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When Collapse Is Cheaper And More Effective Than Reform
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Collapse begins when real reform becomes impossible.
We all know why reforms fail: everyone whose share of the power and money is being crimped by reforms fights back with everything they've got.
Reforms that can't be stopped by the outright purchase of politicos are watered down in committee, and loopholes wide enough for jumbo-jets of cash to fly through are inserted.
The reform quickly becomes "reform"--a simulacrum that maintains the facade of fixing what's broken while maintaining the Status Quo. Another layer of costly bureaucracy is added, along with hundreds or thousands of pages of additional regulations, all of which add cost and friction without actually solving what was broken.
The added friction increases the system's operating costs at multiple levels. Practitioners must stop doing actual work to fill out forms that are filed and forgotten; lobbyists milk the system to eradicate any tiny reductions in the flow of swag; attorneys probe the new regulations for weaknesses with lawsuits, and the enforcing agencies add staff to issue fines.
None of this actually fixes what was broken; all these fake-reforms add costs and reduce whatever efficiencies kept the system afloat. Recent examples include the banking regulations passed in the wake of the 2008 meltdown and the ObamaCare Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Back in 2010 I prepared this chart of The Lifecycle of Bureaucracy: as bureaucracies expand, they inevitably become less accountable, less efficient, more bloated with legacy staffing and requirements that no longer make sense, etc.
As costs soar, the bureaucracy's budget is attacked, and the agency circles the wagons and focuses on lobbying politicos and the public to leave the budget untouched.
Since accountability has been dissipated, management becomes increasingly incompetent and larded with people who can't be fired so they were kicked upstairs. Staff morale plummets as the competent quit/transfer out in disgust, leaving the least productive and those clinging on in order to retire with generous government benefits.
In this state of terminal decline, the agency's original function is no longer performed adequately and the system implodes from the dead weight of its high costs, lack of accountability, gross incompetence, inability to adapt and staggering inefficiency.
I've covered this dynamic a number of times:
Our Legacy Systems: Dysfunctional, Unreformable (July 1, 2013)
The Way Forward (April 25, 2013)
When Escape from a Previously Successful Model Is Impossible (November 29, 2012)
Complexity: Bureaucratic (Death Spiral) and Self-Organizing (Sustainable) (February 17, 2011)
This generates a ratchet effect, where costs increase even as the bureaucracy's output declines. The ratchet effect can also be visualized as a rising wedge, in which costs and inefficiencies continue rising until any slight decrease in funding collapses the organization.
Dislocations Ahead: The Ratchet Effect, Stick-Slip and QE3 (February 14, 2011)
The Ratchet Effect: Fiefdom Bloat and Resistance to Declining Incomes (August 23, 2010)
The net result of the Ratchet Effect and the impossibility of reform is this: it's cheaper and more effective to let the system collapse than squander time and treasure attempting reforms that are bound to fail as vested interests will fight to the death to retain every shred of power and swag.
Since the constituent parts refuse to accept any real reforms, the entire system implodes. We can look at healthcare, higher education and the National Security State as trillion-dollar examples of systems that become increasingly costly even as their performance declines or falls off the cliff.
This is the lesson of history, as described in the seminal book The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization.
Collapse does not need to be complete or sudden. Collapse tends to be a process, not an event.
Collapse begins when you can't find any doctors willing to accept Medicaid payments, when the potholes don't get filled even when voters approve millions of dollars in new taxes, and when kids aren't learning anything remotely useful or practical despite the school board raising tens of millions of dollars in additional property taxes.
Collapse begins when real reform becomes impossible.
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Letting people fail is the best regulation. It teaches everyone else a valuable lesson you can never learn from a teacher.
This cycle was well painted by Thomas Cole in his series, The Course of Empire.
Destruction, painting four of five in the series.
Best painter ever. Cole's Voyage of Life series is my favorite set of paintings of all time, especially the Old Age one. What a depiction...
Good stuff, indeed, Skateboarder.
Andrew Wyeth is my favorite painter.
Mort Kunstler is my favorite artist.
Peace!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner#/media/File:The_Fighting_T...
