Dr. Diablo
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I had the same impression some weeks back, when the center news cycle was that Varoufakis was being removed, replaced by his minister, in order to (perhaps) break the logjam in negotiations. ‘Cause he’s such a horrible person. News, and I’m sure it was right here, how *gasp* no one would talk to him at parties, especially because he *gasp* wore jeans and had his top button undone. Not making it up.
Anyway, same idea: there’s no way Varoufakis is backing off the negotiations, although sure they may want to take a cooler on his personality clash for a bit. So what was he up to? And top guess was, yes, Plan B. So if EU negotiations were going nowhere (i.e. “Submit or Die.” “No.” “Submit or Die.” “Um, no.” “Submit or Die.” “Still no.”) maybe there’s a tiny chance that Tsipras instead send the A Team to Russia/BRICS side to set up the REAL negotiations there, leaving his placeholder behind? And Lo! We had the pre-pay of the pipeline profit news shortly after, along with the fruits and veg embargo end. If the EU is so hot to privatize, they’ll privatize the port to the Chinese, and sell a military base to Russia, which of course is simply ridiculous! Greece can only be sold to OUR billionaires! Now this week, they may have gotten a response from the EU, as talks are to open a joint weapons factory in Greece with Russia–Kalashnikovs in this case. And given what’s happening in neighbor Macedonia, they may need them. I suspect one reason they haven’t tried to get into Venezuela a lot more was the hundred thousands of Russian AKs Chavez bought back when. They can go toe-to-toe with fighter jets, but not urban rifles. No way. Ominous sign, terrible choices, but it is what it is. All Europe has to do is not kill and eat Greece, an amount of favor and debt forgiveness any single-digit billionaire could afford. A City like Frankfort could probably bail them out—they only have to get through June 2015. They won’t, steering EU away from democracy and into rule-by-force, exactly as Tsipras just wrote yesterday. So if that’s the case, what can you do? Greece had the exact same option in 1941, although back then Hitler gave 5 hours for the decision. But the options were the same. Submit and be occupied, thousands killed, your workforce enslaved forever, or be attacked by a unified and superior army and cease to exist as a nation and people.
PS. “Furiously defiant” Tsipras? Really? The puffed up green Incredible Hulk Tsipras? The letter to Le Monde was the most thoughtful, thorough, nuanced, and somewhat bureaucratic thing I’ve read in some time. So when Tsipras says “hey, let’s step back and think about what we’re doing” it’s “Furiously Defiant” (from Ambrose Pritchard) but when Schäuble won’t budge or “negotiate” in a “negotiation” it’s perfectly normal. How does that work??? How do we set up this meta-context, this expectation, so radically skewed from sense and equality? How do people swallow this and not choke?
Tune in next week….
“If European voters 20 years ago were told what the consequences of the euro would be, would anybody have voted for it?” he asked. “I think the answer would be, knowing what they know now, that nobody would have voted for it.”
I think we know this already since, when given a referendum, European voters never voted for it the first place. Wonderful persisting illusion that they ever did. Maybe they already knew what happens when a lot of schmart guys in government get themselves a “smart idea.” Disaster.
Looks like they’re treating the Clintons as a mafia as well:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clinton-foundation-hit-with-racketeering-lawsuit/article/2565069?utm_campaign=Fox%20News&utm_source=foxnews.com&utm_medium=feedRacketeering lawsuit on them from Freedom Watch.
<Sigh> Science again. So they can’t make accurate climate models but already know how the whole US summer will play out? I’ve seen this one before. At least 1/3 of the time, the Farmer’s Almanac’s or NOAA’s model doesn’t work. It’s fine to have models, and that’s how models go, but don’t get all worked up about it. You know any year there could be an extended drought, so you should have prepared long ago anyway.
Same with the Permian extinction. Not so long ago, there was no theory at all. The dinosaurs either gradually evolved into us, or died somehow. Then there was a theory of extinction, trying to tie together two big, long-ago events: everyone knew that the asteroid hit the gulf and ended the Permian. Now we don’t know that anymore: it’s all silly talk. Now we DEFINITELY know that from a few ash samples, far smaller, harder-to-measure events that mirror today’s news ended it all. Absolutely, definitely this time.
I’m not arguing for or against this version of the Permian Extinction event. Plausible and certainly could be true. But again, this is a theory, a model. Every. Single. Day. scientific models are discredited and revised–as you see from this very example, often solid, widely-accepted theories are suddenly and wildly revised into new territory. That being so for at least the last 100 years, can we just accept that they’re models, they’re flawed and in progress, and not pretend they’re definitive? Think about all the theories that have come an gone in your lifetime already–even if you’re 10 years old. Blink and in a few years there’ll be another. Relax. Panic doesn’t engender a wise and accurate response, which is what we most need right now.
Summed up in the phrase “Submit or Die”
When did Canada begin to have such awful exports? Mundell and Carnie and Harper; acting ministers who don’t even reside in the country but in Arizona; refusing to oppose fascism even in name (UN A/C.3/69/L.56/Rev.1), joining with all the wrong crowd in foriegn wars, etc? What’s happened to y’all up there?
And the unsavory thing about Mundell is not that he wants to drown European principles in the bathtub, but that the plan–now enacted by powerful men–was not to be discussed, debated, voted on, or chosen by the people. No one was to know what direction, what options they were choosing, what road they were headed down. Where the original votes in Ireland, France, and Holland didn’t go their way, the referendums were halted forever. But that’s not democracy, and that’s not consent. There’s a word for it, and you’ll find it in UN A/C.3/69/L.56/Rev.1.
What matters is control, not reality. Those-who-must-be-in-control have already decided Greece is out. They just need to blame it on Greece (or Russia) and neither is being cooperative about taking the blame. But don’t worry, since they’ve already decided, it’ll happen. Need a catastrophe to happen to stop Spain and France from flipping to Syriza-like questions about the status quo, preferably with the peak hardship on the eve of elections.
Submit or die. You did not submit, therefore, you are “wasting our time” therefore, you must be destroyed as an example to others who might consider not submitting but thinking of their citizens.
