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Here's Why The Status Quo Is Doomed
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
The problem is the Status Quo only works in a world with plenty of room to expand.
The central illusion of this era is that the Status Quo can be reformed or saved. All we need to do is (or so we're told):
1. Get money out of politics
2. Re-impose the Glass-Steagall Act on banking
3. Close the tax loopholes exploited by corporations and the wealthy
4. Overturn the Supreme Court decision giving corporations personhood
5. Restrict the Imperial War Powers of the president
6. Restore the civil liberties stripped by post-9/11 legislation
and so on. All good-governance, all prudent, all necessary.
But none of these reforms--or any of the other good-governance tweaks habitually promoted by left, right, center and Libertarian--can save the Status Quo. For what's wrong with the Status Quo is systemic: tweaking rules and limiting excesses may make us feel like we've accomplished something useful, but that sense of accomplishment is illusory.
The problem is the Status Quo only works in a world with plenty of room to expand--a world of virgin resources ripe for exploitation (oops, I mean development), easy-to-extract abundant energy, and an expanding population with rising productivity and little debt.
In this world, there's plenty of room for everything to expand: resource extraction, energy consumption, population, productivity, income and debt.
This is a world optimized for growth: there is so much material and labor capital available, enormous quantities can be squandered on wars, mal-investment, elite excesses and plain old waste.
The world optimized for growth begins with little or no debt. Debt, as we know, is a way to consume future earnings today. If $1 in income can be leveraged into $10 of debt, the worker earning the $1 can consume $10 of goods and services today, or buy $10 of assets.
The world optimized for growth is also optimized for banks and central states. Banks earn money as debt expands, and government tax revenues explode higher as population, earnings, productivity, commerce and profits all expand.
The Status Quo has been optimized for this world of limitless growth. There's one tiny little problem with this: the real world has limits, and so does the financial world of debt, interest and taxes.
Does this look like a world with plenty of room for everything to expand?
How about this?
Does this look like a world ripe for limitless expansion of debt to fuel limitless growth of consumption?
Here's the problem: when the world the Status Quo has been optimized to exploit can no longer expand, the Status Quo doesn't just slow--it implodes. When incomes stop expanding, debt eventually stops expanding, which means consumption (i.e. "growth") stops expanding.
When debt and the consumption it fuels both stop expanding, the system implodes because it's based on a simple iron directive: the system requires more of everything to sustain itself: more households and enterprises borrowing more money to consume/produce more, and paying more taxes as commerce, consumption and debt all expand.
There is no way for less to be produced, purchased, consumed and borrowed, or for the number of workers and consumers to decline. The system is not just optimized for growth, it is entirely dependent on expansion of everything for its survival.
Once the number of workers starts declining, the social security/old-age pension system implodes.
Once households and enterprises stop borrowing more and start defaulting on existing debt, the banking sector implodes.
Once household consumption starts declining, the retail sector implodes.
Once tax revenues plummet and nation-states destroy their currencies with excessive borrowing and/or money-printing, nation-states implode.
The world is shifting from unlimited growth to limits and Degrowth. The Status Quo that is completely dependent on growth is doomed--an implosion that no amount of reform can stave off.
Degrowth, Anti-Consumerism and Peak Consumption (May 9, 2013)
When Conventional Success Is No Longer Possible, Degrowth and the Black Market Beckon (February 7, 2014)
And the Next Big Thing Is ... Degrowth? (April 7, 2014)
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Degrowth = Depopulation
WAR is the answer
This is exactly why debt-free money is imperative. There is no need for constant "growth" when money is strictly used as a vehicle of trade - an honest exchange rate. Growth is only necessary to pay off debts on the money borrowed into existence. It's that old "11th Marble" analogy.
Exactly right.
Indeed: http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/11thmarble.php#axzz3m0rIeEig
@ J S Bach
I always did love your music.
And in this case as well, you're absolutely right.
Money is a concept. Money is what people believe their posessions "are worth". As such, the concept of interest also reflects a belief: what I have now can be worth more later or I can trade what I have now for more later.
As long as 'technology innovation + obtainable resources' > 'population + demand/person', the interest belief could self sustain. Once demand became more than innovation and resources could provide, however, one item of today in trade could no longer be matched by an equal item in the future. In other words, No Interest.
