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Must Read: Death To The Uber And Hyper Twins: Mother Nature’s Humble Cures
This is probably one of the most critical charts you will ever see. In several years, when the dollar's reserve status is but a memory, some will look back and say it could have been avoided. But as the "You Are Here" arrow is just to the left of the tipping point, it may very well be too late as is.
Complete must read observations from guest poster JM: Death to the Uber and Hyper Twins: Mother Nature’s Humble Cures (pdf)
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a confounding not a discounting mechanism
I know, I know. When the hammer comes down on us, it will be nasty truly nasty.
what people here forget about is that doom IS already hitting people.. and it will never be all at once.. so there will be no rallying cry.. just the silent cries that everyone who still has stuff simply ignores.. the musical chairs of the American Dream plays on...
Nicely put.
"Complexity in our system that aids in the effective utilization of technology "
Or, so it believes to be "effective." Technology is the tool that we employ against entropy; problem is, entropy, esp in the face of dwindling resources (i.e. energy), dwarfs technology. When we hit zero EROEI that's it; game over for the "technology can save us" model.
"all we have to do is buy a few years at a time as the scarcity equation rachets up the costs of scarce commodities "- We're going to have to buy more than a few years time, and during that period there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
+1
so true
I think what you mean by the second kind of "complexity" is complication, as in the mind-numbing counter-productivity of the US Tax Code. All such regimentation -- i.e., forced order -- is destructive of society, which is inherently complex, and flexibly so.
Yes, our society is going to collapse but not because of its complexity. It is going to collapse because the controls placed on it by the state -- particularly by its stupendously complicated monetary system -- finally overwhelm it.
Or to put it another way:
Cooperation = spontaneous order = complexification = progress = individuated unity
Coercion = regimentation = complication = regression = undifferentiated chaos
Yep, the bigger the scam, the more carefully worded and crafted it seems to be.
Complexity is fraud's best friend...
Pithy. Erudite, even.
:-)
In the sentence that runs on for ten lines... is there a verb somewhere?
The word abstruse immediately comes to mind...
I'm sure it's brilliant but, shorter sentences, please.
errata
I wonder...just how robust does the system need to be in the face of inertia?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7h4OtFDnYE&feature=related
FUNGOO!
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/937.html
Max at his best.
Saudi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvBcl40QOhQ
...wet my pants laughing...
Didn't that final graph just contradict the entire piece, or am I missing something?
You are a perceptive reader. I have to admit uncertainty of outcome. While I think that a grinding uneventful misery without prefixes is the mostly likely outcome, it is possible that the current Fed, ECB, BOJ, and BoC insanities won't burn themselves out. thus everyone gets burned.
The simplistic narrative I think he's putting forth is generally "Nature sucks at chess but always wins. Modern society is a complex adaptive system. Central bankers are jackasses but the currency swap system is mutually assured destruction (so we'll be ok, right?) The best way through this is for both creditors and debtors to both experience pain. Oh, and despite everything I said, be very very scared because our central bankers are bigger jackasses than your central bankers."
Now if the possibility of bondholder haircuts had *ever* been broached as a policy prescription I might believe this "moderation is best" hype, but where is the political or popular will for this sort of middle path?
To paraphrase Ryan Crocker, "the events for which this crisis will be remembered haven't happened yet."
A good point. Perhaps the way to see this is as a poetic meditation on the larger, unalterable reality we live in, a reality we personify and call 'Mother Nature'. The graph is an impressionistic object, which we are free to interpret as we will.
My own take is that this graph illustrates the idea that a given strategy (here, cheapening the dollar) will work smoothly for a while, but will unexpectedly fail well before the endpoint is reached. It's like one of those math functions that it defined between two points: beyond those points we just don't know what it will do.
JoshRoman raises the point that the moderation talked of in the essay is nowhere in evidence. Debtors and creditors alike are made whole, with the long-suffering taxpayer to get the bill. I would also posit moderation in balancing short- and long-term considerations. One cannot ignore either for long, but global policy these days seems to be preoccupied with the short end of the curve. We know how such myopia plays out in our personal lives.
themroc is some kind of masterpiece!
highest possible rating!
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=themroc&aq=f
My take on the graph is that the Fed has posited a smooth glide-path to ramp the dollar down. That the Fed believes is a carefully-controllable phenomena.
However, as with most best-laid plans, at a critical inflection point an unplanned-for event manifests itself, and the smooth slope instantly pivots into a steep cliff.
.
Well done.
It is never all bad, people find a way to live, love and laugh through it all.
Hey JM, good stuff. You may want to read this about complexity in ecological, economic and equitable systems:
(PDF)
www.ivwl.uni-kassel.de/beckenbach/PDFs/.../Panarchy.pdf
Or this longer view on Resilience and the Panarchy (worth a google):
http://www.amazon.com/Panarchy-Understanding-Transformations-Natural-Sys...
And Tainter too...is good on complexity.
www.ivwl.uni-kassel.de/beckenbach/PDFs/.../Panarchy.pdf
Excellent link! It's good to know that complexity in ecological, economic and equitable systems can be dealt with in just two sentences:
<blockquote>Die von Ihnen angeforderte Seite konnte nicht gefunden werden.
Bitte sehen Sie sich die unten stehenden Links an. Sie verweisen auf Information, die für Ihre Anfrage von Bedeutung ist.</blockquote>
Thanks for the tip!
Funny shit. True. A workable link:
http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:NqTYFo_L4XQJ:scholar.google.com/&h...
Or google, CS Holling, Complexity in Economic, Equitable and Ecological Systems (or some combination thereof).
Thanks, that's much more helpful! Cheers! and glad you have a sense of humor.