They print so much money each week, they could solve this tiny crisis with a handshake. They have not, which means they don’t want to. Which means they want the crisis. Which in a way means they “staged” the crisis, made it happen when it didn’t have to. And once “staged” no doubt have game plans to play out as it unfolds, which in a way means they are steering, guiding, directed the crisis they “staged” and chose. But I’d expect no less. It would be irresponsible not to have those plans, or not to make those decisions about accepting Syriza’s requirements or not. Gives one a different perspective on policy though, no?
Looks like you were on the case with Friday’s news:
“We come with arguments, they reject them, then they say, ‘you’re wasting time’. What does that mean? It’s just saying, agree with us. You’re wasting time between getting elected and doing what we say.”
Submit or Die. Those are your options.
It’s the fashion of the day: “Do what I tell you because I’m right!” (and you’re stupid). And if that doesn’t work, then “Do what I tell you because I have the power and will destroy you.” You all may know this better as “Submit or Die” i.e violent tyranny.
Being more generous, what has happened is, like so many ideas, particularly Utopian ones, the Idea, the Dream has now taken on more importance than Reality to a group of believers. (Invasion of the Memes?) So it becomes fully justified to destroy reality–real things, real countries, real people; to rob, oppress, murder by thousands–because those people are inconveniently getting in the way of your Idea, a fantasy you read about once and lives only in your mind. If only they would obey, I wouldn’t have to kill them, but they are irrational. They are, not me. They are the ones making me violent, not me. They are the reason things aren’t going well, not that my idea is a steaming load of bunkum. We all do this to some extent, but most don’t turn it into a psychopathic pathology. Governments do.
However, the history of enforcing Utopian ideals is a bad one: Communism, a wonderful idea of sharing and support and equality was responsible for a possible 85-100M deaths since 1850. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes This is true of many ideas–mostly idealistic, utopian ones, often religions, but the arc of the communist ideal is the most true to form and relevant today.
Since the EU has already killed tens of thousands through unnecessary poverty, suicide, and crime, and has dramatically escalated the police vs. the people (as seen in the recent ECB HQ riots in Frankfort, but also with training and weapons in Spain, Germany) how many thousands or millions will the EU kill before they re-adjust their idea to better suit reality? It doesn’t have to stop; they can have WW4 and demolish Europe again. That is an option.
“”The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself. [Thus] All progress depends on the unreasonable man.” –Geo. Bernard Shaw
What sort of unreasonableness do we wish? Personally, I’d ignore the Idea altogether and simply live the Reality. But I’m unreasonable that way.
NooBoob, the situation is challenging, but the numbers they are using to describe it are badly skewed. This may account in some measure for the people in the know not being alarmed yet.
Easy 1st: Water is not consumed. It is part of the hydrological cycle. They most count the “water used” by wheat, cows, etc as if it is oil, burned, then destroyed forever more. Not so. Water is used all the way down from the top of the mountain to the sea, passing through life from bugs to birds to cows, trees, rivers, streams, and Coke machines all the way. The same water is “used” once, 10, 100, 1,000 times before refreshing again. It is possible to use water more and less efficiently, but you simply cannot calculate its “use” the way you would oil, copper, or even firewood. So watch the numbers.
Continuing, it’s trivially simple to save water. Western methods easily waste 5, 10, 20x the water they have to, which makes for extremely easy, economical gains, should anyone wish to act. It’s reassuring to know we’re eating so high on the hog that we could cut our diet 90% and still eat well. So that’s a good thing. California, the example du jour, for 2 years, if not decades, couldn’t be bothered to limit lawns, golf courses, Nestle water bottle plants, or ditch irrigation. …They’re happy to cut off your shower, however. Maybe they should listen to John Wayne when he said “Life is hard. But it’s even harder if you’re stupid.”
Food challenges generally: yes, problem. However, Africa for instance has been intentionally put in disarray, wildly curtailing their vast production, which could still be far higher if they ever tried using efficient means. So what Africa? It’s a continent so large that the US, China, Western Europe and India would fit inside it. https://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartography And they haven’t even started trying to be productive yet? Sounds like if we cared we might have a win there. Maybe that’s why there’s a resource war going on in East Africa over land enough to feed all of China?
The warming everyone is concerned about is opening up vast areas to the temperate zone as the land mass is skewed to the north, far more is opened in Russia and Canada than is lost in narrower distance from South Carolina to Death Valley. It’s up to us to use it, but it’s there to use. If that doesn’t happen, then I guess we’ll continue using the farmland everyone feared would end, not ending.
Most farming remains desperately inefficient, as they have yet to apply drip irrigation and are using fossil fuels instead of far more productive-per-acre human/animal intensive processes. This would also employ millions who need to be employed at a task robots would struggle on. Yields can be as much as 8x higher with human attention. We have not yet applied Permaculture methods, either for stacking no-till food forests, or in greening the desert, both of which take a mere 10-20 years to accomplish. Reclaiming the desert alone would add about as much land as you wish, and is provably possible by known, inexpensive means. No one really cares. You could probably green dozens of square miles yourself with a bag and a shovel if you tried.
Also, no one has made the slightest use of the highly valuable land we’ve opened with near-perfect transportation, electric, water, and drainage, parceled into neat human-intensive packages, located on top of rich, populated markets. I speak of the suburbs in the U.S. especially, but throughout the Western world. Since near 0% of this land is in production, I’m pretty sure that’s an easy win for a few hundred thousand –or million– acres of prime land.
And we’re not talking yet about limiting the 50% of food waste in our present restaurant/grocery “Grade-A only” model. Add a few million that could be fed off that.
Truth be told, we haven’t even started, so don’t call the end so soon. At this point, the limits have nothing to do with science–whatsoever–or the limits of the world or ecosystem, and everything to do with not wanting to try anything different that might work. Like dumping milk and food in the Depression, scarcity is profitable. Abundance is not. And golly, whyever would the system want to convince you that there was nothing to be done, we were already at limits, so we need to start a war and kill a few hundred million of us? I mean, seeing as it isn’t true. Why would they do that, since they know what I know?
Don’t believe the hype. Start growing some things, press to your local limits, then tell me if food is scarce or not. No matter where on earth you are, you’ll be astonished at how much abundance human attention creates. Act, then get back to me.
