JHK’s Three-Act Play
I t’s not what most people think: a return to some hypothetical “normality,” with the ghost of Ronnie Reagan beaming down like a sun-god under his lopsided pompadour, and all the happy self-driving GM cars toodling back and forth from WalMart-to-home loaded to the scuppers with new electric pop-tart warmers and 3-D underwear printers. (Or drone deliveries of same from Amazon.com.)
I mean, surely the thinking folk out there must be asking themselves: what is the way out of this Federal Reserve three-card-monte, one-percenter-stuffing, so-called “economy,” and what is the destination of this society when that mendacious model for living fails?
I digress for a moment: there was a chap named Richard Duncan on the pod-waves this weekend (FSN Network) putting out the charming idea that quantitative easing (QE — governments “printing” money to buy their own bonds) had the effect of “cancelling debt” and that it could continue for decades to come. I don’t doubt that there are Federal Reserve officers who believe this. The part they leave out — and Mr. Duncan also left it out until pressed — is that there are consequences. Consult the operating manual of the universe, and you will find that there really is no free lunch or get-out-of-jail card.
The truth is, when you rig a money system with price interventions, distortions, and perversions, they will eventually express themselves in ways destructive to the system. In the present case of world-wide QE and central bank monkey business, these rackets are expressing themselves, finally, in wobbling currencies. In many nations, people are deeply unsure of what their money is worth, and how much it might be worth a month from now. This includes the USA, except for the moment our money is said to be magically appreciating in value compared to everyone else’s. Aren’t we special?
Get this: nothing is more hazardous than undermining people’s trust in their money.
All of this financial perfidy conceals the basic fact that the human race has reached the limits of techno-industrialism. There are too many people and not enough basic resources to grow more of them — oil, fishes, soil, ores, fertilizers — and there is no steady-state “solution” to keep that economy going. In other words, it must either grow or contract, and it can’t really grow anymore (despite the exertions of government statisticians), so the authorities are trying to provide a monetary illusion of growth, when instead we’re in contraction.
Yes, contraction. The way out is to get with the program, shed the dead-weight and go where reality wants to take you. In the USA that means do everything possible to quit supporting giant failing systems — Big Box shopping, mass motoring, GMO agribiz, TBTF banks — and get behind local Main Street integrated economies, walkable towns, regular railroads, smaller and more numerous farms, local medical clinic health care, artistry in public works, and community caretaking of the unfit. All this surely implies a reduced role for the national government, and maybe the states, too. You could call it a lower standard of living, or just a different way to live.
I don’t think we’ll go there via rational political discourse. The current instabilities around the world are so sinister that they are liable to lead to even more strenuous efforts at the top to pretend that everything’s working, and even war is one way to pretend you’re okay (and the “other guy” isn’t). Of course, war has already broken out, in the MidEast and Ukraine, and it has everything to do with the sequential failure of nations, in one way or another, to overcome the limits of techno-industrialism. America will be dragged kicking and screaming to the realization of what it needs to do. The 2016 election will be the convulsion point.
Note: JHK’s 2014 Garden Report is finally up
The new World Made By Hand novel
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Paintings from the 2023 Season
New Gallery 15
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“The way out is to get with the program, shed the dead-weight and go where reality wants to take you.”
Reality is beckoning me to get the hell off the internet and go out and check all my veggie starts in the greenhouse for this coming season. Bye-bye internet!
Good for you Neoagrarian! Develop some useful skills and leave the manipulated and gamed Internet to its appropriate use; TURNED OFF. We will conveniently ignore the obvious contradiction that we are both here making comments.
“I don’t think we’ll go there via rational political discourse.”
No we won’t. Not with the government employees on your blog making sure rational discourse leads nowhere and their Federal Bureau of Intervention makes sure that anyone who dissents is not heard and that their page hits of unique visitors a day never gets higher than you can count on one hand with a missing finger.
We are not living in an age where virtue is cultivated or respected. Virtue is considered quaint old fashioned and foolish. In the land of I’ve got mine you get yours avarice is respected as the highest aspiration in the land. Better to be a ‘quant’ than quaint. The perfection of predatory capitalism is our religion and aspiration to be a member of the priestly 1% is as spiritual as anyone now gets. Rational political discourse we will not and no longer even know how to have.
Refusal to adjust to the realities of our universe will lead from the current state of fascism-lite to a full on corn-pone dictator. The Federal Bureau of Intervention will see to it that tyranny becomes our future. Suppressing dissent is every bit as bad as gaming the system by rigging the money system with price interventions, distortions, and perversions of various kinds. It is not talked or blogged about as much as financial woes are, that is an acceptable topic where ‘experts’ can always have the final word.
Yup. Too much inertia now. Neural contagion. System paralysis. Think little. Transmission terminated.
A hearty “Amen!”, K-Dog. You were reading my mind this morning with this: “In the land of I’ve got mine you get yours avarice is respected as the highest aspiration in the land.”
Very well said. Greed has become the new ‘virtue’.
“Refusal to adjust to the realities of our universe will lead from the current state of fascism-lite to a full on corn-pone dictator. The Federal Bureau of Intervention will see to it that tyranny becomes our future. Suppressing dissent is every bit as bad as gaming the system by rigging the money system with price interventions, distortions, and perversions of various kinds. It is not talked or blogged about as much as financial woes are, that is an acceptable topic where ‘experts’ can always have the final word.”
K-dog,
Blammo! — A load of 12 ga. buck, obliterating [what used to be] the bullseye.
“Get this: nothing is more hazardous than undermining people’s trust in their money.” – JHK
…Which in turn leads to a collapse of trust in every other governmental institution and attached drone-bee servicing it.
Rational discourse? You and I (and a few others) have had that, but I don’t see much evidence of it elsewhere. Rational discourse ain’t gonna win no gov’t. contracts or think-tank credentials, now is it?
Blammo! – Ozone giving K-dog the thumbs up on his comment
==============
The preferred exclamation is not Blammo but “spot on” (reference last week’s thread) ;o)
The question of ‘when’ is always the tricky one. All of us in Kunstlerstan know that things can’t continue, but betting on this (i.e., shorting the market) would have you poorer, not richer in these past few years. It is maddening, to say the least. It is like watching Wile E. Coyote go off a cliff – at some point, you know he’s going to take a dive, but until he realizes it, he still keeps going, oblivious to the laws of physics.
What will be the signposts of this contraction/collapse? Inflation running at more than X%/year (X=20?) Loss of a US carrier or two while on some overseas adventure? College enlistments declining, and college towns starting to shrink in size? People growing food on their front lawns in suburbia?
Contraction is the way, yeah…
“People growing food on their front lawns in suburbia?”
That started happening in 2011 in Oak Park, a suburb of Detroit. The result was Oak Park woman plants vegetable garden; city objects. My friend Julie Bass got into an epic legal fight with the city of Oak Park, one that ended in victory for her as all charges were dismissed. She didn’t stick around for a second round the next year, as her family moved to Seattle. There she was able to keep chickens, apparently without anyone bothering her about it.
On keeping Seattle chickens.
Unfortunately, one cannot grow a winter supply of food using the entire suburban lot, no matter how efficiently and intensively managed. Been there, tried that. Coulda gone hungry.
“The question of ‘when’ is always the tricky one. ”
As a Malthusian, I can heartily agree with that one.
A couple hundred years of abundant fossil fuels have forestalled the overpopulation apocalypse and ushered in a period of staggering advances in science, technology, and the arts.
In all probability, the “golden age of mankind” of the fossil fuel era will come to a screeching halt when the liquid gold runs out. But people who keep expecting this to come any day now- don’t forget this is a cycle that has proceeded over a time span of several centuries, so keep in mind that just because you can see it coming doesn’t mean it’s going to be tomorrow. I am 62 and will probably live into my 80s and I do not believe I will live to see the downfall of the fossil fuel era.
Not the complete downfall, no probably not. But the prolonged downfall process is already underway. Has been since the 70’s. Technology has succeeded in putting it off all these years, which unfortunately just means the eventual collapse will be that much worse for those who eventually have to live through it. Better pray reincarnation ain’t a fact I guess. I’m in my late 50s and expect the financial effects of peak energy to be the dominant factor for the rest of my life. The actual running out will likely be the least of it.
I’m showing “The End of Suburbia” to my students again this week. Other than the stats on natural gas, which have improved from the perspective of business as usual because of fracking, the movie has held up pretty well over the past decade since it came out. Your essay drives home an updated version of the message at the end of the movie; the future will be local, not global. As for how my students will react, in addition to making some pithy observations that I will share with you and your readers next week, I’m sure they’ll search for answers on the Internet. Here’s to hoping they find my Guide to entries that contain answers to ‘The End of Suburbia’; it will make things easier for them.
“You could call it a lower standard of living, or just a different way to live/ ” Emphasis mine. This won’t happen without catharsis.
It actually COULD be a better way to live with shared Community public resources, walkable communities where people know each other (for good and ill), fresh local veggies like my CSA spinach with the roots still on them! Instead of huge stadium concerts we could have local musicians singing on public squares with others invited to sing or dance along.
“or just a different way to live” should be ‘just a different way to die’. there is no way that we as a nation can support 350 million people, many packed in cities, after collapse no matter what causes it. High oil prices due to scarcity or loss of faith in the fiat dollar, whatever, the end result is many people die from lack of support; seniors first then children, then city core.
Without abundant, cheap diesel fuel to run tractors and food transport vehicles, mass starvation would be largely unavoidable.
“America will be dragged kicking and screaming to the realization of what it needs to do. The 2016 election will be the convulsion point.”
Perhaps, but only if something like American survives long enough to have such a realization. As for the 2016 election season, that’s shaping up to be another costly farce!
I’ve been tracking the federal budget for some time and recently discovered something that should cause alarm: the amount devoted to paying interest has gone up from around 9% in FY 2009 to almost 16% in FY 2015. Interest had been hovering around 7-9% for decades. What’s behind the sudden increase? Almost six years of Quantitative Easing (QE)! This increase is significant and although it might otherwise be possible for our government and economy to operate so burdened, it appears that there will be no end to QE. Interest payments are increasing exponentially!
Another thing not generally discussed with much candor are durable goods inventories. Has anyone noticed that the major auto makers are now all in month six of “Truck Month”? Has anyone noticed that department store chains are closing one store in five every year? A neighbor of mine is a member of some economic advisory council that meets in New York quarterly. Their consensus is that the US economy will contract for the first two quarters and then in late summer there’s the strong likelihood of another financial meltdown a la 2008.
http://www.thesisa.org
I grow a lot of watermelon for local market and the thing with these new trucks is that you have to be an NBA player to reach over their sides because they are so high. The result is I keep driving my ’95. They are “show horses” not “work horses”. Now I’m off to haul manure , if I can get my ’53 International 1 ton dump to start!
Nice to hear commentary about things that really matter. Like growing and delivering edibles. Very refreshing topic.
The truck I keep up at a friend’s farm in Alabama is a ’46 K Model International Harvester. It’s got an “L” Head six with a decidedly non-synchromesh four-speed transmission. It started out life as a telephone company truck equipped with a utility body. When the telephone company got rid of it they took the utility body off and whoever bought it bolted on a bed from a wrecked Ford. It always starts but it’s not licensed and therefore is only used on a connected series of farms owned in partnership by a collection of furry refugees from the sixties.
Regarding my post, I forgot to note that it’s also the consensus of that economic advisory council my neighbor belongs to that mankind’s number one obstacle to just about any kind of progress whatsoever is Wall Street and their inordinate influence on Federal policy. If we, the American people, can’t figure out how to clip Wall Street’s wings, somebody else will do it for us and do so in a manner that would very much not be in our best interests. At some point soon, perhaps within this year of 2015, a critical mass of the world’s leaders are going to collectively say “No!” to the arrogant bastards on Wall Street and the loyal cadre of imbecilic Boy Scouts who do their bidding in Washington. If they do say “No!” there could be a run on the dollar and the stock market could crash. The world could likely fall into an irreversible chaos. As it stands, only their fear of this chaos is what’s keeping them from saying “No!”
At this point, after six plus years of Quantitative Easing, we’re well past the point of no return. Quantitative Easing, at best, gets Wall Street from Quarter to Quarter. It’s a short-term solution that maintains a highly unstable status quo, but does so by ensuring a decidedly disastrous outcome. It reminds me of a story William L. Shirer included in “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”. He was so accepted in the more influential circles in Nazi Germany he was invited to gala gatherings of the Nazi elite. Occasionally in one on one conversations, these elites would speak with candor and state that it was collectively understood that what they were doing was foolhardy. The line I remember went something like this: Germany these days is like an express train running full speed towards and eventual disaster: to stay on is madness and the jump off is suicide.
I make regular trips to Ukraine and Nicaragua for various projects. They are already at the point that Mr. K describes for America. There are main streets in the towns and villages that are walkable – unpaved, muddy, no sidewalks or gutters, but definitely walkable. Ukraine has a regular railroad system that puts ours to shame. Numerous local farms, containing the best soil in the world. Local health care is what ever the family can provide. No local arts, but they all try to paint the front door and put out a shelf of flowers. And care of the unfit is strictly the responsibility of the family. Will we go there? Yes, I think Mr. K is correct. We will go there, but only as this system collapses and we are forced. No other way is possible with our degraded citizenry and, when it comes, it won’t look pretty.
Great essay. I always read them but seldom comment. Of course war has broken out and in the short-term the ME looks to be very chaotic. Long term the place seems doomed. If Israel bombs Iran in the next 6 months things will ratchet up very quickly. As for 2016….question: will Hillary having wiped/formatted her server to deny access have any effect on her prospects? Who would step in to replace her? Bueller?
The way down will not be easy. The right wing will blame it all on the liberals/Democrats/Progressives, etc., and Americans will eagerly elect crazies who promise to return the USA to greatness with some serious ass-kicking. I see a bad moon arising.
And the left will blame it all on the conservatives/Republicans/ etc., and Americans will eagerly elect crazies who promise to return the USA to respectability and atone for our past sins with some serious ass-kicking. I see a bad moon arising.
“LLPete” and “Farnus,” you’re both correct, and you shouldn’t be. Left and Right should not be the same, and in a healthy political environment, they aren’t the same. But here in the USA in the here and now, they pretty much are the same.
Oh, sure, people point out the differences to me all the time. But they’re all trivial. I don’t care about guns, or religion, or who wants to have sex with whom. I don’t care to whom I have to make out the check for essentials; as if it somehow matters if I have to pay the government or a corporation. I can’t squint hard enough to tell the difference from where I stand. You want to call it Istanbul, not Constantinople? As long as we’re talking about a huge ancient city on the Bosporus, we can butter its buns and call it a biscuit for all I care.
The point is, we have no coherent ideology in America today. Everyone is totally committed to this pattern of organization and behavior that fundamentally no longer makes sense. It doesn’t work. Since all the people who supposedly make decisions can only think in these terms that don’t work, they don’t have any suggestions that will work. By definition. They simply can’t do it.
The result is going to be a “Baghdad Bob-ocracy.” People will make ever-bolder, ever more-ridiculous, pronouncements that are immediately contradicted by facts everyone can see right in front of them. The tough part will be to keep a straight face, but that will be essential because people act really weird and badly when the foundations of their universe of thought vanish. The behavior of Hitler’s SS in the last days of WWII come to mind.
Now, it would be great if we actually had a political Left and Right to look to. It would be great if we had anyone in a position of authority who didn’t unquestionably believe in, and base all their reasoning on, this system of corporate finance capitalism using debt at interest as money. Because it’s becoming unavoidably obvious that such a system can only operate indefinitely in a world of infinite resources, energy, markets, and money. Since, of those, only money can be made infinite and that only by making it abstract, the whole thing pulls itself apart and eventually the entropy becomes stronger than any efforts to cope with it.
So, eagerly elect crazies it is, I guess. And we’ll have to at least pretend to take them seriously. That won’t work for long; crazy people are really good at noticing when you think they’re crazy. Best to stay as far away from them as possible.
QE= sqrt(-1)
Sqrt(-1) is the “i” or “j” operator in complex equations. Its function is to move the phasor 90 degrees. If the square root of negative one doesn’t seem to make numerical sense, it doesn’t until you multiply it by itself and get “-1”, or 180 degrees displacement.
This seems to be the same mechanics of QE. Is it not too ironic that these are referred to as imaginary numbers??
Just started Catton’s “Overshoot” and it is rather obvious that QE is the “phase” in expanding carrying capacity by avoiding the confines of nature (which includes physics, thermo, etc). We have gone from the land based to the industrial to the financial abstraction that attempts to put value on all the preceeding. Including human capital in the form of student loans.
Getting back to the imaginary numbers, what this really means is not in phase with the real component. QE has the effect of displacing the non-work energy from the real work (the stuff that lights your lights and toasts your bread). Too much displacement and systems become unstable, and then it faults, and the “imaginary” energy is discharged – usually destructively if not controlled. Not unlike a large rubber band snapping.
If it were local level, like your home electrical panel, (and don’t say fuse box, like “blue prints”, neither has been around for 60 years), the damage is relatively minor; or at most burning down your own house. But QE is grid level, bulk energy systems, collapse and black out scale.