Prigogine's Entropy implies that as systems become more complex, a threshold of complexity will be reached such that the system will begin functioning in unpredictable directions; such a system will lose its initial conditions and these can never be reversed or recovered (Briggs & Peat, 1989)
These unpredictable directions are called bifurcations in my vocabulary. Sometimes systems bifurcate, slide into chaos and then, exhausted, self-organize in simpler ways.
When the central bank is really a central planner, expect a bifurcation. These guys in charge need to chill out and think for a while.
Using a controls engineering vocabulary, what you're looking to hypothesize is the response of 'the system'. A response, to an input.
In controls, engineers measure the response of a system to a known input, quantifying and measuring simple characteristics like gain and feedback, overshoot, etc., then attempt to build models for predicting outcomes of future hypothetical inputs.
If one can successfully define the correct 'response function' then, one can theoretically predict the outcome of any measurable input.
Punchline is, have you ever noticed how a plot of human population over just 4000 years looks like a dirac-delta function? That is, the input we're all trying to predict the response of.
I'm guessing the Dirac delta spike happened around 1850 and still hasn't come back down? Before this it was flat-line near zero?
But now that I say this, deltas overshoot on return, yes?
In theory, a dirac delta function shoots to infinity instantaneously then just as quickly returns to zero.
In nature, the function is approximated and approaches some really high value faster than exponentially, then returns just as fast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_delta_function
So you were correct in your inference, up until you said overshoot. The dirac input returns exactly to zero (things like a population, are absolute) almost always cause linear, causal, systems to overshoot, then snap back with some degree of undershoot - then oscillate until either a new equilibrium is reached - ie a steady state, or some degree of infinite instability. Some forms of this instability, I'm sure could be called what you label, 'bifurcation'.
...but I'm no PHD. Muti-variable control theory goes deeper than, say, the rabbit hole. ;)
I stand corrected. I haven't done tranforms in a while.
Mother nature flash crashes? Or does she have a "fat finger?"
Sorry. I have not read in this area at all. Could not resist, it was just sitting there.
Yep, there is emerging research that Mother Nature does at times flash crash.
Mother Nature tracks in billions of years. On a fixed scale, would 4000 years be, more or less, instantaneous?
That's what I'm talking about, the dirac delta function, is instantaneous. Our existence is an instantaneous, impulse to 'the system'.
But, ironically, one can't determine if a dirac delta is in fact a dirac delta until it's over.
Now, I've proposed that we are the input, to 'the system', leading to instability or some equilibrium. But, maybe, our population is the response.
Our data on human population over 4000 years isn't that great. It's largely speculative.
It's really not even very good over 1000 years--the New World population estimate offers a range of near an order of magnitude. Even in astrophysical terms that's a significant margin of error.
GIGO.
Good point. But, for the math to work, it doesn't matter if it's 4,000 years or 40,000 years. However, if the time constant is measured in thousands of years vs tens of thousands, it would materially change how fast we approach instability or a steady state.
I could agree on the chilling part, but please stop the thinking while we are still alive!
So life is change. The weather changes, the seasons change, the sun changes, the world ages.
Because our lives are not as secure as say a chunk of Granite, which is eroding, we should be scared? We should piss ourselves because tomorrow is going to be fucking different and possibly difficult?
Maybe we should think, I ate something today. Life is good. I drank water today, life is good. I didn't have a limb blown off in a drone strike today, life is good. I'm not watching my kids starve to death in front of my eyes today, life is good.
Fuck people, others have REAL much more serious problems.
Why the fuck are we facing fears that don't exist? They may happen someday. Aliens may invade someday. The last virus may strike, the one that infects every living thing, some day. An asteroid may blow a big hole in the world someday.
Those are just as real if not more so then our daily dose of terror.
I'm bored and tired. Get your apocalypse on and hurry the fuck up. I just can't maintain this level of high strung neurotic tension anymore.
Aliens?!
"I just can't maintain this level of high strung neurotic tension anymore."
There's an app for that.
You post here daily. Don't try it.
You're not too far ahead of me, Gully.
Apocalyptic bifurcation in 3..2..1...
live for today?? but you need to plan ahead for your 100 year bond investments
KingofPain
Jung said that change is right up there with death on the fear scale of people. Thinking that drastic change might coming must be about as bad, or maybe worse, than the actual change.
Once the change occurs people adapt...even to incredibly bad situations.
Good one. Jung also says that the greatest amount of human stress comes from the conflict between preservation-of-the-species and self-preservation. The balancing act of whether to be completely self-centered while your neighbor starves will rear its ugly head soon enough. That could be where a lot of the problem lies. How will I act when the crunch comes? And it could come many times. We can vacillate between states of mental equilibrium and that is enough to cause insanity and crime, or moments of great compassion.
we are all adults here. i understand the builup of tension. To which i say"fuck it" and move on with the moment. What else can be done? Prepare as best you are able , alert and educate others. Meanwhile keep your center and grow in love. All you take with you is who the inner you has become
Would have to agree, in theory at least. We have a saying around here, shit or get off the pot.
The suspense is killing me already
Life is a dynamic nonequilibrium. Constant change. But it's not change that kills you...it's the rate of change.
And we've modified the Earth so fast that we've front-loaded unprecedented levels of change, accelerating change, into the system.
It'll play out within lifetimes, and generations, not over the scale of civilizations or beyond.
Zhu Rongji a great man? Think back why millions of chinese peasants today have no healthcare dude and how local governments started appropriating farmers' land for real estate bubbles in the 1990s. As for Deng, he was Mao's handler of the 1957 purge of the rightists campaign, and of course the one who gave order to fire in Tiananmen. He nearly died by the same sword he used to murder millions of chinese intellectual who spoke up in 1957. Needless to say, Zhu and Deng offsprings are today enjoying the fruits of their fathers' labor. Zh is a great site, but not for people who claims to know chinese history.
