Greenpa
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There is one economic factor in China (and Argentina) you do not speak of; nor does anyone I’m aware of: organized crime. I’m not talking about the sector that operates in the open by noisily pretending to be legitimate, while they arrange to have laws written to their benefit (J.P.Morgan, et.al.) but the organized crime that runs submerged everywhere; sells drugs, does paid kidnappings, etc.
The organized crime in China is the oldest, most highly evolved, on the planet. They are far less publicly visible than the newer Russian “mafias”; but also far smarter and far more powerful. When the Communist Party succeeded in taking power, Chinese organized crime took a bit of a hit, and submerged even deeper – but certainly did not disappear. They are thriving and expanding now- to the point I would bet they can control bank interest rates and direct the Party.
They make decisions based on their own welfare. But unlike cruder criminals- the Chinese have understood for millennia that they must not entirely destroy those they feed on- so their actions are much more complex.
I grant you- that’s a very difficult bit to factor into attempts to understand international economics- but it is a very major force. And not going away, ever.
yeesh. Sorry to hear. All I can offer is- we’ve bought 2 used Macbooks on ebay over the last year; and they’re doing the job. Enough of them out there that the older ones can be pretty cheap – and still pretty functional. I think we’re harder on our Macs than most users are (we USE them) – so. If you’re careful – you can do ok with used.
Seems to me that both politicians and “journalists” are now just shoveling BS into all available fans, just to see how far it will fly. Connections to “reality” are apparently unremunerative.
All here might be interested in a little bit of perhaps real journalism at the NYT:
A few choice factoids in there- but not many surprises. Should it result in oiling guillotines? Sure. Will it? Nah.
In a bizarre little bit of cosmic synchronicity, shortly after making that comment someone commented on a very old blog post of my own; which deals with poverty, definitions, and other salient stuff. One line: “Would you be willing to put on a sweater for a couple weeks – so a village in India could have a doctor? That’s what it could come down to, in the centuries ahead.”
it’s all systems speculation- not practical; but interesting I think.
https://littlebloginthebigwoods.blogspot.com/2008/01/thwaspcopotty-house-in-winter.html
Ilargi: “All The Plans We Make For Our Futures Are Delusions” – well, sure.
I actually agree with that statement- pretty much entirely. But- hasn’t that really always been the case? “Literature” – as far back as we can trace it- seems to most often deal with stories where plans did not work out. The best laid plans ganging agley all over the place.
This is our universal condition- I grant you, we rarely understand that- but all our philosophers and comedians have agreed on this; forever. The trick is to not let realization lead to despair – and paralysis.
Of the dead ends lurking before us- I think paralysis is a deader end than daily self delusion. Or as the great Zen Masters put it “Oh, what the hay.”
🙂
Rapier, and other folks- one of the consistent problems in all dialogues on “poverty” is the lack of any consensus definition of what “poverty” IS. Arguments go on for decades- with parties unaware they’re not even talking about the same thing.
I’m not going to suggest a good universal definition- that would be pointless at the moment, no one is listening. But by chance I ran into a stellar example of the problem last night. It was my 8 year old daughter’s turn to choose a movie- and she chose “Fiddler On The Roof”, which she’s seen before. I liked that; her taste is improving.
Early in the movie is the long complaint from Tevye “If I were a rich man”. He makes it clear that in his mind, he lives in grinding, desolate, poverty. This while he is putting away his horse, in his barn, feeding his chickens, then delivering with his wagon- his milk, butter, and cheese from his cows to his village, and returning home to his house.
Um, excuse me? By any rational standards, I would contend that defines great wealth, right there. But his perception is that he is enormously oppressed by inescapable desperate poverty- and in general, audiences easily share that assessment, believe it, and sympathize greatly with this poor, poor man.
Anyone who has seen poverty in China or India or Bangladesh – necessarily has a completely different definition of what poverty is.
