Debt Rattle August 14 2018
- This topic has 13 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 8 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Vincent van Gogh Vincent’s House in Arles (The Yellow House) 1888 • Turkey Will Be The Largest EM Default Of All Time (Russell Napier) • ‘What
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle August 14 2018]Dozens of casualties in a highway bridge collapse in Genoa. Always hits harder when you know a place. Nicole and I were there in 2011 to go see Beppe Grillo.
Segments of the bridge landed on buildings 100 meters below. Very densely populated area.
It’s very mountainous terrain, basically the Apennine Mountains plunge straight into the Mediterranean there. The road along the sea from say, Monaco, to Genoa is one tunnel after another. So there are lots of these very ‘tall’ highway bridges in the region. Beppe’s home is sort of on the coast, but also very high above it.
Ilargi, you are fast to get this; a quick check of the intertubes isn’t coming up with much. Yet…
Tragic for sure. To think there are stone bridges built by ancient Rome still standing (the aquaduct comes to mind).
This will likely be a trend (if it isn’t already) as infrastructure is ignored and maintenance budgets are slashed to nothing meaningful.A very important deal was finalized today between the five littoral countries of the Caspian Sea..
Ministers from Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Turkmenistan have signed the agreement.
Of note was that Russia would be the sole military presence; excluding NATO from any involvement or presence.
Yes!The billionaires hire all kinds of people to fight to keep what they have.
Here is the list of the capital rulers of the world
https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:staticThe World’s Billionaires
No matter what happens in any country, the billionaires have an army of servants to do their dirty work and/to defend their wealthy positions.
Napier thinks Turkey will default on $500 billion in debt by imposing capital controls.
How about something simpler
http://skylighters.org/ww2music/rollmeover.html
Now, this is number one
And the fun has just begun.
Roll me over, lay me down,
And do it again.I played with the list.
https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:static_tab:oldest_sortreverse:true_country:Turkey
There are 36 billionaires in Turkey
and Greece still has 4 billionaires
A straightforward ‘Earth or Tainter reading is that societies overinvest in infrastructure, then on any contraction, have to overspend to maintain past projects, with nothing for today. Although not infrastructure, police and fire pensions vs active police and fire employees is a good example. Several cities seem to want NO firemen in order to pay men who haven’t worked in 40 years. Whatever the promises, that’s not a working plan.
In the same way, it wouldn’t surprise me if the bond on that bridge hasn’t been paid off yet, and the concrete has failed. And guess what? It will cost 1/4 of a bridge just to clean up and pay off the mess. So Genoa will have to pay the new bridge, the old bridge, AND the insurance/clean up. Winning! So yes, overinvesting in infrastructure is a sure path to ruin. You should live as modestly as you can stand, for the other reason that today may be the day we need to contract and go back to the old ways. If you have one 40-story silo instead of 200 modest-sized barns, you can’t just adjust. Infrastructure isn’t flexible. But that efficiency –going fast across the valley, going cheap — is the enemy of resiliency.
But that leads to the other problem: when money if free, you’re guaranteed to overinvest in projects (and underinvest in people). That’s a double-whammy since we’re already not paying wages to living people, but past ones. So where’s your buy-in from the young? Why won’t they say, “Burn it All”? These past people, past projects, decision makers have only destroyed them. That’s not healthy for cohesion and society. Rome fell when the army would sack a Roman city to get paid. That’s more or less what Chicago is doing. Or Athens.
Then these crap bridges, unnecessary vanity projects, made with lying, substandard Japanese steel, fall down. How do you defend that? Defend making another one? Who will trust them when they can’t keep it for 30 years and the Romans 3,000?
All infrastructure. It’s expensive, promising in sunny weather, until the rains.
” …. substandard Japanese steel …”
Don’t blame the steel
Blame the contractor, blame a dumb or paid off engineer, blame the paid off inspector.
Blame the lender of the finance.
Blame the person who made a fortune off this substandard Japanese steel.I like the story of ‘fireman and soccer goalie Davide Capello’ who drove on the bridge when it collapsed, fell down dozens of meters and came off without a scratch. Wonder what brand of car he was driving. We all want one.
But other than that, when a 90-meter high pylon (so 10 meter wide easily at base) made of reinforced concrete just falls over, even after 50 years, my first question would be about the quality of the concrete. Put in sand because it’s cheaper, mix it with soap to make it settle easier, tons of tricks that all destroy the quality.
In Montréal in the late 1990s there was an overpass – a normal one, not like the Genoa thing-that collapsed. And then the stories came. In the 60s, Montréal was booming. they built the metro system, they built Expo 67 (two whole islands were built for that in the St. Lawrence river), and they built tons of overpasses and bridges. The concrete business was all in the hands of the Italian mob.
This continued into the 70s when on top of all the overpasses etc., the city was awarded the 1976 Olympics. Even more concrete, even more mob. The delivery trucks would check in to the construction sites, do a round and check right back in again to make twice the money. Montréal’s Olympic Stadium was the first billion dollar stadium on the planet. Not because of initial costs, but because of repairs. Nick Auf Der Maur (RIP, he died 20 years ago!), father of Smashing Pumpkins’ Melissa, wrote a book about it, think it’s called the Billion Dollar Game.
Those were the days. And you ain’t going to tell me that back in Italy proper in the same days these things did not happen. Even the best concrete doesn’t last forever. Bad concrete can fail anytime, certainly after 50 years. Check when the bridges in your area were built.
Actually concrete can last for thousands of years. An interesting analysis of the concrete in ancient Rome revealed that volcanic ash from Vesuvius was added to the mix. This concrete was essentially impervious to salt water; a well known enemy of concrete.
Dr. D got it basically correct; corruption knows no bounds…
Is it possible to cure humans of this insideous aspect of our nature?
…me thinks the answer lies within the question…An interesting link adding to my comment above;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concreteThe concrete problem, so to speak, is when everyone is lying, and no one can trust anyone to keep their word and do their job without lying. The engineers may or may not have anticipated Italy to cheap out on substandard concrete, but maybe did not anticipate the Japanese steel. Or the round sand, not gravel, or as the overpass that failed in Florida, the construction would break critical rules that broke the stressing procedures. Each group of workman shortsightedly think they’re the only ones cheating and stealing, and they’re the only ones borrowing the engineers’ overbuilding overcapacity. They’re not. As concrete mafia liars spreads across society to sand-and-gravel liars, hardhat liars, lie-about-delivering-coffee liars, society cannot survive all against all, everyone cheating everyone all the time.
Ultimately only moral societies can cooperate. Only accurate cooperation can sustain complexity. That complexity, that infrastructure efficiency is what makes society able to exist as we know it. Drop morality, drop the logos, and you have anti-logos: chaos, disorder, misery, and death. You choose.
Oh, PS, although technically concrete, the Roman version is a different chemistry and flavor. Maybe the point is that although at least now we know how to make real 1,000 year Roman concrete, we choose to make dissolving substandard 30-year concrete.
I’m not sure if this is better or not when we’re making crappy condos and malls instead of lifegiving aquaducts and villas. Maybe it’s for the best for this demented culture to dissolve with our works back into the the forests and the seas.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.