J.M.W. Turner blows Cole out of the water, his exceptional landscapes and their dramatic use of color gave the expressionists license to push the boundaries of academic painting. Now we have gone full course in the arts where the Satcchi galley will sell you a shit bed for millions of debt instruments. All modern art is a front for money laundering. http://mileswmathis.com/launder.pdf
Favorite living artist...https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/ Gerhard Richter. He has the formal background and technique to paint hyperrealistc but his abstracts can make the hair on my arms stand on end.
PS Cole's work is derivative of Turners...http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-the-decline-of-the-carthagini...
Can't blame the man, it's amazing to see Turner's work in person.
not sure we are talking about artistic abiliy, more like content and purpose.
Fantastich!
Final tangent: My favorite artist - Jean Giraud, known as Moebius (R.I.P.)
His hand is unmatched in the French/Belgian bandes style, tugging at the heartstrings in its wanting to be real. See for yourself:
http://www.graphicine.com/jean-giraud-the-time-masters/
http://muddycolors.blogspot.in/2012/03/i-moebius.html
Wonderous.
Thank you HH.
great analysis, but for those expecting beaurocratic seizure & collapse, remember that Byzantium lasted about 500 years after its peak
Thanks for sharing this.
Detroit has already been full-cycle.
Thank you for the tip on the paintings
Alexander Tytler's theory of cyclical democracy:
A democracy always collapses over a loss of fiscal responsibility, always followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world’s great civilizations before they decline has been 200 years. These nations have progressed in this sequence:
"From bondage to spiritual faith,
From spiritual faith to great courage,
From courage to liberty,
From liberty to abundance,
From abundance to selfishness,
From selfishness to complacency,
From complacency to apathy,
From apathy to dependency,
From dependency back again to bondage.”
Problem with that theory is it is only a theory that happens to be presented many times as fact but has never actually played out historically. There has never been a true democracy to use as the base for one thing. Certainly never one that lasted 200 years nor one of any real size either. Lastly not one (Republic or Democracy) that formed as a Constitutional entity either. In most cases the average citizen of the so-called democracies or republics were little more than slaves themselves and still contained slaves as (non)citizens therefore any changes at the upper tier of government had little effect on their lives.
Not saying the US or any Western country is perfect but the last couple hundred years have added some interesting twists to old schools of thought and made many theories obsolete. Personally I would say it will take much longer to move through the later branches of the theory and may perhaps see long gaps of complete anarchy before moving into the bondage stage again.
"It Can't Happen Here..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svdrAHn_LGo
The star burns ever brighter and expands until it runs out of fuel and then it collapses upon itself turning into a black hole and sucking in everything surroundng it...kinda like the asshole in the White House.
I don't blame obama for being black, or a black (ass)hole. I blame him for being a sock puppet and a traitor of his own promises (of change) to the American citizens.
But frankly, I guess it would have happened to any candidate who won the 2008 presidential elections.
As soon as (and possibly long before already) one becomes the new US president, one is being told by the real powers (i.e. Wall Street banksters, messengers of the Pentagon and the Security Agencies) to either play along with the game, or (worst case scenario) get eliminated.
Since, as a presidential candidate, you would never make it all the way to the White House, without playing along with the powers that be, by now it's practically impossible to become US president without becomming a traitor.
Are you kidding? Obama's campaign centerpiece has always been to bring fundamental change to America. You know what, he delivered, and the world is much worse off for it. Maybe people will actually start listening to what their candidates are saying and quit voting for irrelevancy (like electing the first black to the office of the presidency).
-Argenta
Sounds like that star is the Star of David.
Cheap in terms of what? Fiat? That type of thinking is what got us here. Fucking money whores.
This collapse is going to cost a lot in certain circumstances.
I think that our failed experiment in government is rapidly herding its political opinions to hatred and war.
I think that if we do not end our experiment quickly, we will be in another war. Our Israeli-Neocons have pushed this country into 14 yuears of failure by lies and manipulation and raw political power, much of it funded from Israel.
