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In Denial: We Pursue Endless Growth At Our Peril

Tyler Durden's picture




 

Submitted by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com,

As we've been discussing of late here at PeakProsperity.com, humans desperately need a new story to live by. The old one is increasingly dysfunctional and rather obviously headed for either a quite dismal or possibly disastrous future. One of the chief impediments to recognizing the dysfunction of the old story and adopting a new one is the most powerful of all human emotional states: Denial.

I used to think that Desire was the most powerful human emotion because people are prone to risking everything in their lives – careers, marriages, relationships with their family and close friends - pursuing lust or accumulating 10,000 times more money and possessions than they need in their desire for “more.”

Perhaps it was my own blind spot(s) that prevented me from really appreciating just how powerful human denial really is. But here we are, 40 years after the Club of Rome and 7 years after the Great Financial Accident of 2008, collectively pretending that neither was a sign warning of the dangers we face -- as a global society -- if we continue our unsustainable policies and practices that assume perpetual growth.

Economic Denial

In the realm of economics, the level of collective denial gripping the earth’s power centers is extraordinary. Perhaps that should be of little surprise, as we're now at the height of the largest set of nested financial bubbles ever blown in world history.

The bigger the bubble(s) the bigger the levels of denial required to sustain their expansion. These bubbles are doozies, and that explains the massive and ongoing efforts to prevent any sort of reality from creeping into the national and global dialog.

To understand this pattern of avoidance of unpleasant realities, consider the behavior of cities -- even entire nations -- which cannot bring themselves to talk openly about their state of insolvency, let alone do something about it.

Chicago has amassed debt and underfunded liabilities totaling $63 billion, or more than $61,000 per household. Illinois already ‘enjoys’ the second highest property tax rate in the nation at 2.28 percent of a property’s value, which means the average property tax bill for the median home is $5,200 per year. On top of that, Illinois' income tax is a flat 5% and brings in a total of $18 billion from 4.7 million households, or $3,800 per household. Combined, that's $9,000 in taxes per year per average household (which earns $38,625).

Here's the brutal math: the current city deficit is 675% of current tax receipts. How exactly does Chicago plan to scrape another $61,000 out of each household on top of the existing tax bills? 

It doesn’t. It has no plan. The plan is to simply remain in denial and ignore everything until it all breaks down. Which it has indeed started to do, with the ever-late, after-the-horse-has-already-left-the-barn downgrade of the city’s debt to junk status by Moodys.

Or perhaps we could note that of the six mayoral candidates seeking election to run the city of Philadelphia, not one has even talked about its massive $5.7 billion pension shortfall during the campaign, even as they promise expanded pre-kindergarten programs and tax cuts. Not one. Do you think that any of them has an actual plan to address that budget gap's dream-crushing burden?

They don’t. The only ‘plan’ they have is to remain in denial and ignore everything until it all breaks down. And then, we might guess, blame the prior administrations.

Japan has the most debt per person of any nation in the world, standing at nearly $100,000 per resident. And that burden is growing every year. Yet in 2005, Japan passed an important milestone as its population peaked at 128 million. It's been declining ever since. Japan lost 244,000 net residents in 2013, and is now trundling on a downwards population trajectory for the next 50-60 years. And at the same time, it is growing older -- Japan has the second highest median age in the world.

Clearly that demographic profile is a recipe for economic shrinkage, not growth. And yet the Japanese central bankers and politicians are hell-bent on creating rapid economic growth via the twin cattle prods of reckless money printing and excessive government borrowing. How is it that the leaders of Japan have convinced themselves that rapid economic growth is what they need (instead of the more rational and opposite case of managed economic shrinkage)? What’s their plan, exactly?

They have no plan. The plan is to simply remain in denial and ignore everything until it all breaks down.

The same story is written everywhere, with every example sharing the same common element of presumed perpetual growth. Everybody plans on growing steadily, forever into the future, amen.

The United States is no different. It's own entitlement shortfalls, pegged at anywhere from $60 trillion to $220 trillion, are themselves still derived with the assumption of future growth.

Here’s the ‘plan’ for the US according to the CBO:

Yes, the ‘plan’ is for the US to someday have an economy equal to the entire current world GDP as it stands here in 2015. Does that make any sense to anybody at all? Who thinks that’s a realistic plan?