Just pointing out that the entire edifice–from the first word when they get up in the morning, to the last breath over apertif at night–is nothing but a system of lies. That’s true for the papers, the thinkers, the politicians, and even the people. There isn’t a genuine bone left on the continent–or on several continents at this point. Small lies started long ago have been coddled and fostered and festered until now anyone who tells the slightest truth–about anything–is considered ridiculous, if not a mortal threat; one which we won’t tell ourselves we are going to arrange to have murdered while we smile over dinner.
Yes, everything said by everybody, everywhere, is nothing but a tissue of lies. That’s why it can never make sense. So when are we going to start talking about what’s really going on?
Interesting on velocity, because at the moment velocity is collapsing, not rising. Retail traffic and sales too, down 15% in a MONTH. That’s close to “game over.” That doesn’t mean it can’t rise, but it’s hard to anticipate or predict reversals.
A similar thing could happen non-organically if the world refuses the Dollar in trade, thus revaluing it. Then you’d have a forced-“inflation” via currency re-set, down 30-70%, like all good 3rd world countries that run out of rope. But it’s not internal and not inflation in the sense of the domestic economy dumping currency for goods.
Nonsense that they’re “hoarding” cash. In aggregate, they do have cash in the bank (which means it can be confiscated at any hiccup with a bail-in). However, that cash was raised by issuing unprecedented debt. So what companies have REALLY done is dramatically increase their debt position in a bum economy, bought back stock at the worst time, and put a little residue from their stock-pump initiative into the bank, thereby paying 5% on larger debt, receiving 1% in interest, while adding the risk of a bail-in.
Brilliant!
Every answer a question with another question?
https://www.topcovers4fb.com/facebook-covers/question-everything-why/
😉“The keyword in this is ‘austerity’. The Greek people voted en masse to end it, and so did the Scots.”
They keep shifting the meaning of this non-word “austerity”. What I see generally meant in “ending austerity” is that we should keep living above our means forever. That would be nice. Unfortunately, the laws of thermodynamics do not permit this. It seemed so when the West was stealing the resources of the BRICS nations (via rigged exchange rates) and still had a lot of internal value to destroy–liquidating factories, letting electric grids and transportation decay, deferring maintenance on houses, selling off ships and industries, getting into debt–but once the tide goes out they realize they can produce nothing, and so to keep the rich from sharing the hardship, they need to make hard decisions about who lives and dies. Me and my 2nd yacht? Or you skivers whose pension we stole? Ah, but we hold these truths to be self-evident.
At the same time, capitalism has been dead so long, there’s no one left at advocate doing actual work–aka employment–and increasing the national pie. Why would they? With the end of property rights, if you increased the pie, they would only steal it.
12B in welfare cuts? That seems ill-advised. –Not for the inevitable riots and toppling of the existing politics, mind you–I wouldn’t presume to comment on that. No, because 12B is chump change compared to the REAL welfare skivers, insider banks and corporations. In the U.S., in one initiative alone (TARP), they issued $23 TRILLION to pals, including non-U.S. companies like Toyota, European Banks, wives of members to invest in houses on Long Island, and nationally-critical companies known to be in need of funds like McDonald’s and Harley-Davidson. Presently the hundred-trillion$ edifice of Health Care, Student Loans, and Housing rest entirely on corporate welfare. Without the sectors dependent on this merging state and corporate power, there would be no economy.
I venture that $12 Billion is chump change compared to the $23,000 Billion saved by cutting corporate welfare. By a factor of oh, about 1,000. Put another way, you could instead increase social support by 1,000x, and/or reduce taxes proportionately. Why aren’t the fiscal conservatives going after the real budget savings? Why I ask, but why?
Global warming could absolutely be real and still be a tax scam. I would expect no less.
But the real question here–that I think all us glumskulls can agree upon is:
1. it doesn’t matter, as no one is going to voluntarily do anything, or if the West does, their gains will be outrun by the emerging world, ie, all carbon will be burned by someone.
2. it doesn’t matter, because the arrival of peak oil means CO2 is going down already.
3. it doesn’t matter, because resource competition in an oil-constrained world is far more likely to lead to both destruction of supply and the murder of a few hundred million consumers.Did I mention it doesn’t matter? Hoe your own row. If you believe any of these things, you have more than enough work to set your own house in order without worrying about the other guy.
It may be unfortunate that the Isles contain some of the world’s premier gardeners and land stewards–or at least many top techniques were created and remembered there. Unfortunate because everywhere else has a lot of easy gains to make imitating English gardening, coppice woods, green woodwork, bent wood barns and houses, stone blackhouses, and so on. Still, no doubt like everywhere more can be done. I doubt vines, espalier, and new worldwide varieties have full use in the ‘burbs yet.
Still–in 1810, UK had already hit the wall on population with advanced methods, only to find a many-fold increase within the famous animal and vegetable breeding and contests of the Victorian era. Beans and others went from semi-wild, scarlet runner types that you boiled for an hour to today’s modern french filet beans. Yields increased, processing and cooking requirements dropped. Food forests have a similar potential, with northern kiwis, american persimmons, or heaven-knows-what grown on top of each other, in no-petrol-till style.
So just as Malthus couldn’t fathom how on earth the Isles could feed themselves and capped population at 1750 levels, maybe there are other mass exploits to capitalize on. Estuaries with tidal power, fish seeding and “farming” (semi-wild), high-tunnel greenhouses as are catching on here, mushroom caves, creating offshore fishing reefs or whole islands like the Maunsell Fort “Sealand” or…who knows what?
Certainly the UK wastes more energy in stupid stuff than the entire nation consumed in 1920. Rerouting that waste into something useful still leaves an awful high standard of living. And a standard of living that is compatible with green ultra-intensive methods your countrymen are famous for. Knockabout with Elliot Coleman, Paris Market Gardening c 1900, review methods as seen in “Victorian Kitchen Garden” and “Edwardian Farm”, and see how their yields-still not matched today–can be integrated into food forest and vines.