Kang Sheng was Mao's handler/butcher and continued in this role until the Gang of Four was axed by Deng himself. Deng then proceeded to put China on the trajectory it is on today.
As for Zhu Rongji... he is an amazing man, surely with flaws. I remember in 1989 he got on Shanghai TV, got on his knees, started crying, and begged citizens to not get killed by protesting the streets because he couldn't stop the army. I don't think he was being self-serving. And I know he is one of the smartest men.
I wish he were appointed head of the SEC. I'll take Zhu Rongji over any of the pieces of disgusting worm ridden filth that we have as politicos in the US.
So nice to be anonymous.
Hey! Josh! I thought that was you. Glad to see you finally made it. How's Susan?
i love you guys and both try to feed off and make offerings to your coolest of Gods. Having said that "Rome wasn't built in a day" and "it took 500 years before the inevitible collapse finally became official." History is actually littered with the refuse of "fade aways." I've seen spectacular cities simply devoid of life. Indeed I grew up in one of many which in my opinion makes "the city that's a void" even more spectacular. And one of course need only travel to Europe to see what it's like to have an open space where 100 million people basically were disappeared. it's how endings in the real world overwhelming occur: with banal wimpers. i have no idea if "this time is different." as someone who sees history as something that must be made i sure pine for flame, hence if i'm wrong i can always hope that you might be right. now excuse me i have to get back to my movie review column.
Maybe. So next I am thinking about what might be further down the curve. Please, help me out?
The result of most systemic failures, regardless of the system, is?
A) A pause, followed by a successful restart of the system.
B) Repairs of the system fault, and eventually a successful restart of the system.
C) Wholesale replacement of the system with a new system.
D) Whipping the dead horse.
E) An apology along the lines of, "I'm sorry babe, that has never happened before."
F) _______________________
Got Me. Now my head hurts. Got some BB's for BB.
AH, but this is a"systemic failure" by design. Planners already know the next move and have prepared. Thats strictly my opinion, but were i in their shoes, yes i would think longterm, as an asshole elitist i would think it my duty to properly husband my stable of humans.
I keep seeing us like argentina . And they get away with it, beats hell outa me that karma hasnt got them yet.
Everybody hurts?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pudOFG5X6uA
And we all muddle through the long emergency? Or not? There are those out there who caused it that won't feel it. This pisses mother nature off, she will have hers. No even fair haircuts for all involved. Some of this will be bad. We are up against the limits of the Petri dish.
Good fortune to all of us. That means getting through the bottle neck fairly intact. Screw riches. Me and mine, you and yours, alive and healthy.
I salute you all with a margarita.
very nice. this new math is all about subtraction
Dear friend,
"You spiritually manifest your own mansion" - Adele Tinning.
Even though I've a family to care for, I'm preparing to help those that I can with whatever I can do.
This is wonderful. What will you do if/when they ask for the last of what you have? I see need/incapacity all around me and find myself overwhelmed and we are not even in the thick of it, yet.
I belong to an organization that advocates One Day at a Time.
What else do we have?
I belong to an organization that advocates "Why put it off to Tomorrow, When you could put it off to the day after Tomorrow"
MT
Sure, but... The Day After Tomorrow might not be so pleasant!
A VERY effective (personal) approach to our current situation.
I've thought about this for 9 years now. I keep coming back to the same answer, I'm more afraid of what I'd become if I didn't share. And before you dis me, I've been jumped, mugged, stabbed, blasted in the head with a plaster of paris statue, held at knife and gun point. I still believe in the good in humanity. "You're not rich by what you accumulate but by what you give." - again, Adele
9 And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. 9 But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
17 Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; 18 That they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate; 19 Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.
1 Timothy 6
King James Version
"Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once." from the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare.
Here's to you Cheeky Bastard. Prost.
@MsCreant
My wife and I have had this conversation may times. We will stay where we are at and share what we can until either: It gets too violent and shitty, or the act of giving has reached a point that I'm literally taking away from my kids mouths. Then we leave. I would like to say that I'm only doing it for the kids, but if I'm honest, that's a lie. Truth is, if I didn't have kids I'd already live in the woods.
"Today’s monetary standard is much more complicated and beautiful."
A volcano is beautiful until you're being thrown into it. |B^)
Nassim Taleb already made this argument and put it into practice by making millions in the 2008 meltdown.
So, when is the tipping point, so I can buy puts, take the cheap $$ and buy gold before they're worthless?
I don't think the current regime in DC wants the dollar to be the world's reserve currency anymore.
No I think they want the Euroamero Yuanyen Pesofranc Gilderuble for all their Globilitches
Be careful jm
you are ruffling too many feathers
And risking a heart attack in a jacuzzi and drown yourself like Matt simmons!
And thanks ZH, new captchas are simple
Are you kidding: I just had -26 times 39. I had to use Excel got ... -1014 answer and was rejected ... go figure
i like captcha and do them in my head. sometimes the minus symbol gets me rejected. To put or not to put....Viagra!!!!!!!!
I guess that's what happens if you bet the ranch shorting BP.
@
".. nor so fluid that genuine progress is possible."
? "not possible".
progress is funny as in when someone is overweight and
they don't eat for a while and have to work hard, that is progress.
if rate of consumption is the metric you use for progress then,
jeez, we have a crisis, this is the flaw with the fractional reserve
fiat central banking model. the central bankers are like the taste buds
or some other more complicated part of the stomach lining that
perceives a lack of increased consumption as hell in a dark quiet place.
they don't know progress or moderation from shinning shoes.
imo
funding war will do that.
deflation ongoing. steve keen 9/20/2010...debtwatch
nice piece of writing both yours and his.
