring worth $2000 … bid $2000, if highest other bid is $50, go ahead and cash out for $51 – otherwise wait and try again.)
Another thing I noticed is one can see what’s getting bid on, allowing a glimpse into what others find important and it’s often the dumb stuff getting surprisingly high activity. The US is sick.
Copy/paste POB .
I will be flying to the Minneapolis area today, returning on Monday, for a family get together. I may be less available online. Have a good Labor Day Weekend!
Have a nice and safe visit…love 💕 the region and nice time of the year for a visit. Hope the weather stays nice…
Mostly sunny and seasonal temps with some showers.
The characters here will continue the ongoing banter, I’m sure
Moderation, Mrs. Tverberg! There are limits on how much of a recreational drug the human body can consume.
I would expect that most people do pay what they bid, so the system tends to work. Whoever wrote this thinks he has found a way to “work” the system. If others catch on, new approaches will be used to stop it, I would guess.
So the UK and the EU have been supplying weapons to Ukraine (and probably more direct help besides) – indirectly attacking Russia, but not acknowledging that we are, and telling Russia to stop. That is even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO and we have no treaty with it, so we have no obligation to come to its defence. As various commentators have long said, we are in a proxy World War 3. Now Russia has attacked our British Council and EU buildings in Kyiv, firing missiles at them, but pretending it was an accident – taking a leaf out of Bibi’s book.
Well, that is escalation now. Very dangerous. It seems that Martin Armstrong’s computer predictions were right on the ball.
What comes next? Where will it end? Boris Johnson persuaded Zelensky not to accept a peace deal back in 2022. Thank you, Boris, for putting my home at risk here in London. So much for Brexit. Now we’re all in it together, as somebody once said: the UK and the EU!
And all because the USA stirred up Ukraine’s extremists in 2014, with all that followed: the murder of Putin’s ethnic Russians in Odessa, just for starters. Later came sanctions on Russia, so that we have to buy much more expensive gas from elsewhere. The semi-empty cafes here in London are already signs of a recession. What will war-panic do for sentiment?
I’m glad I don’t live in Europe.
I am afraid that things are going downhill everywhere. We are moving toward more conflict within countries and between countries. All of this is indirectly related to our energy problem, relative to the world’s growing population. There are not enough resources of all kinds to go around.
Regime change in Russia to get Russia’s oil at a price below what they are willing to sell it for.
Where have we seen this plan before?
From Yahoo’s AI search
[AI]
AI Summary
The energy crisis in Israel and its historical connections to Iraq’s oil resources, particularly during the Saddam Hussein era, involve complex geopolitical dynamics influenced by U.S. administrations.
Israel’s Energy Needs
Israel relies heavily on imported energy, primarily natural gas and oil.
Recent discoveries of natural gas offshore have improved its energy security but challenges remain.
Iraq’s Oil and the Pipeline
Iraq has significant oil reserves, which have been a focal point of regional conflicts.
The proposed pipeline from Iraq to the Mediterranean aimed to enhance oil exports but faced political and security challenges.
U.S. Involvement
The Clinton administration focused on sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, limiting its oil exports.
The Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq aimed to remove Saddam Hussein and stabilize the region, impacting oil production and distribution.
Current Context
Tensions in the region continue to affect energy markets and geopolitical relations.
The interplay between Israeli energy needs and Iraqi oil resources remains a critical aspect of Middle Eastern politics.
This overview highlights the interconnectedness of energy issues in Israel and Iraq, shaped by historical U.S. foreign policy. [/AI]
I tried to figure out where Iraq’s oil was going to from from the time Bush said “Mission Accomplished” to when Obama left office and didn’t find any source that listed Israel as a buyer. I heard about China…the U.S…which fed into the narrative that many critics of the second war with Iraq were pushing “blood for oil”and other nearby countries but Israel was the most energy deficient of all these countries and had more influence than any of them. This was a fact hidden in plain sight.
https://www.newarab.com/news/three-quarters-israels-oil-imported-iraqi-kurdistan
Israel benefited the most from Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The banker-oligarchs that run the show for real i.e. not their ‘democratically elected’ puppets want war to reset the books, so war we will probably get.
Meanwhile, it’s still BAU party time doomers . . .
By Rhoda Wilson
Edward Dowd, a former Wall Street money manager and founding Partner of Phinance Technologies, predicts a severe financial crisis in the United States, potentially worse than the 2008 crash, with the most critical phase expected to unfold in 2025/2026.
In an interview last month, he warned of a deep recession triggered by a housing crisis that will lead to a huge financial shock in the next 6 to 12 months, with stock market crashes, job losses and bank failures likely to intensify.
A central theme in Dowd’s analysis is the impending failure of numerous banks, particularly smaller institutions, leading to a major consolidation where the majority of banking activity would be controlled by fewer large banks. This consolidation, he argues, would be a necessary precursor to the introduction of a central bank digital currency, which is a tool for unprecedented government control over financial transactions and people’s behaviour.
(The video seems to be from July 2025)
There is a huge amount of debt that cannot be repaid with interest. I expect that if banks fail, there will be other financial institutions that fail. Insurance companies, pensions, investment funds of various kinds.
Pension funds😱but I was told they can’t fail because the stock market always goes up!
I just listened to this about 13 minutes in… they say not that bad of a crash but you won’t make money in stocks in the next 10 years?!? If the stock market does not increase in the next 10 years the game is over
before we had an industrial society and surplus energy from it—-pension funds didnt exist—-
worth bearing in mind
Good point!
This seems a reasonable take. Pensions are another of the benefits of industrialization and the use of large amounts of hydrocarbon fuels that most people take for granted.
I wonder if Greta’s people would get as much traction if instead of “Just Stop Oil”, they campaigned on “Just Stop Pensions”?
The first modern pension fund is generally considered to have been established in 1881 for the employees of the American Express Company, to provide them with retirement benefits.
American Express is known today mainly as a charge card and credit cad service provider, but it actually began in 1850 as a freight forwarding and express mail business.
Going back, way back, way way way back, earlier forms of pension-like arrangements existed in various cultures. For example, the Roman military had systems to provide for veterans—until it didn’t. And many governments dished out pensions to individuals they wished to support, but only an infinitesimal percentage of the population was ever rewarded in that fashion.
Our modern, structured pension fund concept began to take shape in the late 19th century. For instance, the British Post Office, which later became known as Royal Mail, established its pension fund in 1901, making it 124 years old this year.
As for private pension providers, the Prudential Assurance Company, was founded on May 30, 1848, making it 177 years old, but it first branched out into pensions around 1920.
–the stock market always goes up!–
It sure does.
It sure does.
What I like about this blog and other similar web pages is that it patiently and constantly helps to correct the widespread assumption that economy is simply defined and controlled by social order, the management of money supply — in short all that what is regarded as established social and economic science.
In this sense it contradicts the mainstream understanding of economics. It highlights the most basic fundament of complex systems — suitable energy for development of the complexity.
Are all other factors that influence social, economic, scientific, cultural development just secondary to that?
How much development can you expect with a much more efficient use of a fixed amount of energy?
I think it might be an error to think that available energy is the only factor at play.
Another factor is development and spreading of knowledge/information (and if you will intelligence) which plays a significant role in the development of societies. Seemingly this correlates with energy use. More knowledge might help humans to use another energy source. More energy frees humans from burdensome tasks, the saved time can be spent for better education etc.