Just started Catton’s “Overshoot”…
Great book! Picked it up on a Friday and couldn’t put it down until I was done on Sunday. Makes pretty much an airtight case for Overshoot with no hyperbole whatsoever. A sobering work of scientific and mathematical fact.
“the authorities are trying to provide a monetary illusion of growth, when instead we’re in contraction.”
nailed it
nailed it – Gustaf enthusiastically agreeing with JHK
=================
spot on.
“I mean, surely the thinking folk out there must be asking themselves: what is the way out of this Federal Reserve three-card-monte, one-percenter-stuffing, so-called “economy,” and what is the destination of this society when that mendacious model for living fails?”
On the other hand, the Federal Reserve has been around since what was it, 1916 or something, during which time there was a long period of unprecedented prosperity.
As weird as our monetary system is, I don’t think anyone has made a compelling case that some particualar other approach is superior.
The bottom line is that so long as there are fossil fuel resources at affordable prices, we will have a continuation of some semblance of the 1950s economy.
When the fossil fuels run out, it will be lights out. One thing that will be interesting to see is whether when that happens, the politicians and so-called economists will decide the problem is that we have the wrong monetary system, and flail around in a futile attempt to find one that can provide prosperity in an economy that lacks the natural resources for prosperity to be possible.
On the other hand, the Federal Reserve has been around since what was it, 1916 or something, during which time there was a long period of unprecedented prosperity.
You mean except for the two major depressions in 1929 and 2008 and the major recessions in the 1970s, late 80’s, and early 2000s, not to mention two declared world wars and countless other “police actions” or whatever it is they’re calling them these days?
So you don’t think the US Treasury could handle just issuing money debt free without the Fed – which, let’s face it, is nothing but a international cabal of well-connected Jewish bankers – interceding would be better? Lots of people do and are already making the case, the primary obstacle being vested interests in the current system – wealthy Jewish bankers once again.
There is absolutely no reason on God’s green earth that any sovereign government would EVER need to borrow its OWN national currency, unless it consciously decided to be victimized by a wealthy international banking cabal that (unsurprisingly) puts its own interests above all else.
Bravo for the National Socialism 101. Thus said Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Lindbergh, and Father Coughlin. And this is what lead to WW2 when Germany said no.
Fascinating that you know about the Jews, but not the Blacks – just like Henry Ford.
Al contraire comrade, National Socialism is not against free enterprise and private property. You’re confusing it with Marxist Socialism. Nor is National Socialism against Men, Western Civilization, and the White Race.
Federal Reserve Notes vs INTEREST FREE United States Notes.
Many years ago – more than 20 – I remember commenting to a friend of mine after he opined that the economy was then in trouble. I told him that what the real concern is not the economy, per se, but rather the pervasive and progressive lack of trust. This is still our biggest problem. All of our financial woes are solvable. But only if we still have the ability to believe. Our so-called “leadership” is so bereft, so without substance, so handily dissembling, that we have finally reached a point where nobody believes anything. Problems of all sorts can be corrected – but correction requires teamwork, and teamwork requires reality-based trust. Our “leadership” has traded in trust for a few years of apparent good times. QE is a fine example of this.
An elegant distillation; thanks Al.
We have nothing to fear except fear itself? Remember the man who said that was a hardened Communist operative.
Janos, that was a meaningless, stupid slogan. As we both know, fear is sometimes a proper response to a situation. There are some things we ought to fear. But back to the point. I think what we need is some genuinely good leadership. We can never escape from our hopelessness without such. And I don’t mean a master slogan utterer.
Yes, exactly. We don’t have to be afraid of Gays (nor are we), we just have to drive them back into the closet.
Leadership does not exist in a vacuum. It is a component – or creation, if you will – of its host society. We get the leadership we deserve…nothing more.
The younger people looking for a house with some architectural charm, on a street with trees and sidewalk, come looking at Schenectady. They quickly find out that looking politicians have figured that they are entitled to pocket all of the ‘savings’ of buying an older home, in the form of property taxes. So there’s that, your monthly payment will be the same as if you buy a much newer, bigger house in suburbia, except your suburban house doesn’t need thousands in repairs and maintenance yet.
Yes, the suburban house will require you to take on the perpetual auto loan, but in the city there aren’t actually any jobs or stores to walk to.
I notice the government is finally cracking down on the auto loan racket, which took the place of the mortgage racket. I also notice that there is a lawsuit, one of many against various employers, cracking down on a local restaurant chain for wage theft. What I didn’t know before, which was pointed out by a commenter in the paper, is that this chain which started in NY is largely owned by billionaire George Soros. A chain which is nickel and diming its workers. Almost unbelievable.
What is the chain so I can avoid it?
Dinosaur BBQ.
You ought to link to the story. Don’t know the firm, but making the claim without linking might expose JHK, or you, to charges of libel.
http://blog.timesunion.com/tablehopping/47411/lawsuit-dinosaur-bar-b-que-unfair-to-tipped-workers/
I linked to the place I first saw the claim made. I looked it up, it appeared to be true, but how do you know whether assertions made on websites are factual?
I will amend my post to say the claim has been made by others that a billionaire owns the chain. Thanks for the advice.
The way out is by adding millions of legal and millions more of illegal immigrants to lower wages and raise real estate prices and buy stuff at Target. It doesn’t matter if ever more environment is destroyed or our lives become ever more unlivable in the process. What matters is the illusion that economic growth in the U.S. is eternal.
Well done this week James….
Granted the “new localism” is where we are headed. Why few talk about it is curious. Today’s MSM reports say Scott Walker is “worried” and his campaign a bit of a downer. Responsible people like to do something useful and there is no market these days for Reality, much better to try and stay asleep just a little longer. Who really wants to pull the plug on industrial civilization?
And how do you talk about it stretched out at the beach discussing where to go for dinner with friends? I don’t, my wife has heard enough of it and doesn’t want me scaring the kids with the boogeyman’s coming. My son has an academic scholarship to college. What do I know? Don’t drink (much), use a condom, and keep your eyes open. We’ll be here when you want to come home.
I’ll keep fixing teeth–it’s easier than gardening.
My take has been it’s IEEE! or roller coaster down: immigration,energy,environment, economy. If no one is really interested in talking about the problem then who is going to fix it? Why is it just our misanthropic little bunch that cares?
Maybe ol’ Georgie can clear the fog a bit:
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell
And, belaboring the glaringly obvious, in a time of universal deceit, trust is a scarce and precious commodity.
There’s an end to it. Clandestine as well as overt savagery and the rise of the Cornpone Nazis. The exceptionally blinkered American “citizens” are going to get just what they’ve been asking for all these years of bromides, false fronts and papier mache policies with hearts of depleted uranium.
(Support the Troops… which now includes TSA agents and your local police.)
Still can figure out the difference between Fascism and Plutocracy I see. The Cornpone is the only thing that can save us. They will be welcomed with open arms and legs and seen as saviors from the horrors to come.
Nicely said, Ozone!
When people do talk, they get bashed by the other “side”. If you pay attention to what’s in the media these days, it’s all “libs” vs. “cons”, “Dems” vs. “Repubs”, the Occupiers are dirty, the Tea Partiers are racist, on and on.
I think the young people starting out are too busy juggling jobs, trying to get a foothold. They don’t have the perspective to know what’s been done to them.
Yes, the economy is a sham. Yes, our oil is running out. Yes, we are starting dangerous military adventures. Yes, we are ruining our environment. Yes, we have way too many people. And yes, we cannot continue exactly the way we have been carrying on.
The word here is “exactly”. Why does it have to be one extreme (the current situation, but multiplied in the future), or the other (18th century living)? Ever hear of evolution? It doesn’t occur overnight – the eye evolved over a long time – despite what the scientifically ignorant religious folk say. We will evolve into a more rational lifestyle, are evolving now, it’s just not apparent over a short time period.
Neither I or anyone else can know if the future will bring us more or less prosperity. All “predictions” of our future are just mind candy. White and black swans abound, but don’t forget, our very flawed brains are quite good at problem solving.
Unfortunately, our brains are particularly poor at recognizing and solving the problems of Overshoot, which are largely caused by our proclivity for and naive belief in the powers of problem solving in the first place. But yes, evolution is definitely going to take us somewhere, even if it’s extinction. The fact that so many “enlightened” people who should know better scoff at that possibility is why it remains such a distinct and growing possibility.
I saw over the weekend, some college girls on spring break ended up in the hospital with gunshot wounds, after attending a house party. People have held out the college degree as the way out of the ghetto, the ticket to the middle class, the solution to the violence. Here are some middle class young women doing everything the “right way”, and the senseless violence finds them anyway. So much for problem solving.
Violence does not ‘find someone’. Someone dangerous attacks seven at party.
There I fixed the ‘Passive Voice’ of yellow journalism.
What does the ‘media’ not say about the gunman??? Huh?
What the media said or didn’t say wasn’t my point. I was attempting to illustrate that problems we are experiencing related to issues this blog touches on, aren’t getting any better they are spreading.
On the channel I was watching when I saw the story, they kept showing what appeared to be stock footage of mostly white college kids on a Florida beach.
The colleges have been lowered to let people like that in. Such colleges aren’t even at the level of the old high schools.
Now THAT actually makes sense! Congrats Janos!
Yes it’s particularly the case with Blacks. You’re growing, bro.
“Yes, the economy is a sham. Yes, our oil is running out. Yes, we are starting dangerous military adventures. Yes, we are ruining our environment. Yes, we have way too many people. And yes, we cannot continue exactly the way we have been carrying on.” –Beantownbill
Exactly what in the sam-hill do any of the above mentioned have to do with evolution, a strictly biological process???
Was ‘evolution’ involved in the collapse of numerous previous civilizations? Are you conflating ‘evolution’ with the myth of progress, as in the idea that ‘evolution’ will be responsible for carrying humanity ‘from the caves to the stars’?
Can’t really see how slow genetic drift due to natural selective processes has anything to do with societal or technological progress, or retro-progress…
I’m talking about social evolution, not biological. Is there not such a thing? Evolution is change, whether good or not. And evolution tends to happen slowly. The point I was trying to make – maybe a little too disconnected – is that slow change is not often noticeable, and that we may be changing for the better, but it’s just impossible for most of us too see. Any self- aware creature alive 55 million years ago living along the banks of the Colorado River could never have imagined the Grand Canyon. The same with our future. How do we know how it will turn out? With fear and fancy? Wby not visualize civilizational advancement? That’s just as rational as doom and gloom, given the future hasn’t happened yet.
What? Do you mean to tell me we do not have a free market and it really doesn’t know best. And the dollar isn’t worth anything just so we can pretend we have no debt, and we can sell crap all over the world. Starting to look like the illusion is really real. Good grief next thing you will tell me there is no Easter bunny, Santa. Bummer
Comparatively speaking, the Easter Bunny, as an ancient symbol of fertility, and Santa Claus, as the spiritual embodiment of an economy based on gift giving, are very real.
What is totally false is the notion of “free market”, unending and infinite growth, the soundness of the dollar, any semblance of this nation to a Republic, the act of saying ‘presto-chango’ and thereby turning mountains of never-to-be-repayed debt into some kind of wealth, etc.
The Easter Bunny and Santa are just fine.
At least you know sarcasm when you see it. Yep most people in this country have been screwed for sometime now. At least we can still rely on the bunny and the big elf.
And don’t forget Jim’s Jiminwy Cricket!
Your a great read James but this is just a little sad, walkable towns railways, community health. This is along way past wishful thinking, I’m reminded of the end of the plains Indians who when faced with cultural extinction performed the Ghost Dance in the belief that it would bring back the buffalo. their dead ancestors and make the white devils disappear. Well the white devils are still there but your future is likely to make Syria and Somalia look like a picnic. I would be surprised if you don’t end up eating one another and the only people trained for this future are the brutalised under class (blacks).
I read somewhere that without fossil fuels it would take the average American eleven days to produce the food he/she consumes in one so its easy to see where the fulcrum of the problem lies. Good Luck
I am reminded of the opening words to ‘The Unsettling of America’, well worth reading I might add.
One of the peculiarities of the white race’s presence in America is how little intention has been applied to it. As a people, wherever we have been, we have never really intended to be. The continent is said to have been discovered by an Italian who was on his way to India. The earliest explorers were looking for gold, which was, after an early streak of luck in Mexico, always somewhere farther on.
Conquests and foundings were incidental to this search – which did not – and could not end until the continent was finally laid open in an orgy of goldseeking in the middle of the last century. Once the unknown geography was mapped, the industrial marketplace became the new frontier, and we continued, with largely the same motives and with increasing haste and anxiety, to displace ourselves – no longer with unity of direction, like a migrant flock, but like the refugees from a broken ant hill. In our own time we have invaded foreign lands and the moon with the high-toned patriotism of the conquistadors, and with the same mixture of fantasy and avarice.
Neo,
Now you’re evoking the great mystery: what is it to live, and what shall we do with this wondrous gift of consciousness? (Besides just laying up an enormous pile of crap.)
Thank you; it needs to be included in thoughts of future directions.
Ozone: “Now you’re evoking the great mystery: what is it to live, and what shall we do with this wondrous gift of consciousness?”
Near as I can figger apply it where it has half a chance of making a difference of some kind: at the scope and scale of our own lived lives. Nothing fancy in that!
Neo, I understand that you are graciously trying to make Ozone’s “mystery” less so. Nevertheless, your assessment is oversimplified. You write the objective is to “…make a difference of some kind”. Well, what about that psychopath who just crashed that Germanwings plane in the French Alps? He sure made a difference. I expect that your retort would be, make a difference in a positive way. Of course. Of course. And then we would be caught in the conundrum of determining what is truly “positive.” Don’t get my point? Then tell me, is economic growth positive? We are back where we started. Ozone’s mystery.
Since you discount God a priori, your search is short circuited from the get go. You live in a closed world without horizons. As Blake put it, “God us keep, from single vision and Newton’s sleep.”
As Blake put it, “God us keep, from single vision and Newton’s sleep.”
===============
Huh?
Get poetry? Newtonian physics are real at ordinary conditions, quantities, speeds, etc. But there is are many things, places, and conditions where they will not work so well – including inside the human soul. Huh?
Excellent, Neo.
That is my favorite Wendell Berry book. This dovetails well with K-Dogs previous comment about avarice. As Berry puts it, the search for El Dorado continues to this day, but it is done in the corporate and financial arenas rather than scouring the wilderness of the ‘new world’.
Yes, well….as much as Berry is often dismissed for his quaint, backwards ways, his entire body of work is an illuminating beacon that has consistently cut through the crap of urbane sophistication that so often limits the frame of reference for even conceiving of our ‘wicked problem’. This ‘wicked problem’ we all now increasingly face is not going to be ‘solved’, especially at scale. There will be no ‘solutions’, especially at scale. The whole issue is scale, after all. So it follows that no amount of analysis, rational thinking, ingenuity, innovation or engineering, however applied, is going to overcome the intractable inertia of the system. Don’t even look there. Cheers to you!
“…no amount of analysis, rational thinking, ingenuity, innovation or engineering, however applied, is going to overcome the intractable inertia of the system. Don’t even look there.”
Exactly. This is why collapse is inevitable, and ultimately desirable.
And Berry is indeed one of the best thinkers of our time.
And Berry is indeed one of the best thinkers of our time.
===============
I wouldn’t know Wendell Berry from Dingle Berry but I would submit that anyone with whom we totally agree is “one of the best thinkers of our time.”
And you would be correct in this obvious bit of logic. Though if you were to read some of WB’s essays, I suspect you would also join this circle of agreement.
Where does he stand on the Amnesty? As you know, virtually all the big environmentalists have sold out and support the invaders against their own people, nation, and the land they profess to love.
Yes, adding 50 million people to the population of the US does wonders for the environment!
Humanity has three ways out of the current situation we found ourselves in: 1. Major world war that will write off all existing debts and, hopefully, reset the system from clean slate; 2. slow dying – going back to more primitive production models that will probably require shedding 80-90% off the current population levels and 3. Revolution – going to new technological and societal order.
With all due respect, the way out proposed in today’s post is route #2 – slow dying. It totally ignores that going back to smaller enterprises will substantially reduce the level of labor productivity and there is going to be no way of supporting the level of the world population we currently have. So, who will live and who will die and who will make that decision? Who will be lucky enough to live near large government or army or private stockpiles of food, ammunition, fuel and other supplies? How the disputes over those riches would be resolved?
If anything, we will need more government, not less – mostly to support the law and order, provide for necessary level of protection from any outside forces, and provide for minimum social stability by forceful – but predictable and transparent redistribution of existing and newly produced goods. If somebody will get an unfair advantage by trying to “privatize” the property inherited from the old system, they should be fairly taxed on high – 80 – 90% level. Number one task of the government will be by all necessary means to avoid civil war and inter-tribal conflicts and resolve all contradictions on the National level.
All existing institutions should be kept to a maximum extent; the necessary changes should be kept to a minimum and desirably on a policy, not structural level.
Of course, number one priority would be keeping a smaller, but capable armed and police forces.
Other institutions should be revised on case by case order.
For instance – the US Postal Service should be kept by all means, may be even extended with providing local banking and payment functions. All financial payment networks must be kept to a maximum degree, subject to strict lending regulations. It is much easier to destroy, than to build anew.