.
especially liked the connectivity diagram and particularly
noticed the countries that do not appear on it. hmm?
I disagree with just about every single point in that article.
The Austrian school's teachings are about 180 degrees from what this guy is saying.
The guy actually says the Fed is incapable of generating a currency crisis - wtf?
No, the fed is fully capable of generating a currency crisis and they are very close to doing so. He even derides the gold standard as being "jilted" out of the clear blue, as if it somehow failed on it's own without the coercion of government involvement in the monetary system.
This is utterly ridiculous - as are his calls to fix our fraudulent currency system.
The entire article is a joke.
Our monetary system is FRAUDULENT - any attempt to save it through debt restructuring is simply to save a system that will implode again in the future.
In fact, the more I think about what this guy is saying, the more it pisses me off. This is a flat out call to keep a system of open fraud.
Screw this guy.
oh - and did anyone think his references to Mao were a tad weird? As if China is better off for having lived under him in some perverse way?
The austrian school's teachings. Just not going to start on that because there's no point in it... too many different interpretations and I'm concerned with how things are, not how they should be in someone's mind.
About that currency collapse. I'd be lying if I said a currency collapse is impossible. But as I said, I'm not losing sleep over it.
One commenter said "the US doesn't wan't a reserve currency anymore." Quite right. Why? Because the labor markets are the adjustment mechanism when other central bank policies are keyed on your currency. This is what the Fed wants. But the Fed can't control what other central banks do, and other central banks are invested in devaluing against the dollar.
Observe it takes more than a decade+ of ZIRP and national debt > 200% to bust a currency, much more the world's reserve currency. We know that during the Civil War and WWII there was QE going on that makes today's stuff look like a joke. Finally, think of the global wealth destruction involved in a dollar collapse. This is an issue that lies at the very heart of every financial system on the planet, not just on these shores. Nobody including the Fed is on board with a currency collapse.
Th gold standard is dead. This is a fact, not an insult. "The system is FRAUDULENT"... the system is what it is until it is not. Where did I say anything about fixing things? Again, this is how it is. Get your head out the textbook and look around.
Click the links. Enjoy the music. Relax a little.
Yeah, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more! hahaha
Sorry if I'm a little raw.
Anytime I see defense of our current criminal ponzi I come unglued at the seams haha.
While the gold standard may be dead, ultimately it will have to be resurrected if humanity is to have any hope of escaping the clutches of the central bankers and fascist government central planners.
Your comments on it taking more than a decade of ZIRP for a currency to implode are also misplaced. The currency can implode at any time the other central banks begin acting in their own best interests. This notion that the other countries of the world need our buying in order to drive their economies is the biggest Keynesian fallacy of them all.
If China was to let its currency rise, its own people could buy their own crap, just like the US used to be able to do. This is how countries get rich. They save and invest, and that saved capital is then dumped back into the economy to further grow the economy.
China could dump us tomorrow and their people would be far better off for it.
I don't know why the central banks of the world are acting against their own people, but eventually their people will FORCE them to change if they don't do it on their own - of this we can be sure.
if/when china pegs their yuan to gold.....and they will i think because they have positively encouraged their populace to buy silver and gold.... and it would be a very smart move for them
I agree, China is on the move in this regard. They're decoupling from US market dependency and opening their own PM markets with lightening speed, among other things. That tells me all I need to know. That, and the fact that the West is determined to forfeit the world's energy resources to them at a non-compete discount...in lieu of fiat?
I was thinking along the same lines, but I couldn't figure out one huge thing: How could they keep other nations from pegging their currencies lower than the Yuan?
China is already having real problems keeping their recently *ahem* "developed" industries from jumping to even cheaper places nearby. For instance textiles: China promises their textile workers about $210/month, but reports are that many only actually get $100 - $110, and that is due to wage pressure from Vietnam ($60 - $90/mo.) and Cambodia and Bangladesh ($40 - $50/mo.).
I don't think the positives from moving to a solid, gold backed new reserve currency at this time will outweigh the negatives... especially when about 60% of its people are still peasants. Heck, they need hundreds of millions of new factory jobs, and they are already having trouble like the US with market share losses to cheaper competitors!
[and damn... look at those wages. this global trade system is sick. it can't go on much longer]
If we could actually have a real gold standard (one that was not manipulated from the first day of inception) you'd be correct. What most folks call our periods of having a gold standard have been bastardizations of same.
As for Central Banks -- they are gasping for air just to survive, and they'll take us all down with them without blinking.
Absolutely, I am 100% for the REAL gold standard.
The real deal.
No more government looting, ponzi actions, or manipulations.
I personally think the currency is too important to be left in the hands of government. Currencies should be competitive, privately produced, and market driven.
Private coin and bullion producers can produce currencies at a fraction the cost of a government mint and do so at a higher quality.
Banks should be remanded to a 100% gold reserve for all lending - anything else is blatant fraud.
Collapse will have to be quick, absolute, and brutal to attain that goal. Many do not want to endure that eventuality -- those who have the bulk of the money. They seem to think it's some sort of suicide pact. It's NOT!
The gold standard would be a step up, but it's not at all necessary, and in fact isn't the best alternative at this point.
An energy standard makes far more sense. Everyone on the planet has an input and an output already, and it can only be "created" through real labor.
That energy doesn't store tremendously well is a benefit for the vast majority of the population--it virtually ensures constant trafficking and prevents anyone from concentrating too much at the expense of the rest of the species.