The problem is not Jews in religious or ethnic senses of the term, the problem is Jews + other interests in a cabal aimed at controlling maximum political power around the world.
You anit-Jewish idiots are incapable of such distinctions, and please keep your mouths shut on this topic, you make it hard for the rest of us.
Henceforth, anyone who is obviously anti-Semitic should be assumed to be working for Israel and the Neocons. Nobody who really wanted Israel's Zionist foreign policy to fail would ever make an anti-semitic statement, as it so obviously allows the evil that Israel is doing around the world. Neocons, Israelis, some just happen to be Jews.
Which is not to excuse dual-passport citizens in the same government which is so concerned about 'card carrying communists', who were so suspect because they were funded from abroad. Much like some of our thinktanks, I think.
We are being hered to war. Oil is the excuse, power is the goal. The oil will flow whoever owns Saudi Arabia, Iran, ...
Everyone is concerned about a religion that has no power in the US or Europe and is apparently not aligned with any political interest, while the religion that is so obviously intent on ruling a nation and has political power is ignored.
But of course, this will not change anyone's opinion. It is much easier to fool people than convince them they have been fooled.
www.thinkpatriot.wordpress.com
Oh, wow, it's been a long time since I've seen those illustrations around here. Good refresher.
Better pix: US Navy Aircraft Carrier
End Game: sink a $15-20 billion carrier with (1) one uber-fast, uber-smart, el cheapo cruise missile
Results: the carrier absolutely epitomizes the reality of the USA's Petrodollar Imperium.
Sink one and you have blown wide open the 70+ year scheme, "the world sells us everything and takes our paper currency, we 'sell' the world 'protection' in return"
Pffft..., we have a phone and a printing press and we're not afraid to use them.
"#4. The Joker Is Tyler Durden
Part of what made Heath Ledger's Joker so effective was his mystery. We still don't know a damn thing about where he came from or what his motivations were. All we can say for sure is that he had facial scars, a tremendous knowledge of demolitions, and the ability to build an army out of people who weren't concerned if their boss burned their paychecks. But, wait, we just described someone else you know: Fight Club's Tyler Durden. Josh Campana Sr. of Moviepilot proposes that after Fight Club's narrator shot himself in the face, he ended up spending some time in Arkham Asylum. While in that less than therapeutic environment, his second personality re-emerged, but in a much more ominous form. Why It's Not That Crazy: It's never explicitly stated that the majority of Fight Club is set in Wilmington, Delaware, but that's where the zip code on Tyler's business card places it. And the location of Gotham City, according to most maps of the DC Universe, is pretty darn close to Delaware. And while Fight Club ends on a happy note, there's no way the narrator isn't going to super jail for committing a massive act of terrorism that almost certainly killed a bunch of people. And where but Arkham would you stick such a dangerous psychopath? That also gives us a simple explanation for the Joker's scars.
Both Tyler and the Joker recruit weak-minded, aimless people into a pseudo-cult that commits incredibly precise criminal operations. They both have a penchant for "mischief." It's not hard to imagine the Joker splicing frames of porn into kids' movies on his day off, right? And then, there's the Joker-esque smiley face that Tyler fire-paints on the side of a skyscraper. That's why the Joker can shrug off vicious beatings from Batman despite being a scrawny little mofo -- he used to get punched in the face by big, angry men every night. Hell, this even accounts for the look of Jared Leto's new Joker in Suicide Squad. In Fight Club, Leto played Tyler's protege, and the two were so close that it made Tyler's other personality jealous to the point where Leto's character was beaten so badly ... ... that he became disfigured and probably needed some surgery and freaky steel teeth. And those go perfectly with the brain trauma that inspired him to copy his idol's second persona. The only difference is motivation --
Tyler hates consumerism, while the Joker wants to prove that, deep down, everyone is as crazy as he is. But, it's not hard to imagine that, after some time in Arkham, Tyler's beliefs went down an even darker path. Tyler wanted the world to reject capitalism by wiping out America's credit card debt. The Joker just went a step further by burning actual money."
http://www.cracked.com/article_22658_wonka-george-weasley-5-insane-fan-c...