By 2080 when this is supposed to take place, the entire world will be past the peak of all known sources of energy. And Phosphate. And soil. And fresh water. And oceanic fish biomass. And who knows what else. And yet the CBO blithely assumes that US, all on its own, will be producing and consuming 100% of what the entire world does today.

The above chart helps us visualize one of the largest and most potentially destructive forms of denial on display. Our collective denial of limits.  It's also good to remember that all of the entitlement shortfalls are 'only' as bad as they because of the assumption of uninterrupted US economic growth.  Should economic growth fall short of that spectacular run that will take the US to a worldly level of consumption and production, then the entitlement programs will prove to be just that much more underfunded.

Ecological Denial

Sadly, it's on the natural fronts that human denial seems to be at its most extreme. Hollywood visions and SciFi fantasies aside (where humans live in sealed capsules and subsist entirely on man-made foods), humans are 100% utterly dependent on the natural world for their survival. Food, water, oxygen, and predictable temperatures and rainfall patterns provide the basics of life.

To focus on just one part, which I also detail in The Crash Course book, humans are rapidly degrading our soils upon which everything depends.

Not only are we obviously losing topsoil to erosion and generally turning soil into lifeless dirt by stripping out its biological diversity, we are mining these soils for their micro and macro nutrients yet have no coordinated plan for replacing them.

Obviously if you take minerals like calcium and magnesium out of the soils in the form of harvested grains and vegetables, they'll need to be replaced. Right now they are mainly flushed out to sea, never to be economically recovered.

The situation is pretty grim as I recently outlined in a recent report on our nation's poor soil management practices. Here’s some more context for that view:

Britain has only 100 harvests left in its farm soil as scientists warn of growing 'agricultural crisis'

Oct 20, 2014

 

Intense over-farming means there are only 100 harvests left in the soil of the UK’s countryside, a study has found.

 

With a growing population and the declining standard of British farmland, scientists warned that we are on course for an “agricultural crisis” unless dramatic action is taken.

 

Despite the traditional perception that there is a green and pleasant land outside the grey, barren landscape of our cities, researchers from the University of Sheffield found that on average urban plots of soil were richer in nutrients than many farms.

 

“With a growing population to feed, and the nutrients in our soil in sharp decline, we may soon see an agricultural crisis,” Professor Dunnett said.

 

“Meanwhile we are also seeing a sharp decrease in bio-diversity in the UK which has a disastrous knock-on effect on our wildlife Lack of pollinators means reduction in food.

(Source)

Scientists in the UK are being matched by scientists elsewhere, noting that humanity’s general approach towards soils and farming are obviously destructive and exceptionally unsustainable. It should be setting off alarm bells that urban plots are found to be more nutrient-dense than many farms.

The loss of biodiversity is something that we just cannot yet fully comprehend, as all of nature is an enormously intertwined set of complex relationships. Of course, our failure to understand and appreciate the true role(s) of biodiversity will not protect us from the consequences of destroying it.

Any culture that ruins its soils cannot claim any sort of sophistication at all. That just flunks the basic IQ test. It’s not unlike watching a brilliant piano prodigy starve to death because he can't manage the details of making his own meals despite a well-stocked kitchen. No matter how beautifully he can play, he simply lacks the necessary skills to sustain himself.

Human security at risk as depletion of soil accelerates, scientists warn

May 7, 2015

Steadily and alarmingly, humans have been depleting Earth's soil resources faster than the nutrients can be replenished. If this trajectory does not change, soil erosion, combined with the effects of climate change, will present a huge risk to global food security over the next century, warns a review paper authored by some of the top soil scientists in the country.

 

The paper singles out farming, which accelerates erosion and nutrient removal, as the primary game changer in soil health.

 

"Ever since humans developed agriculture, we've been transforming the planet and throwing the soil's nutrient cycle out of balance," said the paper's lead author, Ronald Amundson, a professor of environmental science, policy and management at the University of California, Berkeley. "Because the changes happen slowly, often taking two to three generations to be noticed, people are not cognizant of the geological transformation taking place."

(Source)

Notice the shifting baselines phenomenon happening here. Because the changes have taken place over three generations, our culture is incapable of recognizing the threat, let alone properly responding to it.