Unlike a physical asset, such as gold.
I think that might create a powerful cartel who's main goal would be to keep new, cheap, and clean energy sources like fusion from ever being developed.
There's going to be monopolistic tendency in any system of exchange. One thing that energy has going for it is that no matter what ANY individual or group does, it is impossible to keep it out of the hands of any other individual alive. If a person has access to the surface of the planet, he has an input. A "baseline" income that cannot be confiscated or stolen or leveraged by others.
It's a far less corruptible medium than gold.
This is a long-term concept, though.
That said, I think you're way off-base. Any wealth-concentrating organization would want nothing more than to develop those technologies so as to increase wealth-creation potential for as long as possible--it would be a direct source of increased wealth and thus power.
A cartel bent on preventing the distribution and democratization of energy producing technology, sure. Preventing the development? Hell no.
you both make interesting points but I will ask this...
If clean and sustainable energy abundance was available today, do you believe it wise to implement such technology?
simple answer is NO...
The problem with energy abundance is that money itself would become useless as a means to limit our extraction of natural resources, ponder that for 5 minutes? Or think of it this way... The cost of extracting natural resources is the cost of energy alone. That is what limits natural resource extraction today. If you take away the energy limits, there is no excuse for business to remove say, 100000 cubic metres of earth to extract 1 cubic metre of ??????? I wonder what it would be like to live on an planet that is one giant strip mine...
We can not have energy abundance without a global consciousness shift of what constitutes wealth... What products and services are required to provide a life of wealth and maximum sustainable individual freedom... Turn on the TV and you will soon realise that the pursuit of fast cars and mansions by the sea for all is a bad idea...
Oh, and I'll just throw this out there, but you can ignore the climate change angle if you wish. Not the best production but it hits the mark... Buckminster Fuller, a true genius ;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fVI3BRBC6o
Extraction of "natural resources" becomes far less appealing in a world of abundant energy, though.
If you think abundant energy would make oil depletion more rapid, I think the view is backwards. Oil would lose much of its perceived value when it was no longer important to burn it for electricity.
Things like gold, silver, copper, whatever would still retain value for nostalgic and production purposes, but they'd also be far easier to recover from waste materials. One of the problems that's traditionally faced the recycling business is that many materials are easier to strip from the ground than recover from their previous use.
Abundant energy would make that less of a problem because the importance of oil for creation of plastics is far greater than the importance of burning it to move trucks once you can run the trucks on other sources of power.
I do completely agree with you about a change in consciousness about what constitutes wealth. I think changing the thinking of masses of people takes awhile, though, while changing institutional practices can be done very quickly.
This is a bit simplistic, I know, but the guys with the biggest guns would control the energy. See Middle East. At least I can keep my silver dollars out of the hands of the larger malevolent elements.
jm
Interesting watching your head evolve on this. I accused you a long time ago of telling people to sit back and take their rape and get out of it what they could. You were offended. You still maintain a position which says "deal with the system as it is." But you are more open to collapse than you used to be. I think I'll keep watching you, if you keep posting. If you are forced to capitulate even more, the waterfall may well be dead ahead. Separate from the concepts we can agree and disagree on, you are a good writer and a good thinker.
Everyone knows that the path the world's policy makers are on is unsustainable. The outcome is determined by many millions of poeple doing what is in their perceived best interest. Too many credit metrics are collapsing to deny this.
I have faith that there is a point where they will see a cliff ahead and stop in time to accept the painful consequences of debtors and creditors meeting halfway. Stop laughing, please. Others do not see much hope in them stopping before it becomes impossible to see the cliff ahead in time to do anything about it. This is the catastrophe that many expect.
I could be wrong as much as anyone else about how it goes down. I'm just trying to lay it all out. The reality of loss is unavoidable. People can still make amazing advances, fall in love, make life meaningful for themselves.
What do you know of Chicago School? What theorists do you follow? Who do you hate? Why?
You really do have a good heart. Be careful, people may find out!
You can play in my sandbox any day.
I might need a new avatar, but it sounds fun. (Girls with guns and cigarettes don't need to be messing up Rocky's nest).
Friedman was a fan of a constant fixed percentage based inflation.
This was so the government could be funded through the mechanism of inflation rather than taxation - sinister if you ask me.
When you have a fixed inflation rate like that, the monetary bases grows at an expotential rate. This is unsustainable over the long term.
Further, fixed growth of the monetary base has no rational basis in sound economic theory. This introduces distortions and is a direct cause of business cycles. The people should see their savings INCREASE in value over the long term, not decrease or remain stagnant. As the productive capacity of an economy increases, the money should increase in value (deflation), there by making things less and less expensive as the economy grows.
The Chicago school is just as fraudulent as the Keynesian monetarists.
They make the same consumption based/aggregated investment mistakes as the Keynesians.
I could just tell by the way this person speaks, hes has been through this school ...
He adores corporatism.
To think you can place a model on society ect. its all crap. Now this crisis will bring on a new age "Grand Horoscope", a big bang of opportunity, change ....
Deng and his successors initiated the opening of China with gai ge kai fang
due to their disenchantment with economic instability and the volatile system brought
about by the Cultural Revolution and embarked on a course of reforms aimed at
revitalizing the economy, raising productivity, delivering an improvement in living
standards and confirming the superiority of socialism (Marti 2002, 59).
The type of system to emerge in China was professed by Deng as “pragmatic
socialism with Leninist, single party rule”
I don't adore corporatism. The Mao/Zhu business was just an example of how actions have surprisingly different outcomes.
It is silly to argue about the progress China has made in raising living standards, and I credit it to the quality of leadership.