We all sit on here and bitch about NIRP, but looked at from this point of view, NIRP is actually reflecting reality. Our money system is going into reverse because people realize that they are going to receive less in the future than they have today.
This would be fine if it was voluntary, if people were making independent decisions regarding what interest they choose to accept on a loan of their purchasing power. But because the monetary system is mandatory, all but those at the top of the pyramid are forced to give up their future purchasing power, while those at the top increase theirs. This is only possible because we at the bottom are legally obliged to trade (taxes at the very least) in money for which we do not control the rate of interest. That is the fundamental basis of the interclass theft that is ongoing to this day.
Until people are free to trade in money that does not steal from them - by design, there is no way for us to protect ourselves from this predatory system.
The system and the status quo must be burned to the ground before the proverbial green shoots both literally and metaphorically can start showing up.
Total catharsis and renaissance of the monetary and political system as well as ethics is a must.
Total reform sounds good (maybe) but it's as dangerous as can be. Esp. in politics. Just those two constitutional amendments (16 & 17) and Wickard v. Filburn and it all went south after that. Nothing at all as bad as what we'd get with total reform.
Caution advised.
This is why we are so big on internet technology, go look at teh forums over at CNBC, CNN, BBC, CBC, etc, etc... more and more people are not buying the BS anymore. The comments on those sites are increasingly ZH-ish. Especially people who grew up using computers and getting their information online, or at least balancing it with what they read online. We are witnessing a major, major turning point in human history. The status quo are sitting pretty and very smug right now, very soon they will be running for their lives!
Haha like that will be allowed to happen
What they want or "allow" is not important. They are powerless.
I'll have what you're smoking.
Ultimately, it is all a confidence game. At first, confidence is optional. Later, it is declared mandatory.
Increasingly so, and accordingly more desperate, as the lies become more naked and the force becomes more blunt.
Think as these people didn't: http://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928/ref=s...
I've seen Yahoo. You'd think it were the same person/people posting under different names.
I'm finally seeing the same trend you have spotted on the NYT - comment section - which is heavily edited for negative posts by the editors - but even with the controls -
- huge turnaround in last six months on topics about Russia / Middle East responsibility/ false statements by Obama and his administration / economic metric integrity / cops /
there is undercurrent of Cynicism - people increasingly believe very little about MSM and Obama statements - opinions - facts
"- huge turnaround in last six months on topics about Russia / Middle East responsibility/ false statements by Obama and his administration / economic metric integrity / cops /"
Really? Just how is it different than what was stated at last night's GOP debate? Seems that the Obama administration is also pushing on Russia. Keep in mind that shouting louder is, in the end, just shouting. Deeds are what matters. US military action is still pervasive in the ME. Assad is still targeted TPTB's pipeline projects are STILL being supported.
The two front-runners of the GOP nomination are BOTH corporate failures, yet everyone is blind to this. Paul Volker came in under the Carter administration. Under Reagan's administration we got... Greenspan! Since then it's been the SAME by both "parties."
Yeah, this is all only the behavior of the Obama administration!
Only party pussies cannot see or admit to the reality (facts)...
I'm surprised you didn't type your usual diatribe re: expecting infinite growth on a finite planet.
1. Get money out of politics
a) If it can't vote, it can't contribute to any political campaign. (corporations, lobbyists, foreign governments, columbian drug lords, unions, defamation leagues, oil sheiks, oil companies)
b) If it can't vote, it can't compensate any elected official for "services" (including speaking engagements, interviews, book deals, etc.)
c) No elected official can receive any gift of any kind of any value. (and yes, meals and golf trips are considered gifts)
Ye ol' "growth" meme has been drilled into the heads of the commoners through the media like a virus. People somehow can't put it together that growth == exponentiation, and exponentiation == death.
Linear thinking superimposed on exponential reality... it's like expecting unicorn Skittle-shit from a rusty water spigot.
It doesn't help that we are entering a global cooling cycle (like a 350-400 year cycle.)
Suspicious0bservers had a good video on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7whL9jvdL5s
We've been in an inter-glacial period for slightly longer than the historical norm. A glacial period is in fact a certainty. All is pretty well covered in John D. Hamaker's Survival of Civilization (I don't agree with his notion that we could forestall- there's a lack of analysis on the negative effects on the environemnt of creating all that rock dust). Folks who don't understand farming will laugh at this: city folks think they're smart, they are not.