I always upvote insanity when I encounter it in it's raw, natural form. Green arrow.
FYI- you might want to watch Fight Club again. You're a little off on your movie facts.
Facts, facts, facts..., who needs facts? Just make shit up as you go along. It works for the fed, it can work for you too.
dood is cra cra!!
excerpt from a cracked article, baby. They like to keep it fast and loose. But they might be following the Book {?}
supposedly a sequel {or prequel?} as to the book is in the works.
supposedly a sequel {or prequel?} as to the book is in the works.
NOOOOoooooo ... can't those shit-bags in Jewywood leave a good movie alone? Holy Hell....
trogdor was strongbad's best song, I bought my son the soundtrack
OT - so what was in the brief case in Pulp Fiction?
A soiled pair of Hillary's panties.
https://youtu.be/MLIo7D6z9hY
Beware.
Rome also fell because of coin-clipping, the dole, bread-and-circuses, and heavy taxation leading to popular defection to 'the Barbarians'.
But the result of all of that was for the "Barbarians" to continue some of the most pernicious of the Patricians' policies - namely hereditary property-tax debts and travel barriers for those who had them. What I just said? Yeah. That's Serfdom.
Collapse doesn't undo the legacy of all the bad decisions once they've been allowed to get established.
You have to rip them out root and branch before they become institutions unto themselves.
You wondered why the "Hunger Games" country is called Panem?
"Bread and Circuses" in Latin is "Panem et Cirenses".
The Hunger Games author is telling us about ourselves.
The corporate governments have now released the full text of the TPP:
http://commondreams.org/news/2015/11/05/full-text-tpp-released-public-an...
Bob, We will read it when the official tpp is released. This site has an agenda that I cannot support until I read the real tpp.
Sorry, the site's link got bounced outta fucking bounds! WTF.
This one works:
http://tpp.mfat.govt.nz/text
Obtained via http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/05/tpp-trade-deal-new-zeala...
Bring on the failure so we can get started with the firing squads and a new start.
All white men should be seething with resentment. We need a cleansing civil / race war.
The more people say that a collapse will come, the more determined the corrupt elitist powers are to use fraud to make it not happen.
Just opt out.
? Frank Zappa
I grew up in an environment rich in the use of such idioms as, "Don't throw good money after bad."
I used to try to teach idioms to idiots in public school. I guess those stu-pen-dents are in charge of the asylum now.
They teach English idioms in primary schoole here in Singapore.
They have a whole unit on that. Starts in P5 all through secondary school.
Squid
Print more money. Build more cruise missiles.
Creative destruction, bitches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction
letting failure happen is in some ways oxy moronic.
why?
because it is a question of 'timing' how much you 'resist' the failure by taking 'measures' that are designed to prolong the status quo until its inevitable end.
it's not like the failure is NOT guaranteed ( yes a double negative used for intentional effect)
embracing failure doesn't mean you should want to spend EFFORT kicking the legs out before the house is ready to collapse.
it means preparing for AFTER the collapse .
the real irony is that those who are embracing failure also (in a non mutual exclusive manner) can engage in the same sorts of behaviors that accelerate collapse such as looting.
is goldman sachs not 'embracing collapse'?
they are not 'letting things fail' they are actively engaged in making sure they benefit from this 'inevitable ' state of affairs.
but then, if you believe that failure is NOT inevitable but that it is caused by endless series of insitutitonal looters, than you would try to stop those looters. wouldn't you?
i believe the real occam's analytical razor for this situation is to posit a theory of social collapse that precludes judging who is good or bad, or which institutions are predatory or not. but rather-----it begins with an analysis of which institutions can survive collapse and which cannot. this is a very tricky analysis. so it can be more easily boiled down to the generalized question of WHICH SOCIAL ACTIVITIES CANNOT BE DISCARDED beyond the point of the collapse.
now, when you look at failed states and places like venezuela, it becomes clear that the answer is on some level normative because people taken in groups, societies at large, can stomach a whole lot of deprivation before they actually totally disappear ( which they rarely do).
consider decimation as an example.