The FED should be nationalized and turn into regulator and accounting and central National planning institution, providing National credit to the most crucial for social stability projects – energy, water, transportation, education, medical care. Also it should regulate the national money supply as well as trading with foreign countries – it could be two separate circuits of money circulation (internal and external dollar).
Gold will probably need to be nationalized, except for small amount of private jewelry – Nation will have to have as much gold as possible to be able to obtain necessary foreign resources, especially on the initial stages of transition.
Most of commercial banks should be left intact, subject to strict regulation by the Nationalized FED – it will facilitate providing National credit for the smaller, local projects as well as control as to whether money used appropriately and not stolen.
Speculation and gambling should be discouraged by all possible means – probably by much higher taxes, including transactional tax. Super profits should be taxed at super high rates – up to 80-90%, unless they are invested into new National enterprises providing new labor positions, so wealth accumulation would be available, but on tangible, not financial level.
Hmmm, FITN…
All this presupposes that individuals, society, and government will all work together to ‘do the right things’. If we were capable of that, we wouldn’t be in this pickle in the first place. Just sayin’…
No, actually it does not. We need a better education on social issues, but for time being we are going to need a “drill sergeant” capable of lining everybody up.
You bring to mind the Jefferson quote about how democracy is a government for moral people who practice self-restraint. It is exactly this lack of morality and self-restraint that necessitates your ‘drill sergeant’ — also known variously as ‘totalitarian dictator’, ‘sovereign liege’, or JHK’s ‘corn-pone fascist’.
Any way you spell it, it’s not a way of life I have any desire for. Let the damn society collapse. Rigor and hardship form the kind of character that you are expecting to result from education and repression.
Show me any time in history that government domination created people of high character, except where revolution had to be undertaken to throw off the repressor…
Too bad. You could live in a jungle for a while. When you get sick or hungry, come back over, we always keep a place warm for you. Just don’t kill anybody for your food.
Easy, Russia. Solzhenitsyn said the oppression and hardship created great characters as opposed to the non-entities he met in the West.
The same might not be true of the Chinese who accept such things too easily. We’re talking White psychology here.
we are going to need a “drill sergeant” capable of lining everybody up.
Yesss….Sonderbehandulung.
OMG Finca, you are the quintessential government apparatchik. Apparatchik is one of David Stockman’s favorite words and I can assure you it is never in a good sense.
“Nothing is more hazardous than undermining people’s trust in their money” – JHK
For starters, the currency itself is being altered, beginning with Andrew Jackson’s (a slave owner, drove Cherokees west) portrait removed from the $20 bill, replaced by ‘minorities and women’. Washington, Lincoln, Ben Franklin, they’ll be gone soon. Too white, too far in the past. Point in fact American History itself up till 1965 needs to be eradicated and altered to fit the new political and demographic realities. I’m sure there will be some new crazy colors coming out as well. Green is so drab.
I expect you’ll be able to wipe your ass with these new bills for what they will be worth, ha! Just sayin’. Go into the basement and dig out the old Monopoly board game from the 1960s, grab yourself a fistful of bills out of it, same goddam thing.
The market is up nearly 300 points last time I looked. Why? As far as I can tell no reason except Yellin made a few noises again about interest rates, which seem to be the main driver of US economic news. What a system!
brh
What this Slate Nitwit doesnt get is he can move out of the USA if he has guilt over stolen land.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/03/andrew_jackson_should_be_kicked_off_the_20_bill_he_ordered_a_genocide.html
Yes, JHK hits the nail on the head:
“Nothing is more hazardous than undermining people’s trust in their money.”
You might call it Kunstler’s Law of Trust and Money, and a close cousin of Gresham’s Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law)
This is why my own thesis is that trust in your friends, family, neighbors is at a premium, even higher than money.
When government makes people distrust money, that’s bad, but when the government makes people distrust your friends/family/neighbors (shades of the Stasi and East Germany), life gets even more miserable.
At some point, with regards to money, Gresham’s Law *will* kick in, and when the dollar starts to look wobbly, look out below.
Invest in yourself, your family, your friends, your community.
The sad part about all of this is that there are people up the food chain who think they can outwit the laws of physics and finance.
Picture North America [now Canada & USA] over 500 years ago.
A profusion of clean air, water, and soil.
Trees, buffalo, deer, elk, fishes, meadows of herbs, forbes, and roots.
Non-industrial carrying capacity then: about 5 million souls.
Non-industrial carrying capacity now of this abused and run-down ecosystem: maybe 500k?
Those are a lot of good-byes.
Great points. We’ve got one helluva bottleneck on the horizon.
Finance is a mostly religious function. It does, however, have a small intersection with reality: if working correctly, it allocates resources.
Finance no longer works correctly, and it no longer allocates resources efficiently. We are left with an institution which is religious in nature, a state religion enforced by the state: i.e. you must pay taxes in currency.
Time to put finance on the pile of obsolete religions, before it instructs us all to a Jamestown suicide.
“Finance is a mostly religious function”
No, it is not. Religion, Ideology is the Third Priority, while Finances and Money are just the Forth Priority of the governance.
Finances and Money are just the most abstract representation of human economic activity, absolutely necessary to support proper level of labor separation and productivity.
Can’t agree.
Suppose you get an industrial loan. What changes? Does the workforce change? Do resources increase? Does the food supply increase? No; the only change is allocation of these resources to those under your direction.
Just like seeking the bishop’s blessing for a new church.
Oh, I know that economic orthodoxy does not care to be likened to the religious, but there it is. Doesn’t matter how you dress it up, it’s still religious. Even if they do (pretend to) use the new language of Martingales and equations.
If you get industrial loan, that means that the National resources have been re-allocated to provide you with necessary means to build, say a palm-nut processing facility, so that the palm nuts that went to waste in the past now will be able to enter meat or milk production cycle as animal feed.
Objectively, that will lead in the future to increase in food production and you will be able to repay what you borrowed and have a nice working feed factory as your personal bonus.
Fincaln, the dynamic you explain presupposes that finance, and the loans provided by such, have not been terminally corrupted. Problem is, they have been terminally corrupted</i?! How do we uncorrupt them?
Yes, that’s what is taught in high school and reality TV, and that is the extent of the intersection of religion and reality. As I noted above.
But look a little deeper. The same outcome, the creation of a palm nut processing facility, could have been accomplished in any number of ways. Finance, at its best, allocates. Nothing more. That is essentially, a religious function – it contributes nothing to the process, other than a blessing.
As Petraeus said, after America comes North America. Then the great regions will be united to create a world government under the rule of the financial elite, with one of the Rothschilds as the de facto President, Chairman, or King.
Janos, you left out “High Priest” and “God-Emperor”. How could you?
I think Janos wanted to include Fuehrer (or Czar) and Sauerkraut meant to complete his admonition with Pharoah.
I suspect no personage less than the one-and-only ANTICHRIST hisself will get the job.
Yes, the God Emperor of Dune. The worm that dieth not.
The negligence of Economics, that artifice of hubris and cloak over violence, has been demonstrated in our failure to account for and remedy the social and environmental detriments of business at every level — governmental, corporate, and individual. The ultimate bill is coming due, however. The affairs of humankind, which have been so UNkind to the planet, will be dwarfed and buried by the onslaught of Nature’s wrath. It won’t happen all at once, but it will accelerate as we impotent humans become inundated like boiling frogs.
“Fincaln, the dynamic you explain presupposes that finance, and the loans provided by such, have not been terminally corrupted. Problem is, they have been terminally corrupted</i?! How do we uncorrupt them?" — AKlein
Sorry, I am not a specialist in prosecution of financial crimes. You should direct your question to Bill Black, who used to refer hundreds of bankers during S&L crises to prosecutors. But, obviously, Americans have a pretty good experience in combating financial crimes when they want to.
Alas, that was before the doctrine of TBTF. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Fincaln.
Don’t tell that to people who actually live in Kansas.
Besides, what have changed? The level of informational awareness. That’s what we are here for.
Is there anyone out there who believes that the government should borrow its own money AND pay interest on said money?
Really? So you believe that governments should pay back borrowed money with interest that a private bank creates out of thin air with every so-called “loan” to government. If so, why aren’t you in the bankin’ business? cause that’s a sweet deal – make up money out of thin air and get it back WITH interest!!!
Sure would be great to have someone, anyone, with even a modicum of knowledge of how our monetary works write essays on it. Seems to me the only goal of all this mis-information about monetary matters is to prejudice the populace against governments spending its own money rather than “borrowing” it.
As I’ve said all along, we need a sensible monetary system, BUT, we can’t get there from here.
Such interest payments are actually transfer payments, since they are not made in consequence to the creation of new real wealth. And that’s the heart of the problem. Out current “economy” is a great distortion to rob from producers to the advantage of the elite.
Money is just a political fiction, Governments should never “borrow money” – that is a debt-based monetary system, but they should “lend money” – mostly for productive projects with expanded production cycles – that is a credit-based monetary system.
Additional wealth is actually being created by efforts of people working on the project, the more educated people are the more additional wealth they could create.
Banks and bankers are also crucial to provide the necessary level of financial discipline – basically to watch that managers do not waste money (or resources, if you will) on stupid things and don’t run the project into the ground. (not to say of steeling the money).
They need to be paid as well – so they should be charging a bit more on the money than the FED does.
Another way to look at money:
Of Heat Sinks & Debt Sinks: A Thermodynamic View of Money
Oh, Jeezus. Economics 101. That’s how it is supposed to work – but doesn’t. As soon as the the bankers and their governmental co-conspirators figured out how to game the system, they put an end to a rational system. Check your glasses. Do they have a slightly reddish tint to them?
Well, it does sometimes – just look at the FDR New Deal or Canadian after-war development. The problem is that we have a cast of friggin parasites who are convinced of finite “Earth carrying Capacity” (what about expanding to outer space?), so instead of injecting “money” into the system, they keep sucking it out.
Their best ally is stupidity and ignorance of most folks in financial and monetary matters.
I strongly agree with you on this point.
The idea of expanding into outer space (unless a really massively cheap energy supply comes into play, i.e., cheap fusion (cold or hot)), as much as many of would like, is not going to happen.
One of the best analysis is here:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/
Even if the massively cheap energy supply came into being, you’d get correspondingly large heat pollution, which would also be quite a problem.
John Michael Greer has done some good analysis on this as well, http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/08/elegy-for-age-of-space.html
We live on a finite planet, and all the hopium in the world won’t change that.
“cast of friggin parasites who are convinced of finite “Earth carrying Capacity”
I think you’re wrong here too. Do you really think that the oceans are producing as much fish as they did in the past? Cabot “went fishing” by lowering a bucket over the side of his ship. That is one of very many examples of resource depletion at the same time as population growth. Now subtract fossil fuels, and what do you expect to happen?
“Finite” ! Really? Just do the arithmetic. Just divide the surface area by the minimum area required per person. I think that you will find it is finite. Add in the habitable area in the galaxy if you want. It’s still finite.
Given the finite nature of the real world, it is a matter of rates of use and rates of availability. For example, the rate of population growth must be exceeded by the rate of emigration for population to stabilize before it exceeds carrying capacity, to stay with your suggestion.
A sovereign government’s currency is issued by the sovereign government itself, unless it stupidly and for no good reason whatsoever consigns that right to an “independent” central bank, so why would any rational currency issuer pay interest on it’s own money? We didn’t before The Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
Just don’t fall into a simplicity trap by thinking that “Independent” FED makes its money by simply charging US Treasury percentage for the privilege of printing their own sovereign currency: that is not how it works
According to law, the FED must pay a 100% Federal Income tax, after deducting their relative small operational expenses, back to US Treasury.
The FED owners make their money by setting up the FED lending policy – who, in what amounts, under what conditions gets the money first
Remember this is a country ran by an elite whose main topic of late is who bakes what kind of cake for who. This issue is so important that one of the oligarchs himself so detached from reality that his company came out with an over priced watch which competes with his companies sole breadwinning product a phone decided to weigh in and instruct us on the new morality.
Anyway the collapse is not in the future it is in our past. I’ll offer the year 2008 when America joined the third world, the fiction of capitalism collapsed, an election of a delusional narcissist for president, and anything since then is just a looting spree to grab loot and territory.
You bet, FED pissed off a lot of wrong people around the world by setting on “easy money” (but not for everybody) spree.
A couple hundred years of abundant fossil fuels have forestalled the overpopulation apocalypse and ushered in a period of staggering advances in science, technology, and the arts.
In all probability, the “golden age of mankind” of the fossil fuel era will come to a screeching halt when the liquid gold runs out. But people who keep expecting this to come any day now- don’t forget this is a cycle that has proceeded over a time span of several centuries, so keep in mind that just because you can see it coming doesn’t mean it’s going to be tomorrow.
These Staggering advances in science, technology and the arts have been happening long before fossil fuels were widely used, viz. the Renaissance, Baroque et al.
On top of that, you are making the egregious mistake of not seeing that the very technology made possible by fossil fuels….will make it possible to overcome dependency on fossil fuels, viz. alternative energy, hydropower et al.
Just because you don’t see the age of energy ascent doesn’t mean it’s not already ushered itself in.
It’s here. wpa_ccc, who like myself is a paid government employee whose sole task is to quash dissent on this blog, has stated that the DR or Costa Rica (I’ll have to check our talking points script) used windpower or solar (Note: check GovSpeak file) to 100% power itself the first 3 months of 2015.
First they laughed…
fodase
“On top of that, you are making the egregious mistake of not seeing that the very technology made possible by fossil fuels….will make it possible to overcome dependency on fossil fuels, viz. alternative energy, hydropower et al.”
Don’t agree. I think that if you do an energy audit, you will find that fossil fuels are required to make up the difference.
Technology rides on top of energy, and not vice versa. Technology can thus NEVER replace basic lack of energy. Burn that one into your neural circuits.
I just don’t know how we’d make it, including the Preppers, without mechanical cultivation of the soil. Some here make it seem easy.
If you have farmed, even on a small scale as I’ve done, you know that in some parts of the country the weeds get the best of you as soon as you turn your back.
I guess we’d have to add grazing animals but I don’t want to think about plowing or harrowing with a brace of mules. My father-in-law did that in his youth. I’ve walked behind a horse-drawn plow exactly once; It is NOT easy work. Good to see the John Deere in the barn after that.
JHK is right: you’d have to bring back serfs or, worse, slaves. Forget about using fatty to help; that’s a give. Yet the Millennials I know would not be good laborers. They’d perish. Every summer I work farm helpers half my age into the ground, while I’m only “regular tired,” and I’m no ironman.
Hey Joe, you said “Some here make it seem easy.”
Do you mean that they make it seem easy, as in, they are really good at it so it appears to be easily done; or do you mean that they make it (farming without mechanical cultivation) SOUND easy, as in they talk like it’s easy where it’s really not?
I’m going with the latter. Few people realize the massive amount of labor required to raise and ‘put by’ a winter’s supply of food, not to mention the vast amount of know-how. Hard friggin’ work, especially in a brittle climate like Colorado. And that’s if your crops don’t get frozen or hailed out…
I’m also with you on the state of the younger generation where hard work is involved — many have never even had to clean their own bedroom, let alone put in a good day double-digging or broad-forking garden beds. Many who think they want to volunteer at my farm are good for maybe two or three hours before they announce that ‘this just isn’t their kind of thing’ and make haste for the nearest Starbucks.
I worry for them and their future in the Long Emergency.
Don’t agree. I think that if you do an energy audit, you will find that fossil fuels are required to make up the difference.
May be true at present. Extrapolate in the future the fact that Spain typically gets 40% of its daily electrical power from wind, Denmark gets 25% and Germany gets some percent which I forget.
All three countries, at times, see solar and wind supply 60-100+ percent of their electricity. The “+” is because these energy sources sometimes supply in excess of 100%, at which time the excess is exported.
Go back 10 years in time and these %’s are near zero. That’s why I said extrapolate.
It’s a question of time before we reach a tipping point – if we haven’t already, look at the oil glut – where fossil fuel usage begins to wane due to abundant supply from renewables.
Aeolic energy currently supplying about 30% of Spain’s electricity requirement as we speak….
Perhaps deterred by wind energy’s success in the U.S., where last year [2012] wind energy accounted for 42% of all new power plant capacity and provided 10% or more of the electricity in nine states…
Those are startling statistics.
We are in the age of energy ascent.
fodase
Yes, but major new infrastructure is required for energy on that scale. The grid is fragile from carrying as much energy as it already does. Do you see any political appetite for $1T in electrical infrastructure? I wish that I could.
Foodace we had a place in Spain. Electricity is intermittent and not too reliable, and would quit any time. Not that people care much, sitting around the sidewalk cafes in San Sebastian all day in the sun. Main worry, Do we have ice?
Sounds good, but for real work to get done migrants are brought in from Africa and Central and South America. I’m talking about farm work, which native Spaniards consider themselves too precious to do.
brh
Utter hogwash, but thanks for playing.
The United States, specifically the Western States, are facing a problem with no solution: Water shortage, especially in my current state of residence, California.
No one in the media or even here talks about WATER … a resource far more precious than oil. Even back East there are cities with serious problems like Miami and Atlanta. Your shale oil boom is occurring with an ENORMOUS expenditure of water.