The fanatical obsession with promoting "growth" at all costs is like feeding cancer.
Calling a pack of venomous robbers barons "the status quo" is incorrect. The world is not big enough for the looters who have turned most of the world into a gulag. Things will only get worse. Especially if the Earth itself decides it has had enough of the human lice who have polluted this planet.
Nope. The answer is moar tyrannical government. According to a study done by Professor Rudolph J Rummel of the University of Hawaii, in the 20th century, 119.4 million were killed by government in non-war situations, while only 35.7 million were killed by wars.
Another reason why the Second Amendment may be our safest resource. Talk to anyone from Cambodia, China, Russia, and on and on and they will agree with you.
"The surface of a planet is NOT the correct place for an expanding, technological civilization." -- R.A. Wilson
This is why space travel must be unlocked. People look at me like I'm some space cadet nerd when I say things like this. I'm not. The future of the human race is either spacefaring, or self-destructive.
Make your choice.
So the Fed can go where no man has gone before? How about we spare the rest of the universe that horror.
The natural order for all life is expansion. Becoming spacefaring is simply following natural human behavior.
A virus expands untill it kills the host
An interesting analogy since it personifies Earth and the universe as if humans could possibly "kill" things that old and that large. Trust me, the earth will hardly know we were here only 300 years after we humans die off.
It also presumes that all viruses reproduce in an uncontrolled fashion until the host dies, a notion which the Herpes virus has soundly rejected as a survival strategy.
Where I live it feels like you'd only need to skip one generation for the town to become like them lost Cambodian temples. I go through mower blades like nobody's business. Seriously, we've no chance to suppress vegetation this ferocious; I reckon, as you say, the planet will barely register we were even here.
Depends if we instigate some sort of tipping point. The potential for the meltdown of all the reacotrs on Earth could be one such bad outcome - as would an all-out nuclear war.
Rather than viruses - think yeast.
I was out with the field mower the other day. MY GOD how fasts shit grows! Can't get behind! I'm trying to establish pasture so I can get grazers in! (goats are just too much hassle for dealing with brush- mechanized goats are a lot cheaper now so I'll continue to use them)
Disagree, the natural order for life is balance - humanity has become the exception and will be doomed without changing this expansionist mindset.
Entirely wrong. The natural order is death, most everything in the universe is dead. Life is the exception. We're a long way from damaging anything in the universe with our expansion.
The natural order is vicious sawtooth cycles of abundance followed by dearth.
Depends on what you mean by "damage". Earth doesn't care if humans are on it or not. There was a long time before our species, and the rock will continue to circle the sun whether we are on it or not.
But Earth the way we have become accustomed to it over the past few millenia? That is changing. Our activities are altering the environment upon which we depend for our survival.
So, no. We're not 'hurting' Earth. But we may be well along the way toward nudging Earth into a state which is inhospitable to human habitation. Societies have done this before, though never on a planetary scale.
Yah but then we will be going to war with aliens, trying to sustain growth in the universe. Can we conquer the universe? Big fish on earth may not be the big fish in the universe. But ok lets say man conquers the universe then what go through worm holes to conquer more universes? Man becomes the destroyer of all. Then what?
The universe is tens of billions of years old. If it were possible to conquer our galaxy and life is as abundant as we think it is, then it has already been conquered and we're simply too boring a species for the dominant aliens to give a fuck about us.
Humanity has a bright future, once we stop empowering and supporting the uber-rich parasites who want to control and enslave us.
http://www.SiriusDisclosure.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RKUew-aFXMg#t=862
Nuubee you think like I do, and it is enourmously refreshing to find I'm not alone. Thank you for existing.
If we can't deal with our shit on this planet, there's no f'n way we're going to terraform any other planets.
Regarding space travel, we may dabble in our solar system a bit - but the dream of going to the stars is fantasy. The distances are just too large.
Thank you for that.
Really, that is the most refreshing statement I have read in awhile. I have to mull this over.
Read it and weep. We are pretty much stuck on this rock.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_re...
I work as an aerospace engineer. You're referring me to a Sci-Fi author. I think I'll stand by my own assessment.
Not gonna happen.