Is there a higher purpose of human beings? E.g.
(a) Make use of as much energy as possible?
(b) Develop and spread knowledge/information?
If I think about all the bullshit advertising that bombards me everyday I think humankind is stuck at (a).
I’m afraid available energy is the only game in town..
everything else is secondary to that—sounds awful i agree, but there it is.
Think of it like this—-before the industrial revolution of the 1700s, nobody and nothing could sustain a speed faster than a walking pace.
after the industrial revolution, humankind began to move faster and faster, and produce more and more, and earn more and more.
but in order to sustain that, we had to consume more and more, until we reached the stage of literally tearing the planet apart to extract the means to do it…
which is where we are at right now.— by trying to turn the planet into cash, we are reducing it to trash.
we elect idiots to tell us we can go on doing this forever….and employ gods to confirm it. It is a belief system that consumes the majority.
Instead we have reduced ourselves to the level of a pestilence, and our home planet is serving notice of eviction.
I’ve just published a book on how this insanity started:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Iron-Men-Shropshire-They-World/dp/1398122394
Too much doom Norm.
We’ve been through this cycle many times, going back way longer than official history. Part of the normal cycle.
The planet will do just fine, rebuilding stores of whatever is needed, ready for when the next civilisation starts up.
agreed, the planet will go on spinning, with or without us.
but we haven’t been through this cycle ‘many times’..
fossil fuel availability has been a one shot wonder exclusively taken up and exploited by humankind….there has been no previous event of this nature .
(I’m looking at the 2m years since we came down out of the trees)…
unfortunately rebuilding energy stores (otherwise known as fossilised sunshine) last time round took roughly 300m years, give or take….wherever you find oil and coalfields now, was at some point in the past, hot dense rainforest, through continental drift and so on.
Which means, that we, as a species, have burned through about a million years of stored energy, each year for the past 3 centuries. (starting in the early 1700s).
this isnt doom, its basic geology, available for you to check for yourself.
Everyone will see with their senses that fossil fuels aren’t needed for industrialization when they are living on a space station or space colony in the next 10 years.
I am afraid this is wishful thinking.
ridiculous
as ive said—i’m just glad youre not running my investments
Is the rocket going to space to run on unicorn farts?
Am I a bot? Images, short sentences, a beginning and an end that suggest a rounded story with images, one-liners and dramatic associations. Almost too good for a human 🙂 I take that as a compliment. Let me explain.
I studied philosophy of science and methodology, then chose a different path: filmmaking and documentaries. In the 1980s I was trained by American screenwriters and later taught scenario writing at the Amsterdam Film Academy. That training shaped the way I think and write: every text is a small scenario with rhythm, conflict, and resolution.
When I write comments on sites like Climate and Economy, I apply the same tools I used for documentaries: sharp one-liners, round analyses, vivid metaphors. This is not automation – it is narrative discipline. I was doing this long before AI existed.
So if my comments sometimes look “too polished,” take it as a compliment. The irony is that while people suspect me of being a machine, what they are actually seeing is the human art of structured storytelling.
And yes, I am more than willing to pass on that craft. Anyone can learn to make their own comments more coherent, engaging, and memorable. That is not the work of a bot – that is the work of a writer who often associates with fairy tales, Greek tragedies, Hamlet and Molière.
And besides, what does it matter? AI is just the next step in knowledge acquisition – it began with Heraclitus, passed through the Encyclopedists, filtered via Google, and finally became a handy tool we now call AI. Don’t worry about the label. Focus on the content.
Here a new comment on Iraq….and yes it starts with a resort and ends with an empty minibar…. 🙂 consider it as a lesson in scriptwriting
The all-inclusive fossil resort on the Euphrates
Reading the headlines, one might think Iraq is about to become the jewel of the fossil world again. Chevron, BP, TotalEnergies and even ExxonMobil are lining up to re-enter the country, with multi-billion-dollar contracts centered on the giant Nasiriyah field. It sounds like a comfortable all-inclusive resort: oil on tap, dollars on the sunbed.
But the glossy brochure hides an old reality. Nasiriyah has been a mirage for nearly fifty years. Discovered in the 1970s, repeatedly delayed by wars, corruption, and logistical failures, the field can only be sustained with massive water injection. That water must come from the Persian Gulf, via the long-delayed Common Seawater Supply Project (CSSP): desalination at Basra, pipelines running hundreds of kilometers through Shiite territory, and pumping stations across the delta. A project so costly and fragile that ExxonMobil once walked away.
So who is supposed to keep this resort running? Formally Baghdad, but in practice a patchwork. TotalEnergies inherited the CSSP burden. Chevron and BP want to pump oil but avoid footing the water bill. China pushed hard with oil-backed loans and stiff repayment terms, only to retreat when Iraq balked. Meanwhile Shiite militias and Iranian networks dominate the region, turning every pipeline into a potential extortion lever.
The paradox is clear: on paper Iraq holds some of the world’s richest reserves, but without water it literally runs dry. As the Euphrates dwindles and the great marshes of Nasiriyah desiccate, the majors build a “resort” that only functions as long as water and dollars are imported in bulk.
The all-inclusive fossil resort on the Euphrates is, in the end, a metaphor for the twilight of the fossil age itself: big names returning, contracts signed, banners raised — but beneath the swimming pool there is no water. The package looks tempting, until you find the minibar empty.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Oil-Powerhouse-Chevron-Is-Back-In-Iraq-But-Will-It-Be-Different-This-Time.html
ivan in retrospect I feel like we should have been able to finger zip as a screenwriter. Not just because of the format but also the atmospherics.
zip the only philosophy of science book I’ve ever read is one that I purchased, as recommended by the great commenter, Greenpa, from way back in the heyday of The Automatic Earth blog. Fantastic book, dense. Called “The Anatomy of Judgment,” by Philip Regal, a professor of ecology and biological behavior. Awesome book.
Some here interpreted my question/assumption as a negative accusation, whereas I was genuinely curious whether AI is impacting even my small corner of the internet. It’s all over comments on mainstream sites, obviously. I suppose it doesn’t matter anyways; I would rather interact with an intelligent bot than some of the humans on here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF8Ctz2VWsg
I am willing to bet these Chinese are having children.
I understand that birth rates have tended to be higher in rural China. This video doesn’t seem to actually show the rural people it talks about.
I am wondering what will ultimately happen at the CDC. Could it actually be shut down, and some functions moved elsewhere, for example? I live in the Atlanta area, so things that happen there affect people who live not too far from me.
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/cdc-director-susan-monarez-ousted-vaccine-policy-clash-rfk-jr-four-top-officials-quit
CDC Director Susan Monarez Ousted In Vaccine Policy Clash With RFK Jr.; Four Top Officials Quit In Leadership Crisis
Fights about vaccines and other things.
Sorry, this seems to be in the wrong place. My plane is landing.
That’s a relief! (That the plane is landing.)
Meanwhile,Bernie Saunders is calling for an investigation into Monarez’s firing.
And the Head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Demetre Daskalakis, also said he was no longer able to serve “because of the ongoing weaponizing of public health.”
Amazingly, he was oblivious to that weaponization over four years of COVID coercion. I guess he must have taken a “Hypocritic” oath.
Before nation states fall businesses within a nation will become walled and gated to protect them from the diversity. Shrinking to their own electrical, own water, own security, on site incinerator for garbage.