I realize that it’s often a cheap tactic to say “ok, define that term!” in a debate- but in this case, I think no useful conversations can go on without SOME agreements on what we’re talking about. The UN has been trying to work on < $1/day and <$2/day measurements (about 1 Billion people live between $1.25 and $2; another billion live below $1.25; statistics vary). I think that’s a good attempt. But virtually NO one in the USA has any concept at all of what living on that kind of money means.
“So I’m left with just one possible conclusion: that we live in parallel universes. ”
Very true; and if I may add the view from my Antarean anthropologist friends; one of the (many) differences between them is: in your Universe, the function of public essays is to communicate “Truth”, from the point of view of the writer; in the Japanese banker’s Universe, the function of public essays is to influence human behavior, and “Truth”, from any perspective, is not on the list of ingredients. 🙂
“There’s one final question I can’t seem to figure out: why the €8000 fine? Why not €8, or €800,000?”
My guess would be they are aiming at “real world deterrence” of other bloggers- you, for example, would not be intimidated by the threat of a €8 fine- and the bigger options are so big as to seem transparent bluff; never stick. But- €8,000? Small enough to not be worth fighting- big enough to hurt- so; effective intimidation.
Something all activists need to keep in mind- if you truly start to irritate The Owners – they can, and will take action; up to and including your permanent disappearance. The Greenpeace crew in arctic Russia just discovered that when the oil companies are being directly operated by a mafia- it gets a lot more dangerous, quickly.
https://littlebloginthebigwoods.blogspot.com/
Sorry, but it’s far simpler than all this. They just want to be celebrities. All the endless discussion- is just what they wanted.
Nassim- of course. Colonialism is one one of the very ugly and evil things out there; with extremely evil consequences. Just trying to see it from the personal perspective of a 12 year old boy, who’d grown up helping his parents plant and harvest coffee. Decades later, he seemed to have no blind anger. Not that I did a lot of prying.
I’ll see your Zimbabwean, and raise you a Kenyan. I met this fellow at a global warming conference, he was there as a scientist from Australia. We got along well, swapped stories- and eventually, on day 3 of the conference, we got around to the fact that his parents had been white coffee planters in Kenya; and he was 12 years old when the Mau Mau came for them. They fought back. At 12, he killed grown men.
He looked like a spectacular survivor to me; no sign of racism I could see; still working for the world. Yeah- there’s very bad stuff out there.
Otto – ah, sorry I missed the fact that this one is solar thermal, not PV. Yes, ST is a good deal more terrorist resistant than PV; quite a lot more damage must be done before a serious impact is made.
The long transmission lines are still a substantial terrorist target, however, and militarily, essentially unprotectable. The experiences with pipelines in Iraq, the USSR fragments, and Nigeria are relevant.
If the cost estimates are not including the maintenance of a modest private army for security- it’s a scam.
ah, thank goodness, Georgia has found THE answer for the shortage of farm labor-
More news on China- from Japan. From NHK Japanese National Television news;
“Most Japanese travel agencies handling group tours from China say they have stopped or will not expand the business because it is unprofitable.
“An NHK survey has found that 24 out of 37 travel agencies have no plan to expand business beyond their current levels. Four others have stopped handling Chinese tours altogether. Just 5 are willing to handle more.
“Japan’s government has set a goal of attracting more tourists from China as one of its main growth strategies. The government says about 614,000 Chinese tourists visited Japan in the first 5 months of this year. Nearly 80 percent came in group tours.
“But price-cutting competition is intensifying. Japanese travel agencies say the price of a 6-day tour to Tokyo and Osaka has almost halved from 5 years ago, when it was about 1,250 dollars.
“Jul. 9, 2012 – Updated 09:53 UTC (18:53 JST)”I don’t add a link, because the NHK links only work for a day; ergo the text.