10% of all of society can dissappear for any of a number of reasons and the society can still survive. 10% is a complete and utter disaster however.
is 'syria' surviving? . well it depends 'whose' syria you are talking about. but surely at least half a million of 28 million have died and 2 million have left the country . and i'm being super conservative. at least 10% have been killed or forced to leave and much higher percentage totally impoverished.
so is it surviving?
we in the west are so spoiled because of 70 years of 'peace' or 'insulation' that we have no real clue of true deprivation. 2 generations have passed since the my grandfathers fought in ww2. and many other's have.
how much can we know of 'deprivation'. all is relative. and so too is the idea of 'embracing failure'.
i for one am happy that we are spoiled. there is something to say for keeping our standards high and living well.and i am talking about our current relatively safe state of affairs.
if you are real doom and gloomer , you are thankful for how good it is right now relative to what it will inevitably be some day due to major cyclical effects of history ---pushed by elites fighting over power into a dwindling base of peasants to pull value from.
so , do we embrace failure? or do we try and make things 'better' but in a way that is meaningful and survives the deteriorating effects of a dying culture , vapid materialism, and a ratcheting difficulty of government and criminal raqueteering over each and every possibly source of value to squeeze out of a peasants life?
What?
what i'm saying is, maybe you cannot embrace failure.
maybe you can identify which socially useful activities you want to be a part of as things get 'worse' and to prepare yourself by being involved in developing those skills or social connections or all that good stuff now.
or you can go live in a cave and pretend things will be good to. or you can loot as well. in the end, 10% can easily die and plenty of socially useful activity will still survive the 'collapse' so to speak. but the normative question here is ; what do you want YOUR WORLD AROUND YOU TO LOOK LIKE.
there is no 'embracing collapse' any more than there is 'embracing success' . these mentalities are all just describing a fake sense of watching the world outside you instead of taking charge of what you want out of your own experience.
then again. i make no sense, so i upvoted you.
I agree with the principle of knowing which parts of society will continue after a failure. people will still eat, people will still try to have sex, people will still seek shelter, people will still try to defend themselves, people will still need to exchange things among themselves. people will need medical care. money in some form has been part of civilization for ages. Learning to live without the things that will disappear is a good start. learning to barter, self treat, and grow food and such, and be able to shoot are all training for later when it's needed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJS18wQZd5Q&html5=1
Save the best, get rid of the rest.
Rebuild Institutions, from the ground up, on new foundations if necessary.
CHS has done us a great service with this article.
Not many know or care about organizational behavior (OB MGT) , but it is crucial to consider their motivations and ours.
I will take Implosion for 1 lb of Gold, Alex
Collapse? I agree with CHS when he says, "Collapse does not need to be complete or sudden. Collapse tends to be a process, not an event."
It's happening here in the rust belt - Upstate NY, east of Rochester (actually occurring to the west and south of Rochester. North is Lake Ontario, so there's nothing there to collapse.
A couple of anecdotal evidences:
Judge (Piampiano) just elected to 14-year term on Tuesday, today grants dismissal in murder case which ended in mistrial (he declared it) two weeks prior to election. Took $1000 in campaign money from defendant lawyers. (For refernece see Charlie Tan, James Piampiano). Judicial system - something I have some insight upon, being that my dad was a criminal defense and GP attorney - is completely SNAFU, rife with graft, corruption, money, payoffs, judges who don't know or follow the law, and, forget judicial review, it's a good old boys club. Suspect that other jurisdictions are similar. YMMV. Caveat Emptor.
Property values in rural areas plummeting. Decent, 2-3 BR homes in my county (Wayne) typically sdelling for less than $70K, many under $50K in "as in" condition, a surge in HUD-owned properties, which, I assume, is the upside to banks no longer wanting to hold bad mortgages. At least with HUD homes, one can get financing; not so much with bank-owned properties, and it seems the banks are willing to unleash some of their inventory back into markets in slect areas, like rural enclaves where there's no money, no jobs, no growth.