We keep hearing about shale oil vis-a-vis prices of oil and the only environmental factors mentioned are local poisonings of the water table. Our suicidal culture is investing in a technology that is providing a short term “boom” in oil at the expense of greatly worsening our depleting aquifers.
Soon, we’ll have to do another Faustian Bargain i.e., wasting billions and billions of cubic feet of methane in order to fund last-ditch desalination plants on BOTH coasts in California and the US Southeast.
Finally, while the Mountain West is an obvious target for discussing water shortages, California is in far, far worse shape than its desert neighbor Arizona. The Phoenix metro area actually gets much of its water from the Salt and Verde rivers and while their water picture isn’t pretty either, it’s positively brilliant compared to CA, NV, and NM.
Dante was very perspicacious in observing that there isn’t one circle of Hell but nine.
Yes. Well said.
Therian,
Your post reminded me of this link which I came across on FB:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0HL4L6Pa-4
Interesting video, Buck. Thank you. It underscores what I said with the added kicker that fracking not only USES untold billions of gallons of precious water (in a semi-arid region) but it creates untold billions of poison water as a byproduct.
Water shortages, not oil shortages, are eventually going to cause a massive depopulation of the Western USA over many decades. However, you add up the populations of CO, NM, NV, UT, AZ, MT, WY, SD, ND, and ID and you scarcely have HALF of the total population of CA.
It almost seems karmic to me that California is facing the nation’s most horrific water problems given the greed and stupid balkanization of the entire state these days.
A major upheaval is coming this summer when SCOTUS issues their decision on same-sex marriage. I think it will pave the way for Congress to pass the Natural Marriage and Reproduction Act that ends same-sex marriage in every state and preserves natural reproduction rights. It would ban creating a person except by joining a sperm of a man and an egg of a woman.
I doubt it that Mr Howard. Right now in the US we’re at Peak Homo. This will last until times get hard and it will dawn on people that getting down on all fours in some filthy bus station lavoratory is not the apex of human endeavors. After that it will begin to fade.
brh
uh! garbled 1st sentence
We have an energy source, LFTR, that is abundant, has one million times the energy density of fossil fuels, is cheap, uses proven technology, is safe, is efficient, is modular but will scale, is carbon free, is renewable, provides its own energy for plant operation, and produces clean energy.
Every one of the above claims is backed by hard data from years of LFTR operation. No laws of physics are violated to produce LFTR energy.
Whether CFN finally decides the “real shortage” is of oil or water, or of both, we already have a solution that can provide energy for both electricity and desalination. And, to repeat, it scales.
Pretentious as always. Why don’t you just tell people that a LFTR is a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor and NO there is no longitudinal hard data that LFTR technology is either cheap or easy to produce. Russia and India never got past having a small, experimental LFTR phase and have no announced plans to produce LFTRs on a massive scale.
You need conventional Plutonium reactors to create the “seed” Uranium 233 needed to start a LFTR. LFTRs have unique design issues which I won’t bore this blog with but suffice it to say that they need a large amount of fissile U-233 just to get going and there is an unusually large neutron loss (compared to conventional nukes) requiring “re-seeding” at unpredictable intervals.
Once again, you’re showing off to no good end. First you don’t even explain the LFTR acronym and then you don’t address the design and operational issues at all. CFN’s reliable dilettante … you can count on him to try to wow you with almost no knowledge at all.
The 2016 election won’t be a “convulsion point”. They will be another corporate-crony-funded billion-dollar bore just like 2012, 2008, etc. Yet another BS-fest. I get less interested in politics each year. Another year of Hillary “the digital shredder”, Mike Huckster-abee, “Clown Prince” Cruz, Jeb “The Wetback’s best friend” Bush. And who will our affirmative action commander-in-chief campaign for? Who cares?
“They will be another corporate-crony-funded billion-dollar bore just like 2012, 2008, etc. Yet another BS-fest.”
Somehow I get a feeling you are wrong on that, but let’s live and see.
I agree. Teddy Cruz could make things moderately interesting, but his main purpose will always be to make the lunatic fringe safe for the mainstream candidates. He’ll always be a mere water carrier, albeit a well compensated one at that.
“The idea of expanding into outer space (unless a really massively cheap energy supply comes into play, i.e., cheap fusion (cold or hot)), as much as many of would like, is not going to happen.” — peakfuture
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,” — JFK
…because Russia might beat us to the punch like they already had with human space flight?
What I got out of this weeks post is America needs an icon to follow and show them and the UN the way to go. Hillary fell short of taking her tax paid tour of the world as secretary of state seriously. There is already a lot of negative buzz flyingaround her head which leads me to believe she is being set up for failure like her buddy obama.
Should there even be a sec of state office? What does a fed govt look like when everything is being handled locally? One guy in a suit sitting in front of a webcam? That way if you are among the one percentwho still have internet, senate and house, you can participate on that level.
Who needs a cabinet when you can just appoint ‘Czars’ to do your bidding? These “Czars’ do not need Senate approval, and they are loyal soley to you, not the constitution. I have in mind Maoists like Van Jones. He would carry out any order received from The Pharaoh no questions asked.
brh
We could go to the moon, or even Mars, or even the moons of Jupiter if we wanted to, but the possibility of any reasonable sized settlement is close to zero. Space is unforgiving.
We spent a great deal of treasure getting to the moon, and we did do some cool stuff, yes. If we get anti-gravity, or other wild technologies (a space elevator, making the cost per pound to orbit reasonable) might, just might do it – but that seems like an incredible longshot.
JFK’s moonshot was done at a time (1962) when we had LOTS of extra resources, and we weren’t facing the resource limits we are now. Before he made the speech, JFK also asked his technical advisors if it could be done, and they at least gave it a good chance.
I would have loved to see us go the moon again. I would have loved to see a totally reusable space shuttle. I would have loved to see the DC-X evolve into a true SSTO. I’d love a moonbase, and a Zubrin-style attempt at going to Mars.
Unless those colonies are totally self-sustaining, putting a few hundred folks on Mars or a few thousand on the Moon might not be a good use of our resources.
John Michael Greer and Tom Murphy make some excellent points regarding all this; FincaInTheMountains, do you think we should commit to space, even given the strong case made against it?
This, from Tom Murphy, sums it up well:
“But I want to caution against harboring illusions of space as the answer to our collision course of growth on a finite planet. We live at a special time. We have enjoyed spending our inheritance of fossil fuels, and are feeling rather heady about our technological prowess. For many generations now, we have ridden an exponential growth track, conditioning ourselves to believe that our upward trajectory is an eternal constant of our existence. We’ll see. When we cross to the down-slope of fossil fuel availability—beginning with oil—we’ll see how timeless the growth phase seems to be, and whether we can afford a continued presence in space. We should be mature enough to admit that we have no context in which to evaluate how successfully the human race will navigate this unprecedented transition.”
Thankfully, the idea of humans colonizing space is so preposterous that even the liberals/conservatives can’t imagine it.
In the land of I’ve-got-mine-you-get-yours, avarice is respected as the highest aspiration – K-Dog
==============
i.e. Avarice, for lack of a better word, is good – G.G.
Sorry Jim – the 2016 election will not be the “convulsion point” by any means. A natural emesis point (again) certainly but nothing other than a well funded dog-and-pony show will ensue.
Yet you are absolutely correct that America will be dragged kicking and screaming to the realization of what needs to be done — but (I am not sanguine about our prospects) it shall be too late.
After living the fabulous and famous life of the world’s undisputed richest nation for more than a century, like a real bad turn at the craps table, everything is rolling on the next throw of the dice and man are they ever loaded.
Due to our (and the world’s) dependence on electricity and cybernetics, the Long Emergency (which you wonderfully describe) is going to be upon us fast. Like a lightning strike.
I agree with JK here. But I’d like to have some figures, some stats to illustrate just how far along we have come towards the Wile – e- Coyote moment?
IMO, we began our descent in 1971, the point at which we went into overshoot , not to mention into credit money.
I’ve seen Nate Hagens make some remarks about the arithmetic, but how it locks in synergistically is probably beyond us.
For example how many more doublings in the economy can we fit into our planet? At 3.5% we will double the grand total of all economic activity going back 10,000 years, and double again in another 20 years.
This should be absurd but few notice and the PTB aren’t saying.
Politicians look to the next election and spout soothing rubbish. The reckoning will therefor be brutal, because no one is planning for such a future in decline.
Great! Not!
“America will be dragged kicking and screaming to the realization of what it needs to do. The 2016 election will be the convulsion point.”
Jim, I thought the same with Oboob the first time the dolt ran. Here is a guy who really gets that we need to decide…no kidding..what to keep and what must go, I thought. I voted for “change” but what I got was a black GW extension of the same lies, fraud and military nation invasion de jour. I doubt 2016 will be any different.
Why did you think that? Look inside and face the dark truth: it was because he was Black. Worship of Blacks is one of the main pop religious cults in America.
So I’m guessing all the recent murders by white police are just them showing their affection? Obama’s Country Club Black. Just black enough to qualify for the label and set all the hard-right racists out there heads spinning, but white as the driven snow in all that he says, does, believes, and associates with. What they called a Big House Ni**er back in the day.
So who would be your idea of a good Black President? Marion Bradley? Eldridge Cleaver? Julius Malema? Louis Farakahn? In short, some African War Chief who rally the Black Youth and send them into the suburbs raping and murdering.
Remember, things are what they are because they aren’t something else. A Country that tries to be all things to all people will end up being nothing to anyone. A universal nation is a contradiction of terms. America is White or it is nothing. Needless to say, you and your cohort choose the nothing, nihilists that you are. Your rainbow nation was always made up of garish day glo colors. Now more and more it’s just a dirty shade of mauve.
Why focus on a black president? What does that even mean?
How about a president of whatever color that repudiates imperialism for start? One that TOTALLY repudiates American Exceptionalism in all it’s forms.
It’s not about color at all my man, it’s about coming clean and becoming human again.
Now of course, I realize that’s never going to happen, because it means renouncing white upper crust privilege, but let’s at least be honest enough to recognize it for what it is.
And you’d be well-advised to stop the childish name calling Janos. It really doesn’t become even you.
America ceased to build and create something real in the world with the end of “Marshall Plan” in the 60s of the last century. Since then, now for fifty years, the United States only milked the world economy. Ensuring the right to plunder through the financial system they created through IMF, through the full extension of the dollar zone, and, through its overwhelming military superiority. With its own GDP of less than 20% of the world, America has managed to achieve 81% (in 2013) of the dollar’s share in international payments.
And then suddenly China, with its Asian Development Bank in Asia Pacific really wants something to build. Roads. Bridges. Power plants. And the dollar will be dramatically washed out of the region, where is now concentrated, if considered together with Russia, almost a third of the entire global economy.
Specialists of the Asian Development Bank estimated that only to maintain the current pace of economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region in the development of their infrastructure up to 2020 must be invested at least $290 billion. A common need “for all”, including, primarily, the communications industry, coastal infrastructure of ports, power generation and road networks of all kinds is an astronomical figure of 8 trillion dollars. And those 8 trillion dollars will not be nominated in American currency.
So panic in Washington is not surprising. And this is panic. Of all the partners / allies to participate in the Chinese project refused Japan alone. Even British ignored American “cousins”!
Then the Obama administration has put forward a different argument. China should build its Asian Development Bank only in partnership “with development institutions such as the World Bank.”
Only China is silent. At all. Absolutely not responded to any of the American “proposals”. And no one had. Everybody’s busy.
http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1910461.html
I have a feeling that something big is going to happen before May 9 this year. No, it is not going to be a military confrontation between NATO and Russia in Europe. NATO’s conventional forces are simply not even a close match to Russian military might. And US and Russia are still locked up in MAD (mutually assured destruction) against the use of strategic nuclear weapons.
Most likely there is going to be a desperate attempt at Washington-sponsored coup in Moscow, followed by likely defeat, followed by FSB purges of Russian “colonial/offshore” elites.
After that, things will accelerate in hyperbolic fashion everywhere.
PETITION: THE UNITED STATES & EUROPE MUST JOIN THE BRICS
UPDATED—March 27, 2015 · As leading European nations continue to add their name to the list of founding members of the Chinese-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the growing international campaign for the United States to follow suit and join the BRICS, as called for in the Schiller Institute petition, has become more timely and urgent than ever.
Now totaling over 300 names, the list of endorsements includes other prominent politicians, businessman, academics, scientists and artists from over twenty countries, who have all publicly endorsed this resolution calling on the U.S. and Europe to collaborate with the BRICS nations in the interest of peace and economic development. The resolution, sponsored by the Schiller Institute, was issued in response to the offer of China’s President Xi Jinping for the United States to join China’s New Silk Road development program and abandon the policies of confrontation with particularly Russia and China.
https://larouchepac.com/brics-petition
I, personally, don’t trust the old fox too much. But he’s got a point here.
Diese verdammten A-Merde-Rikaner
Hollande furiously accuses the US of the German aircraft Airbus A320 D-AIPX accident, claiming that America wants to write off the blame on France and Europe, thus taking revenge for the fact that they refuse further confrontation with Russia.
“Those damned-Merde Rikaner done it again! Having already in 1988 on their conscience Iran Air Flight 655, and now the plane of our partners from Germany! You want to push us, the French, and blackmailing us to increased pressure on Russia. Merde Rikaner! ”
Explosive reaction of Hollande was echoed from Washington. President Obama spoke of “the great disappointment and profound breach of trust”. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke of “barbaric language of the 19th century.” A government adviser Henry Kissinger warned Hollande that such rhetoric can quickly lead to “regime change in la belle France.”
Of course, all that is just a humor story in European magazine.
Hollande did not say it, there was no such response from Obama or his Secretary of State, or from old Henry.
But in the context of what is happening is a hint that the next such an attack in France will not be commented by humor magazine, but by more responsible person. Let me remind you that this is not the first attack on the part of American hawks on French: Former IMF chief Strauss Kahn, the head of Total Christophe de Margerie.
Yes, and “regime change ” in France not far off – Hollande totally lost local elections.
Sorry, the damned server don’t take the link to the German publication. Just google the story.
I’m watching Gov Pence from Indiana on CNBC. I say watching because I have the sound muted. I can no longer tolerate listening beyond 10 minutes to this politician, brought in from central casting – ridiculously handsome, perfectly trim white hair, etc – explain the unexplainable…how he can at one and the same time not permit a business to withhold their product or services to a would-be customer while defending the religious beliefs of that business owner that it would be wrong to support the would-be customer’s sinful acts…in this case gay marriage.
Pence has the pursing of lips, to convey his concern and disappointment at the general public’s misunderstanding of the Indiana legislation in question, down to a science. Obama is a master of pursed lips as well.
Now listen and watch such masters as Enoch Powell, Oswald Mosley, Louis Farakahn or Adolf Hitler and you will see the difference.
Did you read that Michio Kushi died?
He was predeceased by his wife and child.
No. When? How old was he?
Relax and enjoy the moment. He miscalculated and now is paying for it very publicly and like any good pol, just keeps digging himself in deeper. This could very well stain the entire GOP for 2016, although that just gives the HillaBeast a boost. Fortunately, I have confidence she’ll screw up very publicly sometime during the process as well.
Peculiarities of modern warfare
In the United States on March 25 was scheduled release of information about the volume of commercial oil reserves in the country. They rose by 8.2 million barrels, compared to 5.6 expected and reached almost 664 million barrels of oil, more than ever in history. This information needed to derail the price of oil. It was expected that it will go all the way down to $50. However, by the end of the day price, on the contrary, increased by 4% and tried to break through the barrier of 60 dollars. Oil prices rose when Houthi in Yemen, began advancing on all fronts soon after the announcement of stock data.
It was March 25 when they took the airport and entered the country’s largest city of Aden, as well as overnight took control of the oil fields, previously dominated by “al-Qaeda”.
By the way, according to informed sources, even before the onset of the Shiite rebels in unregulated by SEC electronic platforms for derivatives trading – a “black pools”, many contracts were sold betting on price increase rather than its decline that was expected after the announcement of record holdings. Someone knew everything in advance. And it was not the Iranians but people from the West, deeply knowledgeable about the features of trading platforms, algorithmic trading, and much more.
In response to the attack by Shiite rebels and standing behind their backs Iran KSIR officers Gulf monarchies and their allies acted quickly and consistently. On the night of 25 March 26 coalition aircraft bombed the territory controlled by the Huthis, including the nation’s capital – Sana’a. It was announced that, if necessary, in Yemen will be sent land forces of the coalition.
And it is important that the readiness to send their troops was declared by Pakistan – a loyal ally of China. It is understandable; China does not need the rise in oil prices. It is more interested in their decline. As a result, in contrast to the hopes of the Iranians and joined with them speculators – the “bulls” – the price of oil on March 27 ceased to grow and gradually moved down to $56 per barrel.
F-16s and “air – ground” rocket played a role in the Arabian battle the global financial and energy war.
http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1910455.html
Art Berman, Shale Oil Plays Have Years, Not Decades of Reserves
The “reserves” the shale players are REALLY running out of is WATER. With half of the West in conditions ranging from severe to exceptional drought, this wasting of earth’s most precious resource outside of plants to make oxygen is being pissed away creating an artificial surplus that has a very limited lifespan ahead of it.
