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Are You Crazy To Continue Believing In Collapse?
Submitted by James H Kunstler via Peak Prosperity,
It’s nerve-wracking to live in the historical moment of an epic turning point, especially when the great groaning garbage barge of late industrial civilization doesn’t turn quickly where you know it must, and you are left feeling naked and ashamed with your dark worldview, your careful preparations for a difficult future, and your scornful or tittering relatives reminding you each day what a ninny you are to worry about the tendings of events.
Persevere. There are worse things in this life than not being right exactly on schedule.
Two simple words explain why more robust signs of an economic collapse have hung fire since the tremors of 2008: inertia and fraud.
Never in human history has there been such a matrix of complex systems so vast, dense, weighty, and powerful for running everyday life (nor a larger population engaged in it). That much stuff in motion takes a while to slow down. The embodied energy has kept enough of it running to give the appearance of continuity. For instance, agri-biz still sends its amber waves of grain and tankers of corn-syrup to the Pepsico snack-food factories, and the WalMart trucks still faithfully convey the pallets of Cheetos, Fritos, Funyons, and Tostitos from the Pepsico loading dock to the big box aisles of glory. The freeways still hum with traffic even though oil is pricey at $100 a barrel. The lights stay on. The gabble and blabber of Cable TV continues remorselessly in the background of life. All of that is due to inertia. It gives the superficial impression of the old normal carrying on. Things go on until they can’t, in the immortal words of Herb Stein
The fraud is present in the abuse and misrepresentation of official statistics used as metrics in government policy, in the pervasive accounting chicanery of that same government in its fiscal dealings, as well as in our leading financial institutions and corporations, including control fraud in banking, interest rate rigging, mortgage and title fraud, front-running, naked shorting, re-hypothecation, money laundering, pumping-and-dumping, channel stuffing, the endless innovation of swindles, and, most importantly, the fundamental mispricing of the cost of money, which reverberates through everything else, most particularly real estate, stocks, and bonds. Beyond that, in the shadows of the shadowland known as shadow banking, a liminal realm of secrets and intrigues, only a few are privileged to know what is going on, and you can be sure they only know their end of the trade — while immense sums of ever more abstract “money” slosh through the derivative sewers on their way to oblivion in the ocean of failed trust.
So, don’t feel bad if this colossal armature of folly still stands, and have faith that the blinding light of God’s judgment will eventually shine even unto the watery depths where failed trust has sunk. Sooner or later the relationship between reality and truth re-sets to the calculus of what is actually happening.
Meanwhile, the big questions worth reflecting upon are: What is the shape of the future? How might we conduct ourselves in it and on our way to it; and how will we think and feel about all that? It’s very likely that the journey to where we’re going will be rougher than the actual destination, once we get there. There is a hearty consensus outside the mainstream financial media and the thickets of academia that the models we have been using to understand the economy look more broken each month, and this surely adds to the difficulty of constructing our own mental models for how the everyday world of the years ahead will operate.
Some of the commentators in blogville and elsewhere like to blame capitalism. Capitalism is a phantom adversary. It isn’t an economic system. It isn’t an ideology, really, or a belief system. If the word means anything, it describes the behavior of accumulated surplus wealth in concert with the known laws of physics — the movement of energy through time and space — and the choices we make organizing society in relation to that. The energy is embodied as capital, represented in money for convenience. Interest expresses the cost of money over time and the risks associated with lending it. By the way, interest rates work the same way under all political systems, despite attempts in some societies to criminalize it.
During the high tide of the industrial expansion, when fossil fuels were cheap and we accumulated the greatest wealth surplus ever in history, humanity made some very bad choices, squandering this possibly one-time bonanza. We fought two world wars, and lots of wasteful lesser ones. Russia and its imitators attempted to collectivize wealth under gangster government and only succeeded in impoverishing everyone but the gangsters. America built suburbia and Las Vegas. The one thing that no “modern” culture did was plan for a future when the fossil fuel orgy and the techno-industrial fiesta might wind down, which is exactly the case now. Instead, we opted for the Julian Simon folly of crossing our fingers and hoping that some unnamed band of genius wizard innovators would mitigate the problems of resource scarcity and population overshoot just in time.