Space travel depends on massive resource inputs. Given that the exact problem we face is a growing resource crunch, the "activation energy" (to borrow from the language of chemistry) is too high. In other words, to get to space, with all those wonderful new resources, we need to exploit a serious amount of resources from Earth to initiate the process. Our social / technological / resource base is inadequate to that task.
It's back to the stone age for most of us, if we're lucky.
Good points Sofa guy. Aero guy probably desires job security on some Manhattan like project for space. Space is too big and too unknown and too variable to do anything with any certainty or even a folly of a hope for success especially on limited resources with no chance of re-supply.
Now I know this sounds crazy but what we really need instead of space travel or fusion plants is time travel. Enough Delorean's are still in good enough shape where we could field an armada of them with bold explorers on board who could sail off into time and then return later with new found riches from virgin territories.
P.S. Got my science education mostly from popular movies. So my bases are covered, right?
When it costs barrels of oil to get one barrel out of the ground, there is a "limit".
Gold costs a fortune to extract so there is another "limit".
So, get your power from one of these sources:
http://www.theneworionproject.org/en/
Or like this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0t4rqu24o0kzixd/USAF%20Flying%20Saucer.jpg?dl=0
Or like this:
http://intalek.com/AuroraTekInfo/PUP3000UC_SpecSheet.pdf
A world based upon ever increasing (exponentially) issuance of debt.
Exponents FTW.
pods
#MakoIsRight
Stupid cherry picked photos. You could just as easily find photos of millions of square miles with hardly a soul living there.
As for consumerism, ever heard of China and India? You ain't seen nothing yet.
I agree with you that cherry-picked photos mean absolutely zero in proving a case.
Have you been reading, however, about the observations (from lots of sources) of the Pacific Ocean dying?
Sorry. China and India are not going to get their chance to live the US / West European dream. It was a one-shot deal. We in the west were ridiculously lucky, and - as humans usually do - we credited our luck to skill.
Malthus was way early, but we on Earth are resource limited, like it or not.
Don't worry Charles, the upcoming war will satisfy your Malthusian views. Me, I prefer non-debt based money and to let mother nature take care of the rest.
Nah the banksters are headed to Mars. Gonna fuck that planet up too; and the moon; and Ceres; and create killer robots and a singularity that will destroy the entire universe. They are banksters. That's what banksters do.
Meanwhile in Japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91qXpHL0vlQ
author seems to think that using a world's
plundered resources,
burning everything,
having poor models of cradle to grave on all products,
and basically murdering and raping everything in sight
is a good model and shoud be called: ( in his words ):
Growth.
|
I think that today's model should be called:
Little Boy Emperor's Short Lived Waltz
|
Soon to end in Little Boy Decapitated.
and then adult supervision and
Rebalancing of Ecosystems and Economies.
|
Sad to see that the little Boy could not be more balanced in his approach and never really advanced his personal development as he was more interested in f*cking and feasting.
|
best wishes.
I need to eat...today.
Happy Constitution day everyone, whats left of it.
It occurred to me this past September that 9/11 has turned into the biggest scam since Catholicism's tell me all your sins and you'll get to heaven. It is absolutely mind boggling how 9/11 has been turned against the American people in so many ways and I'm not even a fucking conspiracy believer. Jeezussss H Christ what a cluster fuck our nation has become.
Are you referring to 9/11/73 when the US/CIA/Kissinger over threw the Chilean government which resulted in roughly 60k deaths, women and children included?
and GHWBush's September 11, 1991 speech to Congress and televised nationally, "It's a Big Idea ... a New World Order ..."
They're gonna need a bigger balloon...this one is getting ready to pop.
dreaming......
And this http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/terrifying-super-fish-reeled-fis...
I see a distinct lack of imagination in those who write about the end of growth. I agree, we're at that point. But you basically get two scenarios. Scenario 1 is we overcome it and return to growth. Scenario 2 is that the end of growth destroys everything. Nobody can see anything else.
I think by the end of this century we will have much smaller ecomomies... but we will still have big cities, high tech, and big government. And our grandchildren will still be locked in the same global forced labor camp.
Agreed. And the rich will still be rich and the poor will still be poor. There will probably be a lot more of the poor however.
