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Entropy – Why the World as We Know It Is Dying, submitted by David Galland, of The Casey Report
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Blacks Holes give the lie to entropy.
How so? As long as we're discussing physics on ZH, might as well go all the way.
I think he means that if a blackhole consumes matter/energy then without the entropy within that blackhole increasing then it could not exist at all. Neither would we mind you. If entropy did not increase at some point in the universe then we would be in equilibrium and I would not be writing this comment, or something like that haha ;-)
Unless there are two parallel universes and Black Holes are simply doorways or hatches by which excess matter and energy flow back and forth to maintain entropy between the two.
Ehh...Or the problem with the idea of entropy is that it is under a "closed system", which nothing is in a closed system. The Universe may not be infinite but all of existence damn well is.
Black hole is super compresssed matter with high gravity. Light cannot escape hense the black hole. Entropy is explained with analogies to disorder but is a mathematical simplification that makes hand calculations work. One example was polluted water on one side of a fish tank and glass separating the clean and poluted water. When the glass is removed the water becomes equally polluted. With computers I figure entropy might not be right way to explain a bunch of particles in motion. Energy cannot be destroyed. Not sure if matter is energy. Believe smallest known particles can be divided further. Science only went so far; who knows. If entropy was real then the universe would be an evenly distributed cloud of super subatomic particles already.
that is one of the latest theories of the 'evolution' of the universe, but the time scale is incredibly immense, trillions and triliions of years in the future.
"2nd law of thermodynamics is inviolable"- paraphrase of a statement by Einstein. It's on you to prove otherwise.
I seem to recall that Einstein did not believe in the existence of quantum effects either....
Einstein was smart, and so was Newton. Each had the best explanation at the time. Neither one is going to be the last word.
"I seem to recall that Einstein did not believe in the existence of quantum effects either...." - Yeah right, you mean like when he explained the photoelectric effect. Of course Einstein accepted quantum mechanics and its empirical success, he was merely searching for an underlying explanation.
Interesting absolutist meanderings about the yet undetermined.
Hawking radiation begs to disagree. Anything that is sucked inside of the event horizon of a black hole will be re-emitted in the form of hawking radiation from each pole. Of course, it is utterly destroyed, much like we are liable to be, but it maintains an increasing entropy in the universe.
"Blacks Holes give the lie to entropy." - Not sure what that means. But theory says that even black holes will succumb to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, after trillions of years, through evaporation. A Mt. Everest-mass hole evaporates after about 10,000 years. Microscopic black holes evaporate (explode, really) instantly.
Correct.
While they may have existed at earlier points in the timeline, there are no Black Holes left these days....except, maybe, in the fevered minds of math weenies. Kinda like free markets...
Some of you guys are seriously stupid. Human beings do not live their lives, develop their societies, or conduct business at the scale of astronomy nor at the level of quantum mechanics.
All - repeat all - known systems within the human scale of operations here on planet Earth manifest the effects of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This faces every individual in his/her daily life (don't ever service your car, brush your teeth, or go to the doctor to see some examples in action). It faces every manufacturer, farmer, financier and politician. No one is immune, and gathering more material into a specific form for a specific purpose or consuming more energy for a specific purpose, at a faster rate, may benefit someone in a specific place for a specific period of time in such a way that that some persons believe they are exempt from the effects of entropy, merely indicates that they don't know or care about the degredation of materials or energy they leave behind or take away from others in the process.
But then, in a world in which most people believe there's an invisible supernatural being with magic powers who deeply cares about and controls what happens to them and chooses sides in nationalistic conflicts, and in which most people believe angels, ghosts and extraterrestrials walk among us disguised as ordinary people, I guess it's quite a stretch to expect anyone to understand something as complicated as that energy which is used in mechanical processes eventually ends up as dispersed low-grade heat that can never be recovered for mechanical purposes again.
And let me guess Mr. Galland, we protect ourselves with gold right? Pfft...
not sure how much research you've done as far as currencies or monetary history goes but could you please check out an independent documentary called "the money masters" by Bill Still at some point and let me know what you think of it? It is an old video that you can probably get via torrent. It's basically about the history of money. Bill makes an argument against a gold standard btw. I don't speak for everyone here but to me all fiat currencies are on their way to failure or debasement, and historically that is when PM's become useful.
And thats the word I'm looking for, "historically"... It is the argument of last resort for gold bugs the world over once any actual constructive debate has ceased...
Don't get me wrong, gold may go to $10000, $100000, and if they print enough $, well infinity right? Because following bug logic, if eg. infinite $U.S. is worth exactly zero, then golds "value" must be infinite, depending only upon the amount of goods or services one planet can provide right... But yeah, you hit the nerve of the argument when stating that
Just like fiat, gold standards were flawed, only in todays globalised economy,even more so and unless one truely believes we are heading for a new global gold standard, the hard cold truth is that your gold will be worth little more than shit.