The demonizers of capitalism propose to remedy our compound predicament by just getting rid of money. But the idea of a human society without money leaves you either up a baobab tree on the paleolithic savannah, or in some sort of Ray Kurzweil techno-narcissistic masturbation fantasy multiverse with no relation to the organic doings on planet earth. I suspect as long as there are human societies there will be things to exchange that have a quality we call “money,” and as long as that’s the case, some individuals will have more of it than others, and they will lend some of their surplus to others on terms. What most people call capitalism was a model of economy derived from a particular transitory moment in history. It seemed to describe reality, but after a while it didn’t because reality changed and it was, finally, just a model. Nothing lasts forever. Boo-hoo, Karl Marx, J.M Keynes, and Paul Krugman.
What’s cracking up first is the complexity and abstraction of our current money operations, sometimes loosely called the financialized economy. If we blame anything for our problems with money, blame our half-baked attempts to mitigate the wind-down of the techno-industrial cavalcade of progress by issuing ersatz surplus wealth in the form of debt — that is, promises to fork over hypothetical not- yet-accumulated wealth at some future date. There are too many promises now, and too few trustworthy promisors, and poor prospects for generating the volumes of wealth as we did in the recent past.
The hidden (or ignored) truth of this quandary expresses itself inevitably in the degenerate culture of the day, the freak show of pornified criminal avarice that the USA has become. It only shows how demoralizing our recent history has been that the collective national attention is focused on such vulgar stupidities as twerking, or the Kanye-Kardashian porno romance, the doings of the Duck Dynasty, and the partying wolves of Wall Street. By slow increments since about the time John F. Kennedy was shot in the head, we’ve become a land where anything goes and nothing matters. The political blame for that can be distributed equally between Boomer progressives (e.g., inventors of political correctness) and the knuckle-dragging “free-market” conservatives (e.g., money is free speech). The catch is, some things do matter, for instance whether the human race can continue to be civilized in some fashion when the techno-industrial orgy draws to a close.
In Part 2: How Life Will Change, we sort out the new operating principles that will matter more in the future than the trash heap of current cultural norms. The society that emerges from the post-growth economy will surely require a new moral compass, a set of values based on qualities of behavior and things worth caring about — as opposed to coolness, snobbery, menace, or power, the current lodestars of human aspiration.
Click here to access Part 2 of this report (free executive summary; enrollment required for full access).
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99% of the people don't "think" anything. if you don't sound like a nut; you must be un-educated. If you're an actual student of history and human affaris, you're definetlely going to sound like a nut.
My secret is that I don't try to convince anybody - least of all family - to see what I see. Instead I ask them what they think, and then I listen and make appreciative noises. And go my own way. I feel no obligation to enlighten anyone, and I save my rants for ZH and a few other places, where very few actually know who I am, and even fewer care.
I've been trying for years to learn to stop correcting people, in and out of the family, when they spout nonsense. I'm still working on it. Mostly, I stay away from people. it still drives me crazy to have people tell me the dumbest shit in the world and expect me to go along with it.
The author makes what is an important point regarding the US political landscape- power is divided between the progressive boomers and the anything-for-a-buck types but it was not alwyas so.
US politics for the first hundred and some years was divided between the Hamiltonians (primarily the North) who wanted strong centralized power, government issued fiat currency and a central bank, federal government sponsored internal improvements with that currency, immigration, and standing armies; and the Jeffersonians (primarily the South) who wanted a weak central government, sound money, no federal spending on projects, minimal immigration, and no standing army. The Jeffersonians lost the war in 1865 and their party was taken over by the European-style left starting at the turn of the 20th century and was completely captured by the 1960's, leaving them unrepresented.
Where the US once had Hamilton vs. Jefferson it now only has Hamilton vs. Marx but the Jeffersonians are far from gone though they have little to no political voice. After the Democrats became the party of the left in the 60's and 70's many voted Republican though they hate them nearly as much as the lefties; this has shown itself lately as the Tea Party types and the struggle inside the Republican Party between the two irreconcilable visions dating back to the founding of the nation.
On the plus side, if and when the whole thing melts down I suspect the Jeffersonian types still remaining will have a far higher survival rate than the "Gimme some stuff" disciples of Marx and the "I'll sell my children's future for a dollar" Hamiltonians.
It is a growing battle between those seeking to keep what they have versus those wanting it. The theme of course is ultimately driven by the propagation of the idea that anyone who "has" has stolen it from those who "have not". My guess is that the ones who have accumulated any wealth are probably much more inclined to expend the effort to keep it that those who never worked to get it the first time, and I feel fairly confident (i'm not sure why) that the accumulators of wealth have probably accumulated more lead and brass as well. It will be an ugly fight but not terribly competitive unless the numbers are just overwhelming.