I think the robotics trend is only going to amplify this. Those who can afford a robot to cook, clean, change oil, mow lawn, etc. are only going to have more free leisure time. Likewise with business owners who can find cost savings by replacing people with machines. Those displaced are only going to find things more difficult in the future.
Meh, those 'bots are gonna require maintenance (until maintenance 'bots are invented!)
In the meantime, kiss my splintery, wooden @ss!
Global debt has increased by $57 trillion since 2007, outpacing world GDP growth
wow not sustainable and what could go wrong ;-)
What complete horse crap. Keynesian stimulus has pulled a bunch of future growth forward. We just need to get through a PERIOD of "degrowth" in order to get back to a more normalized rate of organic growth. These "peak growth" clowns are as bad as the climate change crowd. Just stop panicking, we're going to be fine...
re Status Quo is Doomed.
Maybe so - but they were still one helluva group in their day.
Right, the "growth paradigm" is a false paradigm. As the paradigm has been exposed to be false, faux growth has been substituted for real growth.
A debt-based economy only works in a real growth situation where interest can be paid with increasing amounts of labor, otherwise debt chokes and kills an economy. The banker solution has been to create faux growth through inflation and asset revaluation in what amounts to a Ponzi scheme of every incresing debt. The world economy is Greece Times 10000. Debt is only being paid back with more debt, digging a deeper hole.
I do believe however, that the central banks look upon themselve in a global context, not a national context and as such they have been willing to let certain areas fall so that others can be built up and put under their control.
1. Get money out of politics
Never going to happen, from dawn of the very first chieftain there was a guy who said 'if you give me the premium mud-hut I'll hook you up with some berries every week'. Change the political model so the cost/benefit analysis swings out and everybody wins - give economic powers to local (eg. county) governments - If a big multinational wants sweeping country wide impunity they can buy 1000s of times the politicians instead of the narrow band of pricks currently in their pocket.
2. Re-impose the Glass-Steagall Act on banking
Go even further, make banking a locally regulated utility. Like power, water and gas (at least in cold climates), banking is essential to be able to function in society. Full break from finance, loans become local concerns, decisions need to be justified. Bankers can go back to being people.
3. Close the tax loopholes exploited by corporations and the wealthy
See point 1.
4. Overturn the Supreme Court decision giving corporations personhood
Why bother, let them be persons with all of the joys associated with it. HSBC decides to commit criminal fraud? Lock up the 'corporate person', every last employee who isn't willing to turn on the cancer goes to jail. Treat them as persons in every respect and this works just fine - pick and choose the rights is bullshit.
5. Restrict the Imperial War Powers of the President
Go even further, remove all federal funding for the military - bring it back local, maybe even donation based. If you really want your money going to bomb some group on the other side of the planet you hadn't heard of, feel free to chip in. How about having occupying bases in countries that are supposed to be allies - go nuts, just don't force everyone else to. If the president decides to commit to a BS military action, let the people support (or not) it directly.
6. Restore the civil liberties stripped by post-9/11 legislation
Don't be cowards. If the population as a whole weren't scared of their own damn shadow it would be a lot harder to maintain this (along with the voluntary funding model). Let the federal level worry about the rest of the world, locals worry about their neighbors. If you feel like rebutting 'but how will we find the terrorists?' - see the first sentence of this paragraph.
I propose a #7:
Teach debate and philosophy starting in elementary.
Once upon a time this was done, people of wildly differing views could have a civil discussion (rather than argument) about anything and had a damn good shot at coming to resolution, or at least identifying a point of contention. The only points that can't be effectively challenged are value judgments - the rest can. Make people able to understand the logical structure of an argument (too many people don't understand how stupid they sound when they say ignorant shit like 'i agree with your premises but disagree with your conclusion' eg: A leads to B, B leads to C, but A doesn't lead to C)
No Supreme Court decision ever gave corporations personhood. Corporate personhood is established by state statute. SCOTUS decisions can interpret the impact of federal law on those corporate persons but do not establish personhood.
That said, CHS is more or less right about the End of Growth, and the transition will be nasty.
Nobody is going to read this, but ...
The world produces over 100,000 net new people every day.
That's 160,000 births verses 60,000 deaths.
The majority of these folks are in Asia and Africa.
Whereas the industrial world has negative or parity growth rates - which is why so many leaders support all this immigration; Mexico or Syria.