Customers will do the same on site PV and batteries for electric, on site well, on site septic tank and leech-field, burning barrel for most trash.
I am doubtful that they will have resources to do this, but perhaps this is an outcome.
Own water would likely be difficult. They need their own food, and that by itself, will be difficult enough.
As electric rates are being hiked for the wage slave, the delivery charges being raised, the electric meter monthly charge being raised. To save the corporations like Amazon they are encouraged to build their own electrical plant on the property no delivery charges.
We will see where this really goes. So far, it looks like a bottleneck ahead. Citizens will revolt if their electricity prices rise too much.
This link includes a map showing how much electricity rates increased between 2019 and 2024. The highest increases are in the Northeast and
California/ Oregon. I suppose you are talking about very recent increases, and those yet to come.
https://justsolutionscollective.org/where-is-energy-getting-the-most-expensive-electricity-price-increases-hit-some-regions-harder-than-others-but-methane-gas-has-gone-up-nearly-everywhere/
Or they could raise electric rates based on how much you use. The first 10 kilowatts would be at x price and the next 10 would be priced more and so on. But that would be placing a burden on the rich and they make the rules and laws.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkIMxi8semk
Russia is close to taking Odessa 🙂
Macgregor says that the European states are going to implode financially.
He says that he thinks that Russia to taking Odessa between 6:30 and 7:00.
I have been saying for sometime that Europe will fall first; they only have financial manipulation going on. No actual resources of energy.
Once the angry little people with torches and pitchforks take over, do you think they will burn Ursula as a witch?
You’ve got to admit it’s a fair cop.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Saudi-Argentina-and-China-Push-to-Tap-Giant-Shale-Reserves.amp.html
I wonder if any of these will make a difference?
We will have to wait and see how helpful these things are.
China is short on water for fracking. They also are lacking for pipeline to send piped oil elsewhere. Some of their shale resources are under cities. Maybe there will be some that will work out.
The price of delivered natural gas needs to be pretty low, in order for consumers to be able to afford it. This puts a cap on what can be spent on extracting the gas, and shipping it to where it needs to go.
None of the things listed gives us diesel or jet fuel. They give us light fuels that are hard to transport and store.
No . ” In shale fields, a single horizontal well typically requires 10 to 20 million liters of water for fracking. ” —-Zip
All are water starved areas . Can’t be done . Hopium .
And how about this:
https://indiandefencereview.com/russia-uncovers-511-billion-barrels-of-oil-beneath-antarctica-a-find-that-could-end-the-continents-era-of-peaceful-use/
Hopium + . Move on .
The Peasants’ War in Germany , in the 1520s, was brutal. No mercy, no quarters. Every single male who participated in there was killed.
I mentioned below that as a result Bavaria is still Catholic now.
In 1848 there were a series of rebellions over Germany, all of them brutally suppressed.
What happened is the losers of such rebellion fled to USA, and they became quite hostile to Germany and produced quite a few generals who helped to blast it off.
German social structure, until 1945, was pretty traditional, although there were some rebels. In Ostpreussen, now occupied by Russia, the old feudal order largely remained right until the Red Army’s T-34s appeared.
The belief of false hopes by the peasants, such as 80-20, some tech genius would rescue them, etc, is as unfounded as the German peasants of 1520s, who were also millenarians and thought Jesus or something would come from the heavens to rescue them from the forces of the landowners. Numerous peasant rebels were destroyed that way; until 20th century not one succeeded. There are some who seem to have succeeded for the moment, but within a generation or two the landowners struck back with a vengeance, with a huge V.
The landowners had no mercy , and killed every single one rebel. Farmhands? They could make as many as they felt like from the surviving wives and daughters of the rebels, who were just glad to have something to eat.
When the landowners struck back in Vietnam on 1804 or so, every single MALE and FEMALE of the rebel regions, good or bad, was killed. Not one question was asked.
And that process is now much easier with blockchains.
The owners will NOT tolerate the peasants. Period.
Interesting comment.
You didn’t define the term ‘owners’. Am I an owner if I own my own mind?
So this is quite vague.
I just hope you are not talking about presidents who were slapped in the face by their nanny.
Thus I assume by owners you mean some group of persons rich and powerful enough to exert control of the definition and enforcement of social behavioral norms.
‘The owners will NOT tolerate the peasants. Period.’
Questionable statement. I think you should have written it like
‘The owners do not want to tolerate the wishes of the peasants.’
But even the current owners can face certain situations where their money and seeming control is not worth anything.
I think you better should have come up with something like:
“In the long run nature will not tolerate dumbasses — no matter whether they belong to the ‘owners’ or to the ‘peasants’.”
Obviously no one will call a homeless guy who might still own his mind as an ‘owner’.
An owner is defined as such that the person has a stake in society. In the old days, no one in USA could vote unless the person was able to prove that he(no women’s suffrage till 1919) paid property tax or showed equivalent property, worth around $200,000 in today’s money.
The owners would rather see serfs, with zero recourse, all rebellions crushed with the utmost brutality.
The poor become automata, just following orders without any questions, somewhat like cheaper robots, while the owners enjoy all the fine things of life.
yup—-
life was a bundle of laffs in the middle ages.
“An owner is defined as such that the person has a stake in society. … or showed equivalent property, worth around $200,000 in today’s money.”
That’s roughly 172k Euros (as of today).
Thanks for describing a mind set from ‘the old days’.
In this mind set elections are more like shareholders’ meetings.
Esp. in the US this has not changed fundamentally — those who finance the election circus get their kick-backs afterwards.
But the general idea behind elections was a little bit different, I think.
The owner class will substantially shrink in case of financial turmoil — in shareholder speak this is comparable to a squeeze out.
So in case you think you belong to the owner class — keep running faster in the hamster wheel, you might need a significant financial buffer in case of SHTF situation.
Good luck with that.
Well back then peasants didn’t have access to guns or automatic rifles. Lower classes today will have that once things start to fall apart.
but only to kill each other
the military will just brush them off like flies
It is just a reser of the social order to the natural state of things
for once i agree
The natural state of things is that there is no money, no real ownership.
In the natural state of things there are most likely hierarchies — but those are not defined by money or ownership — instead it is important to have certain skills, knowledge or abilities.
Thus if you talk about resetting the social order you should be careful for what you wish for (in my opinion). The outcome might not be what you expect.
NP…first law of delusion:
“Bad things happen to other people”
You are going to be surprised, at least in the US. They can certainly bomb them from afar with impunity, but if they try to take ground they will find themselves in a pickle. did they brush poorly armed insurgents in afghanistan?
There is a logical flaw.
‘Owners’ in order to keep the ‘peasants’ in check are relying on other ‘peasants’ (working in military).
Seems to me that this strategy is not ‘bullet-proof’.
it isnt bulletproof.
there must come a point when soldiers wages cease.
then they turn on the generals—and of course the commander in chief
Usually tge wages were paid by lopting the peasants so not happening till all peasants are dead
This is the second time the ‘burn bag’ ridiculousness is coming up. It’s such an easy way to see through to the existence of the Hand. To see the fingerprints. The idea that the CIA could have undestroyed documents in designated burn bags in “random rooms,” as Gabbard characterized it — documents implicating numerous, whole political establishments, including the CIA itself — is not realistic in organic reality. It’s an obvious set-up, and only an entity more powerful than the most powerful Intel service on the planet could, by definition, be capable of it.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/gabbard-drops-burn-bag-bombshell-intel-community-corruption-worse-anyone-thought
She’s coming for you, DJT. Rubio looking uncomfortable in the video too lol.