But the problem isn’t really that we don’t know HOW to do these things. We’re already not using methods we’ve known for 100 years. The problem is, we know perfectly well how and we WON’T do it. We’d rather complain and bomb people than work. That’s not a knowledge problem, it’s a moral one.
Yes, Professor, but then we’d be arguing on the basis of logic. Since the VonMises/Bastiat/Constitutionalists has been proven right for 100 years, and the Socialist/Progressive/Keynesian side has been wrong for 100 years, clearly no one has any interest in truth, logic, or what works. At all.
That being so, what is their real interest? If billionaires have so much power, and these “wrong” things were a problem for them, wouldn’t they throw some campaign dollars and stop it? Or is it that the way things are going–however provably, logically “wrong”–is actually an advantage to them, as we see the over-1% wealth expanding and the income disparity wildly expanding?
IF ONLY logic were what was at stake here, or made any difference in argument.
Hostile much? The man has a different overall outlook than you. His thought is to have small government, low taxes, and like Raleigh says, for people to take care of themselves so what is theirs is theirs. Others have the idea that we should collectively gather our money and charitably distribute it from a central point–a model that requires high taxes and centralization. They are two methods of achieving a similar social end. We may agree with one or the other, but they are in essence different roads to the same goal, and therefore the focus of legitimate discussion and debate.
Can we have that debate? Or should we shout down and cripple those who think differently from us?
Of course a complex subject to take on in a post. My thought was the world’s carrying capacity, not the UK. Yes, population would have to slosh around, but the UK is going the other way, by vigorously importing maximum people when they’re already over their probable capacity. And why, one asks? Why when the places they came from are quite probably not over capacity, like Africa and Pakistan? Nevermind, that goes into the other aspects above, killing for profit, intentionally wrecking neighbors for personal gain, etc. But if you ask about the intelligence of importing more people into the US or UK, why they’re coming, or even if that isn’t more or less the dissolution of national borders and thus the national state, you’re a big meanie. Shutting down questions and debate: nice work if you can get it.
On the other hand, we can all do better. Iceland has used her energy for greenhouses, which perhaps Scotland can do with wind and tide, and there is a ludicrous waste of energy on transport everywhere. Consider Britain of the ’20s and now. Seems like you could pretty much reverse to that level without a lot changing, but reversing mostly in expectations. It wasn’t 70f in 1000 sq ft houses back then. The US is another matter as our infrastructure has been entirely centralized and dismantled, but we have far more resources and space if we could make the initial transition.
So can the world withstand the wealth it apparently takes to cause population control? Probably not. But that’s only because we see “wealth” as “having a lot of TVs”. Imagine you were on Caribbean vacation, in the hotel. How much energy are you using to live wealthier than you generally do? A: a lot less: centralized housing, centralized kitchen, community facilities. So it has to do with expectations, infrastructure, and efficiency, not with having a new Jag. We don’t seem to have become that mature yet, but it’s out there. As I usually say, it depends on whether you want to life like Al Gore, or a zen monk. –But happiness, as the monks show, is not dependent on jet setting between palatial estates. In fact, human happiness is a small and humble thing, fit sweetly in the ecosystem, and is what we are most tuned for.
But suppose we are not rich, as “Fewer” proposes? Doesn’t matter. So for thousands of years Africa had her human culture, and North America had hers, and yet there was never overpopulation there, without technology, without doctors, Pogroms, without restraint. How? Did they have 19 babies and 17 of them died? No. Because indigenous peoples–and I’m including the ancient cultures of Sweden, Britions, Europe here–they provably had a balance. Most places you look at had their plants, their methods of birth control that are beyond abortion and war. So no, you don’t need to be rich. It’s just something people understand better and can be statistically quantified. Q: So what shattered this delicate balance into the massive overpopulation today? Why does the system now have to expand infinitely at an increasing rate?
Moving on, one of the places you’ll find the most gain is in the deserts, many of which were human made. But if they were made they can be un-made. Masonubu Fukuoka is one of the core readings on this, probably an enlightened master. Although his world was lush, hot Osaka, when asked, he quickly developed a way to green all the deserts with a screen and pile of dirt in his back yard with a dozen illiterate teenagers. Like “The Man Who Planted Trees”, the idea is that deserts already grow something, we just need to capitalize on that and expand, for deserts, like all earth, want to grow and make their own ecosystem. So you find desert seeds and roll them up in clay balls and throw them in the rocks and crevices…and do nothing. Rain will come, someday, the seeds will sprout or they won’t, but you tip the balance in favor of the green, and slowly, over the years, you discover the land has changed. When that happens, the plants create their own groundwater and their own rain, and soon: no longer desert. Soon: no longer CO2 crisis, no longer warming, with food and pasture expanding. This would apply to the rock and grass “deserts” of Scotland. (Humorously called “forests”, just as they are in Arizona)
Seems like a pipe dream, until you look at the desperate impatients in the Permaculture world. They terrace the desert (their expertise area) and plant the whole system overnight–grass, bushes, trees, right in the flat clay deserts of Australia, and build a food forest in a mere decade, fast enough to retire on, then build a no-energy house on top of it to boot.
The great lament of Malthusians is that deserts are so large and humans make it worse. But humans are paid to destroy (by whom? we ask). In the blink of an eye we can re-take the 33% that is desert and often enough return it to jungle, return Lebanon to the cedars. That’s not counting the endless steppes of Asia or elsewhere. And although no one’s applied themselves to the Great White North, although Elliot Coleman has developed a system of non-energy greenhousing in cloudy Maine, while the cropping of red willow can provide enough fuel to populate the vast interior, with electric and greenhouses even.
So would things have to change? Yes, or else they’d be the same. Would we have to use carbon? Not really. We just can’t seem to think outside the narrow channel of oil + money that has been handed to us. Basically reforming the earth takes some time, intelligence, steady effort, and a few shovels. The real problem isn’t that. It’s that if you started to change it, the existing system would either stop you or else steal back the jungle you grew and cut it down for profit again. So we don’t have real problems, we have fake ones that are in our minds. Don’t kill your neighbors and steal their things. Don’t violently oppress them for profit as they have traditional agriculture in Africa. If you don’t murder them for the first penny they make, they’ll pretty quickly rise to their own level and create a working culture with a stable population. It takes a lot of energy and effort to keep things this screwed up. Stop coming down with top-down “help” screwing things up and people will pretty much start fixing where they live.