Senator Schumer and Governor Cuomo step in with $20 million in taxpayer money, matching Kraft/Heinz dollar-for-dollar for improvements to 3 K/H facilities in NY state, saving roughly 1000 jobs. Textbook fascism: government working hand-in-hand with corporations (yeah, Uncle Warren owns large share of Kraft-Heinz). So, we will pay more taxes to keep jobs, which pay taxes, which we spend on keeping more jobs in state. Anybody see a probalem with this structure?
Yeah, slow collapse. I am all for it. Save your cash and in three years you'll be able to purchase 15-20 acres with a run-down property for under $30K. It's not for everybody, but, for those with an escape plan, it's like, Nirvana.
Now, back to sorting out wood to keep and to burn, shapren axe, get to work.
Good luck to all. (I'd say it's going to be a bumpy ride, but it already has been one.)
There is never going to be a collapse as long as we have responsible people at the helm such as President Obama and Janet Yellen. I know it's trendy to hate the president because he's an African-American on this site but the truth is that he's doing an excellent job. Sane Americans also back the Federal Reserve but the nutjobs on this site hate it simply because it was founded by Jewish people and is pretty much totally run by Jewish people. They can't stand that because they're antisemites despite the fact that the Federal Reserve always works in their best interests. Folks, you people lost in 1945 and you've all been totally brainwashed by Trump. It's time that you moved on and started acting like normal citizens. Get your face out of this site and get it in front of MSNBC, attend a #blacklivesmatter protest, support all the hardworking undocumented immigrants, get out and vote for Hillary or Jeb Bush, and above all turn in your sickening arsenals of your brutal assault weapons.
Now that is some dry Humor...
Ok. Will do.
it's so sick how hard working, responsible and caring, our great and almighty leaders are. God must be so jealous.
Collapse actually begins when these bloated bureaucracies run out of other people's money.
In a private firm, or a centrally planned economy that can't issue a convertible currency, that day comes when creditors refuse to lend it any more money (their own or anyone else's). The paycheques stop coming, suppliers and landlords stop getting paid, the drones either stop showing up or find themselves locked out of offices by irate landlords, and anything of value is sold for pennies on the dollar---or simply stolen by opportunistic drones who've realized they wont get paid any other way.
The nice thing about being a government blessed with a central bank that issues a widely-accepted reserve currency (USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD, CHF) is that you can put off collapse for a very long time.
Not forever though. Eventually people start demanding to be paid in something other than Fed-confetti and you too have to choose between reform or collapse.
Of course, if you've at the top of the heaps, have made your nut and have anywhere else to go where you can keep your wealth and social status, collapse may not bother you too much. On the contrary. After the collapse, you can have endless fun making speeches and writing columns and books, in which you claim you saw it coming long ago.
Strong Powerful, Free, Loving, Righteous America is Bombing Hospitals, Killing women, children, patients and Doctors.
the leaders are laughing about it saying "oh well, they shouldn't have been sick or wounded."
the day is coming when several nation states are going to nuke this country and washington deserves it.
Collapsing as worse than imaginable.
The Most Devious Liars In The Room:
Political Parables about Wolves and Sheeple:
POLITICAL FUNDING
ENFORCING FRAUDS
SUFFERS FROM HOW
SUCH ENFORCEMENT
NEVER STOPS LIES
FROM BEING FALSE.
The established systems, which are based upon governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks, necessarily drive society as a whole to develop social psychoses which are far more profound than most people recognize. Increments of short to medium term social successfulness based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS drive civilization as a whole to adapt to that kind of success by the vast majority of people developing attitudes of deliberate ignorance toward the principle of the conservation of energy, as well as to deliberately misunderstand the concept of entropy in absurdly backward ways.
Given that "reforms" are politically impossible, then the only theoretically possible resolutions must be some real, radical revolutions. Those should be guided first and foremost by series of intellectual scientific revolutions, because what MUST to be adapted to are the developments of globalized systems of electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs. Given that overall situation, it is quite possible, and indeed, most probable, that the degree of coming collapses into chaos (fundamentally driven by diminishing returns from being able to continue to strip-mine the planet's natural resources, through making "money" out of nothing in order to "pay" for doing that) within several decades could become unimaginable ...