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The Most Elementary Question Must Not Be Asked
By Raúl Ilargi Meijer of The Automatic Earth
The Most Elementary Question Must Not Be Asked
We’re in dire need of fresh blood and smart new ideas to clean up the mess the present ideologies and their puppets and puppetmasters have created. The present crew has made a neverending series of ‘mistakes’, intentional or not, and they are dead set on making more, if only because they refuse to change the tack that led to all these ‘mistakes’.
I say mistakes because that’s what they are from the point of view of all those who live in the real economy, not because I think the puppetmasters are mistaken from their own point of view. After all, all they do, literally all they do, is take care of their own interests. Where they will find themselves mistaken is down the line, when there is no longer a functioning real economy, and they will of necessity end up going down with it.
However, even though you wouldn’t say it to look at America and Europe these days, we don’t need to be puppets to any masters. I know, I know, most of you don’t even recognize yourselves as puppets – yes, you -. You believe most of what you read, or at least enough to keep going on the beaten track. And they’re good at making you believe. They’ve gotten a lot better at it ever since you were born, whenever you were born.
You only need to listen to things like this week’s US jobs report, which has the media falling over each other and themselves to declare victory. But which, when you take a good look, declares no such thing. And we’ve been going on this road for many years now, a road defined by debt on one side and propaganda on the other, and we stick to it because we are promised on a 24/7 basis that it will lead to growth, which is always just around the corner. Growth is the magic word.
But why do we need growth, and do we even need it at all? That is a question which is considered blasphemous anathema by the current class of economists and leaders. Still, and maybe especially for that reason, it is a question that needs to be asked, perhaps THE question. Because the past 10, 20 or even 40 years have not actually delivered any growth, once you look beyond the propaganda, and the added debt.
And when you add that debt to the equation, they’ve brought the real economy the opposite of growth, while handing the puppet masters unequaled riches. In a nutshell, the past 40 years or so have given us added layers of gadgets at the price of unaffordable education and health care, the price of a deteriorating real economy. And that is just the start of the way down.
Growth is a topic I’ve written a lot about over the years, too much to even try and find it all back again. Here are a few samples. From November 14 2011:
The Growth Paradigm Has Become An Embarrassment
It’s high time to come clean, to stop the incessant lying. To stop pretending things are a bit hard right now, but otherwise just fine. They’re not. Extend and pretend works only so long. Then it snaps back in your face with a vengeance. That’s why the bond markets are so successful in bringing down Italy and Greece. Not because the ECB doesn’t step in, since that would only serve to cover up reality for a little bit longer, but because they’ve both lied for so long about their real predicaments.
No, just stop lying. The consequences and challenges will be formidable, but they’ll be that anyway. You can’t cover up the debt and the losses forever. And the chances of growing your economies out of the cesspit are zero, if not below.
One thing no more lying will achieve is this: it will re-establish confidence in the markets -or what’ll be left of them-. And isn’t that what you guys always say you want to accomplish? Well, I can assure you, it’s the only way to do it: cut the fairy tales. Take a breath of fresh air and get to work. Do something real and rewarding for a change, and for a living.
Oh, and one other thing that must stop something urgent: stop talking about economic growth. There ain’t none, and we need to wonder hard and loud why we still and always unquestioningly assume and accept that we need it. No, the Greek economy will not grow its way out of its misery. Neither will Italy’s, or France’s or America’s. There’s too much debt to grow out of.
But perhaps this is hard to fathom without resorting to more philosophical questions. For those of you who’ve never read or heard Professor Albert Bartlett’s work on exponential growth (since that is what we’re talking bout), get moving. Bartlett is a physicist. That means he’s an actual scientist, and capable of understanding the inevitable endgame of exponential growth. People like Papademos and Monti, as well as just about any political and economic leader on the planet, don’t understand the science involved. Either that or they’re willfully blind to it.
And there’s another layer to the question, one that goes beyond the easy to understand impossibility of endless and eternal growth. That is, when we look around our respective places on the planet, why do we think we need to grow more? Why do we feel we haven’t grown enough? And perhaps more quintessential: what is it that we want to grow into? At what point, if we do want more growth, will it be enough for us? Have we even thought about that?
We are fed the constant growth story because it is indeed a necessity in our present system. When all money issued carries interest i.e. is issued as debt, you will need to grow your GDP at least as much as that interest rate to play even. Just as easy to understand as the exponential growth conundrum. Or so you would think.
But that doesn’t mean that you can always keep issuing enough money to meet your interest payment requirements. Not when a huge part of it is issued as for instance mortgage loans, but very few people buy homes. Not when money is created when banks issue fresh credit to industries, but industries find no market for their products and instead contract.
In other words: if we don’t grow, we will shrink. And that, we are told, is the very definition of armageddon. But why couldn’t we shrink a little and still be comfortable? In theory we could perhaps, but first of all the human mind isn’t made for shrinkage, and second the money we create as credit is virtual, and can disappear as fast as it was created, and into the same nothingness.
If we would for instance consciously choose to shrink by 5%, we’d run a very real risk that we would cause 50% of the money to vanish. The system based on credit will have the tendency to go down like so many dominoes. It has very little resilience and is thus enormously fragile, something we don’t pay attention to when we have growth, and are therefore not prepared for when we no longer do.
And from April 22, 2013:
The only good thing about all this is that if and when it becomes clear that there is no growth left in the system, all its one-dimensional advocates, from both the Spend! and the Cut! parties, will disappear into a great void. They have no idea what to do without growth. There is no economics class that teaches them, and they don’t have the brains to come up with an answer themselves.
Indeed, perhaps it’s even true that a “not necessarily growth” situation, simply of its own accord, selects for other “leaders”. That power hungry psychopaths, in all the various degrees to which they float to the top of the dungheap, are wiped out and alienated by such a situation.
That could be a very good thing. It’s on the way there, however, that we will see unimaginable damage, mayhem and bloodshed. The forever and always growth classes have an iron grip on everyone’s lives. If only because everyone believes them. Still, just because they can’t change their ways and views doesn’t mean you can’t. You can see quite easily that, in a material sense, you have more than enough already.
And many of you have clued in to the destruction ever more growth brings to your children’s living world (not to mention their brains). Unfortunately, quite a few then fall for the “more growth, but more greener” delusion. Or some steady state one (we don’t do steady, we don’t stand still).
When you get down to the heart of it, the only reason we need more growth is to pay off our debts. Which we owe largely to the same small group of rich, psychopathic and powerful that incessantly repeats the “need for growth” message, and makes sure it’s the only message available out there. But we will have to have the discussion some day, and it won’t be initiated by the people and powers that rule our societies today; that one’s up to us.
It’s a very simple discussion. You can start it today with Krugman or one of his alleged adversaries: Why do you advocate economic growth? Why do you see a period of non-growth or shrinkage as a necessary evil that needs to be brought down to its knees at – quite literally – all cost?
And what is it you want to grow into? Can you explain that? I’ve never seen that properly defined. Isn’t it perhaps true that if you don’t know the answer to that question, you are by definition blindly chasing a mirage? If you don’t know where you’re going, or why you’re going there, why go at all? Or is that still the sort of issue that can easily be swept under the carpet as “commie”?
So it’s refreshing to see this week a German economist and banker, Dr. Ulrich Salzer, thanks to Tyler Durden, going down that same line of questioning. These questions are long overdue. It’s not just one school of economics or the other failing us, it’s the entire field. Any field that refuses to ponder its most essential questions is per definition dead and useless.
Physicists can explain any time of day why we need Newton’s gravity and Einstein’s relativity in order to make sense of the world, and if anyone can prove them wrong, they’d be welcomed. Economists cannot explain we we need growth, it’s simply assumed to be a given.
Deficit Spending And Money Printing: A German Point Of View
And if the capital markets don’t swallow additional public debt, then the Central Banks will step in eagerly as Investors – regardless if this is in line with their statutes!
The leading macroeconomic Nobel-Laureates, the Central Bankers as well as most Politicians have reduced their economic judgment on how to get the economies in Europe and Japan back to sustainable growth on just two recipes: public investments in infrastructure to be financed by additional public debt and, second, an expansive money market policy based on printing more money and reducing interest rates to zero or even beyond zero to negative rates!