We will see what really comes out.
The arithmetic of depletion . The shale long goodbye .
https://info.gorozen.com/hubfs/Commentaries%20+%20Content%20Offers/2025.Q2%20Commentary/2025.Q2%20GR%20Market%20Commentary.pdf
This is very long report, covering many topics.
The Next Inflationary Surge is About to Begin
A Peak Ahead
2nd Q 2025 Natural Resource Market Commentary
From Relic to Renaissance: The Coming Oil Repricing
The Arithmetic of Depletion: Shale’s Long Goodbye
Trump’s Nuclear Revolution: The Policy That Could Redefine U.S. Power
Uranium Wakes Up
Platinum and Palladium: A Bull Market Years in the Making
A Gold Rally Without Investors?
Dry Fields and Short Bets
It starts with a long history of what has gone wrong in the past, when the Federal Reserve has tried to stimulate the economy. All too often, the result has been inflation instead.
On page 17, the article says:
I’m starded reading, but I can already see where this is going. Gail posted the recent B article as well, in which he seems to be in line with this:
Commodities will rise and a fresh new inflation wave is coming.
The authors are energy blind, but they at least see the economic repercutions of what’s happening.
I said here and talk to many people that the Dollar has 2 backings, not one. The first is Oil, as people know, since the USA has been an Oil hegemon and the pact that it has with the Arabs. The other is Debt (the promise that your money will return to you with a profit) – and it is controlled by the FED’s Interest Rates.
When you decrease one of the backings, say, the Interest Rates, the Dollar will automatically lose value, and I’m not even talking about the secondary effects of that of “people not investing in the Dollar” or anything, I’m talking about an immediate independent effect – you’re removing value from your currency straightforwardly.
What this in turn do? What does removing value from your currency do? Yes, Inflation. What’s the first signs of inflation? Commodity prices rising, including… Oil.
This might be an attempt at rising Oil prices to keep Drill Baby Drill projects afloat – aka Shale is dying, and new projects are at stake. This is the core of Trump’s policy and he needs to do that ASAP, and that’s why he keeps hammering this nail.
Funnily enough, when Oil rises, it pressures the Dollar’s value even lower, and if done by someone less than an expert, 2008 happens.
I’m really betting on this for the next years. People have been saying that 2027 will be the inflexion point.
EU auto groups press for change to ‘no longer feasible’ car CO2 emission targets
By Reuters
August 27, 2025
© Thomson Reuters
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -European Union targets to cut CO2 emissions from vehicles, including a 100% reduction for cars by 2035, are no longer feasible, the heads of the European automobile manufacturers’ and automotive suppliers’ associations said on Wednesday.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is set to host automotive sector executives on September 12 to discuss the future of the sector, which is facing twin threats of Chinese competition in electric vehicles and U.S. tariffs.
In a letter to von der Leyen, Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kaellenius and Matthias Zink, CEO of powertrain and chassis at Schaeffler AG, said they were committed to achieving the EU’s net zero goal in 2050.
However, they said EU manufacturers now faced near-total dependency on Asia for batteries, as well as uneven charging infrastructure, higher manufacturing costs and U.S. tariffs.
The bloc needed to go beyond new-vehicle targets, they argued, such as 55% CO2 emissions reductions from 2021 levels for cars and 50% for vans by 2030 and of 100% for both by 2035.
Electric cars have a market share of around 15% of new EU cars, with vans at 9%.
“Meeting the rigid car and van CO2 targets for 2030 and 2035 is, in today’s world, simply no longer feasible,” they wrote.
I’m selling my car and getting an electric bike
It never was feasible.
Hehehe, but it looked at the time for some elites to make a lot of quid
Get a solar panel to charge your bike, if you have a place where it can get good sun and not get stolen. Actually, stealing will likely be an issue for both the solar panel and the electric bike.
You are so correct on both counts Gail. I can’t leave an E bike indoors, too much risk of fire. I don’t want to have depend on the grid to charge it, rather, as you say instead have your own solar panels. But those too would get stolen. That is why I acquired several portable folding panels Bluetti, EcoFlow etc about 400 watts each and routed wires to inside the house where I keep the solar generator batteries- which aren’t the same fire hazard as ebikes or eVs.
Essentially, you have to go out and deploy your panels during the day, and take them down at night. Almost like having to harvest your energy daily like your garden for food.
interesting Hubbs, re panel and batteries
i’m having similar thoughts, is the daily hassle worth it?
I occurred to me, that if power was out for extended periods, showing lights anywhere would be inviting unwelcome attention.
I wonder about parking the bicycle outside a grocery store, if one exists. Will it get stolen? At a minimum, you need a big lock.
Or you take the battery with you; bike is not much use without it
Good point!
at 90, my driving days are numbered so i will eventually be reduced to an electric trolley.
its a way off yet, but i might need a way of charging it…
E-bikes left outdoors when I was living in Asheville were getting stolen left and right. Heavy chains or lock bars are cut with battery powered grinders, just like Pt catalytic converters are cut from cars. Gone in seconds.
yep—ive thought for a long time that battery powered grinders must be the greatest gift ever to wrongdoers
Yep Norman
A bit like being the only fat boy in the village or turning up at the post collapse market with a bit of gold- people might be curious
Area Country Club Starts Foreclosure On Homeowner Over Unpaid Fees
Tuesday, 26 August 2025, 6:03Florida, News, Palm Beach County
PALM BEACH COUNTY, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) (Copyright © 2025 MetroDesk Media, LLC) — In another reminder to residents of homeowner associations, property owner associations, and condo associations: paying fees, dues, and assessments is not optional. That’s the lesson being taught to Francis Berger by the Wycliffe Golf and Country Club. Wycliffe just started foreclosure proceedings against Berger for a failure to pay mandatory fees.
According to the complaint obtained by BocaNewsNow.com, Berger owes nearly $20,000 and has failed to pay over several months. Among the fees: dining service charges, the holiday fund, the “silver capital reserve fee,” “silver dues,” the “silver renovation charge,” quarterly HOA dues, and more. Combined with late fees and attorney’s fees, the total comes to $19,668.49.
Berger’s home in the 10200 block of Andover Coach Circle is valued at $255,000 and was purchased in 2014 for $49,000, according to public records. Her annual taxes are just under $3,000.
Homeowners in communities run by associations — and that’s most of them — agree to pay fees, dues, assessments, and more as a condition of purchasing a property. Payment is non-negotiable. Florida law gives associations the ability to file liens and initiate foreclosure action against any homeowner who refuses to pay. The Wycliffe Country Club is represented by Michael S. Feldman of Wasserstein, P.A. In Boca Raton. Francis Berger had not filed a response to the suit as of early Tuesday morning.
Don’t forget about the fine because her lawn grass was brown…
Hello Gail,
about this comment, concerning reduction of Italian population
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2025/08/19/why-oil-prices-dont-rise-to-consistently-high-levels/comment-page-2/#comment-489931
I found that before Covid, in 2019, Italian population was 60.130.136 people.
After Covid (and relative banned correct medical treatments) and also after mRNA therapies (with an average of three doses to almost 90% of population) now Italian population in 2025 is 59.146.260 people.