The prismatic difference is banks and the Corporate can see and access these emerging markets effortlessly as compared to Joe Six Pack in the Rustbelt amid fungible global wage deflation and computerization.
With so much of the world population under the age of 25, I can't help but think in the board rooms of these grand international business combines the world is wide open and limitless in potential.
Everyone else - that is the Human Spirit - is disposable.
A war here. Cheap cell phone there. A pinch of block-chain and Presto!
New markets.
New debt.
New revenue.
More Power.
Precisely. The corporations are just chasing the next revenue wave. This week Mexican, next week Syrian. This is the reason behind the Cuban and Iranian deals andt he take over of Crimea, revenue expansion it a flat or shrinking market. This is limited but allows them to kick the can a little longer.
Mebbe so, but the premise of infinite growth on a finite planet is still illogical!
Big deal.
Whatever expands, contracts and vice versa.
A contraction phase just looks shitty compared to a growth phase.
Some will be marginalized and most won't.
Life will go on, regardless if the 21 century looks different than the 20th.
Buy a mule if you're that worried.
Growth is good.
Let's imagine I own a bunch of hens and no spare cash. I go to the local bank, borrow some money at interest, use the principal to rent a horny rooster from one of my neighbors, let nature take its course, sell some eggs, let some chicks hatch, return the rooster to the neighbor, pay back the bank loan in full, with interest, and end up with more chickens than I started. That is a good thing. I've grown my assets, the bank made some money, and so did my neighbor, and the rooster had a great time.
The real issue is the purpose of the interest rate and the diligence of banks in controlling the loan process. Yes, resources are not infinite. As they become more costly, the number of projects that will result in enough growth to pay back the loan and its interest component becomes a smaller number due to the increased costs of the scarcer resources. You need to borrow more money to carry out the business plan, and that larger number is harder to repay. As more money gets borrowed, the pool of available funds will shrink, and the cost of that money (the interest rate) will increase. Only those projects which appear to have the best chance of being the most productive will be funded by a bank exercising due diligence. A higher rate of interest becaomes necessary in order to channel the funds into endeavors that will produce the most growth.
The "11th marble" story is idiotic. Human beings are not marbles, nor are dynamic business projects. Put ten humans in factory stocked with marble making machinery and supplies, and you will end up with millions of marbles.
In theory, the human race as a whole might reach a point where the cost of energy and the cost of raw materials becomes so high that no business project will be considered as potentially profitable. Growth will still be good, but just impossible to achieve, and per force either living standards per capita, or the number of people, will have to decline.
To suggest we are presently at that tipping point is absurd. But so is ZIRP and QE 4ever!, and the perversion of the banking system into nothing more that provider of margin loans to rich financial speculators. Under the present set of circumstances, I could never get a loan to rent a rooster, but if I was really rich, I could borrow millions to speculate on egg futures. Once again the end result is that growth is still good, but the perversion of the banking system has made it much more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve for the society within which those banks are entrenched.
Growth is why we roll out of bed and go to work, to better the lives of ourselves and our families. Growth is the result of a lot of smart planning and a lot of hard work. It is difficult to achieve. It is necessary for preservation of the existing system only because of the obvious, that individual failures en masse add up to systemic failure. The system is not based upon growth. Growth is the end result, not the base. The "growth is bad" cult has everything upside down in their minds.
If the system no longer makes it possible for people to create real growth, then that system will die, because growth is good, and a system that no longer promotes growth deserves to die.
I will agree that the rampant consumerism of our age needs to be reigned in, because borrowning money to purchase a bunch on unproductive junk is just plain stupid and destructive of yourself, sort of like taking that rooster out on loan so it can fuck you in the ass whenever you felt like it, assuming that no eggs or chicks will later come rolling or flying out your rear end.
Real growth, as you described is good. But then there's false growth, numbers backed by nothing but future slavery.
I think I stepped in doom porn
The only place ripe for limitless growth and population expansion plus virgin resource extraction is Russia, from St. Petersburgh to Vladivostok lies earth last great undeveloped mega nation.