It never ceases to amaze me how the United States constantly “cures” problems by creating far worse ones a mere handful of years down the road. Same with the Fed’s QE programs which have spawned a world wide wealth concentration never before seen. We’ve spread our diseased, unsustainable models to the rest of the world which is adopting the “if things like good now, it must be working” mentality so endemic here in the States.
Economic collapse is no longer avoidable because China is a vast oversupplier of goods that fewer and fewer people can afford, even at Walmart prices. Moreover, with Workforce Participation at 38 year lows, the tax bases in cities, counties, states, and the Federal government are shrinking even with relatively stagnant wages.
Joe Stiglitz astutely observed that we’ve also lost all social mobility. No matter how astute you are, your chances of rising up to a higher class are slim and none. And no matter how much of a screw-up you are, if you’re a trust fund baby and daddy’s got connections, they’ll find a way to keep you in “the club”.
I’m glad I’m 63. I got to live during about four and a half good decades. Kids who are under 30 now never saw “good” and their going to be around to witness horror.
You’re right about water, but both are vital for our survival now. We’re polluting and wasting one in search of the other. In other words, we’re already in desperation mode to maintain the status quo. The video (made by an industry insider) says we’ve got ten years until the shale oil and fracking plays are completely tapped, but they’ll be exposed as boondoggles and collapse financially long before that, at which time another Wall St bubble will pop and the horrors of 2008 will be revisited once again. This one could be terminal, as our “energy independence” will be exposed as yet another fraud and the true magnitude of our predicament is made obvious to all.
Whitey gets pounded, and pounded good.
www. stltoday.com beating video
This is why us ordinary plebes are a little fearful of public transportation.
The elites love transport and encourage you to use it. They themselves wouldn’t get near it, however, and ride around in Beamers and Benzes, and sometimes even helicopters.
This poor guy on the St Louis commuter train didn’t have the answers, or the correct ones anyway.
brh
Public transport is good as long as you’re armed.
Has a certain sense of poetic justice to it though, doesn’t it? The poorest among us (especially blacks) wouldn’t even think of strolling around some high ended gated community or downtown financial district without being accosted by the local Nazi stormtroopers. Go on their turf, the long neglected subway and bus lines of most major cities and you see mirror image behavior. Local warlords protecting their turf. Is it right? Of course not. Is it to be expected? Absolutely.
DA, that’s a different take on the situation, one that never occurred to me.
That’s why I like this site!
brh
Thanks. Likewise. I relate it to a scene out of the 80’s rather trashy sci-fi movie Escape From New York. The cops and the establishment have their protection zones, the criminal underclass and the have nots have theirs.
He’s obviously a good Lib in that he didn’t fight back, then again, when interviewed by the press afterward, he didn’t blame himself or his ancestors for the assault. I’d say he has a ways to go yet.
Three months in a Reeducation Camp is recommended for this Comrade.
brh
There is much discussion on this guy and his not fighting back.
Check ‘SBPDL’.
Also over there is a link to an Oakland guy w a bike and a knife.
I posted the clip online and was promptly banned from a liberal group.
Liberals are indeed every bit as close-minded as their conservative counterparts. I’m running out of places to comment these days because of it.
DA, where do you post besides here?
I’ve given up mostly. Tired of fighting with people online when the arguments don’t actually solve anything anyway. Besides, I’m old and opinionated, but starting to realize that not only don’t I know as much as I think I do (don’t we all?), but that the knowledge of my generation (I’m in my late 50s), is already becoming irrelevant/obsolete to the world at hand.
I REALLY like Gail Tverberg’s blog Our Finite World, although I havn’t commented there for several weeks and use another name. LOTS of really good and far-ranging discussions in the comments section. Gail is truly an “honest broker” if there ever was one. A trained and practicing actuary who first looked into and then gradually became “obsessed” with the peak oil phenomenon, she’s now a leading voice in documenting and predicting the unfolding collapse we’re experiencing.
I also read and comment over at Sandy Krolick’s blog kulturCritic quite a lot. Please note that Sandy’s an American ex-pat currently living in Siberia, so if you don’t like Russia and/or Russians, please don’t go there and raise a ruckus, especially on my account. It’s a low key blog that doesn’t try to be more than it is, so please respect that.
That said, here’s a few links to my own little bit of fictitious blogging infamy thanks to Sandy:
Walk Hard I
Walk Hard II
Amateurish, I know, but what the hell. Never saw a dollar from it, nor did I expect to, and IT WAS FUN to boot!
Cheers!
Looks like the link to ‘Walk Hard I’ isn’t working.
Try this:
https://kulturcritic.wordpress.com/posts/walk-hard-into-your-corporate-future/
Thanks, DA (Disaffected),
That’s some bigtime fun, there! 😉
Although we’re going ‘somewhat’ fictional, I’ve got to quibble with getting a constitutional amendment to allow unending emperor status to Obama. (Ain’t gonna happen, period. There would have to be a *nationwide* coup in all the legislatures. Improbable doesn’t even cover it.)
In the comments, it seems some have forgotten their Orlov who witnessed what happens with formerly-gov’t.-sanctioned goons. Yes Virginia, they form their own gangs to take what they want by main force with none to stop them. There’s gonna be a shitload of “reaving” going on.
Enjoyed the tete-a-tete. (Hopefully the comments are moderated to keep the cornucopian delusionists and Hitler-huggers at bay; that tends to be more than disruptive to germane postings.)
Bravo for resurrecting the word “reaving”. It brings back reading Conan stories as a lad. And the memories of another life, when we were both reavers on the Spanish Main.
Wow. No new posts since this one by Janos on 4/2. Amazing.
This is a test. Response to my 11:40 post. Posting time is 12:17.
Love your writing, JHK. But I can not find the patience to try to follow this discussion thread anymore.
Sheesh Prog; we get it already: ” [you] can not find the patience to try to follow this discussion thread anymore.”
Every week you drop in to remind everyone of your displeasure almost to instead remind us that you’re still lurking.
Buck Stud: “Sheesh Prog; we get it already…”
Buck Stud, I admire P4W’s ability to get it together enough to post once a week, to remind us how he doesn’t like the software JHK uses… given the amount of pain P4W must be suffering… about the level of legal immigration happening. He doesn’t recognize his country anymore and probably is suffering PTSD, where T is minority-population-level-induced trauma. I feel compassion for P4W… since he is suffering needlessly.
Anyone with a lick of sense must wonder why we’re importing people from third world shitholes over here. Dealing with Indians and Chinese on the endless “support hotlines” now in existence with US phone numbers is a kind of reminder that the US is now BECOMING a shithole just like the places where these people come from. Our local post office has been taken over by Filipinos and good luck when you move and rely on accurate mail forwarding.
Our corporations are violating the public trust that had to be obeyed from their inception in America up to about 1975 or so. Original US corporations were the public’s bitch and violations of trust would result in jail time and huge fines and paybacks to victimized customers and/or closure of said corporation. Now, we are corporations’ bitches.
And they luuuuuuuv the Rainbow Coalition that works for them because those people have no problems with the low-wage, squalid, mean, garment-district-like conditions employers set for them. You see, White people actually speak up when things don’t work right which means that they suckle hind teat. So the eventuality will be that our country is slowly becoming China, the Philippines, Vietnam, and India.
The Vietnamese we’re getting in San Jose are the ones that, like Mexicans, have very organized gangs. So, naturally, San Jose, once voted “safest big city in America”, has had 26 murders since January 1 and the people caught in the crossfire are white engineers and other Caucasians.
So big of you, WPA, to be egalitarian what with being a brutha and all.
We’re now flying little kids from Central America to live here.
Stop your whining, Therian. If things in California are as bad as you say, you can always leave or get involved with local politics and make change. Whining is not a solution. I’m a solutions-oriented guy.
You are like me, irascible. Of the three Buddhist poisons – ignorance, greed/lust, and hatred – we choose hatred. And the higher component of hatred is wisdom. Pretty good wages for one little sneer.
“it seems some have forgotten their Orlov who witnessed what happens with formerly-gov’t.-sanctioned goons.” — gullible 03
It seems some believe what they are told or what they read, without corroboration. Orlov was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and moved to the United States at the age of 12 (in 1974).
Orlov has lived longer in the USA than he did in the Soviet Union. Orlov was living in the USA in the 80s and 90s. What proof do we have that he was an “eyewitness” to the collapse in 1991? I don’t consider watching the Soviet Union collapse on TV, while living in the United States, to be “eyewitness”…
Besides, Orlov is a collapsitarian who believes the USA is in for a hard crash, which is not what JHK and most CFNers believe now, after watching QE and the events of the last decade of fracking and other deft can kicking. Most believe we are in for a long emergency of slow decline. Get with the program, Ozone!
Just what do you have against Hitler anyway? He too made trains run on time, build the autobahn, and drove out the Bankers with fire and steel. And attained a wonderful level of employment by so doing.
Just what do you have against Hitler anyway?
Janos, if you had been an ethnic, non-religious Jew in Vienna in 1938, as my father was, you would have a lot against Hitler. My father told me what happened. He did not invent the story. It could not have been invented. The Holocaust was real.
1938 was the year of Kristalnacht, and the year when Austria was annexed to Germany. My father and his immediate family were lucky enough to be able to escape to America. They were not bankers, They owned two printing plants, taken by the Nazi regime, for which they were compensated by the Austrian government after the war. They and many other productive citizens were driven out or killed by the Nazis. Others in my extended family were not as lucky as my father and my paternal grandparents. They ended their lives in places like Auschwitz and Dachau.
Antisemitism was a mistake that made Germany weak, not strong.
And what was the cause of Kristalnacht? An assassination by a Jew of a German diplomat. How could you leave that out “friend”? And what was the cause of the boycott of Jewish businesses? The boycott of Germany by the Jews who declared war on Germany years before the official outbreak of hostilities. But surely you know this. You know that the headline “Judea declares War” is there for anyone to see, just a google away.
Taking over is not assimilating. You are a 5th column here too, loyal to America only insofar as we serve the interests of Israel – a nation without borders but now with a headquarters in the Middle East.
About two weeks ago, Da advocated for White Genocide.
What would you have done?
Ha, as if you aren’t close minded too.
Therian: “You need conventional Plutonium reactors to create the “seed” Uranium 233 needed to start a LFTR.”
Therian, your objections are related to old design. New design is not dependent on conventional plutonium reactors. Next generation reactors will burn thorium as fuel. There’s a whole new class of reactors that are not evolutionary concepts relative to what is out there now–they’re really different.
The longitudinal research phase continues. Thorium reactors are being built. India is building a 500-MW prototype thorium reactor, expected to be in operation this year. LFTR MSR (Molten salt reactor) design has been or is now being done in the U.S., U.K.,Germany, Brazil, India, China, France, the Czech Republic, Japan, Russia, Canada, Israel and the Netherlands. Other efforts are under way in Canada, China, Germany, Israel, Japan, Norway, the UK, and the U.S.
The new LFTR reactors have many design advantages: built-in passive safety, proven, scaleable, site agile, manufacturable, carbonless, domestically sourced, potential export product, small footprint, transportable, manageable waste, abundant electrical power source, enrichment free, available fuel already, no mineral exploration needed, 1000+ year fuel reserve, can consume existing nuclear waste stockpiles, proliferation resistant, resilient to natural diasters, performance tunable/load following, on/off capable, low-cost fuel, waterless, higher electricity conversion efficiency, centralized quality control.
It is easy to fall back on old objections based on old design. It is harder to keep up with new technology that has already overcome old objections.
We salute you as we soar high above the energy-challenged Clusterfuck Nation.
wpa,
Why don’t you take that Thorium BS to any of the number of engineering sites on the web? Could it be because they’ve already told you that it has never worked, never will work (economically at least), and isn’t a solution to anything (other than hijacking board comment threads)? And on top of all that, the money’s (neither federal development money or just plain old investment capital) not there to develop it anyway. You’re always spouting off about the wonders of “free market” capitalism, so where’s all that smart money sitting on the sidelines in this case? In the corporate paper and derivatives markets, where good old sleight of hand still rules the day. Much better returns on that.
Even the few nations (like Russia and India) that dabbled in Thorium technology have basically shelved their initial grand plans because they’ve discovered that they’re way more expensive to build and maintain than conventional Plutonium reactors. Nuclear power has proven to be an enormous boondoggle because you spend billions building and outfitting one plant and then it has a total lifetime on the order of 30-40 years. How is this a “permanent” solution to anything? Thorium plants, like Plutonium nukes, also have a short total lifespan because all the substances used outside of the fissile material get coated with a vast array of salts and rot in a few decades.
I just read the Wikipedia page on LFTRs. It appears that only China is devoting any renminbi to them and their goal is to have a full-scale functioning LFTR … in TWENTY years. Hilarious.
I followed this stuff years ago by studying the American company Thorium Power, Ltd.. Now they’re known as Lightbridge and their stock is at $1.24 … an eleven year low. And the daily trading volume is about 40,000 shares. They have a $22M market cap which puts them squarely in Pink Sheet Land. Thus, the market has already spoken vis-a-vis the future of LFTRs. There is no future.
When even Wall St has given up on an idea you know it’s not worth a crap. They’ll financialize just about anything these days, so if there was a workable market in Thorium technology you know that damn well somebody would be hyping it.
It’s nice to see that we still have some posters who still take their jobs seriously and joyously take screeching turns away from JHK’s dire warnings and into the land of rainbow-farting unicorns. Lovely, just lovely.
Consider this historically proven assessment of such wonders:
“As the endgame approaches, those still nominally in charge of the collapsing empire resort to all sorts of desperate measures—all except one: they will refuse to ever consider the fact that their imperial superpower is at an end, and that they should change their ways accordingly. George Orwell once offered an excellent explanation for this phenomenon: as the imperial end-game approaches, it becomes a matter of imperial self-preservation to breed a special-purpose ruling class—one that is incapable of understanding that the end-game is approaching. Because, you see, if they had an inkling of what’s going on, they wouldn’t take their jobs seriously enough to keep the game going for as long as possible.” — D. Orlov
Ahhh, the fog has lifted; I feel better, don’t you?
(A pack-friendly ‘woof’ for the K-dog response on that piece.)
Oz, out of all the authors in the 20th century, it seems Orwell was the most prescient and had the deepest insight into the political nature of industrial civilization. A communist fellow traveller, he ended up running from communist death squads in Spain in 1937, as described in his beautiful ‘Homage to Catalonia’. Orwell remains supremely relevant today, almost 70 years after his early death from TB at age 47 in 1948.
Sad situation this morning in Hartford, 20 people burned out of their house in an arson fire, (people wrapped in blankets spilling out into in a grim urban dawn) nobody dead but everybody without a place to live. Already one arrest , guns hard to get now so to extract revenge for one ghetto slight or another you burn your enemies house down in the middle of the night with everybody sleeping. That’s the way it is now, and it seems to be getting worse all the time.
News yesterday the state, hundreds of millions in debt, plans to finance a public housing project in Norfolk, Ct, tucked away in the Berkshires, one of the last pretty NE villages, in order to ‘foster diversity thru out the state’. That doesn’t sound good, has the ring of doom about it.
Also, busway opened between New Britain and Hartford, 9 miles, $100 million per mile, almost a cool billion, from one burned out cinder of a city to another, a big project designed to fool people into thinking big things are happening (like Stalin’s White Sea Canal). Free fare for next 2 weeks, first day day ridership: 30 passengers.
I don’t know Jim, collapse is fearful, but can it be any worse than this?
How do you like it now, Gentlemen?
brh
Yes indeed! Collapse begins to take on local flavors here in the US. This is how it will unfold. Millions of individual tragedies, seemingly unrelated, but with an underlying unifying thread. First the Soviets and now US, as virulent late-stage capitalism consumes its host. It’s the philosophical and sociological cancer of our times. Greed is good? Greed is death.
You keep mentioning ‘Hartford’ and its ills.. I had thought of Connecticut as the land of millionaires.
So I was wrong or 30 years behind.
HF and BP and NH sound like Pretoria or Camden North.
Malthus,
Millionaires barricaded inside high walled estates along the gold coast and NW CT, essentially suburbs of NYC. They might as well be living on Mars. Alot of them are big Libs like Ned Lamont from Greenwich, grandson of the Billionaire Bolshevik, and noted backer and funder of progressive causes.
The real visible elite here are lefty Govt. employees, with their job security, generous benefits, and especially lavish pensions … column last week in local paper documented pensions of Dems who spent just a few years as elected officials and, thru connections made, parlayed that into highly paid unionized positions in State Govt; even after as little as 15 years service annuities topping $100,000. Not just a few, but hundreds.
They take care of their own. Sure its corrupt, but what can anybody do about it? Our job is to eat the sh-t, smile, and say it tastes good.
I’m not making this sh-t up about Hartford, Bridgeport or New Haven; I lift it from the daily news rag, The Hartford Courant. Many people on this blog post about high finance and international politics. What the hell do i know about that? Nothing really! For me these grimy, bloody, urban streets of our capital city is collapse made real, right in front of my face.
brh
Excellent quote! Thanks.