I know because it used to be like that, before they built the centralization that started all this “helping”, these little Napoleons giving orders, and those were the same humans we have now. But without the telephone, internet and cheap books that give thousands of solutions in hours.
Actually, the point may not be the absolute salary of individual MPs but the mind-bending bureaucratic cost of the EU. Remember, the cost of the EU is still ON TOP of the cost of the national governments, which is in addition to your local governments. Adding another whole layer of government is expensive, and the EU is demonstrably not concerned with the cost.
All these expenses are paid by someone. And that someone is the people. Since Corporations and billionaires can recoup their costs with lobbying, the entire cost of government lies exclusively on the people. Generally, the poorest people, least able to defend themselves from predation. In the poorest countries, likewise least able to defend themselves.
So whether ministers are collecting E200,000 and 5-star hotels for work they never did (which many expose’s and their expense accounts prove) or whether they make E20,000/worker, the EU edifice (which is NOT EVEN A DEMOCRACY in that bureaucrats have NO obligation to obey the EU parliament) all those costs for sham, show, phony ministers comes directly from the people starving in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Whatever their intent, their budget is directly removing aid for refugees, so people are evicted, killed, and dispersed while they eat E500 dinners and take the week off back home for more E500 dinners with lobbyists.
You can’t reasonably argue this isn’t happening. We have the expense reports, we have the logs of meetings they do and don’t attend, and we have the news reports of what the EU costs continent wide vs the news of national hardships.
If parliament is irrelevant anyway, shouldn’t we just take their paychecks and use them to help the citizens? We can just declare Barrosso Chancellor to the King and go home. I mean, the illusion seems to be unnecessarily expensive. Does anyone still believe it?
I can’t disagree with RH’s perspective on the issue, but perhaps as ever there are encyclopedias written on the problems and fortune cookies on the solutions. There is a book called “Fewer”, which was a response to the overpopulation issue. In it, the author points out that population is already declining in some important areas, US, China, Europe, and in fact critically so. It may be turning the corner in the Middle East and Africa, but although promising, that hasn’t happened yet. More to the point was WHY population was falling. Maybe you’ve come across the article lately on drug theory –you know, the one where rats in rat prison die from drug overdose but rats in rat paradise more or less ignore free drugs altogether. That says something about the reason society is demented and has issues, and the challenges are NOT the real problem. In a similar way, people counter-intuitively have population growth when their society is destroyed (and even fertility increases) and have fewer children when society is happy and orderly. –This may has to do with birth control methods and children being your only stable support in chaos, but the reasons are irrelevant here.
So the voice that says, “Look at those people over there, their hoards are coming to destroy you” is an ill voice indeed. What you may really be looking at is the consequence of utterly destroying their society under colonialism, and continuing their desperation under militarism and neo-colonialism. Likewise, if you want there to be fewer people hopping your fences, you need to make sure your neighbor’s grass is green. Because shockingly, the richer people become, and the more they are ABLE to have children, the FEWER children they have–US, Japan, and EU as your examples.
Therefore, if you want to solve overpopulation (and I disagree that the carrying capacity is too high–only that resources are ill-distributed to maximize profit) you should NOT go out and kill 4 Billion fellow human beings as may have been planned, but in fact STOP shooting, bombing, strafing, droning, poisoning, and drowning them, and help them–help all of us–become prosperous, and you’ll find, as everywhere else it’s been tried, that a stable, happy, and wealthy neighbor then chooses to have fewer children.
Not only that, but you don’t have to openly promote despair and mass murder on the internet.
Now for a much longer treatise, explore why Africa, the richest continent on earth in minerals and agriculture, has somehow become the poorest in food and money. Because if they just stop using irrational European methods and started using their own, Africa would be so much superior to Europe that Italians would be swimming the other way. But such are the ways of man: they would rather die than change their minds and habits.
Adding this to yesterday’s article that the EU officially refused to help refugees and openly preferred their drowning (“their” being either the refugee or the Italian and Greek states), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/22/eu-borders-chief-says-saving-migrants-lives-cannot-be-priority-for-patrols
we can see how many thousand deaths are considered incidental, if not openly commendable, to the patrons of the present system. 1M dead in Libya, 2M dead or displaced in Syria, 1M refugees from Ukraine, openly bombing and invading Yemen on no pretense at all, killing on the order of several million Iraqis over the many years? Meh. I feel quite sure their only lament is that they didn’t do more. If only they could accomplish more, I’m quite sure it would be a perfect world. And it’s all of us shleps down on the ground holding back their big plans with our “human happiness, must save lives, not kill your fellow man.” Blah blah blah.When are we going to stop cowering about the true name of such activity, of such impulses, and call it what it is?
There are three other Bitcoin problems:
1. The chain is readable by anyone with enough horsepower, meaning there is an indelible record of who bought what, i.e. it is the least anonymous currency in existence.
2. Recent ruling of “What is Bitcoin” says it is common property, meaning if there are legal issues anywhere previous to your ownership, your Bitcoins could be legally clawed back in dispute, similar to the way stolen property reverts.
3. Apparently, and similar to #1, if someone can gain enough Bitcoins they can de facto see the whole tree as well as control the currency’s price. Nations are much better equipped to mine Bitcoins quickly and gain this permanent upper hand, which would be self-funding, and there is every reason to think they have, or will.
This may explain why nations have held back on opposing Bitcoin competition, using it as an experiment in getting citizens to volunteer to the ultimate unbacked, non-real, total-surveillance, total-tax, non-state, world digital currency, and to have people think they are actually OPPOSING the system by doing so. It’s awesome.
Q: How can drilling in some areas possibly be that disruptive to herbivores? That’s never happened anywhere in North America, even the suburbs are stuffed with deer. And are they saying the wolves are at risk? Because reports are they’re expanding wildly where introduced in the Western states. Maybe the issue is more the incredible dieoff of Canadian forests due to rain and the pine beetle? Because yes, if the forests stop being green, there isn’t going to be enough browse for deer, who will be weak. But that would be a different ecological disaster, not the building of new access, which didn’t seem to do much back when the US did it in the 19 and early 20th c. Asking questions.