The expected results, backed by the leading macroeconomic wisdom, should be to kick-start economic growth, to induce private industry to invest and banks to lend to private investors, and thereby to reduce unemployment, and get deflationary tendencies back to an inflation rate that is now officially regarded as ideal if it oscillates around 2 % p.a. When and why this “two-percent” benchmark was introduced for the first time I can’t remember, but everybody today takes it for granted and repeats it like as an undisputed target of Central Bank’s money market policy. Included in this assumption is ever more public debt as the guarantor for lasting GDP-growth!
I never understood why macroeconomics should be regarded as an academic discipline if it is in practice reduced to these rather simple theories of how to handle a recession or even deflation! Maybe Alfred Nobel was just as clear-sighted as I am, and consequently never introduced a Nobel-prize for economics. That was done after his death by the Central Bank of Norway, which also contributed the required funds. It still does so, and not the Nobel foundation!
My personal advice is to stop handing out any more Nobel-prizes for economics to any more American professors on any new theory how to steer economic development and sustainable economic growth, because none of them has ever worked.
There is a lot of blame offloaded onto Maynard Keynes by critics of the present ruling opinion of more deficit spending by governments. But I don’t believe that Keynes would approve any of today’s Nobel-Laureates who saw no other way out of recession than by money printing in unlimited amounts and years of deficit spending by already over-indebted economies. According to Keynes public investment on deficit could be regarded as an “ultima ratio” to re-kick-start a slow economy, but he would never have advised any government that is already highly indebted to increase this debt even more!
In his theory, deficit-spending should be a limited action in time and amounts, and directly afterwards this debt should be repaid by the additional tax income from the stronger revenues of industry and private individuals who have profited from the intervention of the State.
But what our economists and central bankers are recommending nowadays is completely different from “short-term-kick-starts” – our systems are so full of the sweet drug of government deficit spending that (like a drug-addict) it constantly needs heavier doses of the same drug!
It was not long ago that the American Treasury Secretary publicly blamed Germany for not using its remaining credit standing for another round of deficit-spending in order to help Italy, France and other Southern European countries. As if more public debt and burning straw in Germany would have any impact on the southern countries’ economies without any serious political and economic reforms in those countries themselves to fight the weakness at its real source!
As long as our “economy doctors” don’t know anything better than to prescribe more drugs instead of getting the patient off the needle and help him to abandon the ever increasing drug doses, we will never get our economies “back to normal”!
We should never forget that at least the European economies had no real problem as long as the public debt to Gross National Product ratio remained within the Maastricht limits of 60% and before liquidity in the banking sector was multiplied without limit, thereby creating big bubbles in the financial assets of the banks which finally led to the financial crisis of 2008.
Japan is the very best example to prove that the therapy of deficit spending and money printing is dangerously wrong: it is now 25 years since Japan has adopted this cure. If anybody needs proof that the prescription was unprofessional and ineffective, he should look at the results to the Japanese economy and its public debt. Although hundreds of billions of Dollars have been spent during this period on programs to stimulate the Japanese economy the effect was that Japan fell from one recession into the next depression and the public debt ratio to GNP has meanwhile reached the astronomic bench mark of 230% (!!), which is double that of Greece and four times higher than the Maastricht criterion!
I am certain that Maynard Keynes would turn in his grave if he knew to what extent his theory was misinterpreted and misused! Of course it’s a big temptation for every politician to utilize the sweet but toxic medicine of deficit spending and more public debt rather than to introduce hard reforms on public budgets, on social spending and other benefits to their voters.
It’s also a big mistake that European governments have disregarded the traditional role of the European Central Bank as the watch-dog against inflation. In creating the ECB, Germany never consented that it should have more responsibilities and more authority than the Deutsche Bundesbank ever had.
It’s just like with deficit spending Keynes had recommended under certain conditions: it may be acceptable if the Central Bank acts as “Lender of last resort” in case of actual liquidity crisis. But this should be strictly on short-term basis. What we experience today is completely contrary to the German (maybe not the U.S.) understanding of the role of the Central Bank. The ECB has now assumed a role not only to protect the value of our common currency against inflation but also to take action as if it is responsible to create economic growth and full employment with instruments like money printing, zero interest rates and unlimited investments in bonds which the free market is rejecting.
We pay a high price for the chimera that we need constant economic growth and that it is a stigma if our GDP-growth is only 1.5% p.a. Can’t we accept that after 50 years of undisturbed peace and continuous prosperity we have reached a certain degree of personal satisfaction where we don’t need a new car every year, another cell-phone, additional furniture, more TV-sets, more laptops etc, etc. Why do we insist upon economic growth, if we don’t actually need the products which are additionally produced every year?
Is it really worth it to increase the already heavy burden of public debt, which our children must service someday, by accepting even more debt in a vain effort to increase public demand? Let’s instead be happy with zero GDP growth, zero inflation and zero growth of public debt! That could be a more rational solution. Why don’t we consider it?
You almost have to step outside of economics, even out of the financial world as a whole, to pose what is the most elementary question about our economy today. That can’t be right.
The most elementary question is not how we can achieve growth, it’s whether we need growth, and what we would need it for that is important enough to destroy our entire societies and economies for. As Salzer says: “Why do we insist upon economic growth, if we don’t actually need the products which are additionally produced every year?” The most elementary question is as simple as that.
I can finish this the way I started it: we need new ideas, new paradigms, to replace the ones that have gotten us the cesspool we find ourselves in, despite the false signals debt and propaganda provide us with. We’re in dire need of fresh blood and smart new ideas to clean up the mess the present ideologies and their puppets and puppetmasters have created.
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New Ideas? You have to be joking. They will steal any new idea from you and the corruption continues.
We could always borrow from China so can give aid to other countries.
New ideas...
https://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/snake-eyes/
;-)
Sorry. People who do real work, will need soap sooner than later.
If all you actually do is lay about and "think" about things, then yeah, you might be able to go a bit longer.
Unfortunately, real resources are required for a certain standard of living and this requires real work, go ahead, try farmering and not using soap. In addition to making the animals sick, I can assure you that women will not be seeking you out. I have tried not using soap before, FAIL.
EBOLA IS NO LONGER A PROBLEM. That must be the case becasue Flounder is resigning.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ebola-czar-ron-klain-returning-to-priv...
They should make Flounder president.
Turns out he couldn't take all the snickering every morning when he entered the office.
Hopefully the next doctor to lead the charge finds better acceptance.
What's this "growth" shit all the time anyway!?
That's what got us into this mess today was always needing growth to pay off moar worthless growth!
We'll be lucky if we can just manage survival at this point.
So fuck growth!
Really it depends on how your defining growth. Cancer is a growth that interestingly looks like our present economic system but we've got the snake oil salesmen like Krugman with magic cures and meanwhile it's rapidly metastasizing.
This is your perception. Millions of people, many of which are children, live in poverty. Their opportunities are limited because those who really do not need to see growth- control it. Take for instance U.S. aid to an African nation. They decide to give these citizens who struggle to meet their nutrtional needs some help. They insist on using American consultants instead of local people who know the land, Monsanto seeds even though GMOs are not wanted, and American equipment. In the grand scheme of things does this growth benefit those who need it. Very little beyond that crop- the total dollar amount so altruistically given is spent with companies whose bottom lines are already healthy. Had the locals been able to use the money and use local labor, materials and equipment it would have been money and a crop in their hands. This the how the demanders of growth play the game. Growth is needed just not as it is currently dished out. They want the pie to keep growing not to feed others but to keep enlarging their piece.
Say what you will but taxing the fudge out of a certain level of profit will see it willingly distributed to their labor force and capital improvements- anything other than giving it to the government they have already bought and paid for. This as well as giving aid directly to the people, not a government, with no strings attached could put growth where it's needed.
Whew! That was a close one. He saved us all.
Good job Ron.
I believe the proper phrasing would be, "Heckuva job, Ronnie."
Lots of Indian people don't use soap. Unfortunately, the only thing attracted to them are flies.
If you look at the fall of the Roman Empire or any other empire, the 99% are unaffected for the most part. They never really benefited from the Empire at its apex and thus don't suffer when it falls. They just plod along and end up paying taxes and following the rules of someone else. It ends with a whimper and not with a bang.
This. The only way things go on as long as they do is that the Elites are very good at convincing a sizeable part of the 99% that they somehow have a stake in the status quo, and will be harmed if the status quo changes and will be rewarded for their loyalty if they work to maintain the status quo. And nearly every time, it isn't true.