BTW, not trying to be an asshole here haha, you make a valid point until, in my opinion, one realises that gold is about trust (remember that word historically?) and could be given any percieved "value" the subjective mind determines appropriate.
I know an old lady that collects old news papers and she would not trade them for all the gold in the world, just like in the event of a devastating economic meltdown, I wouldn't swap a can of cat food for a truck load of gold...
The new global monetary standard will be based upon the value given to each metric ton of carbon emissions... To me that should by now be completely f**cking obvious but hey, ust my 2 cents haha ;-)
I'll start at thread tomorrow in the forums/general discussion tomorrow under Tierra (or you can, or anybody else who wants to discuss this). Something just came up, but I am interested in talking about it. later.
sure, will check it out...
Hmmm...so you wouldn't trade a single can of food for a truckload of gold...which could then be traded for 100 truckloads of food? Or be used to buy...well, just about anything? Your inability to plan for the future will get you killed one day. Your inability to understand what makes money valuable (limited, static supply, portable, easily divisable) will leave you desperately poor.
You need to understand that when a society collapses, real money becomes highly valued, as dollars were throughout the 20th century in societies experiencing hyperinflation or economic collapse. Indeed, real money will get you a premium well above the stated exchange ratio, as merchants have a strong preference for money that they can save. There will ALWAYS be merchants, even moreso than there are now after an economic collapse, as more people attempt to directly market their wares, especially in the absence of a functioning government (and it's associated regulatory regimes).
Ignore history at your own peril. Higher order money is what preserves wealth during economic collapse. This is ALWAYS the case. If you can't see that, then I wish you well. Enjoy panning for gold to pay for bread, as is the case in Zimbabwe.
Well, you said it all in that last sentence...
Tell me, how much flour, yeast and salt could I purchase today with $1100, maybe I'll swap you one loaf of my bread for oh, lets say, 5 ounces of gold? Which for me would work out to the equivalent of purchasing each ounce for about a quarter.
You're as dumb as your avitar looks.
Most corporations, countries and even the planet earth are not closed systems! The solar system might be depending on your time horizon.
You know, I don't have that much time
Featured today: Greece and America, Cover Up, They’re all in this together, The Global System Is Collapsing—a Freedom Watch video with Gerald Celente
http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/03.10/collapse.html
Also, this excerpt from Building a Future Without the New World Order by Giordano Bruno | The Silver Bear Café
True Economic Freedom Realized
There has been a concerted effort in the mainstream media, not to mention certain protest movements, to blame the financial stress of our country and the world entirely on the "excesses of free-market capitalism." All I can say to these people in response is that they have no idea what free-market capitalism actually is. Few people alive today have lived in an America without the subversive influence of central bankers, and massive corporations, on the economy at large. Since the inception of the private Federal Reserve in 1913, we have lived under economic tyranny. To say that "free-market excesses" are to blame is a response driven by ignorance to the wider picture, because true free markets do not exist today.
When Adam Smith wrote his original treatise on capitalism and free markets, The Wealth of Nations, he did so in response to the organized cartels of rich merchant elites and monarchy who dominated all trade and commerce with vicious efficiency. Those people not lucky enough to be a part of the inner circle, or those not willing to pander to the aristocracy, were left to struggle in vain against unjust trade laws meant to keep the common man, no matter how brilliant or industrious, down in the gutters, begging for scraps from the tables of men born to fortune. "Trickle-Down Economics" is not a Reagan era idea; it has always existed in one form or another in one society or another. Its real designation, its real name, is feudalism, and it is designed to subvert the natural flow of commerce in order to create an unnatural two tiered class structure consisting only of the very rich, and the very poor.
For a short period, the American dynamic opened a door by which this unnatural class system could be dissolved, making way for the birth of the middle-class, a substantial and politically powerful cultural variant which until then did not exist, and in many countries never has existed. In America, the combination of free and open society, along with free-trade open to the masses created incredible wealth and innovation. However, the Elites were not yet to be undone.