“while QE has increased absolute wealth.”
Stop right there. Money is not wealth. QE uses money to squander and liquidate, i.e. destroy wealth. Wealth is the collection of actual things: water, food, tools, knowledge. Money is a token that counts and measures it, in theory. The yardstick is not the cloth. The yardstick–the arbitrary thing– MEASURES the cloth–the real work. Other than that they are in no way related at all. You don’t find out how much cloth you have by counting rulers, although one might think so by reading the news. If we can’t get the little things right, how are we going to solve the big things?
By the way, destroying actual wealth by printing money is just in ADDITION to causing the enormous, unprecedented, revolution-risking wealth disparity Merton criticizes.
In other news, anyone notice that the EU is forcing Greece out by any means possible? They really need Greece to be at the bottom during the Spanish or Italian elections to scare those voters but good, and certainly before Greece bounces back into prosperity inside the Russian camp. Then the Tier II (?) losses in Germany create fodder for Germany to leave and flip East as well, kicking out the U.S. and their NSA corporate/political spying that binds the country and continent. Otherwise, what is Germany’s motive? Just thinking.
Isn’t putting all the money into the Greek center the first part of nationalizing the banks, one of Syriza’s direct party promises? And when they exit on a Greek referendum and use the Drachmas they printed up, wouldn’t it be far easier to dispense them from this center point, keeping those funds away from ECB confiscation? So the municipalities may be well served by getting on board with Verofaukis instead of RBS and Parabas this time? Maybe.
“The EU is to launch military operations against the networks of smugglers in Libya”
Because when you’re a world leader, it’s always a good time to blow people up. That’s how we save them!
Of course, we would never use it as cover to accidentally blow up the people and ships in Libya who are supporting the side we don’t like and so further the war and destruction that’s causing the migrant flight in the first place. No. We would never do that.
Thanks Raleigh. We might also call it by another name: the failure of central planning. Or success! Depending on where you’re sitting.
I have heard that Nestle’s happily selling CA water at a profit–water rationing doesn’t apply to them. In another vein, farmers still open-irrigate in CA, ignoring what is far more profitable (to say nothing of conserving) water measures such as Israeli drip irrigation.
Refugees in Europe. Well, if they take them, they will come. I would. But please explain how Sicily, Spain, Greece and the others can absorb several hundred thousand totally impoverished, possibly ill, mostly unskilled immigrants when their own unemployment rate is 30-50%? And the pope cares so much about this he’s going to open the Vatican, both the gold relics and the city gates to help them? I thought not. His edict is for somebody ELSE to follow Christ’s example and help them.
“The world has benefited enormously from this work by meteorologists over the last half century.”
Except the part where they still can’t predict the weather 3 days ahead of time, even with worldwide coverage of IR satellites, doppler radar etc (a huge advances that should make predictions easy in itself)?
And the part where, even if their complex models are wonderfully translating to the economic world, and work, then apparently no one is paying any attention to them? I.e. We still have, and deny, every economic shock we’ve had since 1987?
Call me not wowed by the math or the science. At least as concerns its application by men.
Europe help Italy? Surely you jest. The EU was not established to help people or countries but to help themselves.
Is it so hard for Italy to look east and see what kind of “help” they can expect?
Excellent articles on Germany. They are considered “strong”, “never had it so good”, but they’re a house of cards. You have to add in their local/city debts and bank liabilities and you’ll see how close to Greece they really are. Just like France, U.K., U.S. etc…
11% increase in German car sales? Please. To whom? What booming, wealthy nation suddenly bought 11% of cars? Portugal? Brazil? China? Russia? Maybe Germans took a page from U.S. auto-sales “channel-stuffing.”
“Rooting for China”? Well, just in the sense of geopolitical power, watched from the bleachers. China, now like rest-of-world, has totally destroyed the one thing that keeps the Chinese alive: their ecology. The number of people is a real challenge, but in my view not nearly so much as the way in which they live and the human ecology they build. We generally don’t see that since worldwide modernization “externalized” costs, i.e. death and pollution, to “them”–whoever “they” are–and so universally ruined the place. But that’s not an absolute.
Although few in number, it’s not that hard to find examples of places where cooperation and a healthy ecology allow a population density, what we call “modernization”, like specialization, invention, books and such, and yet an sustainable, environmental, even what we would call “wild” land. We assume humans are the great destroyers because since the industrial revolution that’s all we’ve seen all our cultural lives, but that has to do with our demented culture and priorities, not humans. Humans lived 10-100,000 years before now without making a wreck of things, and that’s our normal pattern. This tiny blip is the anomaly.
Back to China, the dumbest thing they ever did was pave over the rice paddies that sustain them, to build what? And even if they undid it, it would take far longer and cost more to restore the water, to say nothing of their social cohesion. But they paved it, and they are now turning to address those problems a little, and that “progress” of turning into a slave camp or human factory matters because it makes them comparatively powerful on the world stage. I’d rather own the food than the factory, but that’s me and they are buying up nations of food production worldwide with their factory money. Personal opinions about population and ecology don’t enter into geopolitical observation. The blog–counterproductively, perhaps–focuses on finance, geopolitical power, and not solutions. Maybe we shouldn’t, because there are a LOT of solutions, and they’re not getting much press. Nassim posted one just above, but there are whole forests of sites dedicated to solutions.
The world is over populated to my taste but we’re nowhere near carrying capacity if we only made some very obvious changes that I could name, would be productive, and make people a lot happier. But no one WANTS that change. They don’t want humble lives in green, dewy fields with bright stars against the jet-black night, because if they did, they’d do a single thing about it. They’d reject the machine and slow it down. So I don’t talk about it either, being steps 9 or 10, not step 3 or 4 where we are.
And that’s why the illusion of rooting for China, who is on a long-term up, against the U.S., which is on a medium term down.
That’s a “good news” story.
Yes, China’s sure going to have a bumpy ride here, and for a while too. Just don’t count them as crashed, any more than you would the U.S. in 1895.