Instead of a bucolic pastime, farming has become just another mirror reflecting our destructive ways. Rather than carefully working within natural cycles, the average farming practice seeks to dominate and override nature.

Just spray and you’re done! Easy-peasy. Of course, this has the chance of knocking out your birds and your bees as well as the butterflies and who knows what other essential and beneficial insects as I recently laid out in the report: Suicide By Pesticide.

Pesticides kill the bugs we don’t want and many more besides. Herbicides knock out weeds, but also lots of other life-forms we do need and want kept alive. Fungicides knock out bad funguses and good ones alike.

This lazy approach to farming, although chemically sophisticated, lacks any real connection to the cycles of nature the most obvious one being the strip-mining of the macro and micro nutrients.

There was a reason that the herbivores roamed over the same grounds for hundreds of thousands and even millions of years. That worked to keep everything in balance and led to the creation of the thickest and healthiest soils imaginable when the American West was first plowed not all that long ago (by historical standards).

Horribly bleak study sees ‘empty landscape’ as large herbivores vanish at startling rate

May 4, 2015

 

They never ateanybody — but now, some of planet Earth’s innocentvegetarians face end times.Large herbivores — elephants, hippos, rhinos and gorillas among them — are vanishing from the globe at a startling rate, with some 60 percent threatened with extinction, a team of scientists reports.

 

The situation is so dire, according toa new study, that it threatens an “empty landscape” in some ecosystems “across much of the planet Earth.”

 

The authors were clear: This is a big problem — and it’s a problem with us, not them.

 

This slaughterand its consequences are not modest, the article said. In fact, the rate of decline is such that “ever-larger swaths of the world will soon lack many of the vital ecological services these animals provide, resulting in enormous ecological and social costs.”

 

Herbivores, it turns out, don’t just idle about munching on various green things. They play a vital role as “ecosystem engineers,” the paper said — expanding grasslands for plant species, dispersing seeds in manure, and, in the ultimate sacrifice, providing food for predators.

(Source)

It’s the last paragraph that’s essential to understand.

Nature is so subtle and complex, that we have only recently learned that wolves shape rivers. Or perhaps the Native Americans knew that and it is our ‘modern’ culture that is only re-figuring all this out. I was confused by the thought of wolves shaping rivers the first time I heard it too, but it’s all laid out in this handy 4 minute video:

The loss of large herbivores will re-shape the landscape in ways that we do not yet understand and therefore cannot appreciate. But they are certainly ‘ecosystem engineers’ and the loss of those services, to put it in transactional terms that economists might relate to, will lead to a whole host of as-yet-undefined changes some of which we will regret.

We're Not At The Tipping Point; We've Already Past It

The roles of eating, digesting and spreading seeds and manure seem like things we can make do without, here at the apex of the petroleum age, but in a few short decades we will understand just how much energy was necessary and how much value was created by the actions of these herbivores.

In Part 2: Life Beyond The Tipping Point we look at the looming net energy crisis is mathematically certain to place increasing limits on the modern way of life, in our lifetime -- likely much sooner than we want or are prepared for. In sum, despite the intent of world leaders to blindly deny the economic, ecological and energetic cliffs we are hurdling towards, society has already long past the point where painful ramifications can be avoided. At this stage, destiny will be determined at the individual level, depending on what steps each of takes now, before those ramifications arrive in force. 

Click here to read Part 2 of this report(free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)

 

 

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Fri, 05/29/2015 - 20:17 | 6145669 InjectTheVenom
InjectTheVenom's picture

bbbuttt...the stock market is at all time highs...so everything must be ok !! /hugesarc

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 20:23 | 6145692 InjectTheVenom
InjectTheVenom's picture

>>> Hillary will fix this mess !
>>> Things will only keep getting worse !

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 21:48 | 6145895 J S Bach
J S Bach's picture

"We Pursue Endless Growth At Our Peril"

 

Endless growth is only necessary to pay the endless debt of our debt-based money.  Were our money debt-free, it would serve US and not the other way around.

Wake up sheeple.

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 23:13 | 6146062 0b1knob
0b1knob's picture

Malthusian bitter clinger.   Of course we can grow forever.   Just not on the earth.   Get off of this rock or become extinct.