Adam Smith was highly suspicious of the formation of corporations, or "joint-stock companies" as they were called in his day. Corporations (as opposed to "partnerships") are designed to devour competitionusing methods outside of the free-market ideology. They manipulate trade, and even law, by influencing government in their favor, sometimes buying governments outright. Their legal structure is such that they are rarely held accountable for any wrongdoing, because corporations are protected by "limited liability." Meaning, the corporation is treated as a legal person, and is thus punished as a "single entity," usually with non-threatening fines. The men who actually run the corporation, and make the decisions that lead to the breaking of law, are rarely if ever brought to task. Through this political wrangling, corporate elitists set themselves outside the reach of justice and social balance. The development of corporate culture in America paralleled almost exactly the ascension of the Federal Reserve and heralded the end of capitalism as it was meant to be. The Elites had returned, instituting the same old system of feudalism, but with brighter, shinier, more hypnotic packaging.
Central Banking directs the corporate pillaging of economies by blazing the political trails necessary for elites to stride above accountability. Before the Federal Reserve, the U.S. had suffered numerous economic downturns, but most of them were very short lived. The free market, left to operate without exploitation by governments or ultra-rich minorities, has an uncanny ability to right itself in due course. After the Federal Reserve was born, though, this natural ebb and flow ended. Within 20 years, the Great Depression arrived, lasting over a decade, after which, the U.S. dollar lost its gold backing, as well as most of its original strength and value.
The Fed has now created the potential for a hyper-inflationary collapse the likes of which could very well dwarf the Great Depression in destruction as well as duration...
(For Bruno's solution for a return to economic freedom, see link above)
Jeremy Rifkin wrote a very decent layman's screed on entropy decades ago.
Is it too much to ask that mortal law conform to natural law, lest we avoid the embarrassing consequences?
entropy when your patent gets stomped by CSCO
entropy is when your compression patent gets stomped by TXN and CSCO
While I am a believer of entropy on a philosphical level, watching for it in my portfolio has not been very successful lately. In particular, the slow, steady & managed rise of the SPY and assorted benchmarks is anything but that. Of course it could be building up to a tsunami-like abbregation of the till-now perfect order; that's what I (or my losing positions) are counting on.
While I am a believer of entropy on a philosphical level, watching for it in my portfolio has not been very successful lately. In particular, the slow, steady & managed rise of the SPY and assorted benchmarks is anything but that. Of course it could be building up to a tsunami-like abbregation of the till-now perfect order; that's what I (or my losing positions) are counting on
Entropy does not appear in your portfolio as it is on the receiving end of "energy" in the form of exogenous input from the Fed. Your portfolio is not a closed system
It will continue to go up until it goes down ... I only charge $45/year
well said. and cheap at that.
Good read. Thanks.
Does TBTF contradict this idea of entropy?
Entropy isn't a fancy word or an apt metaphor for fuck-ups, self dealing, rent seeking or belief in free lunches.
Entropy didn't get us in this mess, idiocy did. Besides, all systems are supposed to inexorably degrade over time and all of ours seem to be getting forever more complex.
Here's a physics metaphor I think Obama's political and financial wizards will be finding themselves on the business end of very soon: GRAVITY.
Bankers and Pols would have you believe they are idiots, but alas like a fox.
entropy is when your compression patent gets stomped by TXN and CSCO
He didn't mention negative entropy or syntropy. Business people don't know science. sorry bout that. makepeace.
Don't like the idea of entropy as disorder except as a human phenomenom. The universe and life existing after infinity time...not disorder. Energy is quantitative; order is qualitative. Entropy could be explained in pure energy. Macro simplification of hard to measure energy phenomena. Wait this is not the science forum. Science Bitches!
We have all assumed (at least I had until 2 years ago) that there was some unwritten law of the universe, or God Himself had decreed, that the United States of America could exist in perpetuity despite the number of civilizations that had come before it that had died, or otherwise cease to exist in the form in which they were founded. The examples are too numerous to mention, but you can start with Babylon and work your way through to the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire and then the British Empire. As in these cases, it is only our arrogant self-interest that deludes us to believe that we are somehow the "exception."
When Jesus returns we think it will be in Washington, DC standing by George Washington's grave. This is school boy stuff and frankly none of it stands up to critical scrutiny. Corruption hit America full in the face within weeks of finding ourselves independent of England and it hit many more times before John Adams was sworn in as the second President. (Marbury vs Madison and the midnight judges)
10 years from now (maybe 2 or 3) this country will look a lot different than it does now. The Federal Government will have a totalitarian grip on all of us or we will be in the throes of the Second Revolution.
what a bunch of poop - of course entropy exists, but the degradation and ultimate destruction of one system ultimately gives rise to another - what in the name of the fuck does this dumb-ass shit have to do with investing?
ps I fart in your general di-rection
what a bunch of hooey. Don't blame this horse shit on entropy. When Kelvin, Carnot et al developed 2nd law concepts of classical entropy nothing of the sort was extrapolated. These concepts quantify and characterize the quality of different forms of energy and how energy quality degrades when it is transformed by synthetic processes. Boltzmann, Gibbs et al extended these concepts to statistical thermodynamics and showed how this quality is manifested by randomness on a molecular level. Later on, dope smokin', acid droppin' 60's elites who could only dream of the brilliance of the likes above crapped the drivel that Galland hurls without a clue.