I think your analysis is somewhat lacking. There were indeed great benefits from the Pax Romana, even down to the bottom of the barrel. Certainly it benefited the top 5% tremendously and in glaringly obvious ways. But there were certainly benefits to all under the rule of the Roman system.
How right you are.
That Sparticus was an ingrate.
Analysis lacking. Cute sarcasm though.
"benefits to all under the rule of the Roman system." The greatest times for Rome, like the huge growth of Nazi Germany, came from plunder. When the plunder stopped, the big wheel reversed and slowly crushed the beneficiaries of the plunder.
Point of view depends on whether you were a producer or a parasite. Rome was great for parasites.
Again, there is a lack of close grain analysis here. Rome exchanged peace for its 'parasitism' as you call it. Consider all the resources that would have been spent on, say, piracy suppression had not the Romans turned the Mediterranean to a Roman lake. There is an awful lot of benefit to something like that kind of police presence. Plunder was only part of it; analyze the Roman use of force--they clearly preferred to politcally solve problems and were very careful (at least initially) in deploying their legions. War is very costly and often very risky. They understood this and applied force with careful cost to benefit analysis beforehand. We look at Rome with the myopia of History. It was 1200 years from start to finish. Look more closely. Put yourself in the lifespan of a citizen.
"All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?"
I had to copy/paste that in because it's funny.
One characteristic of Roman rule was that there were surprisingly few Imperial officials. Most provinces and provincial cities were more or less free to run themselves, as long as they paid their taxes and supplied soldiers as required. Now, at the first hint of non-cooperation, the Legions showed up and killed every tenth man or what-have-you. But modern Federal government is far larger and more burdensome than "The Roman Yoke" ever was for those who cooperated.
Living in a world dominated by a modern Imperium, I prefer to live in a regional backwater of the near-provinces of Imperium. Minneapolis is sort of like Perugia or Ravenna. Near enough to have the advantages, far enough away not to be in considered important.
insanelysane
Astonishing self-delusion in your part comparing the collapse and end of our 7 billion complex Industrial Age, with the 50 million self-sufficient agricultural Roman Empire.
“This obliteration of “false hopes,” requires an intellectual knowledge and an emotional knowledge. The first is attainable. The second, because it means that those we love, including our children, are almost certainly doomed to insecurity, misery and suffering within a few decades, if not a few years, is much harder to acquire.” – Chris Hedges
It never got weird enough for me - Dr Hunter S Thompson
Turns out Hunter wasn't much of a visionary.
You might want to rethink that "self sufficient" part.
New idea: Russia addressing its central bank.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/mobile/business/article/russias-central-ba...
The gods of the copybook headings? Its being repeated.
NAFTA, CAFTA, DIDWEAFTA?
The point KIpling was trying to make in the poem Gods of the Copybook Headings
http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm
Was that we don't need new ideas we need to get back to the old ideas.
"The Wages of Sin is Death."
"If you don't work you die."
The reason is we need growth is because debt is unsustainable in almost all Western countries. Will Japan pay off its 230% Debt to GDP with growth or will it by hyperinflation? The US may claim to have Debt to GDP of 105% but understating inflation for decades has inflated true GDP by at least 100%. So US Debt to GDP is not any better than Japan's. Besides, the US has unfunded liabilities of at least $130 trillion which every economist conveniently overlooks.
So growth is needed to kick the default or hyperinflation can a few years further into the future. And growth, real or chimerical, is the obvious need of the moment to avoid the inevitable reckoning.
Growth of an economy has definite physical limits. Growth in the money supply can go on forever. Zeros are really cheap.
The problem is sound money. Just consider the Feds so called sweet spot of 2% inflation and how this has been programmed into everyone's brain as something desirable, What this implies using the simple rule of 72s where you divide 72 by the 2% growth rate is that your buying power will diminish by 50% in 35 years, at 4%, in 17 short years you are only half as wealthy on anything you manage to accumulate. You add 30-50% annual taxes on top of that and its a game you will never win.
All so the .01 percent closest to the origination of this new money benefit immensely at the expense of the other 99.9% of humanity.
End the Fed, their propaganda of a dual mandate of Interest rates and employment is bogus. If that is true, then interest rates at zero for 6 years and 92 million people out of the workforce means they have failed miserably at their job.
Its a system of enslaving the planet, Period. with money that is nothing more than an abstract idea, and the disscussion needs to be to END IT NOW.
Bingo.......
and here is what trav7777 taught us 4 yrs ago......
"what Rothschild figured out is that if he could start a money-as-debt racket, the math would inevitably bankrupt the sovereign and then he could own the whole fucking country. That is the POINT of usury! For fuck's sake, recognize that. ''
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/zuckerman-loses-it-releases-most-scathi...
thanks usurious. it was a great read. wish trav777 would run, he might even be able to wake some people up.
This^. Dr. Salzer is a dollar short and a day late in his critique.
While valid, his critique just ignores the power of compound interest (a force for which even Einstein had profound respect). We must grow now or face another 5 to 10 year crisis from the aftermath of debt repudiation and the dissolution of the Eurozone.
The level of debt is bad enough and he acknowledges it. The compounding part is just poison.
Dr. Salzer is somewhat naive in his call for stasis. Does anyone really think that debt can be repudiated and the Euro and US welfare state be dismantled while everyone keeps his car, Mac, holiday in August etc.? I'm guessing it won't be peaceful.
"the inevitable reckoning."
The main beneficiaries of growth- those that conjure up and "rent" money- have planted the seeds of their own destruction by faking real inflation. Financial parasites- governments and banks and monopolies- need to tax income (I include private sector fees) and by faking inflation rates, real incomes fall anyway, whether the parasites fake the numbers or not. And as real incomes fall the skimming game becomes harder and harder to do.
The illusion of growth is supported by "Hedonics". I ask how anyone can seriously claim that a person watching a black-and-white TV in the 1950's had any less pleasure than someone watching some "updated" version of today's color TV. It's all bullshit and they know it.
"Why do we need growth?"
I think Chris Martenson summed it up best in a recent article:
"Either money and credit are expanding and the banks are relatively happy or the banks are collapsing and demanding taxpayer bailouts. It's really that stark. We are being driven by our system of money, we serve it not the other way around, which is a tragedy of both epic and comic proportions."
Oil And The Global Slowdownhttp://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/89380/oil-and-global-slowdown
Well stated.
Governments and finance made a Faustian bargain to preserve the western welfare state model: increase systemic leverage, ease credit terms while government managed the economy through monetary policy.
We are now in the end game of this failed experiment. A hyper-financialized economy must produce growth. Yet growth is a function of the vicissitudes of technological progress and other variables which are hard to control. Leverage without growth is like a shark that cannot swim, as someone observed astutely on this thread.
"We’re in dire need of fresh blood and smart new ideas to clean up the mess the present ideologies and their puppets and puppetmasters have created." ----
Stop right there. Let me be clear, unless your previous puppets and puppetmasters are forcibly removed from power, NOTHING changes.
If you cannot commit to this or wrap your head around this, get use to your slavery, period.
same as it ever was.
The Dynastic Cycle...time for a change in the dynasty.
Hail to the new dynasty....... Same as the old dynast, to paraphrase.
If the people who make up the "new dynasty" are not the same people, it isn't the same.
Living through a revolution, now that is really living.
Oh well, no risk no reward.
FYI- complaining about your situation and failing to act or even propose a solution is called whining.
but then again many genuinely prefer their slavery over independent reasponsibility.
"If the people who make up the "new dynasty" are not the same people, it isn'tthe same."
True. The Bolsheviks were a big improvement over the Czars.
About the blood thing....we're asking for volunteers.....at this stage anyway.
Yep. Perspective is important but demographics are important too.
Let me be clear motherfuckers; same as it ever was.
The communists BECAME the Tzars....the large scale patterns were very closely the same. China is the same: the communists became the Imperial Chineses they despised. Cultures evolve default patterns, and inevitably revert to them. Those patterns maximize efficiency for their geographic/resource/geopolitcal position. Until the fundaments of environment change, a cultur will not alter its fundamental patterns.
I do, however, understand your point and agree with it.
"many genuinely prefer their slavery over independent reasponsibility."