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 01:33 | 6146260 Radical Marijuana
Radical Marijuana's picture

J S Bach, I responded to the similar points that you made under this article:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-27/insane-financial-world

An Insane Financial World

Also, regarding the reply made by Ob1knob, of course there are trillions of times more resources in the Solar System than upon planet Earth. However, any artificial environment that people could live in would become an intensified version of the problems we already deal with on Spaceship Earth.

As my comment below explained, human beings operate their ACTUAL human ecology through the maximum possible deceits, which enables their ACTUAL political economy to be based upon the maximum possible enforced frauds. Any ACTUAL solutions to those problems would require better death control systems, to back up better debt control systems. However, both the ruling classes and those they rule over do NOT LIKE THAT, since their social successfullness is based upon their ability to operate through denial of those basic facts.

Human beings are starting to have to take responsibility for their impacts upon Spaceship Earth, in ways that they never had to care about before. That means the cultural artificial selection systems need to be radically transformed, IF we are going to survive ... BUT, at the present time, my bets are on that we will fail to do that, and so, the human species will destroy itself, because we would have to be able to save Spaceship Earth, IF we were going to be able to build any other artificial environments that we could survive within in the future ... However, the current political problems that we see are runaway criminal insanities, which show no signs of ever getting better, rather than way worse!

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 12:41 | 6146957 J S Bach
J S Bach's picture

There's no need to insult either myself or the other ZHer's, RM.

Admittedly, I am a believer in simple solutions... and I am also a believer in the positive or "good" traits of mankind.  Your lengthy analysis and explanation reflects a fatal pessimism.  You may define it as "realism" - well... perhaps.  I am not so totally naive as to believe that a complete reversal in our fortunes is possible overnight, but when the pendulum finally swings to the lowest depths of the sewer which our current money masters are so kindly creating for us, there will be a great humbling of humanity which will bring about some kind of positive change.  After all, when people have nothing to lose, they also have nothing to fear.  Fear is the main element which keeps people from enacting positive change at this time.  There is also still relative prosperity - full refrigerators, free-flowing "benefits", medicare, mindless entertainment, etc...  When these things run dry and folks start to suffer, the first stirrings of real change will occur.

Another necessary element is the need for a return of sound morality.  Without this, no worthy civilisation can evolve.  In the past, Christianity served to hold the satanic tribe at bay, but this bulwark, too, has been whittled away with the advent of the mass media and modern academe.   In my mind, most people are not like the monsters who are attempting to destroy us, but they are easily swayed and unconsciously mimic behaviors which the demon herders so cleverly portray.  Whether people can undergo inner spiritual epiphanies in time is the one thing of which I am uncertain.

To paraphrase an old saying, "Evil thrives as long as good men do nothing."  Deeds are preceded by ideas and words, so the more people who begin to think differently and seek positive solutions, the better.  To appeal to the masses, these ideas and words must be simple and understandable.  Once a critical mass realizes that revolution is imperative, real political movements will form and actions begin. 

So, please forgive what you deem my and my ZH brethren's naivete regarding simple solutions.  I will not change, nor will I give in to hopeless pessimism.  When you see my handsome avatar, feel free to scroll on down, because it will more than likely be followed by comments of inane hope as well as dreams of delicious vengeance.

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 13:36 | 6147038 VWAndy
VWAndy's picture

Great post.+ 1000

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 05:30 | 6146400 winchester
winchester's picture

you cannot take a stand, loud voicing to earth " dept is over we reset we do now equal life and share, we blablbla " this mean a part is scamed to benefits of others, this mean war.

 

this is why this will not stop the way the mainstream think does. they all plan here and there 2022, 2030, they push away the moment of the inevitable, indefinitivly.

 

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 20:16 | 6145675 A Lunatic
A Lunatic's picture

You make it sound like we have run out of Hope and Change or something.........

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 20:16 | 6145677 MayIMommaDogFac...
MayIMommaDogFace2theBananaPatch's picture

Club of Rome == Maurice Strong

FTW

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 20:24 | 6145704 Ham-bone
Ham-bone's picture

The reason WHY the Fed and CB's did what they and did since '08 needs better publicity.  Why they changed from marginal manipulation to outright "being the market" since '08...why the big change???  And once you understand the problem, you understand why the Fed's actions are criminal because they were never going to work or "help" the nation...only offer a small and shrinking cadre an opportunity to strip mine the nation on the way out.