Blame that shit on cheating, thieving insiders who believe they're entitled.
Agreed wackyquaker, the universe ia way too
young to be considering entropy at this point.
Heck, the universe is still accelerating...
and getting bigger, starless sky in our distant future...
But applying the concept of entropy to finances is just wrong headed...
Entropy is for thermodynamics only...
You might want to review the entire definition.
Yep. looked at it from my working perspective....
Thanks
You're slightly off the mark. This is first and foremost a mathematical equation related precisely to a closed system within system of infinite probability.
The larger a closed or centralized human system is the faster it approaches entropy due to the larger number of necessities it must address.
Many centralized systems manage to stave off this breakdown by absorbing smaller more capable, or newly created systems to deal with emergent necessity.
Not that centralized human systems are completely useless, they are actually quite capable of achieving short term or well defined goals. However, in order to survive past the point of completion they must become interdependent with the overriding system. In order for this to happen it must become decentralized to fit with the over all decentralized random nature of the overriding system. In other words, it must dissipates dissolve and/or collapse whether it likes it or not.
Just chalk it up as yet another reason why authoritarian central planners are assholes.
thank you. i've been paging down and this is the first one that grabbed me. first, evolution is anti-entropy and so is the market. they are self correcting mechanisms, given sufficient time. i personally think your best sentence was your penultimate. thank you.
Its dying because its being sucked dry....
all employees for the University of Illinois.
Let's see what we have here....
The head of the football team - the coach - makes $1 million. For
coaching a college football team.
The "intercollegiate (sports) director makes $600,000.
The President of the University is just $50 large shy of a half-million.
A large number of Deans and Professors make $250,000 - or more.
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2062-IF-You-Are-Going-To-Dem...
As an alum, I must say that I don't mind paying top profs $250K, but a million for the Zooker is outrageous. Good recruiter, terrible coach!
Then I guess you won't mind the proposed 20% tuition hike meant to sustain that bloated cost structure when the state money dries up.
And you want to be my latex salesman?
Don't confuse symptoms with the disease.
The disease is that we believe that deficits don't matter (Dick Cheney) and that there is limitless energy, available to meet all of our needs no matter how much is needed.
The subject is, contrary to what some believe, VERY relevant, though not as described in this article.
It is laughable to suggest that unfettered capitalism would ward off the pressures of entropy.
As clearly noted, the fundamentals of entropy have to do with energy. Capitalism (or any other manmade "virtual" system, esp economics, exists in the world of energy. As energy is limited, one cannot use increasingly more energy to consolidate energy into forms usable by our manmade systems.
Look the other way long enough, and the tenured crooks will be chipping the gold off the capitol dome in Springfield.
"The U.S. government has a technology, called a perpetual printing press..."
Sir Isaac Bernanke
this paper is non-actionable and idiotic.
Casey's been around for 30 years and isn't rich enough to retire yet. Not the best source of info.
Isn't evolution a direct contradiction to entropy??
Right on, wackyquacker. Galland’s argument is that no matter what, there’ll be no reaction to the trends taking place in America. He found a word, and that word was entropy, synonymous with inevitable—both of which are not true. Galland sounds like a flat earth society; there’s nothing in what he has to say.
This is not entropy; it’s ectropy. The United States was deliberately pushed to this turning point--a point never before reached in its history.
Financial oligarchs have stolen the nation’s financial foundation, deliberately and methodically, until the current system is a mere pretense. To join in the pretense is foolish.
This banker-controlled government is at fault, partner to the crime. It has done its part enabling these speculators to perform like looters, like street gangs when disaster hits, running up and down the streets stealing everything they can carry. This government has been only too happy to take care of its friends and impose inflation on the citizens.
America isn’t operating under a constitutional government; this isn’t “us” anymore—it’s a clique of politicians acting as government, corrosive and criminal, partnered with the investment bankers. An historical example is Amschel Mayer Rothschild who worked together with the princes of Europe to steal the people’s money. Look at Greece? Look at Congress. Congress never worries about how much it is spending, about how much debt it is conferring upon the people, about the plight of the nation.
The disease has been diagnosed. It’s now time to operate. Or perish.
Galland describes America’s plight as something that happened within. What happened to America happened from without. A man, the international financier Paul Warburg, came from tyrannical Europe to America from Germany to make this change-- to infect our system of free-market capitalism with the Federal Reserve System. This did not emanate from the Founders. And, you know what, we’ll fix it, from within.