I’m curious if anyone had the same experience I did back when Bush & Gore were running for POTUS. My wife reminded me about it the other day. I told her that I wished that the Republicans would win everything, from the presidency, to both houses of congress. Then after they fucked everything to a fare the well, people would realize that they are full of it. Well, Bush was elected twice, and the Republicans had control of both houses for 6 years, and we came close to going over the cliff. IE; Iraq and the economy . Be careful what you wish for, you might get it. Thing is, after those debacles, here are the Republicans back knocking at the door again. I read somewhere that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result each time. Anyway, I’m just wondering if other people have had the same experience that I had, or am I the only one who noticed?
Nope. I noticed it too. That’s why I’ve written off politics as a solution to anything. The thing you may not have noticed is that the Ds and the Rs are just two faces of the same coin. They support all the same policies in all the ways that actually count, which should hardly be surprising. All the rest is theater for our mutual entertainment and to keep the illusions of “freedom” and “democracy” alive. The US government has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall St and the MIC for well over a century now.
Spot on.
You called it, DA, both sides are bought and paid for by corporations. The only difference between them is when you bring up a subject where there is nobody making a buck off it, such as abortion, etc. It bothers me when people act like there’s a real difference between the parties, and go to the polls & act like their votes are gonna make a difference. I call them sheeples, both Democrat and Republican, and I wonder if they will ever look up and see how they are being manipulated. My guess is that everyone who contributes to this blog, is already in the data bank of the NSA. Surely that abbreviation, NSA, will attract the attention of various algorithms employed by those in power. However it’s no big deal, because there’s not enough people who understand what’s going on, to make a difference. Understand this: The only people that they watch are the type who read and contribute to this blog. Very frustrating to meet someone who is a true blue Republican or a Democrat, and will argue over policies that are controlled by the corporations, not the voters. Sorry to be so long winded.
Hooray for Captain Spaulding! And, as Groucho might say, “Write on!”
The important issues are not even on the radar screen for the major parties.
Take transportation policy. In my lifetime there has never been a debate about whether we should build more highways and airports, while abandoning railroads. The only transportation debate has been about where to get the money to build more highways and airports.
My mother used to say that “democracy” was invented by the aristocracy so they could continue to reap all the benefits of being aristocrats but without the burden of any responsibility. The health of a nation is driven by the quality of its leadership, not the will of the people, which is hopelessly fickle. Moses proved that long ago at Mt Sinai. By popular vote, the golden calf won.
Your mother was wise (mine, alas, not so much). Hadn’t heard that particular take before.
The war in Yemen
At least 62 children were killed and about 30 more were wounded last week during the bombing and fighting in Yemen. These data comes from the representative of UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Julien Arnis, reports Agence France-Presse.
The war in Yemen is growing and is likely to grow into another protracted conflict with mass casualties among civilians and the complete destruction of the state.
Huthis without a fight entered the territory of the military base in the south-west of Yemen on the shores of Bab-el-Mandeb strait connecting the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean. This means that Huthis gain control of one of the main sea routes passing through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. And this is very much affects economic and military security of the United States, Britain and their NATO allies.
http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1911020.html
The King Salman doctrine
Saudi Arabia no longer cares if this U.S. silence is the passing weakness of a president whose term ends in two years
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2015/04/01/Saudi-King-Salman-s-doctrine.html
“Even the few nations (like Russia and India) that dabbled in Thorium technology have basically shelved their initial grand plans because they’ve discovered that they’re way more expensive to build and maintain than conventional Plutonium reactors.”
From what I have researched, it is now more commercially feasible to develop fast-neutron breeder reactors based on sufficiently plentiful U-238 (100 times more than currently used U-235)
For Thorium reactors you need a particle accelerator that speeds up protons to one third of the light speed and bombard lead to generate fast neutrons. Such particle accelerators exist, but have military applications and for now can’t be used in civil areas.
Bottom line, for fast-neutron breeder reactors we definitely have enough fuel for next 2-3 hundred years, sufficient time to develop some other high-efficient forms of energy generation.
Couple fast-neutron breeder reactors are commercially producing electricity in Yekaterinburg (my native city). I think they are 800 Megs each.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that the fast-neutron breeders are the real future. The key, of course, is that they run on U-238 which is about 25 times more plentiful than U-235. The Thorium reactors have to be seeded with U-233 which is almost nonexistent in natural environments and has to be made with existing Plutonium reactors and that’s a bad “crutch” to have to rely on.
Rosenergoatom already learning from BN-800
The article dated 10 December 2014
The BN-800 fast-neutron reactor at Beloyarsk unit 4, which is scheduled to begin commercial operation by the end of this year, is already providing operating and technological experience of value to the development of the planned BN-1200 fast-neutron reactor at Beloyarsk unit 5, according to Michael Bakanov, director of the Beloyarsk plant.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Rosenergoatom-already-learning-from-BN-800-10121401.html
Beloyarsk is a suburb of Yekaterinburg, former Sverdlovsk, about 14 miles from the center of the city. As a kid, I used to bike over their to swim in the lake near the nuclear plant – it was totally safe.
Finca said: As a kid, I used to bike over their to swim in the lake near the nuclear plant…
================
…and I’ve been giving off a green glow ever since.
Not more than you’d smell off with gasoline after buying candy at the gas station.
If you want to see what our country has turned into, then watch a Barrett-Jackson auto auction. Heavy set gray haired smug jackasses bidding up collector cars to a ridiculous price. Every one of the heavy bidders looking like a gubernatorial candidate. It creeps me out as much as the righteous know it alls that hide behind their computers and bully each other on these forums. Everybody’s right and nobody’s wrong!
Mikhail Leontiev:
An event occurred that hundreds of millions, if not more, in the Muslim and Islamic world were looking forward to: The Saudi monarchy, the beacon of Western democracy, finally found a way to commit suicide.
Saudi Arabia, cobbled together a coalition of 9 Sunni Arab countries, launched Operation “Decisive Storm” in order to return to power fugitive Sunni Yemeni President Hadi, who was overthrown by Shiite rebels. Originally planned ground operation, for which only the Saudis were going to put 150,000 ground grouping. However, the coalition is still limited to bombing campaign.
Declaring war on the Yemeni Shiites, the Saudis have raised the stakes so that they have nowhere to retreat. In this case, the real combat capability of the Saudi ground forces is unknown to anyone, including Saudis themselves, and to smash the Yemeni rebels, trained and patronized by Lebanese Hezbollah by bombing only is unrealistic. Even if it’s not going to end up in global Shia – Sunni war, we are going to see the endless slaughter of everybody against everybody else in the entire Greater Middle East.
The movement of Shiite rebels Huthis, that now controls almost all populated part of Yemen – is, in fact, the Iranian project, coordinated directly by Lebanese Hezbollah. In Yemen, where there are 2 Kalashnikovs for everyone of its 25 million population, including women and children, for whom war is a natural state, where they accumulated huge reserves of different weapons, ranging from the Soviet era to the recent deliveries.
The United States, for example, said that they have lost (!?!) in Yemen half a billion dollars of American weapons. Huthis now are very close to the Saudi Eastern Province, where a significant portion of Saudis oil infrastructure and Shiite population. They also control Bab-el-Mandeb which is strategic way of oil transportation.
The United States officially supported the Saudi operation while completing negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and the lifting of sanctions, and in fact allies with Iran in the war against “Islamic state” in Iraq. That is despite the fact that Sunni fighters in Yemen “Islamic state”, supported by Saudi Arabia, are the only force resisting the Shiites.
In 2013, the New York Times in an article entitled “Introducing the new borders of the Middle East” showed a map in which five Arab countries of the ME are turned into 14 states fragmented along ethnic and religious boundaries.
In an obvious way, this redrawing can only be the result of a long and bloody conflict, which would resulted in elimination of Saudi Arabia, elimination of OPEC, oil prices go through the roof. Europe and China, thus, will be under attack, and energy-independent United States would keep its world domination. And finally get rid of the need to take care of the ill-fated region. No region – no problem.
Fred (on Everything) Reed begins his latest column (dtd Mar 29) with the following sentence:
“For a different take on Moslems from my good (Jewish, actually) friend and former jittebug partner Judith Podell, try Yemen Blues.”
We have come to think of Yemen as one of those hellholes of the third world but this piece above in which Judith Podell describes an experience in that country in 2006, just 9 years ago, would almost make you want to book a vacation there. Little did she know at the time how things would unravel.
Here is the link to the Yemen story:
http://memphisearlene.com/2015/03/21/sweet-memories-of-yemen-blues/
Fred’s been veering a little too far off into crazy land lately for my tastes, but I still like to touch base with his blog regularly anyway. If nothing else, he’s earned the right to be a little cranky and crazy in his old age. Whole lotta miles on his tires in a whole lotta third world and otherwise shitholes. His views on race, in particular, are quite interesting, given that he’s an ex-pat married to a Mexican. Not judging either way, just noting that they’re quite interesting, to say the least.
One thing I think he’s definitely right about is that the coming (actually, ongoing) collapse will exacerbate racial tensions (among others) at every turn, which is reason enough for concern, I guess. For my part, I view it sociologically as the long overdue comeuppance for white European upper crust privilege, which has had quite a run for the past 300 years or so. Will it matter that middle and lower class whites in the US mostly never shared in said privilege and don’t deserve to be singled out? No, of course not, in the same way that upwardly mobile blacks never shared the criminal underclass habits of so many of their brethren, and yet they’re labeled the same regardless.
At any rate, I expect racial stereotyping and scapegoating to increasingly become the rule of the day, so I guess the Janos’s among us will be having a field day in the years to come. Just think we’d all be wise to remember that it’s going to cut both ways this time.
Are you looking forward to getting shot, cut, or stomped? Will you take masochistic joy in it? Or is your self hatred more abstract, perhaps like Anderson Cooper feeling joy when he found out one of his forbears was killed by a slave?
Do you think other races feel like this? Or would accept any of theirs who did?
Here’s whats going to happen this summer:
Some white dude, on a city street, in his car, on a train, in a bus station, in line at a convenience store, is going to be targeted by ‘urban youths’ in their knockout game, polar bear hunting, a beatdown to be recorded and posted to gain street cred and get even for Mike brown or Trevvon Martin, for whatever reason, but this target, much to everybodys surprise, will protect himself, perhaps with a legally carried semi auto, and he’ll take a bunch of them out. That’s not what I want to happen but I think people are getting fed up.
Then the sh-t is going to hit the fan.
brh
Glad to see kunstler`s on board with the self-driving cars. of course he has to poopoo it and say everyone`s going to drive to walmart etc.
such shortsightedness.
he`ll be in one soon enough, writing his thoughts about technofantasy while the car drives itself to the airport, where it parks by itself and kunstler gets into a superefficient aeroplane, where he will write about the end of the oil age LOL
joke is on all you sycophants.
WIND power supplying 68% of all electricity being produced in Denmark as we speak….
http://energinet.dk/Flash/Forside/UK/index.html
fodase
we
WIND power supplying 68% of all electricity being produced in Denmark as we speak….
With the help of fossil fuels providing all the energy underlying the infrastructure and support base. Thanks for that.
Hillary’s skeletons in the closet: THE ASSASSINATION OF RON BROWN
JACK CASHILL: “On April 4, 1996, the subject of my radio show in Kansas City was Commerce Secretary, Ron Brown. He and 34 others had died the day before when their Air Force plane crashed into a Croatian mountainside.”
“What Clinton did not say was that Brown had gone to Croatia to broker a sweetheart deal between the neo-fascist strongman who ran Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, and Enron Corporation. This was all part of the Clintons’ desperate drive to raise money for their 1996 re-election campaign.
“More than a few callers argued that the Clintons had the plane destroyed. I dismissed these arguments out of hand. I believed then, and believe now, that an American president would never do such a thing.”
http://www.wnd.com/2004/09/26786/
Well, there are conspiracy theories and there are hard forensic evidence collected by intelligence services of certain world powers, who would not be too happy to see Mrs.Clinton back in the White House. Stock up on the popcorn, it should be an interesting election in 2016.
“But look a little deeper. The same outcome, the creation of a palm nut processing facility, could have been accomplished in any number of ways. Finance, at its best, allocates. Nothing more. That is essentially, a religious function – it contributes nothing to the process, other than a blessing.” — sauerkraut
Not sure how I am to make a drum-dryer out of the “blessing”. Or a pyrolisis air furnace. I need steel sheets, welding electrodes, electric-motors, and shit load of other stuff. Also I need to compensate welder, the metal shop and others.
You miss the point. I rest my case.
Interesting: the traffic measure on kunstler.com was for few days at over 20,000 – all time high, according to Google. That reading stayed there for couple of days and then vanished – now the highest mark is at somewhere 14,000. I should’ve made a screen shot. Somebody messed up the stats.
http://www.semrush.com/info/kunstler.com?db=us
JHK, great stuff.
You’re at your best when you ‘stay home’. Forget Ukraine and Syria, etc.
Personally I can’t believe that you are wrong about the future being local, but that strongly suggests there will be major winners and severe losers. Instead what seems to be happening currently is a regionalization of localism. Big cities, supported by and ultimately supporting surrounding rural communities that are the last redoubts of the type you envision. Denver, Boston, San Fran, Seattle, Chi-town, Miami-Fort Lauderdale, D-FW … I could go on.
In this power city-state model, without scale, you’re screwed. Enough of it, and you stumble through – sometimes better.
As other commenters have noted here, I also believe a collapse is due – but alas yes the question is when.
Forget shorting the equity markets in recent history – where, yup, it would have hurt reeeeaal bad … betting against the adaptability and creativity of homo sapiens has been a truly terrible wager for oh, eons now.
It’s an inconvenient truth.
The thing that’s different this time isn’t shenanigans at the Fed.
It’s that the capacity of the earth to heal up and keep on providing is fading fast.
I understand – it ain’t cool to be a tree-hugger.
We’ll see how adaptable we really are.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/russian-doctor-military-sciences-says-181400470.html
The Doomsday Weapon: one nuclear bomb on the Yellowstone Caldera and it’s lights out for everyone – all over the world ultimately.
This is very old news. So called “Sakharov’s Option” – generating a mega-tsunami by detonating underwater thermonuclear devices was well known since 1950s. I am sure that US have adequate response – all part of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction)
http://www.debatepolitics.com/history/166444-king-torpedo-and-plan-sakharov-old-war.html
The US is at a disadvantage since the Russian Federation is large and spread out. Perhaps we should strike first? In any case, next time we’re in the Middle East we’ll probably leave behind some tactical nukes. By accident of course. WW3 seems baked in the cake now. Why not win it? Someone has to…..
Perhaps the subsequent radiation will provide the mutations enabling us to evolve to a new higher state of Man.
A Yellowstone Strike would be a worldwide catastrophe – far greater than your tsunami strike. Your attempts at equivalence show you don’t understand the difference.
The US is at a disadvantage since the Russian Federation is large and spread out. Perhaps we should strike first? M
You’re prescient. I hear that’s been widely considered already, although the US still barely cares about public opinion enough that they’re engineering various pretexts for such. But the great corporate MSM hologram allows a lot of flexibility in that regard. Rationales and rationales for rationales can be fabricated from whole cloth anytime before or after an event now.
As Karl Rove so presciently noted as well:
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Who knew what he meant at the time? Now we know.
Sorry, screwed up the italics off tag.
Here is your new Soviet Black Proletarian Overman – stealing a wedding ring off a dying woman’s finger.
http://www.amren.com/news/2015/03/man-who-stole-wedding-ring-off-dying-womans-finger-at-taco-bell-sentenced-to-11-years/
By no means an anomaly: when a plane crashed in Lagos a few years ago, the emergency workers couldn’t even get to it because of the huge mob looting the bodies and luggage. Face it, they just aren’t like us or the Asians.
After the Tsunami, thousands of White tourists were destitute for a few hours or even days in various ruined places. No reports of rape, assault, theft, or murder. Now imagine if the same had taken place in the Caribbean, places like Jamaica or Haiti. I think we both know that it would have been a very different story.
In any case, it is clear that US European missile defense system in itself does not affect the level of confrontation between Russia and US too much, but, unfortunately, humanity takes another step towards the scenario of the film “Terminator”. Indeed, the anti-air missiles do not differ from first-strike missiles, but their positioning is such that flight time to Moscow is reduced to just 3 minutes, which forces Russia to entrust the decision of nuclear response to a computer. There would simply be no time for human decision, and the red button disappears as superfluous.
In addition, a very unpleasant result of this development is the disappearance of the system to prevent unauthorized launches, as if in the case of a single missile launch, which had to fly to Moscow for 40 minutes, you can still take up the phone and start talking on the subject, in terms of having to talk missile defense has any meaning only after ABM installation has been destroyed. Indeed, if the “Iskander” has 5 minutes to fly, another 5 minutes to confirm that it engaged target, 3 minutes to pick up the phone, another 5 minutes on the conversation itself, the decision on salvo launch can take only 18 minutes after Russian radars will register something questionable, and in 10 minutes before the explosion of the alleged warhead will make such decision impossible.
http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1911257.html
And, on cue, the shale oil bubble begins to implode:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-02/revolver-raid-arrives-wave-shale-bankruptcies-about-be-unleashed
Small companies may implode, but the industry will be safe and sound, at least for the next 5 – 10 years that might be crucial for the current war.