Do I need to keep hammering out posts telling people that Washington wants to take Russia over, with a color revolution or a war, then send in Western Corporations to exploit the undeveloped vast areas. Russia is an impressive expanse. Even a short drive or river journey east from Moscow begins to make clear the scale of this land. Travel for days and days just to reach the Urals, a gold mine of minerals of all types, then cross the Urals into what they call "The Green Sea" Siberia. Just the great Siberian rivers alone allow for a massive scale of development with easy water transport north to south. Let me tell you about the Russian Far East! A mega land unto itself, the potential is mind blowing.
Washington State Department people have already been caught complaining that Russia has too much, and doesn't want to grant the West free access to it.
Like Germany in the 20th century, who made two tries to take Ukraine and Russia, in the 21st century, it is Washington that is hell bent on conquest, and are prepared to use force to get it.
This is why authorities in Russia now openly say they fully expect to be forced to fight a major war in the next 5-15 years. They are building defenses and defensive missile systems and electronics. Getting a nice warm welcoming committee ready for Washington's invasion force of choice. i.e. NATO. Including the Color Revolution type. Organizations are already being built to mass forces to counter any Washington funded Moscow Maidan.
We need to ask an honest question, and demand an evidence driven answer, not some political answer, but one founded on evidence. "Who really is threatening War on Russia's borders?"
A war with Russia will destroy US, and one of the reasons is precisely its vast uninhabited expansions. It is impossible to occupy Russia! Even if you believe that technology or whatever gimmick will help you occupy such a vast tract of land, it is practically impossible to control it afterwards. The Germans learned that lesson quickly in WWII, when they occupied only about 60% of the European part of the USSR, and for a very short period of time... The alternative is to nuke the whole place, but then (apart from the little fact that we would be blown to smithereens too) you cannot exploit its resources. The whole concept is highly idiotic and tells a lot about the mental state and intellectual capability of those populating the offices where such nonsense gets concocted...
In the case of an actual invasion of homeland, throw out all the ideas of "rational actors".
Nuclear weapons exist, and any group of humans who genuinely fear the invasion of their space will use what they have to stop the invasion.
The idea of invading Russia is stupidity. Sadly, given the dangerously psychotic level of insanity demonstrated by all large governments in the past decade, the fact that it is globally suicidal may not be enough to prevent these "people"'s megalomaniacal power addiction from manifesting.
Too true,
SofaPopa:
I see no actual political mechanisms to prevent that, primarily due to the vicious spirals of POLITICAL FUNDING making it politically impossible to stop the MAD Money As Debt continuing to be backed by the MAD Mutual Assured Destruction.
It seems NOT practically possible for enough people to perceive their problems in radically different ways, which is what it would take for civilization to cope with runaway electronic frauds, backed by the threat of force from atomic bombs ... Meanwhile, in each short-term increment, those who benefit from privatizing the profits from strip-mining the planet dominate those who do not. Therefore, the collective socialized losses have no effective political mechanisms to prevent the runaway MADNESS.
The feedback loop relationships between artificial selection systems within natural selection systems are hyper-complicated. The history of warfare has driven the most psychopathic people to become able to dominate civilization. They are not good at anything but being dishonest and backing that up with violence. However, that was all they needed to do, in order to control civilization in the short to medium terms. Those who may have been concerned about the longer term consequences were never able to prevent the triumphs and excessive social successfulness of those who became the best at backing up lies with violence.
The central social fact is that we have fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems based upon governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks. Civilization is based on organized crime, whose excessive successes have become runaway criminal insanities. Despite that becoming more and more blatantly obvious, to those with enough education, information and imagination to see it, there continues to be practically NOTHING that can be done, due to the POLITICAL FUNDING being dominated by vicious spirals of ENFORCING FRAUDS.
Moreover, the excessively successfulness of those systems has resulted in there being almost nothing but layers of controlled opposition surrounding that core of civilization based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS. There is virtually NO public understanding of how and why that is what ACTUALLY HAPPENED, since the vast majority of the public does not want to know those central social facts, about their lives being controlled by integrated systems based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS. Indeed, even in Zero Hedge articles, and comments, where the frequencies of understanding those central social facts is way higher than in the general population, still there one observes mostly the same old-fashioned bullshit "solutions" being promoted with respect to that situation, because SOCIAL SUCCESSFULNESS BASED UPON ENFORCING FRAUDS PENETRATES VERY, VERY DEEP INTO THE WAYS THAT ALMOST EVERYONE THINKS!