It was a "flow" (not "stock") issue of new consumers that killed an already very flawed model.  The annual "flow" of new population growth in the US, EU, Japan, elsewhere all peaked in the '80's and annual new population growth began ebbing.  By 2008 in the US, the 25-54yr/old annual population change went negative.  The sliding #'s of new consumers had been hiden for years by lower interest rates, more available credit (subprime, etc.), longer duration credit.  But the '08 outright annual fall of the consumer base was too much. 

The Fed and CB's had to "suspend the free markets to save the free markets" (but what they really meant was they needed to suspend free markets because what a market would have done is found real pricing between lots of sellers and declining buyers).

Everything now is simply trying to hde the fact we have shrinking consumer bases and will for a decade...and maybe for the rest of our lifetimes.

I try to outline in the following links...all data from Fed's FRED...

http://econimica.blogspot.com/2015/05/2008-was-tremorwhy-main-event-is-still.html

http://econimica.blogspot.com/2015/05/reality-check.html

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 20:28 | 6145714 buzzsaw99
buzzsaw99's picture

fuck nutrients use brawndo! it's got what plants crave.

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 20:30 | 6145716 FredFlintstone
FredFlintstone's picture

But does it have electrolytes?

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 07:19 | 6146462 DavidC
DavidC's picture

There must be some others who get that! very funny!

DavidC

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 20:33 | 6145720 Niall Of The Ni...
Niall Of The Nine Hostages's picture

Hogwash. The Limits to Growth was laughably crude propaganda even in its time. Even 1970-vintage Keynesian economists laughed at it. 

We don't need fewer people. We need better people. You will not solve any of humanity's real economic problems by encouraging the people who made industrial civilization possible to stop reproducing while encouraging those human breeds incapable of any but the most mindless physical labour to breed like rabbits. 

Bluntly put, Africa is not overpopulated. It's full of niggers too stupid to practice birth control. If Africa were inhabited by white people it could sustain populations several times what it does now, and those people would be as rich as Americans.

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 21:15 | 6145816 farmerbraun
farmerbraun's picture

I guess that you are wholeheartedly in favour of education for African women then, since it is agreed that this would be the most effective way to reduce breeding.

In the meantime , I think that China has big plans for Africa.

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 21:19 | 6145829 Joe A
Joe A's picture

Somebody from a prestigious university in the US reran the numbers of Limits of Growth and they are pretty much accurate. The Club of Rome's predictions are still on track.

One of the reasons why Africa is as poor as it is is because it is the victim of its own richness. Mineral exploitation and Western support of dictators who with the help of financial institutions made whole countries slaves to debt put the whole continent in ruin. Remember this Bob Geldoff Aide thing to Africa? He thought it was quite something that his action raised 33 million UK Pound at the time until he found out that that is the amount that Africa has to pay off every two weeks in debt repayment. And that was just interest, not even installment.

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 07:21 | 6146464 DavidC
DavidC's picture

Not to mention rampant corruption.

DavidC

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 08:13 | 6146498 squid
squid's picture

Before we get all Awshitzy on the chap, let us observe a few facts:

1. in 1975 Rodesia was a first world country, major exporter of agricultural products and finished goods,

2. in 1976 Rodesia came under black majority rule and the name was changed to Zimbabwe,

3-4. A whole bunch of socially uplifting changes instituted by that brilliant visionary Rober Mugabe were brought in which included, gang rape and murder of white women(farmer's wives), mob murders of white farmers, land confiscation, etc....

5. Zimbabwe solved its foriegh debt problems in 2008 by hyperinflating its currency away to ZERO,

6. Zimbabwe is one of the poorest countries in Africa now with rampant starvation. Mugabe owns several properties in Switzerland and France.

 

For a repeat performance, please keep your eye on South Afrcia. It is going the way of Zimbabwe. Will take slightly longer since it was a bigger train and will take more time to bring it to a halt.

In 1996 when SA voted for Black majority rule, there were 17 million whites in the country....there are under 3 million left and the number is falling.

 

Progressives don't like these facts and they have nothing to do with National socialism, they just are.

 

It makes you think because it challenges all the melarky we were taugh in school in the seventies.

 

Squid.