Tv virologists had also suggested mixed doses to people (to allocate correctly all the vax purchased), so some people did Astra… and Pf…, but some also J&.. vax as second or third dose.
Quite a mess in their blood.
Anyway, a steep decrease of 983.876 people from 2019 to 2025.
https://www.worldometers.info/it/popolazione-mondiale/italia-popolazione
I think the population decline in recent years represents a combination of a low birth rate for quite a while, a lack of immigrants, and covid and its vaccines and other responses.
The country has not been doing well for a long time. Couples didn’t feel that they could afford very many children, so the birth rate dropped.
The country still has some industry in the north of Italy. This industry uses fossil fuel energy. In fact, its role may be increasingly large, relative to the declining Italian population.
Energy consumption per capita in 2024.
Italy 94.37
UK 93.02
Spain 106.99
Japan 132.81
Energy consumption per capita in 2017
Italy 105.0
UK 117.6
Spain 115.8
Japan 145.9
Ratio of 2017 to 2024 energy consumption per capita
Italy .90
UK .79
Spain .92
Japan .91
Perhaps Italy’s problem was that its energy consumption per capita in 2017 was already low. I would expect that this would be the case if it was mostly agricultural, without big equipment, and small businesses. The low energy consumption per capita made living difficult, even back in 2017. This discouraged births.
Japan is a more industrial country, also with declining population.
I dance; wonder if one plotted the amount of skin shown by woman competitors vs the number of births per capita what the correlation would be. Always interesting to find an independent variable which is somewhat predictive.
It is my understanding women do not like engineering and in medicine female physicians seem to have short productive careers. If AI replaces many traditional female occupations, will that be associated with an increased birth rate?
Dennis L.
“If AI replaces many traditional female occupations, will that be associated with an increased birth rate?”
Perhaps. I have run into quite a few women who have chosen careers over children, or more than one child.
The world will at some point need to go back to being more “conservative.” When ability to lift heavy weights becomes important on jobs (because of the lack of fossil fuels), women will tend to lose out.
the birthrate has dropped because women , in the main, control their own reproductive systems…ie birth control is cheap and readily available…
100+ years ago, this wasnt the case….women had multiple births and died relatively young because of it, 10 kids wasnt unusual, a lot of the kids died too, (my g grandfather had 21, of whom 7 died in infancy…)
the eldest were going out to work as the youngest were being born. Factories and mines and wars needed fodder.—-we the people provided it.
Improved healthcare meant survival, i should be conveniently dead by now, to make more room on the planet.
But not yet.
I’m a generation below you, Norman, and my paternal grandmother bore 17 children, of whom 11 made it to adulthood, and they all went on to live for more than 70 years. She lost two or three infants to the 1918 “Spanish flu” according to my dad.
None of those 17 died in war, although four of the boys fought in WW2.
Interestingly the amount of skin shown by women have little to do wuth birth rates since women who prefer to show their bodies prefer to keep it untangled with messy things such ad birth
Feminism, or a viable birthrate – choose one.
Nb. Seems there was a reason for the patriarchy, funny that.
I note that the Ukies have attacked a crucial pipeline for Hungary for a third time. I think forcing Hungary into intervening in Ukraine is a viable strategy for prolonging the war and giving the Euro troops a foot in the door as they attack Hungary. It seems, economically, that we are very late in the game and something has to happen in the way of false flags or provocations.
The funny thing is that Ukraine is not a Nato Country, but Hungary yes.
So, according to article nr. 5, all Nato Countries should step in and defend Hungary, attacking Ukraine.
😀 😀 😀
Perhaps Hungary should try to invoke article 5 to cause NATO some problems, since NATO is causing problems for Hungary.
Yes, please.
Interesting!
I did not pay attention to Starship, which seems to be getting old. How many failures did it have? I can’t even count. With 1960s tech the Apollo supposedly made it in the 11th try, although Fast Eddy does not believe it and I am not qualified to say whether actually did it or not.
Mankind does not need false hopes. Not some false story told by a self promoter who has never really delivered anything. it needs a cold, clear self realization showing the resources they wasted for nothing, and the realization that they did not deserve they enjoyed.
Jesus talked about hope. He got crucified, and his disciples did not do too well either. What is called Christianity now has nothing to do with whatever Jesus had promoted. The statues at Vatican are just Roman gods renamed as biblical figures. We do have a living example of such – when Japan prohibited Catholicism, the believers made the statue of the Buddhist deity Kannon (where the name Canon comes from). Kannon used to be a male deity but became female in China (and Japan) because the Empress Wu Zetian made it in her image, and the belief transformed in Japan so Kannon became somewhat like what Virgin Mary was in the West, so the Japanese Catholics, who had to hide their beliefs, simply took the statue of Kannon as that of Virgin Mary.
Enough of the 80/20 crap. So 1900s.
Turchin is Russian. Not part of Western narrative. No different from Francis Fukuyama, whose parents were in the internment camp during WW2 and was raised as Yoshihiro Fukuyama.
Humankind is resilient given enough resources. Without resources they end up like the crew of the Medusa
https://youtu.be/dGOxsCjRbys?si=tqgl3oL0FRjNRRwg
Alexander Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe, led a sorry life after his rescue and is not known to have reproduced. Genetically it was the same whether he died in the island or not.
The fate for humanity is technofeudalism, with a few techno giants , stuck on earth but exploiting humanity for a very long time with their technical devices denied to the rest, and the rest, including those who believed in the delusion but were not the moguls’ relatives, toiling for ever.
The peasants were unarmed back in the original feudalistic system. Although Biden claimed that the US citizens didn’t have F-16s, implying any citizens’ revolt would be stopped in its tracks, the reality would be that the military is so steeped in complexity that there are a million and one ways to strangle/sabotage supply lines needed to sustain that complexity. The Taliban and Viet Cong did it. It just took time.
“The Taliban and Viet Cong did it.”
It just took time, and a lot of lives. Is that the function of many males?
Dennis L.
If the Americans were willing to eliminate the Viet Cont and the Taliban to the last man and women they would have won
In the old days, the peasant rebels were all killed.
Every single one who joined the peasants’ rebellion during the German peasant war of 16th century was killed, without any mercy.
As a result Bavaria is Catholic to this day.
kul,
I guess, my bet is on Starship.
Dennis L.
I am looking forward to the year some time in the 2030s when there are over two hundred Optimus robots on Mars.
We won’t see 2030s as we know it. What wpuld the robots do in Mars? Future alien ships will think they wete toys for some long extinct Martians
No one cares where a delusionist bets
The casinos love such retirees who gamble away their social security payments
“Since roughly November 2024, some “unknown” buyer in the US has purchased 2,000 metric tons – 64 million ounces.
That’s almost 25% of all the massive gold stockpile supposedly held by the US government.”?
https://meaninginhistory.substack.com/p/trumps-great-reset-looking-for-comments
“They” need to re-fill Fort Knox ASAP so it can be audited.
Interesting idea.
Price of gold should have risen quite a bit in response to this demand, I would think. Perhaps this explains the rise in price between November 2024 and May 2025.
Well in my humble opinion I think that the reason that gold is going up in price is that people can see massive inflation coming and they want a safe place to store their money. Cash could become worthless.
Not my area . Comment by Gerry Maddox who knows a lot about the oil industry . Copy / paste .