I have the hardest time with this. I speak to people and some of them DO realize the nature of things and just how screwed we really are. How bad the fraud against the American people is and just how absolutely evil the banks are. But then, out of nowhere I hear, "but I like my life. I like going to starbucks and having cable." As though they knowlingly/willingly trade their freedom and their kids futures for cable TV and starbucks.
I guess they really do prefer slavery. I will never understand it though. We The People have been dead for longer than any of us have been alive.
Polymarkos
You might have a point there:
The Revolt Against Civilization -- T. Lothrop Stoddard
“… the downbreeding of existing European populations and of how the worst elements of society are continually outbreeding the best, leading to lower average Iqs and civilizational levels.”
http://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Against-Civilization-Lothrop-Stoddard/dp/1471051773/ref=pd_ybh_10
To all the people who think we can just grow our way out of this they are wrong. If you think the worlds surging population will not become a problem because of new energy sources I say, wake up! Anyone with even the slightest mechanical knowledge will tell you that solar panels, wind mills and such take a lot of energy to build and often are maintenance intense.
Both these complicated systems have a short lifespan and require a great deal of energy to be expended in just keeping them up and running. Carry no illusions the days of cheap energy are behind us and not only has the low hanging fruit been picked it has been eaten. Sadly, if we look back we will see much of this energy was allowed to go to waste. The article below looks into the cost of failing to plan long-term and questions if "collectively mankind" has become incompetent.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/12/does-peter-principle-apply-to-mankind.html
Breaking News Israeli fighter jets target sites near #Damascus intl airport - Syrian state TV. Details to follow
http://rt.com/news/212275-israel-strike-syria-airport/
People are born valid. We do not need to earn validity, which is what the oligarchs want us to believe, it's what they have brainwashed us all to think. There is another way, but it scares too many people. We do not need police, or banks, or large government, or jobs, all we need is a naturally evenly distributed form of money, thus giving us a natural flowing resource based economy. All support and advancements can be done via open source. This will leave people truly free and asking themselves seriously for the first time, what will I choose to do with my life? When 100% of humanity has this opportunity, it will release such vast potential, it would be like a rocket blasting into space. It is 12:01 in the jars of our existence, time for a whole new way.
Because debt is money
Debt is CONTROL. Debt is a voluntary servitude to the debt holder. NeoSerfdom.
The reason "growth" is imbedded in the human psyche is that everyone wants to be rich, or at a minimum comfortable, as in not having to worry about survival. Those with the proper abilities and the pure luck of being born into the right circumstances, can have this. But those without those benefits will necessarily suffer. Given that those who do not have the benefits are human, they will look at those who have them and be jealous; that's simple human nature. This then leaves those with the goods two choices: admit that there is not enough material for everyone to live the way they do and have the "have-nots" come after them to kill them and take their goods, OR convince them that if we can just make the system "grow" then yes, eventually, everyone can have enough. It's a no-brainer. No one with resources will ever tell the "have-nots" that this is a zero-sum game. It would be a sure way to class-warfare, and the privileged don't remotely have the numbers to win that war.
"Growth" will destroy us, it's true. But admitting that it is a myth (even though this is the truth) is group suicide for the beneficiaries of the current system. Ain't gonna happen.
Except that, "there is not enough for everyone to live comfortably," is just another one of their lies. There is enough. Right now we have the oligarchs taking/stealing enough to support 99%, more than they could ever need or use, and the rest of us sharing 1%.
Physical goods are actually not the limiting factor. It's the natural variation among humans that is the problem, combined with our genetic predisposition to competition (which, btw, we share will all other species that I know of). Humans WILL compete. As such, some will have more than others. Once we accept this fact (I haven't ever heard of any human society - still around or extinct - where competition and hierarchy did not exist), then the rest of my comment is the logical conclusion. Goods will never be evenly shared. Sadly, it's not in our nature to do so. So our species eventually goes extinct (taking a large number of other species with us this round), the next one steps into the spotlight, and the Earth continues to circle the sun. Those of us here can only enjoy the ride.
Feeling a bit fatalistic today... :D
I fall into it too sometimes, but not today, it is self defeatist. It's all due to fear. We need to release our potential for empathy instead, don't sell humanity short. We have not proven much of ourselves as of yet, but I have hope for the future. P.S. I did not neg vote you.
Building a bridge without knowing what materials you have at your disposal is impossible.
Trust, but always verify.
I suggest that you do some homework on "global biological cycles". While I will agree that humans could be so much more to the universe, the earth is still a closed system where only energy is exchanged (via the sun - a fusion reactor).
The vast majority of that energy is being used by ecosystems to keep those biological cycles turning (nitrogen cycle, sulfur cycle, carbon cycle, phosphorus cycle etc.). Should those cycles stop turning, life as we know it stops. This has actually happened before and most likely will again. The concept of a "carrying capacity" for the planet is very real. Some will have the consumable calories required to live at a decent standard of living, most will not. Same as it ever was...
Do not discount the boost we will have in technology, streamlining, making things more efficient, and yes, we do need to keep population levels at sustainable levels. We do not have to keep growing, we need sustainability. You are assuming the status quo, we have to choose to change the status quo and we do have that power.
Our technology has led us into a system where for every 1 calorie of food-energy produced, 10 calories of energy are expended. Technology does not, by itself, imply efficiency. It implies leverage over our environment, efficient or not.
Planned obsolescence alone currently wastes more than we would need. We have the ability to make things last almost forever, we can achieve sustainability, constant growth for wealth for a few was never needed. Technology has not led to the current system, that was misappropriation, greed, and criminality.
Nothing lasts forever. Technology is merely a tool. It is not a panacea for all that troubles us today. It also requires energy, which is why you should pick and choose what technologies you understand wisely.
Which is why I said, "almost forever". A working new system would have to involve good choices. As well chosen technology increases, less energy is needed. I never claimed it was all we needed.
And what well chosen technology are you talking about? How much energy does it take to implement? How efficient is it? People's blind faith that there will be some technofix to our problems is going to be shaken and shattered. Again, technology is not the same thing as efficiency. Technolotgy has energy requirements of its own.
You sound like someone that doesn't believe we can fit on a thumbdrive what used to take a whole room. It's self defeatist and plays right into the plutocracy's plans for your slavery. We have had a 300% productivity increase because of technology, all of that has gone into the oligarchy's pockets when it rightly belongs to society as a whole. Your denial that it even exists seems delusional to me. As well, my comment you initially responded to lists technology, streamlining, and making things more efficient as 3 separate things, you are the one taking the meaning as technology alone.
I asked for a concrete example of what technology you are talking about. You couldn't give me one, and you responded by calling me delusional, which tells me that you are working on blind faith. Again, what technologies are you talking about? Because a thumb drive isn't going to fix things. I ask for concrete examples, and you give me pie in the sky unicorn reasoning.
Lets have a little discussion about energy:
Work, from a physics standpoint is NET force times distance. If you exert 5 newtons of force on an object over 5 meters in some mythical frictionless environment, you have done 25 joules worth of work. But in the real world, there'll probably be some kind of friction. So, say you exert 5 newtons of force on an object over 5 meters, but over that 5 meters, you had one newton of force from friction pushing directly back, you have applied a NET force of 4 newtons over 5 meters. You have done 20 joules of work.
What is energy? Energy is simply the ability, or capacity to do work. It can be stored in chemical bonds, it can be stored in nuclear bonds, it can be transported via photons or electric fields. Temperature is merely the measure of the average kinetic energy of the molecules in the substance you are taking the temperature of. That leads to efficency. That's simple. Take how much energy you expended and divide that into how much work you actually did. 5 newtons over 5 meters to do 20 joules of work? Well, that's 20 joules/ 25 joules for 0.8, or 80% efficient. If you get over 100% efficient, you are either fooling yourself with some unknown energy input, or you have discovered something that will shape human history forever in a way even greater than Newton and Einstein combined.
For most things, you'll be doing very good to get 50% efficiency. Assume that we had some breakthrough that made it possible to do everything based on technology at 99% efficiency. What would that buy us? That means that we could do twice as much with the same amount of resources. That's very linear. Our current system requires exponential growth, which is very non linear. 2% growth per year leads to a doubling every 34.66 years, so if we were growing at 2% per year, doubling our efficiency would, at best, buy us another generation. And that hypothetical doubling in efficiency is more unicorns and skittles. It's not going to happen.