Big fan of you, JHK. I’ve read your books and read this column every Monday with enthusiasm. I love the recurring theme of driving to Wal-Mart, and all the Americana it conjures up. It could just as well be “flying to Disney” or “flying to Vegas.” Either way, it’s sheeple ‘Murica at its worst. Grossly obese people who slave away in their cube farms for 51 weeks in order to drop a bunch of money to go to plastic-land and buy a bunch of crappy, plastic trinkets to bring home as a memento of their trip to nowhere.
Keep up the good work!
WIND power supplying 68% of all electricity being produced in Denmark as we speak….
With the help of fossil fuels providing all the energy underlying the infrastructure and support base. Thanks for that.
Yep, you’re right, that’s why those dummies in Europe, the US, Russia, China, India, and virtually everyone else on the planet, with the exception of people like the cthonians on CFN who know better, is ramping up solar/wind/alternative energy.
And those dummies at Stanford have the nerve to state that all the installed solar capacity worldwide has now produced more energy than it took to manufacture, transport and install it.
I’ll send them your 20-word message and let them know they’re outright wrong.
Alt energy was 0% 20 years ago or less. Now it`s 40% daily in Spain etc.
Explain that.
Critics of wind energy often claim that the energy used to construct a wind turbine outweighs the energy produced during its lifetime in operation. This is not correct. An evidence review published in the journal Renewable Energy in 2010, which included data from 119 turbines across 50 sites going back 30 years, concluded that the average windfarm produces 20-25 times more energy during its operational life than was used to construct and install its turbines. It also found that the average “energy payback” of a turbine was 3-6 months.
Arguing with you girls is too easy…
fodase
Marines in the Yemeni port of Aden were Chinese military
Soldiers in the port of Aden in Yemen, which some media took for paratroopers preparing to launch a military operation, were the Chinese security forces that were guarding the evacuating citizens, said Deputy Managing Council of the Gulf of Aden port Abd ar-Rabb al-Halyaki.
“The port was a military Chinese ship arrived to evacuate Chinese citizens … during the evacuation skirmish, this led to the landing of Chinese soldiers, who were on board the ship to protect passengers” – quoted by al-Halyaki
http://vz.ru/news/2015/4/2/737829.html
China, as always, copies everything. But how good does it do it! In this case, simply delicious – right under the noses of the Americans. Landed, took its own and gone. But that’s gone, right? And does this mean that the Strait of Aden is now under the control of China?
DA, Al Klein and Captain Spaulding and others
There are democracies that work and democracies that don’t. Some are kind of in between. They have “elections” that have a lot of hair on them and a messed up civil service but somehow the wheels stay on.
There are democracies where the people vote themselves the keys to the national treasury, aided by pandering politicians. And we regularly see the results on the news as one country or another keels over.
There are democracies that have the appearance, that is, elections and assemblies and written laws and constitutions but where the executive and legislative branches are utterly subverted by special (and usually monied) interests. And likewise for the judiciaries and governmental bureaucracies. You would recognize this brand. And, given that this brand is subverted by a powerful few, it’s the few that help themselves to the national loot. And it’s all done with legislative and executive due process, legally enacted, with i’s dotted and t’s crossed. Tax cuts anyone?
Many countries are a combination of the two. Meaning that though the really big money goes into the pockets of a few, enough gets carved out to keep the street quiet. At least until the national accounts show zero.
In the American brand of – cough – democracy, the food fights you see over same sex marriage rights and abortion and school prayer and all the stuff that gets people really excited, is the stuff that’s routinely (and cynically) thrown out into public square as a diversion. The time honored way for the thief to make a big score is to arrange a kerfuffle to distract everyone. And we fall for this trick over and over and over. As soon as some politician says “abortion” or “gay marriage” the battle lines form.
Never fails. As sure as the sun sets you’ll have Gwen Ifill hauling someone like Amy Walter onto the show for a chinwag over what some Republican cave-dweller just said. The blogosphere fills up, the twitter-verse goes into scream mode. What do you think, what does this mean, what are the implications?
But who the fuck cares? While everyone was all jumped up over men humping one another, tens of thousands of factories relocated to China and the American the middle class went down the drain… Neat trick don’t you think?
Are you a patriotic American? Are you a progressive? If you are the former you will vote Republican. If you are the latter you will vote Democrat. And if you are fooled you will believe there’s a difference.
Are you a patriotic American? Are you a progressive? If you are the former you will vote Republican. If you are the latter you will vote Democrat. And if you are fooled you will believe there’s a difference.
And if you’re enlightened, you’ll stop participating in the con and start railing about it from the roof tops. Must admit though, I was fooled most of my life too. It is, or at least was, a pretty convincing con. These days? Not so much.
reave
verb archaic
gerund or present participle: reaving
carry out raids in order to plunder.
rob (a person or place) of something by force.
“reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast”
steal (something).
“reft” is a wonderful word as well…
Janos, thanks for reminding me that I have to (re-)read great Western literature works such as Robinson Crusoe, The Way of All Flesh, and reams of other great works.
Someone will always be at the end of the tracks reciting A Tale of Two Cities…
fodase
Cousins, indeed, and by their uncle cozened
Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life.
Whose hand soever launched their tender hearts,
Thy head, all indirectly, gave direction.
No doubt the murd’rous knife was dull and blunt
Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart,
To revel in the entrails of my lambs.
But that still use of grief makes wild grief tame,
My tongue should to thy ears not name my boys
Till that my nails were anchored in thine eyes,
And I, in such a desp’rate bay of death,
Like a poor bark of sails and tackling reft,
Rush all to pieces on thy rocky bosom.
Another Way Out
Good job this week, JHK.
Ozone: “a constitutional amendment to allow unending emperor status to Obama.”
———
How about going for the same status Putin has in Russia? Putin has been in for about 15 years now. Another eight years of Obama is not a bad idea, Ozone.
Obama managed to negotiate with the Iranians, something those calling Iran a part of the “axis of evil” could never manage. Peace is better than war. Friends are better than enemies. Long live Obama!
Isn’t reaving what Mike Pence attempted to do last week in Indiana before the LBGT community forced Pence to go back on his principles and change the language of the anti-gay law he just signed?
Lithuanian president worked as a prostitute on the instructions of the KGB
According to released documents, Dalia Grybauskaite served foreign clients in the hotel “Baltic”, St. Petersburg
http://ren.tv/novosti/2015-04-02/blogery-prezident-litvy-rabotala-prostitutkoy-po-zadaniyu-kgb
Wow, gloves are really coming off. One has to wonder, what other Western lady-politicians have their KGB files full of juicy materials?
Therian: “there is no longitudinal hard data that LFTR technology is either cheap or easy to produce.”
LOL! Unless you choose to ignore the data from 20,000 hours of reactor operation at Oak Ridge National Laboratory which demonstrated the technology has sound operational fundamentals. Recent advanced reactor design has only made things better. The future is bright.
Show me the money wpa!
DA, government is not a corporation. The purpose of government is to provide for the common welfare, not to make a profit. Nonetheless, you have asked me to show you the money:
3 cents per kWh … LFTR electricity
4.8 cents per kWh … Gas
5.6 cents per kWh … Coal
These costs include fuel and operations costs. Anymore questions?
You can always find some publication that makes claims that are simply outrageous, passed on as truth. If LFTRs were the future then somebody outside of China would be racing to a Thorium future. Truth is even China has made a vague statement that they’ll have the first economy sized LFTR in TWENTY YEARS.
Lightbridge is the only US corporation dabbling in Thorium technology and they’ll be bankrupt in a couple of years. All they get annually is a few hundred thousand dollars in “consulting fees”. All nukes are becoming impractical because they cost billions to start up and no matter whether they be Thorium or Plutonium based, they have about a 30-40 year life span.
I’ve been following Lightbridge since it was Thorium Power, Ltd. and worldwide interest since then has waned almost to zero. Anything 20 years off in official statements might as well be a century off.
I’m now reading “Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry”. It’s ok. But it does highlight the interesting phenomenon of black-on-white, black-on-Asian, and black-on-black violence. It seems that urban black males prefer to travel in groups, attacking their victims for sport in groups. I wonder to what extent gang culture has influenced black culture in the US?
I wonder if the gang phenomenon is a symptom of Collapse? Popular accounts of a post-Collapse world often include images of marauding gangs terrorizing the population.
I’m now reading “Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry”. It’s ok. But it does highlight the interesting phenomenon of black-on-white, black-on-Asian, and black-on-black violence. It seems that urban black males prefer to travel in groups, attacking their victims for sport in groups. I wonder to what extent gang culture has influenced black culture in the US?
I wonder if the gang phenomenon is a symptom of Collapse? Popular accounts of a post-Collapse world often include images of marauding gangs terrorizing the population.
I’m now reading “Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry”. It’s ok. But it does highlight the interesting phenomenon of black-on-white, black-on-Asian, and black-on-black violence. It seems that urban black males prefer to travel in groups, attacking their victims for sport in groups. I wonder to what extent gang culture has influenced black culture in the US?
I wonder if the gang phenomenon is a symptom of Collapse? Popular accounts of a post-Collapse world often include images of marauding gangs terrorizing the population.
Any thoughts? Thanks.
Any thoughts? Thanks.
================
Yes I have a thought. Post a comment once, not 3 times.
Yes. It did post 3 times, and for some reason, it posted in the middle rather that at the bottom of the postings as the most recent post. Oh well….
In the same way that the mafia was a reaction to state corruption in the old world, in the absence of an honest police force that even pretends to protect anything but their corporate masters, I would expect gangs to be a natural response. And a reminder, there are no official statistics documenting corporate crime against ordinary citizens in the form of corruption, wealth stolen, and opportunities lost. One of the many benefits that accrue to being the “official” criminals in charge of what now amounts to a third world banana republic of sorts. I’d suggest (black or otherwise) street crime pales in comparison, whatever those numbers are. What’s the old saying? When you ain’t got nothin’ you ain’t got nothin’ to lose. Wanna see some real criminals in their natural habitat? Put on a nice suit and go weasel your way into a corporate board meeting. Then burn the suit and take a long hot shower to get the stench off.
At the end of the Cultural Revolution in China, the new Party leader, Hua Guofeng, said: “Whatever Mao said was true. Whatever Mao wrote was true.” And if anyone said anything differently, then they were labeled a “Capitalist Roader”, and they were destroyed. This is the quality of the “Conversation About Race” in the US. If one says anything that they don’t like, even if the statement is supported with evidence, then you’re labelled a “Racist”. Very dangerous.
I see some validity to your point. The same is true for sexism and being labeled a sexist, which to my mind is even more rampant now. But racism has a much longer and much more virulent history in the US. Haven’t seen a lot of white men or women of any race hanging from trees or drug to their death behind pickup trucks lately, have you?
Google the Knoxville Massacre or the Zebra killings. You really are a creature of the pop media, aren’t you? Black atrocities against Whites is a daily occurrence. Man bites dog type stuff. The status quo is monstrous, not viable, and getting worse.
Not that you care, but the guy who “drug” that retarded Black guy had been gang raped by Blacks in prison.
In the US now, on many issues, the People are basically told what to think, and most people are too afraid to say anything.
Then stop listening to the programming and start speaking up. You have nothing to lose but your chains. Your money, your freedom, and your life they’re going to take eventually regardless, if they haven’t already.
Compare the way Putin reacted to the media when he left his wife for some young Hottie ( as Jim mentioned), and the craven way Governor Pence reacted in Indiana.
Wow, backed by the media and The Pharaoh, homosexuals haven’t wielded this much power since General Ernst Rolm and his Gay Clique headed up the million man strong SA Brownshirt army in Nazi Germany in 1933! He was loud and proud about it; any criticism invited instant annihilation.
The verdict is not yet in on SS Chief Himmler and SD Chief Heydrich, so they remain suspect.
brh
Jebbie got caught out first supporting the Indiana law, then backtracking after Pence started waffling. The Repubs are such cockroaches at heart, although the Dems are certainly no slouches either.
We need a satire candidate again, a la Pat Paulson way back in the day. They’d have a field day in the current environment, which is all marketing hype and polling data and no substance. Stephen Colbert gave it a go, but his comedy is too fawning of the power that it lampoons in my opinion. We need someone who can really cut to the bone and make these stiffs truly uncomfortable. Someone that would incite civil insurrection maybe and that the powers that be would shut down altogether when they got too uncomfortable.
Yes, it shows who really rules: the Corporations. And thus the Republicans who are Ok with them and the Leftists who hate them are really on the same side, whether they know it or not. Nothing is more ridiculous than the Social Justice Warriors who think they are so edgy that they can barely walk down the street without cutting themselves. They wouldn’t know an edge if they fell off the Empire State Bldg.
Hitler crushed the arrogant Brown Shirts. You should revere him.
I wonder if JHK will mention Anthony Stokes on Monday.
Not much about 150 Christian Students being targeted and wiped out in Kenya by Al Shabob yesterday. Indiana, Kenya, Syria, Iraq, Indonesia … its open season on Christians everywhere, Happy Easter, ha!
Incidentally, where the hell is the Pope on all this? You’d think he’d attempt to organize some resistance. The west looks weak, weak! Does it even deserve to survive? The only country willing to fight back is Israel.
brh
brh: “The only country willing to fight back is Israel.”
In 1992 Netanyahu declared Iran to be an existential threat to Israel because Iran was supposedly “3 to 5 years” from having a nuclear bomb. Except that Iran was only developing nuclear energy and did not have a nuclear bomb in “3 to 5 years”
Netanyahu still considers Iran to be an existential threat, but has not been willing to fight Iran to save Israel. BRH, maybe you are overly romanticizing Israel as a fighting force?
Iran is not a threat and does not want a nuclear bomb.
We will soon lift sanctions. Iran can be our partner in trade, just as we are partners with Iran on the battlefield now, in 2015, against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. Moderate Iran wants to get rid of the extremists just as badly as you do.
Good points WPACCC.
Iran is a mystery indeed.
But why the belligerent public threats to destroy Israel?They’ve made them as recently as last week. Is it perhaps just a domestic political issue, directed at the Iranian population? Whatever the cause, these threats understandably make the Israelis nervous. Because of recent history they need to take them seriously.
brh
I just stuck a couple of these on my trucks.
http://patriotdepot.com/does-this-ass-make-my-car-look-big-sticker/
If I see it driving up 10 I’ll know its you, Rip.
A true patriot does not disrespect the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces.
As I understand it, both Stelmo and BRH have earned their lively hood via taxpayer dollars. In fact, Stelmo, according to his posts, is collecting a public employee pension.
Talk about a country that is truly ‘fucked’; some of those hating on Obama/Dems don’t even know who “butters their bread”.
Memo to the morons: The Tea Party model embraced by the likes of Walker et al–the entire GOP these days–would slash public employee pensions to ground zero if they had the chance and EMT’s would be making minimum wage.
Get a fucking clue.
The Neoliberal theory is to smash the public sector in the interests of privatization and of course the private interests who gain from it.
Our main export is war which will need to feed off the public sector since there is no mechanism anymore to create real wealth—that got exported to China long ago and it’s over for us.
As China takes over the world economy and desperately needs energy to fuel growth there are a few foreign policies that have to be changed. We need to make nice to Cuba and we need to make nice to Iran.
Why, or course it’s about oil and competition with the no longer sleeping giant which will swallow us whole like the sun will eventually do to the earth.
Now I’m reading a great post from Pepe Escobar today.
Iran is ready to crash Pipelineistan:
[Now it’s a completely different story. Even U.S. Big Oil is salivating at the prospect of doing business with Iran on energy.
Beijing, for its part, already is. Iran is invariably among China’s top three energy sources. Not by accident, Chinese President Xi Jinping will soon visit Tehran; Foreign Minister Wang Yi has already promised “dramatic” announcements – and China’s Foreign Ministry is not exactly prone to hyperbole. For Beijing, the energy relationship with Tehran is no less than a matter of national security.
China also remains a top client of Saudi oil. But buying oil from the Persian Gulf and having it shipped via the vulnerable Strait of Malacca is not exactly Beijing’s idea of a bright future]
http://atimes.com/2015/03/iran-is-ready-to-crash-pipelineistan/
You are right Buck Stud, I do receive a pension. I did 33 years on the Bonebox, I have memories of dismemberment and disembowelment’s, not to mention crib deaths and the like. If it was not for your first responders your life would hang in the balance. Call 911 and have your neighbor come over and stuff your guts back into your abdominal cavity. Obviously your brains have already leaked out of your cranium.
As J H K mentioned;
“It’s not what most people think: a return to some hypothetical “normality,” with the ghost of Ronnie Reagan beaming down like a sun-god under his lopsided pompadour,”…
Especially now that the employment numbers are out:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-03/americans-not-labor-force-soar-record-931-million-participation-rate-drops-february-
At “126000 jobs added” and a generous helping of *that* just ‘birth-death model’ fakiness there’s not much ‘cover’ left to hide behind for the ‘Baghdad Bob’s’ of our (supposed) ‘Recovery’.
Elsewhere in the news, Oil’s price took another hit because Iran got a sanction-lifting deal and Saudi Arabia’s getting “embroiled” warfare on the southern marches of the realm… Good Luck With That.
It’s been an interesting week in the world of __Results & Consequences__.
Cheers!
So now you believe and cite the BLS numbers?