Good to see the Vatican interested in being stewards of the garden. However, the impulse and article are pretty overblown. Because the catholic parts of the earth are well-known for being ecological, sustainable, green centers? Er, no. In fact, the greenest centers have happened not to be catholic. So don’t give me how much they care and how strong their record has been.
“a social disaster zone. 3 million people are without guaranteed healthcare, 600,000 children are living under the breadline and more than half of them are unable to meet their daily nutritional needs. 90% of families living in the poorer areas rely on food banks and feeding schemes for survival, and unemployment is approaching 30%, with youth unemployment approaching 60%.”
Sounds like America.
This article is a sample box of false and erroneous theories. Really the gold standard, compressing the most stupid into the least space.
“…the USA is a transfer union. Richer states support poorer ones by means of federal fiscal transfers.” Yes, it is a transfer union. Problem is, it’s a transfer union from the POOREST states to the RICHEST ones. Or maybe you can explain why, 100 years after the present system is in place, all 10 richest zip codes have migrated out of NY and into K-Street in D.C? Places like St. Louis, Wichita, Cleveland, and Utica used to do pretty well for themselves. Now due to a persistently tipped playing field and a 1,000:1 return on investment for federal regulations by lobbyists, there is basically NO money left in the District 12 “Flyoverland.” Europe for its part, is exactly LIKE the U.S. in stealing all the money from the weak and poor into the Capital Core, as seen most clearly in Greece, and ring-fencing Europe off from refugees.
Moving down the list, “[Federal] government expenditures such as pensions, education, healthcare and defence. (sic)” Yes, there are. All of which are completely gutted, broken, and non-functional, worse than Europe. Also entirely illegal: the Federal mandate for pensions, education or healthcare—not to mention meddling in the economy—is strictly prohibited under the 10th Amendment.
“States…can go bankrupt.” False. I do not believe any U.S. state has been allowed to go bankrupt, although the definition has been tortured a few times.
“living standards tend to be maintained even in states that completely foul up their budgets.” False. Been to Detroit lately? Scranton? W. Va.? Mississippi? Only our mind-altering P.R. could disguise these areas as anything but 3rd world. See above with the crippling economic extraction of the periphery to the core, above.
“Fed is responsible for maintaining both price stability and full employment.” Yes, and which it both has never done (see the 70’s) nor can it conceptually accomplish, the question being like “how many hammers does it take to drive a spaceship?” i.e., a total non-sequitor. Almost universally, high inflation correlates to high unemployment as per South America. Not to say that low inflation doesn’t also relate to high unemployment, as per austerity in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece. This theory is hilariously false, for near 50 years, yet somehow still in use, its proponents not tossed out on the their ears, and/or sued.
“ECB has maintained far tighter monetary conditions…” So…negative interest rates and Dragula’s new Q.E. program don’t count? Transferring all the distressed worthless assets in Europe to the ECB’s balance sheet a big nothin’ burger? Say, how many trillions do you think their banks got so far? More or less than the $23 Trillion the U.S. handed out? Because I’m thinking they’re contenders when it comes to free money for their friends.
“far tighter monetary conditions” Like what? 0% seems like a real easy monetary condition for Spain to borrow under. How has 0% rates and the ECB buying all bonds and looking the other way on bank/national bankruptcy and budget deficits “hampered the efforts of member states”?
…And so on. Like I said, practically 100%, every word is stupid, ill-informed, and/or wrong. Why isn’t this in Bloomberg?
Certainly China is in big trouble, but that trouble was coming anyway. Let’s be Dr. Devil’s Advocate and see what the other side shows:
China, enormous housing bubble, stock bubble, and capacity bubble. Check.
Revenues dependent on building boom, and associated power-bloc likewise. Check.
Dependent on manufacturing production to a world market that has collapsed, leading to massive shutdowns, unemployment, unrest, and lack of revenue. Check.
Shadow banking system that depends on levering/compounding the bubble or collapse. Check.Okay, on the other side of the ledger:
China has the world’s manufacturing for which there is little replacement.
China owns her own assets and her debt and can alter them at will.
Is familiar with internal strife and internally has strong support for the nation.
Has used debt (printed Yuan) and bought up most of the world: Spanish houses, U.S. agriculture, African mines, South American companies.
Has collected as much as 30,000 tonnes of gold and bunkers of oil, copper, and iron.So let’s look at it another way: China is planning to make the transition from being the manufacturing slaves to being the rent-collecting masters. If the world goes down–which it already has–then Chinese economic activity will go with it. This is what we see above. But how far can they fall when they are collecting the profits generated by owning real assets worldwide? Copper mines may not be making much, but what they are, China gets a cut. Spanish homes may remain low, but bought at the bottom, they are still valuable and what value they have supports China. China now has a floor because Europe, Africa, and North and South America now subsidize them via “profits.”
Chinese industry presently rests on the low-cost solution. But that industry is already tanked, just like the rest of world. So what harm is there now in re-valuing the Yuan sharply upward, backed with gold, production, and worldwide ownership? It is claimed high currencies stop economies, but in fact the reverse is true. Who is richer? Argentina or Switzerland? Germany or Italy? The U.S. or Mexico? The stronger currency leads to a higher standard of living, which prevents civil unrest. China is in a position to have this higher currency and higher standard of living for their people at a time of their choosing. The more they can hold out and the more worldwide assets they buy–such as 2/3 of Manhattan real estate, Detroit, Ohio, Indiana, and Pittsburgh–the more they can support this higher currency and better living for their people on the back of the Detroiters, Ohioans, Spanish and Greeks.
They are simply swapping the production model (low pay/low cost/low currency) for the rent-seeking ownership model (high pay/high currency). Whether they can accomplish this remains to be seen, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t work.
The same idiocy is commonly said that bad currencies make good countries and there’s no way it can happen, ignoring that the U.S. at the turn of the century did exactly this. They converted from the world’s factory to the world’s owner, and although bumpy, set the stage for 100 years of power and high living. They gave that away with NAFTA and WTO favored-nation, converting themselves back into slaves as nations do. But China is on the other side of the wheel. What puts the U.S. down puts China up and vice versa.