America’s development, the American dream, is a pure example of throwing off a deteriorated system, the monarchy of Europe. America undid Europe’s feudal system and started over. IMO, this disproves Galland’s entire premise. Now, America will go in, overturn this current system of special privilege, and throw out the Fed and its sycophants. And Galland will have to say, “I was mistaken.”
He found a word, and that word was entropy, synonymous with inevitable—both of which are not true
That entropy's actions "encourage" balance, and that our actions are WAY out of balance with nature (which is real medium by which everything exists, not economics), I'd state that it is in fact inevitable that the system will NOT stay out of balance with entropy.
Our "systems" are only actors on a stage, a stage that exists by the grace of nature and its available energy. Changing the actors of a bad play doesn't magically turn the play into a good one: can't fool the audience, can't fool mother nature!
"Entropy?!?!?!"
Are you freaking kidding me?
I hate when people borrow that term from physics and try to apply it to complex systems.
Yes, there are bubbles. Yes, there are declines and sometimes collapses, and new systems that arise to take their place. It's all part of the process of the evolution of society, a process that continually progresses toward more organization.
"Entropy" tells us nothing.
Lame article.
"'Entropy' tells us nothing"
True statement. Zerohedge and the collective postings tell us nothing either. Consider Entropy in it's information theory and philosophical context. The progression of our lack of understanding in a world of increasing access to 'information' and the effect on the individual, country, or globe.
-MB
to paraphrase donald rumsfeld: it's not the known unknowns that bite your ass, it's the unknown unknowns.
to paraphrase donald rumsfeld: it's not the known unknowns that bite your ass, it's the unknown unknowns.
"'Entropy' tells us nothing"
True statement. The collective postings on this site tell us nothing either. Consider Entropy in it's information theory and philosophical context...the progression of our lack of understanding in a world of increasing access to 'information' and the effect on the individual, country, or globe.
"It's all part of the process of the evolution of society, a process that continually progresses toward more organization."
OK, then ask yourself HOW organization is achieved. For each single reply ask the question again (how that position is achieved). What you will find (past the superficial) is that it ultimately comes down to energy: you cannot HOLD anything together (and yes, that's exactly what organization means -holding something together- and HOLD means FORCE, and FORCE requires WORK, and WORK requires, wait for it...) without ENERGY.
On one hand people bitch about all their hard-earned money (via WORK) getting gobbled up by bureaucracy, and on the other hand they say that we need MORE "organization." Again, the devil is in the details. But...
I suppose that people don't want to acknowledge that capitalism requires ever-increasing amounts of limited energy, and that someday the total amount of WORK that capitalism can do will encounter its energy limit.
Capitalism is just socialism with an air of more class. The deception in both is that neither acknowledges the limits of growth (pushing the notion that they can expand indefinitely on a finite planet).
Thanks for playing!
I once had a dream about markets that moved, but nobody traded, and people who had risk didn't have to manage it, because it didn't exist...Wait, that wasn't a dream it was the Wizard of Oz on LSD, who knew?
Life is always dying. That's why it makes new life.
I made it through the 4th paragraph before I got too irritated to read on. He draws several historical conclusions that are, to put it nicely, bullshit. Let me clarify a few things:
I'd also echo the scientific issues with the analogy addressed by several comments above. This article is pure crap, ex post facto, parochial, hogwash. Let's all try to keep some sort of historical perspective, alright?
The world is not about to end, you shouldn't be stocking up on cabins in the woods or shotgun shells, and tomorrow will come. Please! This is totally a side point, but I'm sick and tired of reading comments to the effect that it's all about to end, blah blah blah. No, it isn't. The world will change. Change is the only constant. Get over yourself, you aren't that important, the time you live in isn't that important, and your pet issues aren't that important. The world will keep on spinning.
Go play a round of golf, or shoot some pool, or have some sex, and think about the fact that compared to someone living at just about any other time in history, or many living in large parts of the world today, your life is pretty damned good. Short of a nuclear war, that fact isn't going to materially change, even if the PPT is truly manipulating the markets, or if the US dollar loses 90% of its value, or the Democrats pass health care, or even if China's GDP eclipses that of the US.
I'm as interested in what is going on as the next guy (more so actually), but I can't abide by all of this myopia!
Your last couple of paragraphs reflect the attitude of just about everyone that I talk to regarding recent economic events.