The numbers look like this: 10 to 15 million citizens of the U.S. will fight. Of that number maybe half a million will have the wherewithal to to conduct an effective insurrection. These are the folks that must find a way to organize their respective communities. There will be nowhere on the planet for the criminal elites to hide. Whatever gilded spider hole they dig, they will be found and dragged out like Saddam. This is the way of our history and this will be the way of our future for the time being. Perhaps we will shed this barbaric skin when we marry our computers...
There are nuances to "how long can it keep going?"
The primary nuance is the reality that cooperation among countries, at the government and central bank level, is to date the ONLY thing that has kept the wheels turning. What this means is patriots have been kept out of power. No one is allowed to look out for his or her own country's best interest because every step along that path is confronted with a sign that says "what's good for the world is good for your country, and if you seek something better for your country, the world is damaged which then damages your country."
On an individual elite basis, this has created more greed than before. Each party in power, seeing that there is no more patriotism, is free to look out for their friends and only their friends.
Oil. Oil is everything. Its scarcity is relentless. The subtle aspect to this is that a flow rate that holds constant, or even grows a bit, becomes more scarce, because population grows.
The US consumes oil at a proportion far beyond its population's percentage of the global total. There is no reason the Chinese should tolerate this. There is no reason to believe they will.
Automation is/has destroyed jobs for the low IQ folks, and they are half the global population. They will be an increasing burden on the rest.
There is no reset coming. A reset means some reconfiguration from which elevation resumes. This is not what is coming. The Great Reset is the Great PermaSmash. It will be down, and there will be no rise from there, forever.
I'm not sure why you say that because we consume so much oil that China would not tolerate it. If there is anything like a market place, higher consumption would or should push prices higher. In theory the Chinese price should be relatively similar to the US price. Are we supposed to walk to work so Chinese, making $5/day can afford gas? Maybe if the fuckers stayed home we might have a few more jobs to drive to here?
"Are we supposed to walk to work so Chinese, making $5/day can afford gas?"
If you're Chinese and your per capita oil consumption is way below America's, why would you not answer yes?
Yes, they will say, America's consumption must decline. By any means possible.
If you're not a huge believer in bullion, you might want to try VXX.
This is a very poor idea. you don't want any ETF's.
If they don't see it, dont even bother to explain....and if they get under your skin write their name on a piece of toilet paper and wipe your arse with it. Dont forget to Flush...My problem is that my arse is red raw!!
Frankly, my answer to the question "what is the shape of the future" is that when "the great groaning garbage barge of late industrial civilization" SINKS, then I expect to go down with that barge. I have no reasonable and realistic plans for the future, other than to wait and watch until I am murdered in the general mass murders of the majority of the human population on this planet. I may be lucky enough that that will be postponed until I have already died from natural causes, although I doubt that. What I believe is that things are going to get worse, faster, and that there is actually nothing that I could do to prevent that from happening, nor prepare for that happening.
The real world is too totally screwed up, to the degree that it is terminally sick and insane. It is practically impossible to have any rational political debate about any important public issue, since the language that we use is almost totally BULLSHIT. Consider the use of the phrase "free market capitalism." That phrase has almost nothing do to with the real social facts. Similarly most of the goofy political debates have almost nothing to do with the real social facts, but rather occur in hermetically sealed kinds of ideological (and/or religious) BULLSHIT!
WHAT ACTUALLY EXISTS, AND IS THE ONLY THING WHICH CAN ACTUALLY EXIST, ARE DIFFERENT SYSTEMS OF ORGANIZED LIES, OPERATING ORGANIZED ROBBERIES, WHICH HIDE THEMSELVES BEHIND BULLSHIT ABOUT "CAPITALISM" OR SOME OTHER BULLSHIT "ISM."
People talk about "democracy" when more than 99% of the powers of governments have already been privatized, with the most important of those being the PRIVATIZATION OF THE PUBLIC "MONEY" SUPPLY, so that almost all "money" is issued by private banks, by being made out of nothing, as debts. Therefore, the symbol of "money" has become inverted to become "NEGATIVE CAPITAL" rather than positive capital, and that has negated "capitalism." Similarly, the triumphs of the banksters in getting governments to legalize their counterfeiting of the public "money" supply has enabled those banksters to manipulate the interests rates. After the interest rates are rigged, and after everything is being bought and paid for with "money" made out of nothing, as debts, it is ridiculous to talk about there being any "free markets."