So why couldn’t they, why shouldn’t they, and haven’t they taken every requisite preparation to do so? They just need pull the lever from DC to AC and the conversion process starts.
The details may be true, i.e. that the interest is created via the velocity over time, but if the essence of the argument is false, how come monetary base must always expand at an increasing rate or collapse? If it’s no problem for it to reverse, then what is anyone worried about? Why can’t we have a nice stiff dose of deflation without the system coming apart and being rebooted, as was done with Roosevelt’s confiscation and revaluing of gold to re-collateralize the system?
It’s because it’s not false. The system must expand infinitely at an increasing rate. That’s the “velocity” here. That is to say, the system must collapse (or reboot) by original design. Otherwise, aren’t you telling me that over time that exponents don’t compound vertically against a finite world? They do, and it can’t, so it will collapse. By design. Then the powerful use their power to seize or retain the assets that re-collateralize the new system, (as in a debt-to-equity swap) and therefore own the new system too.
Back of the envelope, what happens in Keen’s system after a few iterations of the cycle? Or if the system accrues malinvested debts that cannot self-liquidate? Don’t they have to create money to maintain it? Or possibly force the velocity to ever-increase instead? We’ve seen both. And if you write off those non-interest-paying assets, doesn’t his system then suffer from a sudden collapse of collateral to back lending/banks/activity? I suspect so.
“We need to think about some other ways to finance growth…”
Because there’s this thing called “savings” that we can use to build with. And compared to borrowing, it’s both safe and relatively free. But when the product your industry sells is “loans”, it’s heresy to suggest there is any means of payment but debt. –Where you pay a 5% toll to the gatekeepers to do what could be done for free.
Imagine: whole industries earning “profits” that they then use to invest in themselves and their countries from “savings” without burdening their economies with the unnecessary overhead of debt. It could happen.
I’m amazed. Newsweek reports U.S. exposed 200,000 soldiers to nerve agents during the Gulf War, then covered it up and abandoned them for 20 years:
https://www.newsweek.com/how-us-nerve-gassed-its-own-troops-then-covered-it-317250
The usual suspects, the usual coverups, the usual play-along by the usual men. But admitted! In public!And the drought map above? Are you high? This map claims to be from March 24, 2015. AND IT CLAIMS NY, PA, AND VT ARE IN DROUGHT!!! Are you kidding me??? Buffalo to Boston just had an epic winter with medium-high levels of 100″ of snow! There hasn’t been this much winter in 60 years. Even the previous summer wasn’t that bad. Central PA was not that different. I’m not an expert on Minnesota and Wisconsin, but my understanding was that they had a substantial winter filled with snow. And they’re in serious drought? Did anyone ask them or go up there with, I dunno, a ruler, and measure water levels?
I don’t know where to get real climate data from, but it for sure isn’t U.S. Government websites. Apparently their data is now on par with the BLS where unemployment is 5% with 100M people (1/3) not in the workforce. A drought? Jeesh! We’re swimming here!
Mouth-breathing idiot Larry Summers thinks higher population causes lower GDP? No wonder he lost $1.8B billion when he ran the Harvard endowment. One of the few things we can be SURE of in economics is that increased population will cause those people to have economic activity, and therefore raise GDP. You can find more on this with Harry “Demographics is Destiny” Dent, showing exactly how this works within countries over time.
No amount of ridicule is adequate when it comes to Mr. Summers. Or his dreadful toadie, the odious Krugman.
Reminds me of the Beppe Grillo article yesterday,
“This debt is im-mo-ral. Actually, it’s not the debt of the Italian nation – or Greek for that matter. It’s a debt that had accumulated from corrupt deals, arms sales, it’s debt to Siemens or international arms corporations that sold Greece their submarines. There were many deals like this one, and people didn’t know anything about them.”
There are 20 reasons Greece shouldn’t pay. That’s one of them. What about the legal rule that says ignoring totally obvious bankruptcy is fraud, and therefore, fraudulently conveying additional debt onto a bankrupt entity has no force of law? Because that’s already a well established precedent, worldwide.
If it weren’t, the smartest thing to do would be to start a company, bankrupt it by not paying, then collude with the bankruptcy judge to double its debt again under shelter of law. In which case, the entire societal trust system would collapse. …Which is exactly what has happened in Greece-EU, for exactly the same reason: fraud, theft, and tyranny under color of law means everyone now understands there is no law.
Also from the Beppe Grillo article:
“The right-wingers say we should kick everyone out of the country, the left-wingers say we should keep them, whereas what we really should do is work out a compromise.” –On the flood of 120,000 immigrants per year disappearing into Italy.“Ecuador told the U.S. that its debt is immoral and Ecuador is not going to pay it off. We can do the same. This debt is im-mo-ral. Actually, it’s not the debt of the Italian nation – or Greek for that matter. It’s a debt that had accumulated from corrupt deals, arms sales, it’s debt to Siemens or international arms corporations that sold Greece their submarines. There were many deals like this one, and people didn’t know anything about them. Now, they keep telling us, “You are to blame, you didn’t live within your means…But I want to know what happens to my taxes. Why should I pay them, if I don’t get the services…?” –Beppe Grillo
Again, unending deception in every article, confounding of cash and debt, help and hurt to twist the perception. And they fall for it!(along with ubiquitous adding of “radical”, and “leftist”) Let me correct this for you:
“What is certain is that Greece still needs–much moar debt–externalxxfinancialxxsupport, particularly the €7.2 billion in –additional onerous financial drain– bailoutxxfunds which it hopes to xxunlockxx –borrow– from its international lenders. To date, Greece has received two –crushing loans– xxbailoutsxxworthxx costing a total of €240 billion.”“Greece is revisiting the possibility that it might be –permitted to borrow– ablexxtoxgetxxsomexxofxxthe €7.2 billion remaining in bailout funding in return for part of the reforms being demanded by creditors”
So to be saddled with an additional 7.2B, I also have to give you parts of my nation? Golly, what’s the catch?Sounds different when you properly name “assets”, “help”, “money”, and “debt”, doesn’t it?