I don't know you, and I won't make any assumptions about you or your life. In fact, you may be right. Perhaps civilization is not so thin a veneer after all. I suggest you don't watch videos like this if you want to maintain that belief:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw2pRnBgeBU
There are many examples throughout history which demonstrate that when societies go through dramatic 'change' (of the magnitude that some of us believe is approaching), the results can be quite painful for the majority, and on a personal level. It is easy to sit in comfort and say that "Change is the only constant. Get over yourself..." and "The world keeps spinning.", but I wonder how you might feel if you or those you love go through the type of change that you dismiss so lightly.
And, in the greater scheme of things, you are quite right that "you aren't that important, the time you live in isn't that important". But, regardless of personal religious beliefs, a rational mind should accept the possibility that when you die, that is it. No heaven or hell, no nirvana, no soul, just an organism shutting down. So while I agree with your statement, I find that even the possibility that this is it and there is nothing - nothing to follow, pretty much makes life precious to me. To borrow a lyric from the band Green Man, I find that I am unprepared for eternity.
So I believe it is wise to accept and discuss the possibility of a shit-hit-the-fan moment in the near future. For one thing, it just might help some people prepare (including mentally), and such preparation is quite useful regardless (e.g., for those who live in areas prone to fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.). For another, rational contemplation of what could happen can, for some, lead to a much greater appreciation of life on this side of the apocalypse.
Just my 2cents
Well put, I certainly don't mean to suggest that what happens today isn't important to all of us. I also won't get into the spiritual aspect of things too much, for my part I procede undert he assumption that what happens to me during my corporeal life is all I've got, so I'd better do my utmost to make sure I do everything I can to make it as meaningful and comfortable as I can.
All I was trying to say there is that even if the 'worst case' that we're contemplating in terms of financial upheaval or even political unrest comes true in the near future, it won't affect daily life to the extent that many ZH commenters regularly imply. We won't revert to life in a state of nature, and we won't be wandering Cormac McCarthy's road (if you haven't read it don't, what a depressing story, with premises completely unexplained).
It isn't that things may change - they will change. But this myopic view of the world, in which the government (imagined as a clever, devious, sentient being) is out to get everyone (when the government is really just people like you and me, trying to get through the day to get home and crack a beer) and is putting one over on all of society, with scant evidence to that end beyond conclusions drawn in broad strokes using layered assumptions of conspiracy (when we know they can't even enforce a guest list at the white house, for example) is ludicrous.
I like a conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but let's get a hold of ourselves and keep a bit of perspective here. We may well be approaching such a SHTF moment, and if so...so be it. Knowledge is power, and ZH is a fantastic source of information, and I check the site for updates a dozen times a day, every day, since the middle of last year.
You are 100% right, we need to be thinking about this sort of thing, but sometimes it gets taken a bit too far. Thanks for the well thought out response.
Can you at least agree about his philosophical point, that the tighter the government tries to control capital the more capital will run away from them?
I have to admit I didn't finish reading the scribd post, after he got all high and mighty with his historically flawed "America is the best ever" premise.
I think I can agree with that statement in general (at least as I understand it, while still stubbornly refusing to read the remainder of an article that opens in such a fashion), I am always predisposed towards free markets, and lack of government intervention whereever possible.
While there is certainly need for prudent regulation, and enforcement of rules & ethics, by and large government manipulation and command & control of markets causes more problems and distortions than it can ever hope to 'fix'. This compounds itself, and soon you are 'fixing' problems created by your last 'fix', and boom we get the OCC/Fed/FDIC's banking regulatory functions (as they exist presently).
I find it hard to argue against the free market in most cases, though I can also be persuaded otherwise in certain situations.
Well the free market by nature is just as short lived as a command and control economy I suppose. Because what it really comes down to is that life is anti-entropy and the market is more or less a living thing, the idea of the "free market" being a force exactly like evolution. Both really are just functions of structure, the structure being in this case "market participants". And these market participants tend to organize and consolidate, it just becomes unstable when this consolidation results in benefiting the unproductive.
So then suppose we view it as a swinging pendulum, rather than simply as a one way highway to hell?
Yes, indeed.
Ah... no.
The pendulum analogy suggests that this is cyclical. It is not.
Retorts such as "highway to hell" are simple dismissives to the discussion of what direction change/time will bring.
And thinking that things will just carry on regardless of the market (being undermined OR being given free reign), is poor logic. The existing SYSTEM ("organization") is supporting a LOT of people (we're all dependent upon it). As soon as those trucks stop delivering to the local store you'll be able to test your hypothosis.
Capitalism is starting to lose to nature, that's a fact. Capitalism's push for growth is being pushed back on by nature. Many people don't see this because they believe that "the American way of life is not negotiable." The negative affects are always hidden until they cannot be hidden anymore. But, the reality exists, and the harder we push it the quicker we'll end it. Consider:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/07/food-water-africa-land...