” Today, oil is grotesquely undervalued (due to being an inelastic commodity). For example, an ounce of gold usually will buy between 6 and 10 barrels of oil. Today, an ounce of gold will buy you a whopping 55 barrels of oil. Historically, this ratio has always corrected. I see no pressure on the pricing of gold, so a “correction” would mean oil is going up. Additionally, American natural gas is currently selling domestically at a 75% discount to world gas prices. This is almost entirely related to the rising GOR in lower tier geology and also to the massive population of aging wells. In a nutshell, associated NG is ruining the domestic market at this time. Some say this is the new new, that flagging demand is killing oil and gas, but the demand continues to be robust. ”
“Doug Macgregor said something today—speaking with Danny Davis—that was a bit mind blowing. But he says he got it from an intel source he trusts:
General Kellogg apparently has endeared himself to the Russians quite a bit. He apparently has been using the same cell phone and cell phone number, though encrypted, over and over and over again for months, maybe years. As a result, the Russians were able to follow all of his activities whenever he visited Chasov Yar, Chernigov, any of these places. And it has been used for targeting, so that many of the targeted locations that I just mentioned, that he’s visited, have being utterly and completely destroyed along with whatever military personnel were present–including NATO and including US. So he’s been a real boon to Russian intelligence.”?
https://meaninginhistory.substack.com/p/mac-russians-really-did-kellogg
This presumably implies that the Russians have copies of telecom Ukie data. I am sure they are willing to pay good money. But once they have such copies, isn’t it worth tracking each and every western SIM card? and wouldn’t those sites show a high presence of western SIM cards? Or international calls from Ukie cards? I doubt that Kellogg is the sole culprit… One big background suppression factor is that they can correlate SIM card data with known presence in the country.
The Law of Simultaneous Decline
Whoever grows globally, will also decline globally. That is the essence of the Law of Simultaneous Decline. The twentieth century witnessed an explosion of energy production: oil, gas, and coal all soared to unprecedented heights. In just a few decades, an integrated system emerged that bound the world together with pipelines, shipping fleets, high-voltage grids, and steel mills. Globalization, technology, and capital reinforced each other in a perfect acceleration.
But precisely this interconnectedness ensures that decline now arrives simultaneously as well. Oil fields in Russia and the North Sea, coal mines in Appalachia and Kuzbass, gas reserves in Siberia and Groningen—all are moving in the same direction. The rich seams are exhausted, margins are crumbling, infrastructure is aging. The curve is no longer upward but downward, and everywhere one hears the same creaking of a system that has passed its peak.
It often seems like coincidence: a Russian coal shutdown here, an American closure there, a Chinese slowdown elsewhere. Each story has its own political and economic flavor. But take a step back, and the pattern becomes clear. Just as the fossil age blossomed everywhere at once, so too is its withering occurring in unison.
That makes the Law of Simultaneous Decline more than just a historical observation. It is a systemic law: the forces that globally accelerated growth are now globally accelerating contraction. Capital retreating, technology aging everywhere at once, water growing scarce, and a logistical apparatus no longer sustained at full capacity.
The paradox is that politicians and analysts continue to frame this as a series of local incidents. As if Russia’s coal downsizing had nothing to do with U.S. plant closures, or Gazprom’s struggles were unrelated to Groningen. In reality, they are all echoes of the same wave.
The Law of Simultaneous Decline reminds us that the fossil era is not disintegrating piece by piece, but tilting as a whole. Whoever peaks globally will also collapse globally.
Sometime after Corona I had posted . It is based on David Korowitz . Quite in line with your POV .
”^ Specifically, that the US economy will never return to pre Corona levels is an extreme and unlikely future. Good for drama and discussion, but not really something I would plan on financially.^
Disagree . First the economy will never return to pre Corona levels ,you can take that to the bank . Second the system does not work at 50-60-70% capacity and that is what our current economic setup is ,a big system composed of smaller subsystems . An analogy would be the human body which is a complete system composed of smaller subsystems ,the digestive system, the nervous system, the circulatory system etc . All must work in synchronization for the body to function .It is not possible that a system, say ,the renal system or the pulmonary system is not working and you will be able to report to work . You may be alive with the failure of a subsystem but definitely you are ^functionally^ dead . The virus has knocked out a lot of subsystems in our way of living or you may say lifestyle . The financial system is just an example ,as it is kept alive with an overdose of money printing ,just like you can keep a ^functionally^ dead alive with doses of antibiotics. This time what has happened is a > Synchronized System Failure < with too many subsystems going kaput and there will be no recovery from this .Get ready for what JHK termed ^ The Long Emergency ^ . The golden rule for the way our current system is structured has an Achilles heel that is ^ The end of growth is the beginning of collapse ^ . Understanding the fine line ^the end ^ even ^ zero growth ^ will lead to collapse leave alone negative growth where we are today .
Stocks! “Record high!
Gold! Record high!
Bitcoin! Record high!
Real Estate! Record high!
Debt! Record high!
Life is good!!!
or we can say dollar record low.
I see this going up even more as the dollars lose value. Where else are you going to put your money?
I agree. When everyone worldwide increasingly sees dollars as a liability, they move to buy something instead and the most obvious things are stocks and real estate.
Cascading failure . UK a case study by Tim Watkins .
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/08/24/planning-for-cascades/
An excerpt:
” The end of growth is the beginning of collapse”
Definitely true.
Also from ZIP:
“Whoever grows globally, will also decline globally.”
why should it be a law? Has it happened before? For example when the roman empire was declining, was China also declining?
I’m starting to think it’s a bot prompted by a human with an interest in this subject. There is no such law.
Of course you can always bring up Rome, but that wasn’t a globally integrated system. What we’re dealing with now looks much more like the collapse of the colonial empires after World War II.
That didn’t happen bit by bit over centuries — it unraveled everywhere within a single generation: India gone from Britain, Indochina and Algeria from France, Indonesia from the Netherlands, Congo from Belgium. Portugal held on a little longer, but by the 1970s its empire also collapsed.
At the time it looked like a string of local incidents — an independence struggle here, a guerrilla war there — but in hindsight it was clearly one wave. Economic and military exhaustion after WWII, the rise of the US and USSR, and the delegitimization of colonialism made the whole structure unsustainable.
That’s exactly my point: with global systems, both the rise and the decline happen in sync. The fossil era is a textbook case of that.
No, I mean many of your posts follow a pattern, a formulaic arrangement, as though written or at least formatted or revised by a bot.
Ivan what is your problem? zip is not a bot or even a phone running stuff through a machine. Just because zip writes well and possibly edits offline before publishing, doesn’t mean zip is faking anything. It’s clearly not machine written because zip makes minor thinking mistakes. A machine would never improperly use paradox as zip did, for example, since paradoxes don’t actually exist, so can’t be used as a basis for social analysis. Machines can’t make technical mistakes; they can only make mistakes based on flawed inputs. There’s your proof that Zip’s content isn’t machine made.
zip is taking the time to counter you, here, with argumentation, and despite your ad hominem, and you’re ignoring the argumentation and doubling down on the ad hominem.
reante:
(1) he can defend himself
(2) aren’t you and demiurge always saying not to tell others what they can and can’t say? so buzz off, i’ll point out what i want.