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 21:20 | 6145830 Gumbum
Gumbum's picture

You would have made a great asset in the 30-40s Germany mate. Juuuust bright enough for rifle duty in the watch towers of Auschwitz.

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 20:37 | 6145728 kchrisc
kchrisc's picture

In an unfettered economy, as highlighted by the Austrian School of economics, an economy, and society, economic growth are grounded and balanced by real savings of consumers.

The fiat counterfeit produced by the banksters, backed by the the violence of their violence-puppets, government, short circuits that balance in favor a rat race of "spend it before it evaporates."

Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..

 

Guillotine the Fed. Audit the heads.

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 20:50 | 6145762 Kreditanstalt
Kreditanstalt's picture

" How is it that the leaders of (XY government...) have convinced themselves that rapid economic growth is what they need (instead of the more rational and opposite case of managed economic shrinkage)?"

 

Easy answer: FRACTIONAL RESERVE DEBT. We live in a system where debt creates "money" and where debt uptake MUST continue...

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 20:58 | 6145780 Captain Willard
Captain Willard's picture

What's the better bet?

Japan paying off their $100,000 per resident or Illionois paying off their $61,000?

Any thoughts? Personally I would take Japan. I'm curious how people view this question. I suppose The Feds could bail out Illinois. But is the US at $50,000 od debt per capital that much better of a bet than Japan? 

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 21:47 | 6145893 holdbuysell
holdbuysell's picture

Japan can print. Illinois will need a bailout. Both will end up in a gutter.

It's not by accident that there was a recent Fed announcement that some municipal bonds could be available for purchase...here comes the source for QE4.

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 22:50 | 6145998 farmerbraun
farmerbraun's picture

You think that QE4 will be restricted to that ?
Surely moar, much moar than just that will be " needed" ?

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 07:57 | 6146490 squid
squid's picture

Agreed.

So everybody wins! The state employees will all get their pension cheques at 3-6 grand per month, or whatever it is. I think that is great and super. And federally, everyone will get their 2500 SS cheques, I also think that is grand.

The only fly in the ointment is the currency debasement that will be required for the above will make a loaf of bread $1,000 and a tank of gas $15,000. But everyone will get their currency notes, that is no problem.

Absolutely peachy if you ask me.

Squid

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 21:20 | 6145831 Joe A
Joe A's picture

The Club of Rome predictions are still on track.

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 23:39 | 6146106 malek
malek's picture

True, the statement "30 years from now whole countries will die from starvation" is as irrefutable today as it was when first made by them in 1970!

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 07:51 | 6146487 squid
squid's picture

99.9% of he studio audience missed this I bet.

:)
Squid

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 21:31 | 6145853 MedicalQuack
MedicalQuack's picture

The problem here is that too many people anymore confuse virtual world values with the real world and it's not always their fault as news and marketing push all of it too.  For God's sake look at Dick Fuld yesterday saying he still believes Lehman wasn't bankrupt...big example right there and whacked out perceptions live on.  

http://ducknetweb.blogspot.fr/2014/03/virtual-worlds-real-world-we-have.html

Welcome to Duperville USA as cash rich companies keep hiding cheating code on the web, and this is not the hackers, it's banks, corporations that want to steal and sell your data.  They're getting near the bottom of the barrel and "score" you into a corner where you can't get out! 

http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2015/05/privacy-duping-of-america-intangible.html

I don't know how much longer the dupes can go on, as people hate math so that's what banks and companies use to make money...check out the killer algorithms page if you like..lots of videos from folks smarter than me that explain a lot...some good quants and mathematicians who are on our side:)

http://www.ducknet.net/attack-of-the-killer-algorithms/

 

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 22:34 | 6145917 honestann
honestann's picture

I love boonies.  I love super-duper-extra-low population density.  I hate cities.  So there's the disclaimer... in advance.

But... I'm also honest.  If human beings behaved in responsible ways (honest, creative, productive, benevolent) rather than irresponsible (dishonest, destructive, malevolent)... probably 10 or 100 billion humans could live a very comfortable life on earth without harming the ecosystem.

The problem is, the vast majority of humans today are dishonest, uncreative, more destructive than productive, and largely malevolent.

The problem is more lack of quality than excess quantity.

Though I do prefer less quantity.  Much less.

And vastly higher quality.