The real foundation is a fraudulent financial accounting system, which has made a mockery out of "free market capitalism" by systematically perverting and inverting that to become the opposite of what it is supposed to be. However, those who promote that nostalgic nonsense, as well as those who oppose that, tend to operate through BULLSHIT in the form of false fundamental dichotomies, and related impossible ideals, which deliberately ignore the most important social facts, while they continue to "debate" each other through their totally BULLSHIT LANGUAGE about this "ism" or that "ism" operating in this "ocracy" or that "ocracy."
I REPEAT, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE ANY SANE PUBLIC DEBATE ABOUT ANY IMPORTANT POLITICAL ISSUES, BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS ALMOST TOTALLY DOMINATED BY BULLSHIT, TO AN ASTONISHING DEGREE, IF ONE ACTUALLY LOOKS AT THE REAL SOCIAL FACTS!
Indeed, that BULLSHIT goes right through the heart of the philosophy of science, as well as through the more superficial and silly political economy theories. Those human tragedies exemplify a theoretical problem found in the theory of all general energy systems, that the most labile components control the systems. Therefore, human civilization is controlled by the people who are the best at being dishonest and backing that up with violence. Therefore, human civilization gradually evolved through the history of warfare, in which success was based on backing up deceits, to become the basis for the political economy based on backing up frauds with force.
Since the overwhelming vast majority of people continue to take for granted the BULLSHIT LANGUAGES based on false fundamental dichotomies, and their related impossible ideals, it is IMPOSSIBLE to have any sane public debates about anything that civilization should do. In that context, guys like James H. Kunstler continue to cutely understate the degree to which our "civilization" has become so criminally insane that it apparently could not be fixed. Rather, since real civilization is controlled by runaway systems of insane lies, backed by insane violence, there are no sane resolutions possible for our real problems.
Globalized Neolithic Civilization is headed through a series of psychotic breakdowns, because I agree that "sooner or later the relationship between reality and truth re-sets to the calculus of what is actually happening." However, Kunstler persistently underestimates the degree to which civilization has become a runaway criminal insanity system. Therefore, he routinely understates how bad things actually are, and therefore, overstates how much we may be able to adapt more favourably to the real situation in the future.
The real world operates now on the basis of its real death controls being denied and suppressed, while those realities tend to be somewhat revealed by people who then recommend that the "solutions" are that there ought not be any death controls. That is the core of our completely crazy kind of human ecology, around which was built the superstructure of our even more insane political economy, with all of its totally BULLSHIT LANGUAGE, in the form of every ideology and religion that I am aware of, from those having a significant public presence.
Given that our actually combined money/murder systems operate through the maximum possible tunnels of deceits and frauds, and that those tend to only be opposed by those who continue to operate within the same BULLSHIT LANGUAGE as those who operate the existing systems, our REAL PROBLEMS ARE TRILLIONS OF TIMES WORSE THAN TEND TO EVER BE PUBLICLY ADMITTED.
That is WHY, after I face those facts, I conclude that there are no practically possible ways to prevent nor prepare for the psychotic breakdown of the established systems of globalized electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs. Instead, the most realistic attitude to have towards to the question "what is the shape of the future" is that when "the great groaning garbage barge of late industrial civilization" SINKS, expect that one will go down and be drowned with that barge.
"The real world operates now on the basis of its real death controls being denied and suppressed"
Could you explain what you mean by 'death controls' - its vexed me for a while, I find a great deal of your comments unintelligble because of your use of that phase - I have no idea what it means.
The general conclusions of your post I tend to agree with - but I do think that some proportion of humanity will survive whats coming, and with preparation you can increase your chances.
O.K., Amagonx, I will try to provide some clarifications:
"Death controls" are the production of destruction, that includes everything from weeding a garden, to cold-blooded, calculated murder on a battle field. Overall, true birth control is to encourage a process to develop, by saying "yes" to it, and backing that affirmation up. Real death controls are to discourage a process to develop, by saying "no" to it, and backing that negation up.