CFN believes government statistics are lies. CFN disagrees with positive government numbers.
Now, when government numbers are negative CFN cites those numbers and does not question their truthfulness.
How convenient.
Cheers!
I’m glad I’m 63. I got to live during about four and a half good decades. Kids who are under 30 now never saw “good” and their going to be around to witness horror.
my 3 kids are all under 30 and have done very well for themselves. get a decent education in a science related area and you’re fine.
it’s that simple.
walmart greeter country my ass, that’s what happens when you study english lit and feminism and hip hop.
how dumb can you be.
Yeah i tell my nephews forget about liberal arts college; It’s a waste of time. That year long welding school in VT, or Colorado School of Mines, or even join a Reserve Unit and go to a Navy A school or Air Force Tech school, your better off. Also, don’t take out any student loans, its a goddam Rat Trap you might never get out of.
brh
Good advice, brh.
Welders, cutters, solders, and braziers are needed, as are assemblers, fabricators, structural metal fabricators and fitters.
Why are they needed? Because we are in a growing economy, thanks to the recovery Obama has brought us.
But, brh, how do you expect a student not to take out a student loan when a one year welding program costs $7000?
BTW, a welder only makes from $35,000 to $40,000 (in Oregon). Good luck paying back that $7,000 welding certificate program anytime soon.
It shouldn’t be too hard to save up $7000.
If your nephews are thinking about college, they are probably teenagers. Many teens earn minimum wage at their summer jobs. That is $7.25 per hour. If they work 40 hours a week and save half their salary, it would take one year to save $7,000.
Most teenagers I know do not have the discipline to save 50% of their salary, and not touch those savings when a new iPhone is announced.
It shouldn’t cost $7 grand to learn to weld, backrow.
I know it probably does. But it shouldn’t.
P4W: “It shouldn’t cost $7K to learn to weld”
P4W, welding today is not your father’s welding. Welding technology is always changing. New processes, such as electron beam welding, friction welding, plasma arc welding, friction stir welding, explosion welding and laser beam welding, have increased the range of materials and components that can be welded. In industrial welding most of these processes are fully automated and computer controlled, making them highly productive. All of these processes are new to welding technology not around in the 1950s.
The $7K is for a certificate saying you actually have both the latest knowledge of techniques and materials, plus hands-on experience. A community college program gives you all three.
Welding training programs cost $5,000-$15,000 at community colleges or technical schools. Programs may last two years and typically culminate in a certificate of completion. For example, Modern Welding School in Schenectady, N.Y., offers a three-month welding program for $6,000, which includes tuition, fees and materials. Alexandria Technical & Community College in Minnesota offers a one-year welding technology certificate for $7,000 in tuition and fees, and the Welder Training and Testing Institute in Allentown, PA, offers a nine-month program for $8,100.
http://education.costhelper.com/welding-school.html
DA: “Show me the money wpa”
DA, government is not a corporation. The purpose of government is to provide for the common welfare, not to make a profit.
Nonetheless, you have asked me to show you the money:
3 cents per kWh … LFTR electricity
4.8 cents per kWh … Gas
5.6 cents per kWh … Coal
These costs include fuel and operations costs. Anymore questions?
It seems that Chicago is somewhat gang-infested. There’s one gang, the Black P. Stones that is reported to have 40,000 members. It seems to have gotten its start in the 1960’s by a black “Community Organizer” with a US$1.5 million US government grant “to help poor disadvantaged black kids.” They promptly went into the organized crime business. The gangs are reported to have black Muslim links and organized around the theme of anti-white race hate.
Obama was a Chicago “community organizer”. He knows all about this, but has done diddly.
If black culture becomes imbued with urban black gang culture, then all the Political Correctness in the world and education is not going to do a bit of good, and we’re fucked!
Strangely, there are no good books on the gangs on Amazon. Everyone just seems to stick their heads in the sand. Bizarre….
I read an excellent book many years ago entitled “Propaganda”. According to the book’s author, a French bloke, an established principle of propaganda is that once a person is “organized” into a group, then it’s very difficult for outside propaganda that comes from outside the person’s group to influence him or her. If this is true, then the anti-white racist black urban gangs are a huge problem.
In the US today, when a white person calls you a “Racist” it could mean anything, including that the subject does not like to eat Mexican food.
When a black person calls you a “Racist”, it could mean the imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death.
Ironically, in both cases, there is zero rational content to the term “Racist”, and it is only an emotion-laden epithet—i.e, propaganda…..
Hey Pucker, I haven’t seen Colin Flaherty interviewed yet by Gwen Ifel on PBS at the ‘Busboys and Poets’ bookstore. Think he’ll be on soon, to discuss ‘White Girl Bleed a lot? Yesterday she interviewed an author who has just written a bio of Michelle Obama, man, it was hard hitting. Phew!!! I was squirming in my chair.
Can you share tomorrow in JHKs new topic?
I wonder if there are any reasonable parallels between the black urban gangs and the Brown Shirts?
Thanks for the week’s work, JHK. Relocalization isn’t going to happen, though. At least not until the whole thing collapses and takes US population numbers to way below 150,000,000.
Just consider the economics of one shipping container going to one Wal-Mart on one tractor-trailer. Now split up the contents of that container to go to your localized butcher/baker/candlestickmaker. It would take 20+ delivery vans to replace the one semi. The efficiency embodied in modern Walmart styled logistics is impossible to compete against – until it isn’t, of course.
I do try to keep that latter possibility in mind.
Well, that’s strange. I just made a new post that should have gone to the very bottom of the thread. It didn’t go there. Wonder where this one will go?
“The Neoliberal theory is to smash the public sector in the interests of privatization….” – beingthere –
Yeah, bt, no kidding. Problem is that jobs in the public sector (if you can get one!) are far superior in benefits and security to jobs in the private sector. And public sector salaries, on average, have pulled ahead of private sector averages.* Certainly, federal salaries are WAAY ahead of the same average pay in the private sector, in my region of the country.
*that’s averages – Warren Buffet and Mr. Zuckerberger and their ilk skew the statistics.
yeah this comments thread is beeROKen.
like, fix it jhk
“The 2016 election will be the convulsion point.”
Unfortunately, I think the exact opposite for this coming electoral period. My description would be more like a culture with collective Peter Pan Syndrome and extreme Anosognosia.
LOL!
Can you name one person, besides Michael Jackson, who self-identifies as Peter Pan?
Don’t underestimate the manliness of men in the United States, millions of whom have gone through military training. Excluding the millions of military, even among civilians the estimated rate of private gun ownership (both licit and illicit) in the United States is 101 firearms per 100 people.
We are a long way from suffering from Peter Pan syndrome. Every 9 seconds in the USA a woman is assaulted or beaten. Actually we could use more Peter Pan syndrome and less macho patriarchy.
So ‘that great man from Indiana’ –according to Janos–turns out to be not so great after all. Or maybe he figured out that Am Ren/Stormfront/ Daily Stormer conventions were not going to pick up the financial slack in Indiana.
But speaking of LGBT issues, I was standing in line at that grocery store checkout line when I accidentally pushed my cart a little too far forward and said “excuse me Sir’. At which point the “Sir” in front of me wheeled around and displayed a chest which seemed to harbor a set of female like breasts although I was still wasn’t exactly sure what to think. Anyway, “Sir” was now irate: “Don’t fuck with me or I’ll fuck you up” obscenities flowed from the mouth of “Sir” in such a way as to leave no doubt in my mind that this was a testosterone laden male to his core.
From a physical standpoint there wasn’t much to be worried about. But from a psychological standpoint, this person struck me as being deeply disturbed and quite possibly deranged and someone to not take lightly. And sure enough, as I was walking out to my vehicle “Sir’ drives up to give me one half of the peace sign in a multiple invective barrage.
Driving home I thought of which came first: the chicken or the egg? Was this person essentially unstable thus the gender switch (assuming that was what actually was occurring)? Or had some hormonal imbalance as a result of the process resulted in a potentially very disturbing body chemistry/psychological imbalance?
Or perhaps something about me and my “Sir’ comment simply brought out the inner lunatic in this person and not unlike that time when I looked deeply into the eyes of a city zoo mountain gorilla only to be charged and treated with a banging bongo window symphony.
Well I was just being hopeful and hope is often dashed. But if Pence had stood his ground he would have had the world at his feet in terms of Conservatives. Trouble is we aren’t organized like the Left and our response is going to be far slower. And yeah, since almost all the big Corporations are against us, he might not have ever gotten sufficient funding to have a real shot at high federal office. But he has nothing now – he crawled and will not be forgiven by either side. Marco Rubio was jeered to scorn for not standing for his original stance against the amnesty. But his unpopular move was one favored by the Republican Party – and thus he is still loved and funded by them. That is not the case with Pence.
As for the Tranny: you should have pretended you were trying to meet it. Bumping shopping carts is supposed to be a classic. “She would have forgiven you and so, so much more….
Maybe your unconscious was trying to do just that?
More likely my “unconscious” was trying to be a smart ass and irritate the poor fellow trying to look like a woman–“excuse me Sir ” is not exactly being polite in some quarters 🙂
“So ‘that great man from Indiana’ –according to Janos–turns out to be not so great after all. Or maybe he figured out that Am Ren/Stormfront/ Daily Stormer conventions were not going to pick up the financial slack in Indiana.” — Buck Stud
Great line, Buck Stud. There are also active chapters of the KKK in Indiana (in Madison, in Kokomo, in Monroe City, Indiana).
“That great man from Indiana” quickly saw the light when the CEOs of Walmart, NASCAR, and the NCAA let their views be known. Governors of Arkansas and North Dakota and other states also learned a lesson.
Pence underestimated the strength of LBGT and their supporters, who are good American folks who believe in human rights.
Way down in Kokomo?
NASCAR has betrayed its base and should be shunned. Unfortunately, the yahoos don’t have the discipline and are sheep being lead to the slaughter. Same thing with the NFL and mainstream sportscasters – all PC shills.
According to the author of the book “Don’t Make Black Kids Angry”, violent black mobs bash innocent white people as revenge for slavery. Violent black mobs bash innocent Asians and Mexicans because they “take jobs from black people.”
Why would any prospective employer hire such people?
Be careful when out cycling. There’s a lot of random violence against cyclists because cycling is considered a “white thing.”
The US white community is obsessed with Political Correctness while in the black community black culture is being imbued the urban black gang culture which is violent and based upon race hate. The society can’t reconcile the contradiction so it psychologically shuts down and goes into denial.
Buck. that was an interesting post you made earlier about the incident in the grocery line. Well written, and very revealing. I go to extremes to avoid ugly public incidents like the one you describe. A nation of lunatics, ill bred, rude, uncouth, ignorant, aggressive, entitled, psychopathic, violent, and sometimes tragically, armed and dangerous!
Sometimes I think its best to avoid public places altogether.
My God, what a civilization!
Well, I planted a few rows of peas. See what happens.
brh
Kiev hopes in vain for US Abrams tanks
New national idea of former Ukraine: “Give us 1000 Abrams, and by the summer we will be in Moscow.”
For starters, the total number of all modifications of Abrams in US possession is about 6900 pieces. And there is not going to be more since a single tank factory “Detroit Arsenal” is closed and, moreover, taken down to the basement. There is still some repair capacity for newer modification, but there is no production. And it is not planned.
Once again, there is no large tank production now in the United States, as in “at all”.
Significant portion of the 6900 units, about half constitute Abrams first model M1. For understanding: during the invasion of Iraq crews M1 was strictly forbidden to engage in battle with the Iraqi T-72 tanks to avoid imminent fail. Their ceiling (again, according to US documents Iraqi period) – the confrontation with the T-55 (Soviet development of the mid-fifties of the last century). Even the RPG-7 grenade with a tandem charge was enough to take it down. One of the Abrams M1 in 2006 was destroyed (burned down) after a single hit from DShK machine gun (12.7 mm).
We are no longer the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’, that much is clear.
But if you want a $5 cup of coffee, served up by a chirpy young Barrista with green hair, neck tatts, and a ring thru her nose, this is the place to be. Also you can read the NYT list of the top ten Gay Friendly US Cities while you drink that coffee.
This is a little off topic, but we’ll be headed west soon, but is there a Meth Cookers Union on the other side of the Mississippi? Have they organized yet? I’ve been advised on good authority if we’re out in the boonies and run across a meth cookers encampment turn around and go the other way, which seems like sage advice.
brh
Stelmo writes:
“You are right Buck Stud, I do receive a pension. I did 33 years on the Bonebox, I have memories of dismemberment and disembowelment’s, not to mention crib deaths and the like. If it was not for your first responders your life would hang in the balance. Call 911 and have your neighbor come over and stuff your guts back into your abdominal cavity. Obviously your brains have already leaked out of your cranium.”
You miss my point. I’m glad you receive a public sector pension; you certainly have earned one I’m sure. What I don’t understand is why someone like you would buy anti Obama right wing conservative Tea Party stickers for your vehicle as if you were a ‘by thy own bootstraps’ sole-entrepreneur ‘limited govt Tea Party type’ who was being taxed to death by librul redistribution types?
Stelmo, your economic lifeline is a result of a public sector pension provided by private sector workers via taxation. You are NOT a private sector Tea Party type; thus your ideological hypocrisy is morally repugnant.
President Obama and those liberal Dems are on your side and have your economic interests in mind. The Tea Party/GOP types, on the other hand, would have privatized your job a long time ago and gone would be your pension not to mention other worker protection benefits such as workers compensation –did you know that Workers Comp is optional in Texas, land of many Tea Party members?
I’m sorry Stelmo I just don’t get the disconnect; the utter ideological incoherence/hyopcrisy of your views. Perhaps it’s nothing more that the ol’ ‘I got mine fuck everybody else’ dynamic’ which would make you prime Tea Party material indeed–after the public sector benefits fact.
But perhaps there is a more nuanced and rational reason for your beliefs that I’m missing?
Moreover, your statement ” I did 33 years on the Bonebox” is particularly revealing and in typical public sector entitlement fashion. Stelmo, for the true ‘by thy own bootstrap’ workers in the private sector, 33 years of work ain’t jack shit; that’s just a stroll around the block; the private sector craftsmen;tradesmen is just getting warmed up and in the prime of his/her expertise with much more learning and revelation on the horizon of daily toil.
And that’s a good thing, our longevity. After all, how else would Stelmo be able to retire after a mere 33 years and receive a public sector pension if not for the marathon private sector worker?
Take that sticker of your vehicle Stelmo; you didn’t earn that.
BRH writes:
“My God, what a civilization!”
The top box office movie so far this month is “Furious 7”–what a “civilization” indeed.
BRH, you frequently mention/invoke “reeducation camps” in your posts, but who needs reeducation camps when people voluntarily pay to ingest the disgusting tripe coming out of Hollywood these days?
The film you cite is going to be a huge moneymaker. The PR people have parlayed the untimely death of one of its actors into a pretty successful advertising campaign.
Seems like not much difference between advertising and propaganda these days, almost one and the same, a legacy of Joseph Goebbels.
brh
Looks like wpa was posting over at ABC News.com recently. Following this pictorial of the ongoing CA drought, the first two comments were:
Jasper Eliot • 19 hours ago
California, if you can figure out a way to pipe in and melt all our #$%@ snow in New England, you can have it.
THE LLAMACOIN Jasper Eliot • 19 hours ago
Heh- funny
BUT – you MIGHT be onto something there.
A mass pipeline across the nation.
Might just help resolve some of the problems.
That or mass desalination.
Look on the bright side of the melting glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica – it’s lowering salinity in salt water 🙂
Easier to desalinate ?
Call me an optimist heh.
Ahhh, I get it now. Like a certain soakie-sockie, I must have “a program” to adhere to and be included in.
I should emulate a hierarchy-worshipping, delusional shill for a profoundly unhealthy status quo?
Mmmmm… maybe not.
(Ps. that certain soakie-sockie ought to write to Mr. Orlov and tell him they’re convinced that he’s a bald-faced liar. That should go well. Strange they didn’t post any of their fine “observations” on his blog’s comment space.)
According to the book “Don’t Make Black Kids Angry”, the local police forces in the US are determined to manipulate local crime statistics to show that crime is down. So local police will often either not file police reports, or they will charge extremely violent assaults as a misdemeanour. That doesn’t prevent the police from stopping people and stealing their money and stuff, of course.
http://www.dailystormer.com/asian-boy-defends-whites-against-genocide/
Even some cool East Asian hearts are moved by the coming doom of the White Race. This man may not be my brother, but he is my friend. You who don’t care are neither even if you are as White as snow.
Ditto with Prog: this post should be at the bottom. Wonky software gets wonkier.
Czech President refused to talk to US Ambassador
Milos Zeman is angered by undiplomatic statements of US diplomat.
Czech President Milos Zeman rebuked US Ambassador Andrew Shapiro statements criticizing Zeman trip to the celebration of Victory Day in Moscow.
“I cannot imagine that the Czech ambassador in Washington would advise American President, where to go”
Zeman said firmly that the doors of Prague Castle (residence of Czech presidents) are now closed for the US ambassador. He did not even want to see Shapiro for explanation.
Sorting of comments is all f*cked up on this particular thread. Let’s see if the techies will figure out the problem by the appearance of new aricle.