Globalization Is Dead, But The Idea Is Not

[Raúl Ilargi Meijer]

Dorothea Lange Youngest little girl of motherless family 1939   We can, every single one of us, agree that we’re either in or just past a -financ
[See the full post at: Globalization Is Dead, But The Idea Is Not]

[Greenpa]

The extreme fragility of the rule of law is being demonstrated right now in the Philippines; where they elected their demagogue president. Simply by saying he would be fine with citizens just killing drug dealers – and he would not prosecute – “more than 400 suspected dealers dead and more than 4,400 arrested since Duterte took office on June 30. Nearly 600,000 people have surrendered to authorities, hoping to avoid getting killed.” According to the AP and WaPo, and others.

Another source says 800 have been killed so far. Other sources point out that not everyone being murdered is actually involved with drugs- the chaos is seen as an opportunity to murder at will.

And just how do you get a society to step back from that sort of culture?

Grim seems an inadequate word.

[seychelles]

I’d say wherever you live and whenever your next election is, don’t vote for anyone who promotes any centralization ideas. Or growth. Because those ideas are all in some state of decomposing, and hence whoever promotes them is a zombie.

Good advice but not actionable. The only candidates are zombies. Pragmatism dictates that decentralization’s survivors will find meaning for their lives in the spiritual rather than the material. They will make a nice day from within.

[hugho]

“I’d say wherever you live and whenever your next election is, don’t vote for anyone who promotes any centralization ideas. Or growth.”
Good advice Seychelles, if only that were possible. Unfortunately that is the existing dominant meme of political economics whether you cling to the neo classical variety or the Keynesian flavor. Nobody get why growth has been the driving force for more than 200 yrs. That growth has been created by real wealth and that real wealth has been driven by energy cheap energy which has facilitated cheap food, transportation and exponential industrial development which did not exist prior to oil and coal. With cheap energy nearly at an end, economic growth will diminish and contract.. If you subtract the huge contribution of financialization to GDP numbers the past decade or so, growth in most of the OECD has been flat or negative anyway. Paper trading in the casino banks doesn’t yield real wealth anyway. It makes money which gets counted as GDP but it is not wealth.
The Saxo bank boys are right about the Persian and Roman Empires as Michael Grant points this out in his marvelous book “The Fall of the Roman Empire”. Grant emphasizes the income inequality and disunity of the Roman empire but has a whole chapter devoted to the onerous taxation Rome resorted to trying to keep the empire together and pay their military. History rhymes even if it doesn’t exactly repeat.We are in new economic, social and political ground this century because we have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet by hockey stick economic growth driven by free energy. The economic failures looming are also driven by the insane policies of debt and central bank cluelessness of course but economic collapse will be the least of our worries. I recently reread The Limits to Growth and they called it 50 years ago. The party is over. This is a new rodeo. Hang on to those reins and that saddlehorn. Gonna be a heck of a ride.

[Joe Clarkson]

Japan is leading the rest of the OECD into their demographic future, so it is important to keep in mind a few pertinent facts. Japan’s working age population has been declining steadily since 1990, absolute population levels declining since 2011, and yet real GDP per capita (even with far fewer workers) has been drifting up continuously. In short, the average Japanese has it good. I don’t know how long Japan can keep it going like this, but if the rest of the developed world follows in their footsteps they will be lucky.

[Greenpa]

Be very wary of economic statistics reported by Japan. Other statistics do get mentioned; but tend to disappear; example: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20160810_30/ “Data from the Bank of Japan shows that prices of goods traded among companies fell in July for the 16th straight month.” They have excuses for why; but that looks just an awful lot like real, systemic deflation to me. Also – # of households in Japan on welfare; record high; # of children in poverty, record high. Number of young people going into farming, record low; % of food Japan imports – stable; at 60% on a calorie basis, last I looked… but hey, they’ve got Pokemon Go, now; after everyone else-

[V. Arnold]

Ilargi; I think a self correction is inevitable and it’s going to be deadly on a global scale. The self correction I speak of will not be human driven but a Gaia driven event; totally out of the control of humans.
We’ve a history of making very poor choices; I think Adam and Eve must have been westerners; and getting kicked out of the garden started this whole ugly process.
My last sentence is said with tongue firmly planted in cheek…sort of…

@ Greenpa; Duterte’s anti-drug policies are straight out of Thaksin Shiniwattra’s 2003 playbook in Thailand. It started shortly after I arrived and killed about 2,400 men, women, and children, extra-judicially. The numbers vary according to who is doing the telling.

[TonyPrep]

You’ll never get rid of the drive for growth but there’ll come a time (soon, if it isn’t here already) when that drive cannot be satisfied except by fiddling the GDP figures even more. Even that will eventually reach the end of the road and cold reality will bite even for the elites.

[TheTrivium4TW]

The question that is almost never addressed, and when it is addressed is done so with misinformation, is, why is growth a necessity?
The main reason growth is a necessity is because of the nature of debt-money systems. Consider a simple system where $20 is lent into existence @ 5% and is to be paid off in one year’s time.
At the end of the year, the borrower has $20, owes $21 with interest due, and the lender controls the $1 as an accrued interest asset.
Does anyone want to venture how $20 can pay $21, especially when the collateral on the $20 loan (with $21 due now) is the person’s house and the lender has a legal way to effectively steal it from their prey through debt-money fraud?

I didn’t think so. But the Debt-Money Monopolists don’t just want to steal $20 worth of stuff. They want to steal the MAJORITY OF SOCIETY’S PHYSICAL ASSETS WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY IMPOSING DEBT SERVITUDE UPON THE MASSES AS A CONTROL MECHANISM.
SO THEY LEND AND ADDITIONAL $20 INTO EXISTENCE. The original borrower can work or sell assets in order to make their debts payable, BUT THE OUTSTANDING DEBT ROSE FROM $1 TO $2 – VOILA… INFLATION!
Now you know why the Debt-Money Monopolists target inflation instead of a steady state system.

You people who support a steady state system while simultaneously ignore the debt-money problem have taken in immoral stance. By demanding a steady state economy under a debt-money system, YOU ARE PROMOTING THE SYSTEMATIC ASSET STRIPPING OF SOCIETY THROUGH DEBT-MONEY FRAUD. Whether witting or not, that’s a DEMONIC POSITION. People need to expose the debt-money system instead of allowing it to stay on their “never touch” list… exactly as the Debt-Money Monopolists instructed the MIT faculty to warn their brightest eCONomists.
The debt-money collapse and societal asset stripping mechanism is “a feature, not a bug.” Suckers will cheer the engineered debt-money collapse exactly as the Star Wars republic citizens cheered the fall of their republic and their ensuing enslavement.

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