For the sake of "better death controls," better perceptions and language about that would be a first step. For instance, most of what we call "birth controls" are actually forms of death control, because those stop something happening. That is, what we call "birth control" is mostly a deliberate production of destruction, that stops processes that otherwise would happen. Birth controls are the most efficient and effective forms of death controls. However, since our language tends to talk about everything backwards, we talk about those backwards.
EVERYTHING SHOULD BE PERCEIVED IN THE OVERALL CONTEXT OF THE SUPREME IDEOLOGY OF MILITARISM. That includes "family planning" which is now discussed through the bullshit language of "human rights," rather than through more realistic human ecology.
People becoming more aware of what they kill to live, to provide their food, would be good ideas. An approximate ideal is that one should kill the minimum necessary to stay alive. However, as with all ideals, when one examines that more closely, there opens up infinite tunnels of self-referential problems through itself, which make that quite complex to consider.
What I mean by the phrase "death controls," manifests inside the context of a general theory of artificial selection, as that exists when human beings operate relatively more self-aware natural selection processes. Natural selection always existed, and as human beings build better mental models of their world, with a model of themselves within their model of their world, they more and more live inside of an artificial environment, inside of the surrounding natural environment, and that human made and maintained artificial environment then operates an artificial selection, inside of the greater context of natural selection.
Clearly, financial investing is an expression through political economy of both true birth controls, and real death controls. However, the language about that has tended to be deliberately divorced from the reproduction of human beings. In general, the bigger problem is that our current political economy is dominated by frauds, which get away with their political economy ignoring the overall environmental ecology as much as possible. For instance, the air in the atmosphere is still mostly treated as a free resource, and water was too, for a long time, until that is not so much the case now. We are backing up into a collision with the limits of the environment in crazy ways, because we operate a fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting system, in which context the banksters are the masters of that Bizarro Mirror World way of thinking.
Since, in our currently crazy kind of Neolithic Civilization, the air we breathe is treated as a free resource to consume and to pollute, our civilization places almost no value on the ecologies of the oceans, despite the fact that more than half the air we breathe is produced by the phytoplankton in the seas. Therefore, we are collectively destroying the oceanic ecologies, and thereby seriously diminishing the ability of the phytoplankton to live. However, as is typically the case, since there is more than a Century of abundance of air stored up in our atmosphere, we act with evil deliberate ignorance towards the eventual destruction of the ability to renew our air supplies, as well as act with evil deliberate ignorance towards the longer term consequences of polluting the atmosphere. Since the air we breathe, and the water we drink, are even more important than the food we eat, the same concepts as apply to the ethics of food production, and killing to live, apply to the air and water supplies, and so too, the general ways that our current civilization acts with evil deliberate ignorance towards all those facts is typical of our times. After all, the banksters are the best organized gangs of criminals, who most get away with separating the murders that the money system causes from the profits and bonuses those processes distribute.
What I try to do is apply the concepts of general energy systems, and evolutionary ecologies to human politics. That process is full of definitions, and examples, for which there is too little room in a Zero Hedge comment. However, that kind of language is profoundly different than the normal language, especially since I provide radical critiques of the basic concepts of thermodynamics and information theory, within my overall endeavours. Rather, that explain everything I am saying in detail, with definitions, in a Zero Hedge comment, I merely type out my impressions to various articles that I read, like this one above by James H. Kunstler.
I merely write to pass the time and amuse myself. Nobody has to read it. Since I believe that the real world will spin wildly out of control, despite anything I may say or do, and that the current runaway debt insanity WILL result in runaway death insanities, I believe I am merely being realistic when I try to understand what is going on.
Since you have asked, Amagonx, I have repeated myself here to reply to you ... in case you find the time to come back and read this.
Meanwhile, Zero Hedge comments are not the context to provide definitions of every word or phrase. Of course, I do try to provide more scientific operational definitions of the language I use in other contexts. (After all, I have been doing this since I was a teenager, and I lived on university campuses for a dozen years when I was younger, and I have primarily worked on political experiments and related court cases since then.) The language I use tends to represent the way that progress in postmodernizing sciences have tended to reconverge back to ancient mysticism. Theories such as the special theory of relativity and quantum mechanics have enabled awesome technologies to actually work, despite that the philosophical conclusions that follow from taking those theories seriously are an assault on common sense. When I use the phrase "intellectual scientific revolution" I intend that in the way that Thomas Kuhn's book on the Structure of Scientific Revolutions revealed the history of valid new ideas going through a pattern where usually it took the death of the older generations before the new ideas were more widely accepted. I expect politics to be like that, except way more so, and perhaps even fatally so for the whole civilization?