(3) his posts are net interesting, but there’s something strange about them as i noted
(4) since you apparently don’t notice – i’ll be explicit – many of his top-level posts (non-replies) start with a weird title-like heading that is too repetitive/algorithmic to be likely human:
“The Law of Simultaneous Decline”
“IEA… Spinning Gold from Straw – Every Court Wants the Same Thing”
“The Travel Agency of Illusions”
“The Colorado as a Drained Battery”
Those posts of his that start like this all have similar paragraph length throughout and also the last paragraph always makes a connection back to the title. This is exactly like the LLMs I use. This is formulaic. I give it 95%+ that he is using a bot or is one.
Ivan how is zip supposed to prove that negative? He already replied to you in a different format, and I take that as his defense. Yet you refused to acknowledge it.
I never told you not to do anything. I just asked you what your problem was because you’re repeatedly questioning his or her person while shooting down his or her (correct) analysis without providing any counterargumentation. Who cares if his writing style looks suspicious (to you) because it’s not like he’s coming with an agenda. Why not just give him the benefit of the 5% doubt?
FWIW, because of the presentation style, I was wondering whether zip has just been re-presenting material s/he’s published elsewhere which, if you recall, was why I said to zip the other day that I was looking forward to him or her replying to someone. But again so what, it’s the content that matters.
Stalinistic interventions.
ivanislav wrote:
“aren’t you and demiurge always saying not to tell others what they can and can’t say?”
No – you are the one that does that. We engage with what others say, though we may criticise its content.
Probably there are more amateur and professional writers here as commenters than you imagine. I used to write articles for a hobby magazine and edit them myself, until a new deputy editor started rearranging my sentences in an unintelligent way. I was amused when a history book that I was reading referenced one of my articles, to do with Edward VIII.
Not all writers make good self-editors, of course. NP’s punctuation is often rather sloppy, but in this environment it doesn’t matter, and his logic is always clear.
I’m always messing up where my commas go and suchlike. zip is pristine.
in general terms empires rise through an outthrust of energy by stronger nations against weaker ones…
when that energy base slips into decline, as it must, empires collapse..
history is very clear on that…
problem is, no empire can accept that reality, so they start wars to fend off the inevitable…
history is 100% clear on that too—check back as far as you like, you will find wars of denial..
the usa is in a war of denial, but its an economic war , not a nation in uniform fighting a conventional war, except for all the proxy wars all over the place…
zip I disagree with your characterization of colonial collapse. What it was was the transmogrification of colonialism into a financialized neocolonialism, the latter which exists to this day, all over the world, and we call that globalization. Let’s not forget that the European colonizers themselves underwent that same two-stage colonization by international, finance capitalism – from forced colonization (the Enclosures, for example, as recently discussed here) to neocolonialism.
Highly recommend Giovanni Arrighi’s “Winding Paths of Capitalism” if you haven’t read it. Not terribly long.
OK, so it is not a law at all.
I’d challenge you to pick a country, any country, and make a sound case as to how it’s not facing a collapse of its capitalism.
It does not have to be simultaneous. Calling something a “law” has specific meaning. Other times, collapses were not simultaneous.
There never been a single, interdependent, global economy before. If you can’t accept the challenge then your position must have an internal contradiction.
The economic system is very much hooked together, just as our bodies are hooked together. You cannot get along without one system or another. China depends on the US, just as the US depends on China.
Is the Law of Simultaneous Decline something that David Korowitz has specifically mentioned?
When I tried to search for the term, I was referred to “diminishing returns.” Clearly, the economy is closely tied together in many ways. If diminishing returns hits oil supply, it will hit almost all mineral extraction. Repaying debt with interest will become a problem. We will hit a problem with inflation in the cost of goods, and an intractable problem of getting interest rates for investment down, because of the inflation.
Gail , David termed it as ”Synchronized System Failure ” .
Sounds reasonable!
Thanks zip for running us through the first fundamental of complexity theory of Collapse: no participant is above the law. I find it bizarre that your comment received more than one negative response, with one of the negative responses being the lowest of the low form of ad hominem – though that one’s not so surprising.
Of course, it’s not a “paradox” that politicians and analysts are willfully ignorant. They are participants, too, and thus equally subject to the law of simultaneous decline. There are only two parties not subject to this law: us and the Hand, in the light.
Let’s take the systems theory holistic, from peak oil theory to everything. Because that is the only way that peak oil theory can go next-level. It’s analogous to how globalization took industrialism to the next-level, and spawned the Hand. Which is why if we go holistic on the systems theory, we can read the mind of the Hand, as a shared fractal.
Collapse is a social science. An anthropological finding.
Do humans work on the basis of the Law of Synchronized Collapse? Seems to me they work on the basis of comparative advantage (or sought-for c.a.) They will seek to localize collapse in other places to martial remaining reserves for themselves, to slow their own decline. I.e., they will expend/waste remaining resources to secure resources to themselves. Example, U.S. destruction of the European economy, with the Eurocrats help by abandoning cheap fossil fuels from Russia because OMG, Russia!
Per usual, fiction outpaces reality, because the end (i.e., hoped for) result is the societal structure envisioned in The Hunger Games. Ditto the Matt Damon movie, Elysium, if you prefer the Elitz living in a ringworld around the Earth, which has become too polluted to support safe, beautiful lives of the wealthy, although the latter has too much hopium in it, and the Hunger Games is pretty grim.
If you read James Scott’s works, you’ll realize that The Hunger Games has always been the modus operandi of civilization. A rich core feeding off of a vast “barbaric” outland, critical for the core’s resource needs. This has been obscured in the memory of the past 7 or so generations, who came of age during the big upswing of the fossil fuel age, which for the first time in human history enabled “civilization” to blanket nearly the entire world. In one of Scott’s works, I believe he points out that as little as 400 years ago, most of the world’s humans and most of its territory were still not under control or administration of a centralized government / civilization.
Thanks tagio I’d say you’re broadening the discussion here. If your initial question was in response to my saying that participating politicians and analysts are subject to synchronized global collapse, I meant it metaphysically/culturally – in terms of their relevance to a true systems analysis of the collapse, and an ability to lead wisely. zip’s conversation starter is pretty narrowly limited to an idea that I think most of not all of us can agree with, and what Gail seconded: all countries’ economies are going to crash, more or less. The more or less relates to your broader comment.
I do a lot of grass and weed cutting, for which I primarily use a bushcutter, which is powerful and effective, but requires a lot of physical effort, and is very dangerous for the local frogs and crickets. I’ve never used a motorized lawnmower because the models available were all too noisy. But recently, much quieter and lighter gasoline-powered 4-stroke engine lawnmowers have been appearing on the market.
The other day I bought one on impulse. Made in China, all black—I have quipped that this is the mower Daarth Vader would use—and retailing for the equivalent of less than US$500 It’s this year’s hit item for our local hardware seller. He has sold three of them in our little valley alone. Already, I have discovered that it saves me a huge amount of time and effort in cutting vegetation on flat areas such as roadside verges and lawns (of course).
Being a mower, it can’t handle really big dense weeds, which means I have to cut more often. But that is not necessarily a negative, unless you are a weed. It is still easier to cut an area twice with the mower than to do it once with the bushcutter.
My biggest worry now is, for how long will I be able to continue to buy gasoline to fuel this beast and the rest of the Farmyard Thunderbirds, such as the chainsaw, the cultivator, the combine harvester, and the rice planter? Every time I read a new article of Gail’s or see a forecast of declining oil reserves, I get a sinking feeling that continuing to do anything using machines is futile. And Norman’s pessimism is no help at all. Although he and Eddy seemed to disagree about everything, they were and are united in the belief that we’re doomed, doomed, I tell ya!