I suppose that this will be tempered by aging populations, with foreign lands and peoples continuing to prop up the unsustainable for a bit longer, and for robots (making goods etc.) doing the same, but as time and entropy carry on the system will not have the energy to sustain itself. Is this the "road to hell?" Depends on how you look at it.
It may also be the road that leads us to long-term sustainability, one that actually is more in balance with entropy (though we'd likely never achieve this, else we'd all end up being bits of tiny matter floating in space).
Thanks for playing.
As you said capitalism's push for growth is being pushed back by nature. But we have to ask ourselves, how is it possible that we have reached the point where the expansion of our economic system is stressing nature. I believe the answer to that question is the fundamental problem that currently exists in our society.
Capitalism, although biased towards growth, is limited by price. Mises outlined this wonderfully in alot of his books. Price and price discovery limits the growth of an economy as well as dictates where it expands and contracts. Thus even capitalism can exists in a finite system due to the limitations imposed on it by scarce resources who's scaricty is reflected in price.
BUT when price becomes distorted by a fiat monetary system that has ZERO limitations and is in no way, shape or form based in reality (only the reality in Ben's mind) then the limitations imposed on capitalism can be violated. In a fiat money system economies (or more specifically consumption) can expand ad infitium. As corruption, fraud, credit expansion, etc. allows our economy to expand (bubble anyone?) beyond reality the situation will only get worse.
It is laughable that either of you think that capitalism is losing to "nature". The market is in a state of decay because of government, not limited resources.
The market is in a state of decay because of government, not limited resources.
Yeah bright-bulb, just stating it makes it so, yeah, right!
Apparently you live in a bubble, shielded from the majority of the world (which lives on a measely $3/day or less, not because they are lazy, but because they don't have the resources to prop themselves up to an unsustainable level, or the energy to ward off exploitation).
Sorry, but your granite countertops, SUV and McDonalds shakes are going to be ravaged by nature.
People are always quick to lash out at others for their problems.
Dollar donominated valutations are meaningless. So your assumption is asanine. You are an idiot that looks at symptoms of a problem and blame the symptom.
"just stating it makes it so, yeah, right!"
hmm... pot I have a call for you on the other line, I think its kettle.
You're dismissing resources, like physical matter doesn't exist, like the "Great Market" can overcome. Who's an idiot?
Bring your best shot pal. I'll shoot you down in a heart beat. Logic trumps!
I am not dismissing resources, I am dismissing it as a problem. And the comparison to denying physical existance is an extreme jump in logic.
Certianly if resources were infinite then by your logic we would all be wealthy, but alas you are nothing more than a fool. Because of course you don't think that perhaps a resource is something that is earned which in tern is capital. A resource is nothing if it is not worked for. There are resources all over the planet, in peoples garbage, in places people pass by everyday and yet no one utilizes them.
It is a lack of capital that is the problem. And capital is work. Every resource is meaningless without the work used to process it. Everything we trade, buy, sell is produced from labor even in its un altered form. Capital is labor. If gold sits in a river an no one claims it, does it have any value? No.
What's the point? I dont see what you brought up compared to the previous answers made to you.
A resource is nothing if it is not worked for.
But work is nothing if it is supported by resources.
If no gold sits in a river how can someone claim it?
Your words read like somebody who believe that the market will provide.
As to the downfall, of course.
Mankind started to mine Earth 10, 000 years ago. Standard of life have largely progressed since those days. The downfall will not happen over night.
Excellent points all. I have had the opportunity to work with a number of people who are 'in the system' and might be considered part of the-powers-that-be and my experience has been that, just as you say, they are mostly just trying to get through the day and get home like most of us. While there is some value to trying to see patterns in the events of the day, it is possible, when emotions come into play, to get pulled a little too far to the conspiracy side of things.
Thanks for providing a balanced perspective.
+10 Golf... sex... sounds like a plan. Is 18 holes considered a closed system? Just wondering...
your life is pretty damned good. Short of a ... war, that fact isn't going to materially change"
And if you said that in 1930?
Much misconception on entropy in the comment section... Good luck.
Chaos Theory is perhaps a more appropriate study for "why the world as we know it is dying".
No, I don't think that there's any such chaos or randomness to what's going on, rather, it's HIGHLY predictable. We're only fooling ourselves thinking otherwise.
The System is struggling because it's infrastructure is based on $20/bbl oil and it's trying to operate on $80+/bbl oil.
Everything ties to energy...
Just because we cannot control something doesn't mean that it's chaos. Only our actions can be described as chaotic.
Interesting read, but the US (or any other economy) is in no way a closed system. We're all experiencing why it's an open system through resource depletion for example
Not only his his concept of entropy misapplied in his reasoning, but his concept of entropy is circular. Entropy defined by maximun entropy.