I do wish for good men that can effectively lead.
We are lost as a people, no moral compass anymore.(And some peple are happy about this, so be it) The amount of killings in the last 100 years is mind numbing, from world war to abortion its been mayhem for a long time now around the globe. Turn on the t.v.,radio, what do you see, what do you learn, an escape from what ?
See if this moron can chart the desruction of the "family model", another leg down for the good old USA'
Read about the "Age of Kali", all will be revealed to you.
The 'family model' you yearn for died when American agrarian society died. The big move to cities for better wages than could be made on the family farm were choices made by millions of individuals...not some mandate handed down by government. For many years the family farm lingered. The breadwinner would travel into an industrial area for work and return to the farm at night. A lot of the family farms were swallowed by suburban flight and comparatively few still remain. A family farm is a grueling life...I know, I grew up working on one during the summers. It is many times harder work than working an 8 hour shift in an auto plant.
'Ozzie and Harriet' and similar 1950s - 60s tv shows were an attempt by the media to show people how to live in a suburban environment...a tutorial of sorts. The general citizenry always take their Qs from mass media. Goebbels was a master at using mass media and the US simply adopted what the Nazis had learned.
The battle to control the output of Hollywood began when the film board censors were installed, exhorbitant federal taxes were placed on individual theatre owners (much higher than any comprable businesses), and the McCarthy hearings were 'rooting out communists'.
The story is long and complex and does not lend itself to a blog entry of a couple of paragraphs.
For instance...few people know where or when the largest human migration to take place in the US happened or what caused it...Hint...it was after WW2.
None? Nowhere? Nobody? Come on. Absolutes in matters like this are difficult to defend. You'll find proportions of good/bad people, as well as moral/amoral people, and lazy/industrious people to the same here at ZH as in the general population. We might be surprised at how moral most folks are when they know that it all boils down to them.
Rocky...ya gotta remember that most people think history started when 'they' were born.
Human nature has not changed one whit since cavemen were painting on walls. Altruists existed then for there is ample evidence that their tribal members experienced severe debilitating injuries and yet lived many years afterward because someone in the tribe was caring for them.
Posters that think human nature has basically changed are only seeing that many millions have died and not realizing that modern war weapons are capable of killing vastly more people now than in the past...and, there are vastly more people alive to kill now than in the past.
Exposure to modern media bs showing lots of bloodletting might influence the already borderline unstable to some degree.
But, human nature is unchanged.
Pretty much right. Here's a previous comment of mine:
I agree with your discomfort regarding Mao. The author states nature is nature and that is the path to progress. I guess it is easy to say if your not starved or shot in the name of progress. Is he trying to adjust us to the new normal?
+ 1
My sentiments exactly, Michael Suede.
Lao Tzu said that small problems can be solved, but when problems get too large, they become impossible to solve. How then do problems get so large? The answer to that question lies in understanding this statement: Leaders always kill their followers and followers always kill their leaders.
The post covers what happens when a society breaks down in a slow, painful process. There is a certain point when it stops functioning and internal or external forces remove the old process. Think of the French Revolution or of the Nazis taking over Germany. It is inevitable that a new order will appear.
Has ZH realized the role of technology in the downfall of Western Civ.?
How many human jobs have been replaced by computers/machines?
I was watching this show on the discovery channel where tractors were driving themselves via GPS. It got me to thinkin...maybe some jobs will never, ever, ever, come back.
Shit... Self-checkout has even removed the need for grocery clerks.
Also, saw a guy summit Mt. Everest with machine legs. No bullshit.
Yep. Some talking head investor sort was blabbing today on CNBC about buying particular tech stocks because businesses are replacing workers with tech/machinery. Scumbag.
The next Carrington Effect will solve that problem. A liitle overdue, IMHO.
"How many human jobs have been replaced by computers/machines?"
>>>>>>>.......
probably a lot less than the number of jobs lost to the CFR/NWO export of industry from USA those we know are in the millions.
when any economist talks of production, cost of labor ,is always why industry moves across the globe..I maintain it is a false premise - it is cost of exporting that determines where jobs go. Got no tariffs ,got no jobs.
What, me worry.... I'm an old geezer, I'll be 59 in November, I climbed a huge Banjan tree today just for the fun of it..... I climbed better than than when I was 12, I don't think about living a dignified life, that's not something that I concern myself with. However the one thing that I do know is that I'm not going to die in a hospital with a hose stuck down my throat and another hose stuck up my ass and I can't tell them to take the hose out of my ass because I have one stuck down my throat... That ain't gonna happen, I may loose everything that I have, all my worldly possessions, but I'm not going out like that....
Best regards,
Econolicious
contra i so agree with your view. I am done with the fake ass no nothing pill pushing doctors. I am one of the very few who takes no pills, no gloves,hats rings, tattoos. 59 also and go barefoot except when driving. Lived alone and in sleeping bags under many a bridge. Then went on to 30 years in business, the last 20 very stationary. Now i am preparing to hobo again, face new adversities and see it as an adventure to undertake and make the best of.
I will gladly die own my own. I have seen myself drown in a dream and had several dreams come true. I well welcome it and thank the life for having shown me repeatedly that the material world is not the only reality.
+1
As a mere babe of 58, I love change. The interestin thing about wisdom is the only way one can acquire it is through time and experience. I have experienced much in life already and am looking forward to the next batch. Bottom line: The only person you ever have to live with is yourself, and I see myself in a bodybag b4 a diaper.
Bravo merehuman, bravo!