But back to energy, most of what we consume is fossil fuels. Oil, coal, natural gas. We don't have any viable alternatives ready and waiting to replace them. Our only option for industrial society right now based on our current level of knowledge is combining nuclear energy with reverse combustion, and it would take longer to develop the processes required for general use and then put that infrastructure into place than it will for the costs, both in energy and in FRNs, of pulling those fossil fuels out of the ground to overwhelm our system.
Oil is the keystone energy source for all of our society. We use oil to get oil. The workers of the oil fields have to drive out to the fields. Big trucks have to haul the equipment. Mining equipment that runs off of oil derivatives is used to mine the iron ore used in the vehicles that oil workers drive to the fields and to build the drilling rigs. Oil is also used to run the tractors that are used to grow your food, in the trucks and trains that haul the cattle to the slaughter houses, in the pumps that pump water onto fields when there is not enough rain, in the trucks that haul the raw food to be processed. Oil is used to mine coal and natural gas, and to mine the minerals used in solar and wind energy. Oil is also used as a feedstock for many pharmaceuticals and synthetic materials. The plastic that encases your precious thumb drive? Oil was used as a feedstock. The minerals used for the semiconductors were mined using equipment that runs off of oil.
All of the technology that you can imagine that would fix things is going to need energy.
So again, what technology are you talking about? More specifically, what technology is going to replace oil? Chop chop! You have 5-10 years at most to develop it and have it coming on line in a big way. Big enough to start replacing 18-19 million barrels of oil PER DAY for the US alone, and the 5-10 years is being optimistic by assuming that everything is managed properly, which we all know isn't going to happen.
What do you expect me to think when you deny the existence of levers, wheels, axles, and pullies? Also, when you decrease storage space required, as with thumbdrives, you also decrease energy needs. The advances in energy storage recently will revolutionize solar panels.
I did give you an example already. Robotics has given us a 300% increase in productivity so far, that will continue to grow. We do not need to change what we use necessarily, just use it smarter.
So give up and die while doing the same thing over and over, even when we know it doesn't work, just because we are sure nothing else will be better? The technology we have now already would suffice in a resource based economy with open source.
Hemp, for one, has the potential to replace oil and we do not need oil to survive, only to sustain the current population. Also, you are assuming oil is going somewhere, whereas I did not. If we choose to scale down, we can make it work. It will be hard, we may have to fight and do without to get out of the current system, but living with what we need instead of more than we can ever use is not rocket science.
That robotics is a big consumer of energy. And hemp oil is nothing more than stored solar energy. How efficient is hemp at converting photons into chemical energy? How much land would it take? I'll give you a hint: land based plants suck when it comes to the efficiency of photosynthesis.
So is the wheel. Did you add the cost of the ongoing military industrial complex and current failed system? Hemp wins and hemp is not the only answer, we can use a blended variety.
So, 300 gallons per acre. At 42 gallons per barrel, to do a one-to-one replacement of oil with hempseed oil, you need 2.5 million acres just to run the US for one day at current rates of consumption. Cut that number in half and it's still 1.25 million acres for hemp for just one day with a lifestyle marked by reduced energy usage. For one year, that means that you need over 900,000,000 acres. To put that into comparison, one square mile is 640 acres, and the total land area of the US is a little under 4,000,000 square miles. So one quarter of all US land would need to be put towards hemp production. Even though the stuff grows like a weed, that is untenable. You still have to replace what was taken from the soil, no matter how hearty the plant. We would still have to grow food after that, and that is just replacing half of our oil use with hemp. The energy requirements for farming that much land by itself would be enormous.
Oddly enough, that's about the same amount of land that is currently farmed in the US. So, we would have to put half of our land towards food and hemp production, and that's at producing half as much hempseed oil as we consume in crude oil. Not all land is equal for producing plants either. The solution that we will be forced into is not more efficient use of energy (though growing your own food without the heavy use of industrial equipment is far more efficient than what we do now,) but it is instead that we will use less energy. We won't be able to run the giant MIC that we have now. We won't be able to have industrial agriculture like we do now. We won't be able to afford all of the cheap chinese crap that we want but don't need. After the proverbial fan is hosed off, we may yet be able to have a decent quality of life, but it won't be anything like the past 50 years.
We can improve on those numbers already with alternative gardening solutions. All these little things strung together, combine with, yes, less energy use as well, will give us a better quality of life. Unless you base your quality of life on hills of money, useless junk, bigger is always better, must impress the neighbors. You guys are fucked!!! ;p (not meaning you, I have no idea if that guy is you)
Improve those numbers by 10,000%, and exponential growth will still kick the fuck out of them. Without a markedly lower quality of life, what we have now is fucked.
And we're not going to improve those numbers by 10,000%. Not even close. '
Life is going to change, and people are going to die. I plan on surviving, even though I'm scared to death of death. Or especially because of that fear. I plan on surviving.
I agree that there is a great probability it will not be painless, a lot of people may not make it. I cling to hope for an easier transition, but people don't change easily and some will not have laid enough foundation or possess the stamina to see it through to the other side.
But, in the least, I do see the possibilities for an other side. Since I believe in an afterlife, I do not fear death or change either, though I do fear pain and loss of individuality. I feel sad for what is lost that could have been, I also see an opportunity to do things better and that is exciting, however dark the transition.
I use a cheese grater that belonged to my dad's great grandmother - I'll be 60 soon.
Before it came into my hands, I was buying one or two a year that always just fell apart.
The amount of energy and materials in both kinds are pretty much identical.
OK, 150 years isn't forever, but that's 300 pieces of metal that didn't have to be dug up from the ground as ore and smelted, producing pollution and using energy.
So, all technology is "good" now? LMFAO!!!!
I don't assume anything and you are missing the point. I have taken a biotech company public before. Technology requires that capital, resources, and time. It takes a tremendous amount of all three to really develop good technology.
Look around at how people and governments are allocating their capital, their resources, and most importantly, look at how people allocate their time.
ake the fuck up.
I never said it was all good, everything has potential for both, the difference is in our choices. Open source has already proven what I say works and very well. Again, you are assuming the status quo, what I suggest tosses it on its head. Tesla and Einstein both were driven to work in their chosen fields and often did so for free due to self interest. If everyone were free to do this, the unleashed potential for real progress is exponential.
You are part of the 1% from a global perspective I would guess. Ponder that and see if it changes your thinking. An income of $54,000 USD would put you in the top 1% making about 40 times the global average.
Are we all pigs feeding at the trough, pecking away at our computers?
It is pondering that which drove me to my conclusions. We are 5% of the population in the US using 20% of earth's resources. We are what we hate, we need to choose to change. I started with myself and my family, I am not only typing on a keyboard. We scaled way down and will continue to do so. We are happier for doing so as well, closer as a family and more content. I highly recommend it! More people doing so also has the added potential benefit of toppling this current system. win win
Good for you and hopefully your progeny will carry on your lessons.
I never bought into the "they're living on $10/day" as a valid comparison. Sure, people in third world countries have it hard, but they produce a lot of their own stuff. If you live in a hut with a mud floor, but you eat well on food that you produced yourself, I guarantee that the $10/day comparison does not take that production into account. Their life may be hard and brutish, but they are not relying on FRNs or any other fiat currency like we do. If they raise their own goats, occasionally butchering one and eating it, what value is assigned to the meat for the $10/day calculation?
On the flip side, we live in a system where it is very difficult to not live based on FRNs. Most of us don't go out and pick our little side salad. Most of us don't grow our pumpkens, roast them, mash them and make a pie from scratch. We go to the store with plastic or paper and buy shit that we have no clue where or how it was produced.
The economies are so differnet between those in third world countries and our country that I say that a FRN comparison of how well we are doing relative to them is like comparing apples and oranges. Things like food security, access to fresh water, medical care and clothing are what should be considered, not FRNs. FRN comparisons only make snese when talking developed countries, and even then, markets and rates are so distorted that we should be careful.
Interestingly enough, we have a much higher rate of depression here in the US compared to those poor 3rd world countries. Makes you think quantity may not actually equal quality. If we all choose to scale down, that would naturally topple the current system. Yes we would have some tight corners to turn and the oligarchs may get violent so we may have to fight. But if not now, when? The sooner the better or just borrow some money to buy your own shackles and call them a fashion statement, the matching coffin accessory will come out of your ass in the form of a large ditch shared with fellow debt slaves.