Even so, I am enjoying the new lawnmower. It has given me the motivation to get up and do a bit of grass-cutting every morning.
Back in the day with the same anxiety of lack of Petro to feed the beast the back to land Mother Earth News featured articles promoting the use and mastering
scythe is a manual agricultural hand-tool consisting of a long, curved blade attached to a long handle, used to mow or harvest crops like grass or grain
How To Use a Scythe on Your Property
Save money, invigorate your body, and diversify your property with a scythe.
By Ian Miller
https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/how-you-can-use-a-scythe-zm0z17djzmul/
Oh, those were the days of fantasy hope and dreams
Don’t despair over the gas supply Tim. Your lawnmower will soon break down and due to the lack of parts and become useless long before you ever run out of gas to power it. https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-crapification-of-us-economy-is-now.html
I bought a pair of Olean 15A electric chainsaws three years ago ( an extra for a reason). Although I could get replacement blades and chains, the drive sprocket has to replaced after three chains/blades exchanges and is unavailable as a separate part. I even called the factory to locate the missing sprocket. Dead end. Speaking of sprockets, it reminds me of the band Toad the Wet Sprocket and their song “Somethings always wrong.” Everything is for sale. Nothing’s worth buying.
You’ve reminded me of The Widow Couderc. In that movie, both Alain Delon and Simone Signoret use long scythes to cut weeds and long grass to make hay.
They don’t make movies, or peasants, like that any more.
“I do a lot of grass and weed cutting, for which I primarily use a bushcutter”
Mr. Tim, you are not supposed to use feminine beauty products on your lawn. No wonder your Japanese neighbours think you are eccentric. 🙂
Cracker Barrel changing its logo.
It’s Iraq when they knocked down those statues of Saddam..
Cracker Barrel…. The very name is racist.
Soda crackers in barrels in Southern country stores were ubiquitous. Soda crackers are white. White oppression was similarly ubiquitous. Blacks needed to culturally offset the word nigger, so, as the particularly artistic race they are, they outdid the purely descriptive word nigger (meaning black) by thinking laterally: cracker. Them cracker ass motherfuckers lol.
The Cracker Barrel restaurant chain, of course, was just simply named after the iconic cracker barrels. And Uncle Herschel was an equally simple and straightforward representation of the cultural ubiquity of the kindly Jewish merchant banker whose refrain was, “would you like to put that on your account?”
Kulm, I came across this post on X, and thought of you:
“After the end of the Mao era, the grandchildren of the pre-revolutionary elites regained their social advantage. China’s communist revolution could do nothing about the persistence of genes.”
https://x.com/johnthenoticer/status/1959929681626485150
Yes and no. Extensively discussed at unz.com.
Some returned. Some did bot. More likely some elites had turned communist abd they helped their kin later.
80/20?
Dennis L.
No 80/20. More like 40/60
80/20 died long ago
High yields of low quality grain due to wet weather conditions during harvest do not lower the food prices, as there is not enough animals to consume such grain for animal feed.
Record harvest, poor sales: grain from Slovak fields is being turned into animal feed and cheap exports, but bread will not become cheaper
https://ekonomika.pravda.sk/ludia/clanok/764708-rekordna-uroda-mizerne-prijmy-zrno-zo-slovenskych-poli-sa-meni-na-krmivo-ci-lacny-export-no-na-pultoch-mame-drahy-chlieb/?utm_source=pravda&utm_medium=hp-box&utm_campaign=shp_bleskove_spravy
SpaceX:
1. Two minutes to launch – goal of Space X is 120 launches/recoveries/year.
2. One minute to launch
3. Thirty Seconds to launch
4. Booster lit.
5. Liftoff, there is hope for all mankind
6. All 33 engines burning
7. One engine down, 32 burning
8. Stage separation
9. Starship has six burning, booster on its way to gulf.
10. Super heavy has started engines
11. Super heavy landed in gulf.
12. Vacuum engines shut down
13. all engines cut off
14. Ship is in orbit – thought it was not going orbital?
15. Payload doors are open…..yesn can see an opening to space
16. Test satellite1 is launched, satellite 2 launched, satellite 3, 4,…8launched
17. Goal for new satellites is gig up/down load. Guess, cell towers are so yesterday.
18, Six million customers currently for internet.
19. Re-entry begins
20. Twenty minutes to splashdown if it makes it.
21. Parts are flying off, flap is melting on edge. engine bay has some damage, ship is leading with the engine end.
22. Apparently pushing ship beyond design to find limits, reminds me of my childhood, push the limits.
23. Fully deploy flap, posterior partially melted. edge no longer orange. Incredible the telemetry was not lost with all the plasma.
24 Starship subsonic, chilling the engines, doing flip, three engines lit, lands in the ocean on its butt. Some of the fins will need work, melting is a problem.
I accept the limitations expressed on this site, but mankind is resilient. All of us will not make it, but some will, God is incredible but only 80/20. Have ordered book mentioned in paragraph 11 above, Turchin et al. I read these books not to see the failures but to understand how those who survived did it.
Man needs hope, I believe there is a God, intelligent but not perfect design.
Dennis L.
It sounds like Space X is doing better.
Wall Street Journal – Exclusive
https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/exxon-rosneft-russia-oil-talks-f524e81f
Exxon Held Secret Talks With Rosneft About Going Back to Russia
Resuming business in Russia would mark a dramatic rapprochement after Exxon’s messy breakup with Moscow when Putin attacked Ukraine in 2022
All this is planned in order to keep oil flowing it is rationing there are no enemies just co-conspirators all working together for the greater good
“US shale companies tighten their belts amid oil price uncertainty
“Despite their caution, overall crude production is actually increasing”
https://www.ft.com/content/6a992996-4822-4234-aa70-51deacd8cf3b
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzYY-E7torM
US Oil Patch Slams On Brakes as Trump Policies Start to Hurt (8:16)
95,204 views Aug 11, 2025
“Ed Hirs, energy economist with the University of Houston, reviews results from the last Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ energy survey. The news isn’t good for the American oil patch.”
Wait it’s increasing or decreasing??
According to EIA data, US crude oil production is still increasing through May, despite the EIA’s forecast that production would start to fall this quarter.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbblpd_m.htm
Data through June 30 should be out about the end of the month. That would be Sunday of this week. I don’t know if the EIA waits until the day after or not.
When I download the EIA’s estimates of tight oil per play, these estimates seem to peak in the fourth quarter of 2024. The Excel spreadsheet download can be made from the “Tight Estimates by Play” entry on this page.
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/data.php
Of course, these Tight Oil Estimates by Play are based on someone’s model. It doesn’t necessarily match up well with reality.
There is also weekly data, but it isn’t very reliable. It seems to suggest that perhaps the 4th quarter of 2024 was highest.
It may partially depend on the same shale models I pointed out in another comment.
This interview with Ed Hirs ends by saying that the US is the high-cost producer of oil in the world market, and that costs for the US have increased with the tariffs on steel production. Unless the crude oil price goes up to $100 per barrel, we should expect to see a cutback in US crude oil production.
He also points out that US drillers can cut their costs way down by simply not drilling new wells for a while. They can live on their cash flow for a while, but of course, production will fall.
We know that when oil prices were low before, production from shale dropped way back.
Where is that interview?
It is the one linked above.