JM, the mother nature you speak of and the motive "force" behind increasing complexity is energy... Our universe is but a wave of energy potential that some unknown information component forms into the elements of mass we know and love here in objective reality... It is this mass that allows us here in reality to extract "NET ENERGY GAINS" from our environment and it is this surplus of energy and the capital that allows us to do more work per unit of energy that got mankind to the point we are at today... The point where we as a global civilization can no longer substitute energy consumption for energy efficiency as the energy resources we utilized to produce such a complex system are experiencing an increasing rate of diminishing returns (all the way to becoming energy sinks)...
What does this have to do with economics? Everything... Economics is the study of how we produce, consume and allocate (for either production or consumption) energy scarcity... It always has been, always will be...
Growth (in anything) requires one thing (primarily), an energy surplus... This energy surplus (or net energy gain) can be made by either extracting and consuming more energy from the environment or by using each energy unit more efficiently, thus producing an energy surplus that would not have been available (capital) otherwise...
Capital (tech,info) has increasingly dislocated the labor commodity from access to an energy income due to its greater work efficiency per energy unit... As this greater efficiency has not been shared with labor, it has been necessary to substitute exponential energy consumption in its place in order to continue the profit system of energy allocation... As labor sells its energy surplus to the employer but never receives an equal energy income in return, the employer has produced a net energy gain, a monetary profit... Money being nothing but a medium for the exchange of energy value, energy we cannot quantify with our sense's without a unit of account to represent it... But as labor never receives an equal income (or the goods they produce are marked up), Labor can NEVER afford to purchase the goods it (or capital) produces and thus the requirement for infinite growth... We do this by overproduction/duplication/waste of goods and services for which we add energy value above the embodied energy required to produce the goods and services, an energy gain and thus a monetary profit... I will just say it, the monetary profit system of scarce energy allocation is over... To continue it is suicide... We need a new system...
Nice post. I'm sure this point has been bandied about by acute thinkers for awhile--a popular topic of discussion amongst SciFi writers after the 'shrooms kicked in, I'd bet.
Part of the real problem is that, as Zappa put it, "It looks like it might just be a one-shot deal." There exists a very real possibility that any self-organizating intelligent system can overextend it's "maximization of short-term benefit" resulting in guaranteed depletion/extinction.
A certain amount of employable energy can be extracted from the environment and invested into more efficient systems, or it can be squandered on wars and parties. When the extraction cost becomes too high to continue, the wars and parties end. Like it or not.
Despite the input from our sun, we currently possess the ability to destroy enough of the ecosystem to extinct ourselves. Will we or won't we?
Seems almost tempting now and again...
Economics is just another attempt at thermodynamics, that's for sure.
Abso-frickin-lutely...
Natures gift of finite energy dense fossil fuels will only provide us with one chance... We need this energy to produce the sustainable energy technologys that will allow mankind to progress to a future of unlimited human potential... The fact is that we have the ability to provide every single person on this planet with all the products required to live a life of true wealth (not a mansion and a ferrari for everyone) and we have the ability today... We can provide everyone with an equal energy ration (money in our terms) at a rate that is energy sustainable (linear) without the need for infinite consumption/growth via profit... Once we can end profit, sustainable energy technologys become, for lack of a better word, profitable (ha) and this energy supply grows exponentially... But before we can implement a system for transition we must make people understand the problem, that is the hard part and that is why I continue to sound like a broken record here on ZH... But everyday, with posts such as JM's, I can see that we are waking up to this... We are being forced to ask the hard question, what is wealth? And that gives me hope for the future... We cannot afford to go back to some gold standard false utopia as it ends up in the same place (debt only got us here faster)... We must move forward, we must end profit and the almost unfathomable energy/resource waste, environmental damage and human suffering it has caused... The profit system was always a necessary step in our capital evolution, but it was never the endgame... Mankind will always be in a state of evolution, but only if we make the right choice today... We must reach the type one civilization or its zero... And energy equality which will allow us to create abundance is the key to unlocking this future, there is no other way... Unless one believes that we can circumvent the physical laws of our universe?... The clock is ticking ;-)...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb0eoXfcVPE
Fred Hoyle...or, Sir Fred Hoyle, pointed out circa 1955 that humanity has a 'window' of about 200 years of resources available to accomplish whatever the fuck we are trying to accomplish...No one has bothered to explain what the goal is, or if they have, they have not told me.
Hoyle also pointed out that whatever replaces us will have little resources to work with.
Malthus and a multitude of others have pointed out the same facts.
I have wondered if the SETI project (to discover communication from/between ETs) is doomed to fail because the 'window' is about the same on all habitable planets. Of course, other explanations for non success of SETI abound. Radio communication at the distances of stars is measured in thousands, or more, light years.
BTW, I stopped reading si-fi when about age 12...But, the SETI project is interesting.
Well if as I suspect natural selection is in operation like gravity (universally) then it stands to reason that the competitive nature of humanity will be replicated in other advanced civilizations. We clearly are having difficulty in tempering our competitive and tribal urges in pulling together and working in a unified and purposeful way. This may well be a terminating boundary for advanced civilizations to go inter-stella. If we don't resolve our differences we'll drop down into a very low energy state from which we are unable to escape the confines of the planet. A huge tech retardation could be on us shortly as we decend into a low energy and impoverished future. Forget star trek it'll be Easter Island gone global. What a fucking mess. The weak will inherit the earth - some inheritance. Mind you a global cooperation of the meek is well over due and getting rid of all these corporate psychos is a worthy task I'm really looking forward to participating in.
I think deflation will be a head fake and then US hyperinflation will occur (however one wants to define it). I agree with Jim Rickards -- deflation is just too hard for governments to tax, which makes inflation the default. It's just too easy.