It really doesn't matter what 'we' think, what matters is what the banking elite thinks. They have all the tools to do whatever they want. The only thing 'we' can do is try and stay informed and to try to go along without losing everything we work for and are to our shadow masters.
Another one of their lies, don't fall for it, don't declare yourself powerless because you are not powerless. All we need to do is turn our backs on the current system, stop funding it, it has become invalid.
You have to admit, they've got the game pretty well sewn up. About the only way to turn your back on them is to go off the grid. And even THAT takes a hefty grubstake. Most of us live hand to mouth, and not by our choosing. I'd make more money if I could; I cannot find better employment than skool bus driver and I have nothing to start a business with--I can't afford the gubbamint permission slips, let alone tooling or materials or anything else.
I will not give up, however. I keep at it and will keep trying.
A lot of people's perceptions of helplessness come from how they see themselves and their skills. You don't have to consider yourself a "skool bus driver," looking for jobs driving a skool bus. Instead, you manage a complex logistics system with very fragile and volatile cargo, involving timing, reliability and safety. You have significant hands-on experience at the point of service delivery. With a shave, a haircut, a good shine on your shoes and a cheap but presentable suit, you could be an outsourced self-employed business logistics consultant servicing a number of clients for 6-figures a year. The people who are doing that right now aren't any smarter or better at it than you.
I say this because this is what I have done. I quit my job in a fit of anger 11 years ago, due to some ridiculous workplace politics and the fact that no matter what happened, I would still only be able to support my family after my labor paid the bills for my boss's family's expensive tastes, the social-climbing ambitions of a large and lazy sales force, and a fleet of hangers-on who did their work for them. I set some specific goals for myself; to regain my previous level of income in 2 years, to double that within 4 years, and to pay off my starter home in 6 years. After 18 months, while preparing my first full year's self-employment taxes, I realized I had already doubled my previous income, 30 months ahead of my self-imposed schedule. I haven't done anything at all different from what I did as an employee. I simply consider what I do in a different context.
Not everybody can do what I have done, but when I hear people complaining constantly about their jobs, living in fear of a layoff, not being able to get ahead; and then they refuse to consider taking their fate into their own hands because they need the "security:" all I can see is self-imposed manacles.
Don't give up. Keep trying. And consider the role your perceptions of yourself and your abilities plays in your condition.
Congratulations on your success. I've been racking my brain on how to get out from under, having read a few books on the topic. I split first and last on a couple things: 1) what to do, (2) where/how to get started, and (3) pure fear. I admit my fear. I know it's holding me down.
I have ability, but as a Myers-Briggs INTJ, I am handicapped by an inability to relate well to people. I say this not as an excuse, but as a fact. People perplex me, and I have trouble understanding how to sell myself in terms the other person will udnerstand and appreciate. It's as though I were handicapped but I don't get the good parking up front. It's been this way all my life; dating was miserable.
I live in Wasilla, Alaska, which has good and bad points economically. It limits my options, with Anchorage being the big market I will have to compete in. The industrial orientation is toward resource extraction, tourism, fishing, and oil. I'm not sure where to fit in those arenas. I'll find something though. Dammitall if I won't.
This is no easy thing to do, but I completely agree with you: it's self imposed.
Refusing to be a victim is half the battle.
Try being an INFJ, we may as well be aliens.
I feel your INFJ pain brother, I really do.
" things you can do depending on your position.
1.) If in debt try to get out of it because the interest on the debt is the money they seek.
2.) Out of debt move to a cash only trading system if the money is not in the system it cannot be leveraged and more money creation.
If populations moved to this position the banks especially the central bank have a serious issue on generating growth "if the only growth is the money creation".
I do expect the banks to try to outlaw real cash at some point but then to fight it move to a barter trading economy and put opium or the like at the top of the pile as a cash equivalent. Reckon we would have had the bail in by then of depositers funds so it will be a real easy step to trade in anything that has value.
Your turn Mr Banker, your economic system is dieing if it ain't dead already.
I deal cash as much as possible. What money we have is at home, secured. We leave little as possible in the bank.
We clear debt as fast as we can. House note, car note (now paid,) and stoodint loans are all we have left besides monthnly bills. We do all our own cooking, buy in bulk and stockpile (a strategy that has saved us considerable heartache over the last 8 years,) and we relinquish something only when it's been used up and scavaenged as fully as possible.
If everyone simply scaled down and refused consumerism (buying more than you really need), we would topple this system, it is much more fragile than it seems.
I've scaled down all I can. The house is cold and dark as a coal mine, I drive NO PLACE I do not absolutely have to be, and we ration our eats. I keep on the 'net because I need news and to hunt better work. That's about the only thing that could go away.
I agree, however. Quit with the endless buying already. I can't therefore I don't. It's much nicer. If I want to gift someone, I make it myself. Much more satisfying that pricey kitsch.
Great job, you have some joy in there where you can I hope, that tends to be free.
They only have all the tools because we choose to hand them to them.
Just as sharks have swim continuously or they will die. So our economy based on fiat money has to grow continuously or die.
Why? Why does it need to grow or die? I would say that living systems can contract, be balanced, or grow and that they will adapt to the conditions. Grow or die is what the oligarchs want you to believe. They are not happy unless their wealth is always growing.
Exactly, what we need is sustainability.
We live in an age where knowledge has become a substitute for wisdom... and your solution? Well, to seek after more knowledge of course.
We are not suffering from a dearth of energy, or understanding, or right ideas, but rather from a lack of moral conscience. Man invariably, when give the resources, comes to believe that he is his own god, and that he is able to reinvent himself. Such a generation always seeks after knowledge, which is why man 's so called 'golden ages' always precede a collapse. Unless you want to count the Renascence, where the resulting chaos was allowed to expand into new territory... the rather aptly named New World... but having once again expanded to our boundaries we find ourselves in the same old boat... came rather close to mixing metaphors there...
We will ride this thing until it flounders. Man must operate within the constraints and allowances of his nature. He is a sad sort of creature in some respects. Because he has free will he is able to choose. Because he invariably produces generations that discount wisdom he invariably produces an age in which he chooses poorly. Because he is a prideful creature he invariably believes that this time will be different. Because he believes that this time will be different he must invariably carry through to the destruction of his generation. It is only when the destruction has run its course that he once again reaches for wisdom, having once more witnessed the result of that wrought by his own hands, derived as it was from his own knowledge.
That is, of course, unless this time really is different.
Well Put....
And indeed:
"..... Man must Operate within the Constraints and Allowances of his Nature......."
Economists are the modern analog of Medieval alchemists...they all promise to turn lead to gold, they all claim to have some secret knowledge that enables them to do this, and all will assure you that YOU cannot turn lead to gold because YOU JUST DON'T KNOW what they know. Endless growth is really the promise of endless wealth, of ever increasing riches. They posit the assumption growth is necessary because it ensures they will have a job, it SELLS. The more 'growth' they promise, the more people listen to them.
If one can add, subtract, and possesses a modicum of not so Common Sense, one can readily see these charlatans for the smoke and mirrors mob they are.
What colour is the emperor's suit?
A very white shade of pale. Or clear. Hard to tell from this angle.
The origin and history of A Whiter Shade of Pale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4TtgUncy6M
We need constant growth because fiat money constantly has to grow so it can be paid back so more credit can be created to pay for the previous credit.
Sure, it's sounds crazy.
But it will all work out just fine.
Trust me.
To be more precise, our debt based, fiat money system needs to constantly grow. Our current monetary system must either grow, or collapse. There is no steady-state solution.
trust me, the check is in the mail?
or is the other one? funny
What the world needs is not growth but deleveraging. TBTP do not want that instead they want to continue to fuel debt with more debt. The world needs to get rid of companies that cant make a profit, get rid of ponzi schemes known as pensions, social security, and medicare, the ghost cities in China, military-industrial complex (which is completely fueled by debt), et al. The market will eventual delever the whole system unless we collectively do it as a society. This will never happen because no one wants to voluntarily feel the pain of the process.
The whole leveraging of the system is like baseball players taking steroids. Yeah its great and wonderful to watch Herculean men hit towering homeruns over Mt Olympus with such frequency. It puts asses in the seats and tremendous amount of ad revenue is generated. However, you know there are problems when Rafael Palmiero is doing Viagra commercials in his 40's. There will be problems when ballplayers are pumped with chemicals. This is no different than pumping the economy full of debt. There will be consequences to decades of debt fueled bubbles.