He clearly doesn't understand what he's talking about.
Third, the world of asset markets and the earth at large are not closed systems, in which case his argument falls apart.
He's argument would have been much better without mixing entropy misconceptions in it.
I might have used the word "decay" as opposed to entropy. The steady, inevitable degradation of something to something more base or course.
The constitutional republic created in 1789 is long gone, replaced by a vampire squid Federal Government in Washington, D.C. Now the free market is dying, being suffocated to death by taxes, regulation, and political intrigue.
It is a sad day for the freedom of all people to see a world so thoroughly oppressed by Big Government and Big Brother. George Orwell was right.
Good word, I was leaning toward corruption. Of all the economic models that look so pretty, none factor in flat out corruption.
...death by taxes, regulation, and political intrigue...
All of the listed above have their roots in someone paying someone off to get a little more for themselves.
Agreed.
But history shows the evening of decay which falls to night is followed by a new dawn. Unfortunately, we are living in a time in which we have a front row seat to watch the decay, but will probably be dead before the dawn.
I'm afraid the most we can hope for is that some ZHers, excluding the imbeciles, may take part in laying the next foundation on the graveyard shift.
It was said that George Carlin did not become the entertaining and incisive comic he was until he understood the concept and dynamics of entropy.
Could not get past page 2 where he declares the brilliance of shorting Toyota -- not GM, not Ford, not any other of 5,000+ companies that would have been a better short by a large factor.
Disregarding the people who say please don’t pay attention to what is going on, the old world keeps on a turning, and we’ll all be here in the morning, there is only one nugget to be found in these discussions. And that irritating fact is that the American system without a correction will morph into tyranny before you are “all right in the morning.”
The capital markets have been taken over by the oligarchs, the U.S. foreign policy is in the hands of the international bankers, the Congress of the United States has the face of former Representative Eric Massa, and the people have paid with every last penny the extortion by grand larceny imposed by the Federal Reserve.
Yesterday, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation warned that someone had set up a bogus web site in an attempt to trick Madoff victims into turning over confidential financial information. I ask, is this predatory, unregulated government fixed? No! Somebody thought these victims were such saps that they could be taken again. This is the kind of government we have: the barn door was not locked so the horses were stolen, and if you got your horses back, you may have noticed that there’s still no lock on the barn door. This is America 2010.
And now we get chime's comments that everything is pretty much okay; go back to sleep.
"The capital markets have been taken over by the oligarchs, the U.S. foreign policy is in the hands of the international bankers"
The "money changers" have been in control (with periodic hard fought pauses) since the ink dried on Declaration of Independence (and long before that in Europe)... Fractional Reserve Central Banking being the method of choice of funding their various "projects" through the ages.
Could it be that quantum leaps in communication (the ZH community being a shining example), born of technological advances (ironically fueled by the oligarch's insatiable appetite for profit), will finally awaken the "serfs," providing the transfer of energy from outside the system required to reverse the "entropy" process?
Absolutely!
Sure, we can all become awake to the fact that we can't all be awake at the same time...
Seeing as nothing is static, we're either losing the battle with entropy (which will/would occur in the end anyway) or we're winning. In order to "win" we'd have to employ substantial energy, and unfortunately, we're kind of lacking in this department. It would appear, then, that we're reversing, losing ground. And with this reversing we're also likely to face the (non-linear) effects of economies of scale in reverse.
Entropy is just the force that keeps energy in balance. Our anti-entropy powers were obtained from the magic chest that is stored energy (wood, coal, then oil). It's like a burried plastic (water) tank that doesn't have internal supports, it works well when full, but at some point as the contents are extracted the forces outside the tank, the earth/dirt, start to take over, eventually collapsing the tank.
No, it's not "doom and gloom" or the "road to hell," it's just plain physics, it's just reality. It's time to start adjusting to the physical realities of the world, and quit thinking that if we just pray harder (to a god or to markets) that a new magic chest will appear.
Roach- ignore the sniping- you may have the single best av. and Id on the internet!
who's in charge here? ain't you?
You're bread won't stay all that tasty fresh for very long though. Just saying....
Unused commercial space can be used to grow vegetables. It even has sprinklers, and lighting!
This is our fallback plan up here in Central Canada when the vegetables stop arriving from a fallen USA vegetable market...
Now That's the kind of innovation that we'll be needing!
I'd always kidded SUVers that trucks were better, as when they ultimately all get parked at least you can plant in the truck's bed! But those stuck with SUVs, don't despair, you can still use the vehicles to dehydrate food! (sun not included)
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