He also had a great take, and agreed with JM, that increasing complexity of systems eventually makes them untenable. The cost to maintain and perpetuate such complex systems eventually exceeds the benefits produced insofar as there will be guaranteed increasing catastrophic failure frequencies as critical points multiply and feed back. Rube Goldberg lives.
I look to people in other countries that collapsed and how they coped, just for comfort. But, they did have a global cop around.
Also a comfort -- a self-directed IRA with which to make foreign investments.
There is a nice graph of the deflation which happened quickly and temporarily in Argentina which would bolster your argument -- just before inflation shot straight up. But Google was no help in finding that graph. It's a beaut.
that graph's in a reply to one of Gonzalo Lira's threads...towards the beginning.
Cup and handle chart! Buy buy buy!
The writer correctly uses a complex system to describe the economy, which nullifies Keynes by the way, and then comes up with the wrong conclusion.
Complex systems necessarily collapse portions of their complexity during large environmental changes. That reduction is a part of the process of successful adaptation to its new reality. Renewal and adaptation of self-autonomous agents in complex systems are the way that nature evolves. It is creative.
A number of our institutions, namely the FASB, SEC, and the Wall Street have been playing a bureaucratic game that is not flexible enough (read self preservative and inflexible). The complex system that is the economy voted to destroy them.
The government chose to preserve this adaptation, pushing us into mountainous debt.
Absent that adaptation, we are now preserving the debt that got us into trouble in the first place. Preserving a complex system that is trying to adapt to a new reality means we have unemployed agents stuck in assets and homes that prevent adaptation.
Until that adaptation takes place, the economy will struggle, if not implode. Nothing is going to happen until those toxic assets are repriced and a market is re-established that conforms to today's reality. All stimulus and spending is throwing good money after bad in an effort to preserve those failed institutions.
The complex system was trying to adapt and renew. Standing in the way of that renewal is what puts the life of the whole complex system at risk. That is what is happening now. The organism can die. In economies, it is static beuracracies that bring about the failure in a mountain of debt induced by inflexability. Power and complex systems do not mix. That is the story of failed societies.
Western civilization is on the brink. Europe is structurally bankrupt, having beuracratized out of a complex system years ago, and commiting self-genocide. America is running after them in an effort to preserve its failed institutions.
It is time for renewal. Re-invent the banking structure. Let them fail. Reprice the debt. Press on.
we may be in for serious trouble...and mother natures full force is here :
http://europebusines.blogspot.com/2010/08/special-post-life-on-this-eart...
Well what a lovely, cosy, visually appealing little ditty that was. You've got to be kidding. The western world is in a death spiral and the only reason why we can't see it is the temporal nature of the decline - we operate at the centre point of scale and time. These events are taking sooooo long to unfold that we fail to perceive them properly - but like every good disaster movie when the tipping point is reached all hell will break loose and we'll be very painfully aware of the consequences but simply unable to act/react.
I'm firmly in the hyperinflationist camp and already have started buying seeds and tinned goods. If I'm wrong so what, we use this stuff anyway - if I'm right when it kicks off there'll be no way to get these items as demand will be at infinity and supply at zero.
If the northern loop warm current has been interrupted for any reason Europe will experience another ice age of unknown duration...could be a mini event like the one that triggered the potato famine and wheat shortage in France...could be a major one that would cause a huge attempt of mass migration. People tend to forget that agriculture flourishes with the consent of mother nature...not the commodities markets.
Thanks for the link
I didn't find the article either well written, enjoyable, or informative.
While I like the use of imagery, simile, and metaphor, the article read like a guy doing his best to come up with a clever line every third sentence.
And enrtropy is a measure of disorder, with greater disorder being defined as greater entropy.
Under no circumstances can society be viewed as having "greater entropy" than the lack of society. Society is, by definition, more ordered than what came before.
In the end, I'd have to disagree that the tag "must read" should be associated with the article.
+1. This article is so obfuscated by attempts to sound like a line from Fight Club that it just fails to make sense.
There is nothing natural about the monetary plane today. Unpayable debt, limitless currency creation, extend and pretend denying reality. If economic systems found a happy equilibrium, they wouldn't fail so often.
Nature isn't kind and caring either. Ask the dinosaurs, or any of the many species that go extinct every year.
I don't think I agree that central bankers will all fight to save the system's nodes equally becasue a loss of one node means the loss of the system. I am pretty sure the United States' intervention to prop up the dollar ast Nov used the Euro as a fulcrum for its liquidity lever and ended up crushing it in the process. When a ship sinks, all the survivers swim for a while. If one starts drowning and grabbing others to stay afloat, everyone else swims the other way. The US is that drowning swimmer.
I don't disagree, but every country has similar problems. For example, the ECB is using Germany's low credit risk as its fulcrum to save the EU.
Yeah there is probably some very powerful technology beyond fossil fuels. But first we have to invent it, then we have to build it, then we have to build the infrastructure to support it. To do that we have to use what we already have. Do you realize how much energy, capital and raw materials that requires? Oil production has already peaked, coal is due to peak in a few years. Even though wind, solar and nuclear are great, nothing in our current scientific paradigm will replace fossil fuels. We have to look beyond our current paradigm, but I'm afraid a smooth transition is no longer possible. A lot of people will suffer and die before things get any better.
And that's the point - which for all you hyperinflationistas and uberdeflationistas should be taken on face value but it won't be ... because you (and you know who you are) 'know' you are 'right'.
Good luck out there and watch out for flying chairs.
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2010/09/17/can-capitalism-save-the-planet/
huh? what was that garbage?
Yeah, I understood a very small portion of it. I guess some have to talk that way to garner respect.
I want what he's smoking.