All life needs growth. What is forgotten is death. Death allows other life to grow. Our systems want immortality, which is denied by Nature. A forest lives and grows because of death.
It does not need growth, it simply needs to change form and keep moving.
The cells in your body continually die and new ones grow to replace them. That death is a part of you as a living organism. You grow, even if you do not increase in size.
When decrease is equal to increase, there is no energy usage growth, none at all.
When cells die in your body, their necrosis does not generate the recoverable energy to allow the replacement growth in your body.
When cells die, they use no more energy. I am not saying the new cells use the same energy, simply that energy constantly moves and changes form. That does not mean overall energy grows. The ecosystem is a good example. In an ecosystem, nature keeps population in check, it never grows over what it can sustain unless humans have messed with it artificially somehow. When it is messed with, sooner or later it gets righted again until equilibrium is reached. That balance exists in everything, even economics. We are about to find that out the hard way. Kali will make Karma look like a sweetheart over this QE garbage. Since we did not allow the bubble to take its natural toll, instead of the big drop and recovery, we will see a very long sustained low before things get better, they will probably get worse. We need a new system that works with and respects the natural balance.
Micro VS macro
Think about a company competing in an industry with 5 other companies.
If the industry is growing - all 5 companies can grow and be profitable. The stockholders make money, employees get a raise, the community is benefited.
If the industry is not growing (worse yet if it is shrinking) some companies are going to lose.
The stronger - better managed companies will start to take business away from the weaker ones.
DOG EAT DOG...
The stockholders of the weaker company lose, so do the employees, the community .
Now substitute country for company and ask yourself - do you want to have a policy that says -
Don't fucking worry about growth - be happy with what you have - and watch as other countries take away all of your economic activities.
If anyone thinks that we can all just agree to maintain the status quo - then they are an idiot.
You think the folks living in an 3rd world shit hole want that deal?
They want to find a way to grow their standard of living - and if you don't have growth in the pie they will be willing to take part of someone else's pie.
Sure I understand the thing about exponential growth (for the world as a whole) not being sustainable - but when there is no growth and what we have is DOG EAT DOG competition between countries -- that sounds a lot like war.
How many of you want your income to shrink and have your standard of living lowered so some guy from Cambodia can live a better life? Anyone willing to start sharing your home with 10 other people - eat only rice and beans - give up most entertainment so the family from Nigeria can afford to build a new house?
I didn't think so.
If all resources were evenly allocated as with a resource based economy, everyone would live quite well, that sustainable model is viable without growth.
Really - you want to trade in your current standard of living for an equal share of allocated resources?
You think the average person in the world lives "quite" well?
You are either living in poverty or are not understanding what the current "average" standard of living is in the WORLD.
If you are an average American your standard of living would at least be cut by 75% - is that really what you want?
For a better world, if that is where we have to start, so be it. However, that is fear mongering and not necessary when you actually look into a resource based economy and how many at the top are wealth hoarding via crime and force. Are you alright with people dying and suffering for your way of life in the current system, including your own children? Too many are and therein lays our real problem.
Think about your own children.
You want them to get the current "world average" level of education?
Or health care, or food, or shelter.
Do you want them to only be able to use the current world average amount of energy?
Do you want to take your kids on vacation? I wonder what the world average vacation budget would look like?
What about buying your kids a B-day present? What would that world average gift be?
Your view is noble in some strange way - but you are so misguided.
The bottom line is - when faced with these choices - you would not accept "your equal share" of world resources, for yourself or your kids. Unless you are a horrible parent.
But even if you did - what is the probability that everyone else in the world would also take that deal? Rich or poor no one wants this deal. Plus it is just not in human nature to not want a better life for yourself and your kids.
So the only way your deal works is by force - complete control at the point of a gun.
That what you want?
BTW - rich folks may horde financial assets - but they don't horde food, or energy or medical care, or education, or shelter.
Take all the food the richest .01% eat, all the energy they use, medical care they use ,all the education they have, and homes they live in and divide it up between all the people in the world and what do they get?
A single grain of rice worth of food, a few drops of gasoline, an aspirin, a #2 pencil with the eraser chewed off , and a single rusty nail.
I understand how you feel, but we can do better than the current fear based system. Time to evolve for once, use our intelligence and learn from our mistakes, not keep making the same ones.
This is a great piece, very much in tune with things I've seen and pondered for years.
I'm 48 years old. Considering short-term jobs when I was younger, I've worked for about 20 different companies. Only 2 of them are still in business today. Every one that failed did so because they tried to grow and expand, and it didn't work out. While I was at those companies, I always asked, "Why? We're making a living and paying our bills, we have clients and repeat business and don't owe anything to anyone. Why do we have to expand?" Nobody could ever answer me, but they resented my questions enough I learned I either had to hold my tongue or leave, and the way it usually worked out if I chose to hold my tongue I would still have to leave. I've had the experience of showing up to work and there's a Kryptonite lock on the door and Orange paperwork taped to the door. That's not the time to start designing one's next employment situation.
The reason for the growth imperative is precisely to support usury. Our system is entirely based on usury. When what most people consider "money" is actually debt at interest, the economy has to grow by more than the rate of interest or it fails and the debt cannot be rolled over, much less repaid. Nobody would take on a debt today if he didn't think he'd have more money tomorrow to pay it back, unless he had no intention of ever paying it back, which is a different matter.
Unfortunately, to have infinite growth, we need infinite resources, energy, markets, and money. We have the misfortune of living on a finite planet. Resources, including energy, are vast but finite, and at a certain point require more energy and resource inputs that can be extracted. We've conqured all the available continents, and everyone who can buy a refrigerator and has a power source to plug it into owns one, so virgin markets are a thing of the past. That leads money, which is of course debt, and is abstract. That we can make infinite, and all around us we see the benefits and consequences of that approach.
Yes, making money abstract and equating it to debt has allowed an enormous multiplier effect. When money is concrete and exists on its own regardless of debt, very few people can become fabulously wealthy, and growth has to be arithmetic, not geometric. Making money abstract allows for exponential, though abstract and sometimes imaginary, growth.
This system can work, too. Except every so often, the accumulated debt has to be written off. What is happening now is the the current Elites have accumulated so much wealth/debt that to reconcile the books and extinguish the debt that will never, ever be repaid would cause them great inconvenience. Their immense current perceived wealth is due to having sold so much worthless debt that will never be repaid, that they can't balance the books now. It would require all their notional wealth and more to square things up. In reality, they have no wealth; they have negative true net worth absent the continuation of fraud and selling that which has actual negative value by misrepresenting its nature.
In 2008 we had a choice before us. Several times before then as well, but it was starkly apparent then, when I started reading this site. At that moment, we could have acknowledged the reality that a large part of our wealth was illusory and in fact of no value. We knew the price to fix things would be around $15 Trillion notional dollars. That's about the amount we've spent since then, pumping it through the banks in return for worthless bond and derivative debt instruments, imposing ZIRP, and recycling that money in a closed loop through Treasuries. Keeping the loop closed prevented overt inflation. It also preserved the nomial value of all that debt, including especially the debt that is actually worthless because it will never and can never be repaid.
Instead, we could have taken that $15,000,000,000,000 and given every man, woman and child in America $50,000. $200,000 for a family of 4. Most families would have used it to pay off their household debt. Some would have bought new stuff, creating demand. Some would have spent it on hookers and blow. Some might even have wasted it. But it woudl have restored the banks organically, by clearing their books. It would have created jobs to service purchasing demand. But we didn't do that. Not because some morons would have called it "Socialism," and some people might have gotten benefits they didn't deserve. That's the political pablum served up to the simpleminded who have never developed past toddlerhood concerns that another toddler might get a bigger, or undeserved, cookie.
No, we didn't do that because the Elites wanted all that debt preserved because it cements their advantage over society, whether that debt is real and can or will be repaid or not. As long as they can still pretend and present that debt/wealth as real, they remain wealthier than the rest of us. This will continue until it stops. When a critical mass of people decide not to accept that debt as real, it will stop being real and that will be the beginning of a real messy unwind of our state of affairs.