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 01:51 | 6146289 VWAndy
VWAndy's picture

Ann thanks for touching on it. The system is set to operate on scarcity. So it has those limits. If it were set up to operate on abundace? It would be so different almost unrecognizable? No?

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 00:23 | 6150909 honestann
honestann's picture

Yes.

Tue, 06/02/2015 - 02:14 | 6154511 VWAndy
VWAndy's picture

Thanks for the sanity check.

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 22:41 | 6145990 farmerbraun
farmerbraun's picture

NZ never did have any large herbivores , but then we didn't have a lot of grassland either.
Sure we did have some very large flightless birds but the plants evolved to cope with that.
Now we have a lot of grasslands , and more cows than humans, as well as ten sheep for every human.

It's not all roses , but we are not screwed yet. If we can kick the annual cropping for cereals , and develop some perennial food sources to go with the beef and lamb , and dairy products, it could still be Godzone for a while.

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 23:37 | 6146097 malek
malek's picture

Well Chris, it doesn't help to cure denial with overcompensation.

Just because the psychopaths in power are fucking up everything, doesn't automatically prove that it's impossible to sustain the current level of living conditions, nor that there are immediate limits on further improvement.

Fri, 05/29/2015 - 23:43 | 6146116 q99x2
q99x2's picture

Arrest anyone with over 10,000,000 and take them to the pyramids.

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 07:49 | 6146485 squid
squid's picture

10,000,000 what? Indian Rupies? Indonesian Rupia? Korean Won?

You sound like a huckster politician that tells the ever shinking middle class that "we're going to tax the rich". Problem is, the middle class never gets around to asking, "Just how are these rich you're going to tax?". Because the answer will be......you.

Ok, so they go after people with 10,000,000, the were easy to round up (or they flew the coup).

Run out of those, so go after the ones with 1,000,000. Ok, a few more of those but run out again...

Go after the ones with 100,000, lots of those (rubbing hands together). Darn, run out again....

Right, go after the ones with 10,000 since they are the only ones left........

 

You see where all this goes.

The middle class plebs have fallen for this trick over and over again. The only solution is to cut spending and since no politician on the planet will dare do that, onward to the crash we go.

 

:)

 

Squid

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 01:46 | 6146237 Radical Marijuana
Radical Marijuana's picture

"We are now {nearing} the height of the largest set of nested financial bubbles ever blown in world history."

The ruling classes have prepared their kinds of "solutions" to these problems. They have covert plans. They developed their systems of debt slavery, backed by wars based on deceits, in order to prepare their paths towards being able to get away with inside job, false flag attacks, so that they could start more genocidal wars, and impose democidal martial law.

Those that are ruled over are mostly already too brainwashed to believe in bullshit to be able to face the basic facts that limits to exponential growth require different death control systems, as central to any better integrated human, industrial and natural ecologies. While those are theoretically possible, what is ACTUALLY being done are that the plans of the ruling classes are being implemented, in order to mass murder the majority of the human population during the next Century or so ...

Various people have posted comments here on Zero Hedge, which stated their typically preposterous political fantasies regarding what the idealized "solutions" should be, which I would like to share in too ... However, none of those could be implemented without better death control systems at their core, while the ACTUAL death control systems, that back up the ACTUAL debt control systems, are based upon the maximum possible deceits and frauds.

Therefore, the ACTUAL things that the ruling classes have been doing to prepare for the limits to growth were things that would enable them to drive conditions towards mass murdering the majority of the human population. Since the vast majority of the people being ruled over have been reduced to incompetent political idiots, that do not want to consider any of the problems outlined in the article above, but rather, would prefer to continue to deliberately ignore those problems, those problems are automatically getting worse, faster ...

Several decades ago, when I was a teenager, I recognized that I was living inside of a civilization based on endless exponential growth, backed by weapons of mass destruction. Of course, I became concerned that was criminally insane, and did everything I could to try to prevent that tragic trajectory from being actualized, and I tried to develop harder political science fiction regarding those scenarios, that was better than the standard kinds of political fantasies which were more popular. However, along the way I was gradually forced to face the facts that the established systems based on enforcing frauds were going to continue to deliberately ignore any rational evidence or logical arguments which led to conclusions that they did not like, while the vast majority of people would continue to go along with that too. Therefore, especially, I would say, since about 2008, I no longer have the slightest shreds of optimism nor idealism left. The ruling classes have successfully created their "War on Terror" as a self-fulfilling prophesy, which is orders of magnitude worse than their similar "War on Drugs," and which was designed to start more genocidal wars, as well as prepare to impose democidal martial law.