Thanks for the definition.
So paraphrasing;
Death control - a deliberate action or inception of a process designed to forcibly destroy or extinguish a certain target (process, structure, relationship, subject)?
So when you are calling for better death controls - I assume you mean, punitive legal and military force?
That obvious overt murder system is part of the picture, Amagnonx.
However, disease kills way more people than anything else. Death controls should be studied scientifically, as social facts. In that context, the profit from disease systems, and profit from junk food systems, torture to death at least an order of magnitude more people than the military systems do. Medicine is inside the money system, which is inside the murder system. The murder system backs all of the others up, at crucial points. However, overall, the systemic death controls are pervasive, and manifest throughout all phases of the life cycle.
Those things theoretically could be studied scientifically. However, in fact they are almost totally dominated by old-fashioned religions and ideologies, and delibertately buried under bullshit since success in warfare was based on backing up deceits with destruction, and therefore, economics became based on backing up frauds with force.
People do NOT LIKE to face the fact that money is based on measurement backed by murder, because all private property is based on claims backed by coercion. Rather, the point of most religions and ideologies is to bury that under the kinds of bullshit that they want to believe. Most people love their favourite impossible ideals, and therefore, are attached to their favourite false fundamental dichotomies. Therefore, we have the runaway contradictions of sciences transcending previous false fundamental dichotomies, which then enable technologies to become trillions of times more powerful and capable, BUT which are still being channeled through old-fashioned religions and ideologies, which are based on false fundamental dichotomies, and their related impossible ideals, which actually make the opposite happen in the real world.
THOSE RUNAWAY CONTRADICTIONS ARE AUTOMATICALLY GETTING WORSE, FASTER, WHILE, AT PRESENT, THERE APPEARS PRACTICALLY NOTHING THAT IS POLITICALLY POSSIBLE TO PREVENT THAT HAPPENING, WHICH IS WHY I BELIEVE COLLAPSE INTO CRAZY CHAOS WILL HAPPEN.
Oops, double posting.
Some things need to be read twice.
To answer the question posed by the title, no we are not crazy to continue to believe in collapse. History teaches us that our dance through time takes the form of an oscillation driven always larger by the pressures of population and technology. We are giving birth to a new age and giving birth is a painful and bloody business. I forecast in 1994 that we would be in a fully developed collapse scenario by 2013. Argh, I missed it!!! We are however clearly in an incipient global socio-economic collapse scenario. Deniability could vaporize this year or very possibly next year.
All that collapse mongering said, I am still optimistic for the future. We have a very bad decade or two and then a renaissance the likes of which has never been seen will commence...right up to the singularity...and then my friends, the stars.
I have not and will not change my plans for the future. (As an aside, I have maybe 15 years left on this plane, so I will probably be strumming a harp by the time this is all sorted out. ;-)
OBTW: Sorry James, I will have to skip Part 2. I have taken a vow of poverty.
I urge those of you who haven't been here long to look up the works of Joseph Tainter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter). Tainter observed that societies fall and collapse because of social complexity.
Nigga, money is free speech.
Don't listen to self-proclaimed economic experts on the internet predicting "iminent collapse". This is what we learned, isn't it?
...isn't it?
"The lights stay on. The gabble and blabber of Cable TV continues remorselessly in the background of life. All of that is due to inertia. It gives the superficial impression of the old normal carrying on."
Toward the end of WWII allied bombers obliterated the Krupp Werks, but their head office was able to continue on with fully employed paper pushers for another year.
When you fall into a really big black hole you still think you're OK because time slows down to almost nothing, but from an objective view you're already lost.
Like still seeing the light from a star that has already died....
Such an otherwise good article dragged down by cheapshots from the hip, such as
squandering this possibly one-time bonanza
Rrright. And who exactly decides where squandering starts and where it ends, i.e. what use of resources is acceptable?
the Julian Simon folly of crossing our fingers and hoping that some unnamed band of genius wizard innovators would mitigate the problems of resource scarcity and population overshoot just in time
Purposefully oversimplifying the views of Julian Simon as an indirect way of Malthus glorification.
Kunstler is a whack job.'
Left over hippy who's still crying because our society hasn't yet collapsed from it's "excesses". Do some research on this nut. Tyler giving him front page attention shows just how far down the shitter this site is traveling. May as well be KWN.