Until then, the smart thing to do is to be extremely cautious and to examine all propositions carefully. My grandfather ran a hardware store in Appalachia through the Great Depression. He said that a 20% decline is indeed a Depression, and a hard time indeed. But it doesn't mean nobody buys anything. It just means that where they used to spend $10, now they spend $8. You have to figure out how to survive on that $8 of revenue instead of the $10. He lived to be 96, died in his living room with an unfinished Manhattan and cigar, and left a small inheritance to his kids, including his paid-up house. We could all do that too, if we stay mindful of what is and is not real and have the genetics in our favor.
John Prine & Nanci Griffith : Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2e9wWFg-pI
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"..out there runnin' just to be on the run." j.p.
Great article.
The banksters and their violence puppets, governmnet, won't' care until the guillotines come out.
An American, not US subject.
The alternative, shouldn't that be resilient local states/zones/communities, self sufficient in all basic commodities such as toilet paper, and a free world trade in all surpluses?
Freedom to move and contribute anywhere, to any of the self sufficient zones, as long as you migrate your social and economic interest to wherever you go
No income taxes. The collective coffers for health care, education, defense etc to be drawn from a levy on raw material extraction and imports.
The tendency for economies to coagulate into monopolies to be controlled by requiring enterprises above a certain size to be run as co-operatives.
+3000!
Multi-national companies - no. Trade and co-ordination between independent zones/states/communities - yes
To those of you who follow Elliott wave theory, some interesting observations:
http://www.globaldeflationnews.com/sp-500-indexelliott-wave-update-for-w...
http://www.globaldeflationnews.com/dow-jones-industrial-averageelliott-w...
Those that make the most efficient use of resources win.
Doesn't matter who or where they are.
For a long time it used to be us in the Western world.
Not so much anymore as more resources are used to service unproductive debt rather than create value added items to sell.
The tide turns when the debt creates more losses than gains. This can take a good long time because most of that debt is an accounting trick rather than representing a 'real' loss.
A diabolically clever system that inspires wonder and jealousy.
The ability to counterfeit labor.
Lastly: any radical new idea to replace the present paradigm can not be established without a struggle. Elections? Dont make me laugh.
Leaving aside the resource waste of corruption,cronyism and war, the world unfortunately needs growth because the population keeps increasing. Every time I've researched it on the Internet the consensus is approximately 200,000 more people are added the world each day.
If there are X amount of resources/goods and a growing population then it stands to reason there will be less to go around. Even if we miraculously managed to regain control of the monetary and governmental systems and set things right, the issues inherent with a growing population would remain.
Usually, when someone brings up the issue of sustainability, comments flood in to the effect that all would be well if "they" would just release the secret technologies, free energy, etc.etc. I've never seen significant proof of technological repression so as to engage in that train of thought. That leaves the issue of growing population on the table.
Perhaps Ilargi (the author of this piece) can address the matter.
Agreed, we would need to figure out the earth's sustainable level of human population and bring our numbers to that point or under and stay there. That is doable. If we fail to do this by choice, nature will, but it will be messy.
Exactly so.
However, the population numbers are not relevant. The only sustainable situation is renewable resources that grow faster than consumption. The rest will go to those who can afford an increasingly shrinking (I like that incongruity) supply until it disappears.
Then everyone goes without unless an alternate is found and used. Population numbers only decide if that is sooner than later.
Something to think about when considering the energy density of petroleum. It's going to take a hell of a leap in technology to have a parity with a gallon of gasoline.
We might even get lucky and have it show up before oil becomes economically unfeasible to produce.
They have all the good inventions locked away until after that point. I am teasing of course, but I also hope it's true.
A SONG FOR YOU - Leon Russell & Friends (1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37dw2r45Xzg
"We’re in dire need of fresh blood and smart new ideas to clean up the mess the present ideologies and their puppets and puppetmasters have created. "
True. The ideas are already here, but flesh and blood is needed to spread them. Not that all the ideas have to be new. Along the way America had some really good ideas that were end-runned. The new anti-federalist papers- with lessons learned :
http://www.amazon.com/Localism-Philosophy-Government-Mark-Moore/dp/06922...
The objective is not so much growth per se as grow market share.
Two choices. The illusion of growth, or revolution. The "Power" will always choose the former. New blood as well as old.
"We’re in dire need of fresh blood and smart new ideas to clean up the mess the present ideologies and their puppets and puppetmasters have created."
There are no smart new ideas. It has been known for thousands of years that 1+1 = 2.
The same things keep repeating, over and over again. Why should we need to reinstate Glass Steagall, when it already existed from the 1930's?
Why did we have QE, when Bernanke wrote in 1988, that QE doesn't work? Greenspan wrote in the 1960's, that 1920's FED easy money policy lead into the Great Depression. He then doubled down on that 1920's policy. So what good will fresh blood do?
It is not like the lessons were forgotten. Greenspan and Bernanke both knew them and threw them out the window.
"According to Keynes public investment on deficit could be regarded as an “ultima ratio” to re-kick-start a slow economy, but he would never have advised any government that is already highly indebted to increase this debt even more!"
The economy doesn't need to be kick started in the first place. A recession creates pent up demand. Pent up demand kick starts the economy.
"I am certain that Maynard Keynes would turn in his grave if he knew to what extent his theory was misinterpreted and misused! Of course it’s a big temptation for every politician to utilize the sweet but toxic medicine of deficit spending and more public debt rather than to introduce hard reforms on public budgets, on social spending and other benefits to their voters."
Yes, it is all about staying in office, or gaining it. The republicans hounded Clinton over deficits then couldn't balance the budget even once when republican Bush Jr. was in office. Obama called Bush's deficits unpatriotic and has run even bigger deficits. They all talk of paying down the debt, while running up more of it, with no intention of stopping.
Once upon a time, I asked my Wharton graduate school strategy professor that exact question, "Why growth? When is enough, enough? Why do we never see a company disestablish itself after a job well done?"
He spoke with a French accent. Laughter a la mode is especially cutting but he delviered it with a wink that one must never ask such a question again.
The stupid burns. In terms of the big picture, globally we'd like not to have a massive human die off because mass starvation sucks. We'd like there to be zero people living in caves, living in energy poverty, and generally living a short, nasty, brutish existance. In no way shape or form does the global economy produce enough resources to solve all these problems in an optimal manner. So we compromise. Over time we try to solve the problem well enough so that we can unwind the compromises.
Intensive agriculture (or factory farming if you don't like it) is such a compromise. The foodie movement is an attempt to unwind that compromise. I'm in favor of both, because we don't currently know how to feed everybody using foodie style techniques but we are at a point where we can realistically start doing better than just 100% Wonder bread all the time.
Each compromise unwind needs economic growth to pull it off for the very common sense reason that if we had the economy size necessary to do the activity without compromise, we'd never have done the compromise in the first place.
We have major compromises going in terms of food, energy, housing, clothing, communications, how we treat prisoners, how we treat the poor. The list goes on and on. It would be nice to fix any of these things but none will be fixed without economic growth.
We’re in dire need of fresh blood and smart new ideas
Color me very skeptical of such a statement - "new ideas" usually is the euphemism for ignoring history's lessons (again).
It used to be called "living within one's means".
If individuals would do so, I suspect many of the above-mentioned issues would simply resolve themselves.
If people lived within their means, somewhat greater numbers could in part provide more for themselves, though it might necessarily entail there must be far fewer numbers of people overall.
If people lived within their means, they would always have a little bit of money left over. Over time, this would add up, as would their sense of well-being, their personal freedom, and sense of security.
If people expected of the land it should produce within its means (sustainable living), the Western countries wouldn't be feeding Africans. Africans would be feeding Africans (at least those left which they could feed themselves).
If people lived within their means, business/industry would be forced to change their operating models.
If government operated within its means, the debt would certainly be eliminated, government's size and scope limited, the wars it chooses to fight greatly reduced, and the huge numbers of locusts (bureaucrats) vastly decreased.
The consumer-oriented, debt-driven model that replaced "living within one's means" has really taken its toll on the western cultures.
I think the beginnings of the consumer-oriented, debt-driven model by which we live our lives today can be traced back to the era of its origins. Henry Ford's need to extend credit to those who wished to purchase a car but did not have the means otherwise with which to do so was that era. Those lines of credit have, over time, simply been extended to every facet of modern life. Over time, people grew accustomed to being slaves to their debt. The banks were just too happy to facilitate at an ever greater rate of return.
But, what do I know?
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