IF one is realistic about there being relatively objective limits to growth, then the crucial issues are necessarily what are the kinds of death control systems that are going to limit that growth. If one is realistic about that, then the conclusions are that those are most probably going to be based upon even more of the same sorts of deceits and frauds that those have always been based upon. The ONLY genuinely better resolutions of our real problems would require developing better death control systems, to back up better debt control systems, so that our human ecology and political economy were less runaway criminal insanities than they are now ...

However, the ACTUAL systems operate through the ruling classes being as dishonest about what they are doing as they can be, while those they rule over have mostly adapted to accepting that, and taking it for granted.  The ACTUAL systems are that there is almost nothing but organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition groups. The funding of the political processes have become vicious spirals of enforcing frauds, everywhere one looks, so that some of the profits from frauds can be reinvested in more frauds, while nothing else can effectively resist those established systems.

As I have similarly stated in my responses to the previous series of articles and videos from Chris Martenson, that have appeared on Zero Hedge, he does not directly address the ways that there are combined money/murder systems, whereby money is measurement backed by murder. Since he does not recognize how the production of destruction controls production, he does not address the deeper issues regarding how the debt controls are backed up by the death controls. Overall, that kind of denial, and tendency towards having serious deliberate blind spots, means that Martenson is not able and willing to face the facts that the ruling classes have plans prepared for the future regarding the limits to growth, and those plans involve deliberately driving conditions to deteriorate in ways that will enable the majority to be mass murdered. At the present time, there are no good reasons whatsoever to believe that the vast majority of the people being ruled over are going to stop believing in bullshit, or stop the ruling classes from carrying through their criminally insane agenda.

Better political science fiction would require series of intellectual scientific revolutions, in order to change the ways that we perceived politics, so that we could change the ways that we perceive and operate the death control systems. As the established systems based on the maximum possible deceits and frauds automatically become worse, faster, that MIGHT provide some impetus for more people to think about that, and to get out of their mental habits regarding how they tend to not think about that.

Of course, I agree with Martenson that:

"One of the chief impediments to recognizing the dysfunction of the old story and adopting a new one is the most powerful of all human emotional states: Denial."

However, in my view, Martenson continues to indulge in way too much denial, which may be expressed as relying too much upon Hanlon's Razor, regarding the nature of the problems that we face. A new story is by definition a paradigm change in the narrative that civilization is telling itself. Of course, I agree with that, however, I believe that the kinds of paradigm shifts that we should go through are far, far more profound than guys like Martenson are yet willing to begin to entertain ...

Meanwhile, I have been working on those issues for decades, but have mostly now concluded that the ruling classes are going to continue to get away with their criminally insane agenda, mostly due to the degree that they are able to control their apparent public opposition. In my view, guys like Martenson are a kind of controlled opposition, because of the degree that they still think in the same basic bullshit ways, where they begin to appreciate that there needs to be profound paradigm shifts, but have not actually done so in any sufficiently significant ways.

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 01:23 | 6146265 Tek Kinkreet
Tek Kinkreet's picture

HEMP

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 07:22 | 6146466 GreatUncle
GreatUncle's picture

Not a chance ... when you are prepared to implement this then you are living a gaia world.

No more paying or subsidiing children if you can afford them fine but it is for a person / couple to fund not the state or taxpayer in any part. Brutal? Nope, can't afford children the population shrinks to sustainable levels not this overcrowded situation pushing the cost of living ever higher.

Population shrinks low enough, plenty of space then children will be more affordable and the population will cycle between the upper and lower limits of sustainability.

No politician has got the bollocks to implement this and sustainability is dependent on the the resources in that country not by the external funding to prevent people starving.

Truthful but it is where any form of sustainable world and consumption of resources starts.

 

Sat, 05/30/2015 - 08:52 | 6146547 Dominus Ludificatio
Dominus Ludificatio's picture

GDP must be the new religion of the short sighted gullible human animal. Everithing is measured with gdp,including b.s.

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