"The gabble and blabber of Cable TV continues remorselessly in the background of life."
To be realistic, that should read "The gabble and blabber of life continues remorselessly in the background of cable TV viewing." For most in USSA, anyway.
ONLY chance we have to avoid the collapse of America is to throw out the Incumbent republicans and switching to pure Tea Party insurgents....
Once the demand for pure-motive politicians is made clear the supply will rise up to meet it.
This midterm election is probably our best and last hope to get the old America back. Laugh or scoff if you will, but you got a better plan (other than prepping for chaos and demise) ?
Yesterday in Texas the TEA got fucked hard and BUSH won all,
The NEO-CONS are saying the next election will be a clean sweeep for them, and their going to have the NSA place child-porn on every TEA party persons PC.
Game-Over
"Are You Crazy To Continue Believing In Collapse?"
I've read the replies but feel no one has responded to this headline. (... and the article didn't stay-on-point with the headline either).
I can't be the only one who currently asks "WHEN will things correct?".
I've reduced investments in "the market" having become convinced that it is a rigged casino and is certainly no longer a worthy or viable vehicle for anyone who seeks to make "investments" aimed at helping businesses and the economy grow. That simply is gone now. "The market" is a sham and no place to "invest" in anything.
So I sit and wait for the judgment and resurrection. I wait for the day when those over-extended must show their hands and default... knowing it won't include me. I wait for the day that those front-running the markets are persecuted.
And I do ask myself "Am I crazy to believe in collapse?"
I often view my role as a "non-participant" as meaningless and unwise and that my inaction kindof leaves the prison in the hands of the wanton prisoners. But that view is just not right. The fact is that there is a war being waged and I am clearly on a side that the other side recognizes and fears (even though I don't appreciate that). The other side knows that I and many others are withholding dollars from their grasp. They know that the gains they've recently amassed will become worthless should my side holdout long enough to "win their collapse" just as I and others see as needed. My point here is that I believe dollars withheld are powerful weapons. Dollars withheld frighten to strangle the other side. Its not just individuals, but prudent companies too, are withholding dollars. Dollars withheld hurt the speculators.
If enough people and businesses withhold their dollars from their game and the market they've created... it'll collapse. I'd like to see this idea spread. The other side is vunerable to losing hearts and minds. They worry about ZH and Hussman. What if we saw ourselves as clearly as they see us? What if?
Not making the same money as the blind at the present time? Worry your going to miss even one jumper in your slumber? Folly is making the mist look like a dream and you only see fog? Everytime you look at the balance its down a couple instead of up a lot? I remember when it snapped in 2008 that knife kept falling falling falling and tout est calme its contained contained contained. If it goes like you think then its level will be quicksand in your brain its going to be too ugly to look back into any SOUTH SEA FACES for many moons. If we are wrong than we missed the party and the clean up big deal the fund manager can only beat the benchmarks with buyers
The only thing to expect is moving your head side to side a little further and a little slower. The Fed never did anything different after 2008 it wasn't doing before 2008. The only thing that changed was telling everybody how much and how often which is pretty much captain obvious? The real problem is the feds estimates of how much the banker made on its borrowing. Winning every day would jack up results pretty quickly and winning everyday for 5 years....! There are too many marginal banks who will continue to challenge the Feds rate policy long into the future? Once QE is done than cash will flow again and rates can rise? I believe first we will see a point were fed is buying bonds and raising rates at the same time. Banks can discuss negative rates until the bank runs start? TOO MANY BANKS and a lot of inventory to take under management?
Wow.
I read this twice before truly getting it.
This is complete horseshit.
I'm kicking myself for having those initial doubts.
Trust yourself, Johnny! We agreed to work on that!!
Friday, July 8th, 2011 @ 15:30
"Tell My children to wake up now and see the turmoil in the world, where financial crises abound. Tell them that while people’s greed was partly responsible for plunging them into debt, that the banking crisis was deliberately planned by the One World Order.
Many reading this Message will smile and question this fact, but they should also know that unless they stand up and defend their rights, they will be forced to accept the mark of the beast to access their money."
http://www.thewarningsecondcoming.com/eternal-father-will-prevent-new-wo...
"Give a man a fish, and he can eat for a day. ...
Give him a fishing rod and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day
Jetpacks
Undersea apartments
flying cars
laser discs
bitcoin.