There are no mechanisms within the established sociopolitical systems that could actually stop that. ENFORCING FRAUDS is headed towards the digital "money" debt insanities driving death insanities caused by weapons of mass destruction. The persistent failures of any "monetary reforms" are symptoms of the degree to which civilization appears to have become too terminally sick and insane to prevent itself from committing collective suicide, "given the dangerously psychotic level of insanity demonstrated by all large governments" which has been getting worse, faster, at an exponential rate, throughout the whole history of Neolithic Civilizations.
Did I overlook the analysis on nukes and keynesian rebuilding or "growth".
Several of the comments above, e.g., Bach, Bastiat and Dr. Engli, recommend radical monetary system reforms. While I theoretically agree, such "solutions" are now too little, too late, and anyway, have no politically possible ways to become implemented due to the established systems of POLITICAL FUNDING.
The article above was correct, but it understates things:
While all of that is correct, and although the exact time horizon is not certain, nevertheless, the ruling classes' "solutions" to those problems are what they have actually prepared and implemented, namely starting more wars based on deceits, in order to engage in more genocides and democides. I.e., implosions become explosions.
I provided more analysis of that in comments under:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-16/us-rejected-offers-afghanistan-iraq-libya-and-syria-surrender-…-and-proceeded-wage-w
U.S. Rejected Offers by Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria to Surrender … and Proceeded to Wage War&
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-12/unmasking-isis
Unmasking ISIS
There are COMBINED MONEY/MURDER systems.
Death controls really back up debt controls!
Therefore, any monetary "reforms" would also have to become reforms to the murder systems. BUT, "reforms" to the monetary systems of sufficient magnitude would require "revolutions" in the murder systems. For the various reasons that I restated under those two articles I linked, there are no good reasons to believe that changes to the combined money/murder systems are actually possible to achieve other than through the worst possible ways.
P.S.
I merely write what reading articles provoke me to actually think after I read them. I WISH that there was some practical point to doing that, which then could motivate me to edit that stuff better, however, my current conclusions are that it is politically impossible to stop the eventual mass murders of the majority of the human population. For several decades I have been worrying about those issues and working on theoretical solutions, only to more and more confirm my current conclusions.
As the first comment posted stated:
Old-fashioned WARS are NOT "the answer" because those are no longer possible in a world where there exists globalized electronic money frauds, backed by the threat of force from atomic bombs. Old-fashioned wars enabled some to WIN, but now, everyone would LOSE wars waged with weapons of mass destruction ... but nevertheless, our morbid social habits are driving towards those happening anyway.
BY DEFINITION,
different death control systems are the answer!
BUT...HOW DIFFERENT IS THE REAL QUESTION.
If you haven't already, do read David Graeber's Debt: The First Five Thousand Years. He very explicitly demonstrates the fundamental linkage between debt as practiced in money-lending economies, with violent theft of resources and enslavement of persons (always justified as an alternative to death).
Faeriedust,
I watched:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs
David Graeber, DEBT: The First 5,000 Years
How different depends on where you're coming from and where you want to go. A 'westerner' is 'acCUSTOMed' to and 'FAMiliarized' with tools for preventing birth. Their problem is they can't advance their politics beyond Roe v Wade. China continues with a one-child policy and the rest of the world was just given a release via the pope's encyclical.
The question of population control was raised at the IPCC AR5 WG4 (Synthesis report) press release 02NOV14:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=q7tA31Q9cUY#t=24...
By stating the obvious in his answer, it should be obvious that the meek WON'T inherit the earth. The zero-child policy IS The Mars Project.
Yeah. politically impossible today, but just wait until Chelsea Clinton is Commander In Chief. What won't she do to make up for lost time?
p.s.
had to smile when you said "because SOCIAL SUCCESSFULNESS BASED UPON ENFORCING FRAUDS PENETRATES VERY, VERY DEEP INTO THE WAYS THAT ALMOST EVERYONE THINKS!"
because as slaves to the hormone (men and women, rich or poor, body and soul) deep penetration underlies all our thinking!
I skipped through to about the 41 minute mark to watch the answer to that question on population control. That "answer" was vague bullshit ...
It was vague bullshit which is why I said the meek won't be inheriting the earth... they'll be inheriting a zero-child policy, if they're lucky, or genocide.
(I thought the link I provided takes one to the marked time, sorry)