My translation: “The Japanese Government’s plan to bring the Japanese economy back to full health by taking in laundry from China has proven ineffective. Apparently, taking in each other’s laundry and paying each other for the labor does not actually result in economic growth. Everyone is astonished.”
“Monbiot to be curt, condescending and obtuse”
very concise. As far as I can tell, these days Monibiot is condescending to everyone. I rarely deign to read him.
Ok, really scary. Following my comments above about the key problem being a lack of ability to make decisions and take actions-
This morning, over at WaPo, the big sidebar ad is from Dow Chemical – and they have trademarked the word “Solutionism.”
And have a website to go with it. https://www.dow.com/solutionism/
So- the big corporations are already working to move into the place of societal decision making. And they’ll likely succeed- because it’s a vacuum, as I pointed out. Your government can’t act? Hey, come to Dow. We can.
An unusually lucid glimpse into China’s internal economy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/business/global/prices-tumble-across-the-chinese-economy.html
Fascinating that I would trust Chinese business statistics far more than those generated in the US at this point- less corrupt and/or politically slanted there, I think.
What?! you say? China less corrupt!?? What nonsense!!
Oh, really? Three words; Barclays; LIBOR; systemic.
Endfarm- yes, the idea of big solar farms in North Africa is pretty old, well discussed. You’d need to be running big underwater transmission cables up to Europe- transmission is always the bugaboo; but they think they can make it work. Technically; maybe. Economically? maybe.
But. One aspect to photovoltaic power generation that is NEVER discussed is: it is desperately vulnerable to terrorist or vandal attack. All you need to do is break a few panels- and major disruption of service can follow, as the system gets unbalanced. Can you buy or build a weapon that will break windows over a fence and 200 yards away? Oh, yeah, easy.
Wind is less vulnerable – but- we had a local crank take a shotgun (12 gauge slug) to a commercial turbine this spring, and knock it out.
And I think it’s clear the future will have more cranks than now. Tunisia? I’d prefer to invest elsewhere.
Frank: “I just flat out don’t believe those farmers down in Alabama who claimed they offered $15/hr and couldn’t replace their wetbacks.”
Well. I used to be with you there. Now I’m not so sure. The problem is; there is no longer a pool of local workers who know HOW to work out in the sun all day. They never have, and don’t know anyone who has, and few of their parents did.
It’s quite a long set of skills and knowledge that you need; starting with “the fact that your stomach is grumbling does not mean you’re about to keel over from hunger”; which goes with “if you ignore your stomach for 15 minutes, it will shut up.” They have never ignored their stomach for 15 minutes in their entire life. Literally. And they truly believe they will start to die if they don’t stop and get a snack, a carbonated soft drink, and a rest in the shade, right now.
Only a few years ago teenagers around here made their money by de-tasseling hybrid seed corn. No longer; it’s done by machine, genetics, or in Mexico. Kids simply no longer work in the fields, ever, and have no older sibling who bought their jalopy (now there’s an ancient word) with money they earned with sweat. You sweat at the gym; yes, but never otherwise. And it’s become culturally embedded.
So. I can believe it, these days.
I greatly appreciated your: “come home to find the hay mowed, the mower unbroken and the tractor untipped”…
You obviously know whereof you speak. : – ) My own experience there; some 10 years ago, the last time we tried interns here; we had 3 at the same time; all brilliant scholars from top schools. They worked hard enough. Stuck to it. And literally broke every machine we own, besides killing thousands of crop plants.
I blame it on Nader. They’d grown up swaddled in cotton; and never had any chance to discover that fire is hot, ice is slippery, and steel will break. Not, actually, a good direction for Homo. And here we are.
Ilargi: thanks for the deletion there. Aglebert – have you ever heard of “preaching to the choir”? And this here is an old, old choir- and you are the newest boy soprano. Keep your sermons really short. 🙂 Not that we don’t appreciate passion.
HZB “And nobody – NOBODY!! – is connecting the dots!”
Oh, I assure you, I connected all those dots years ago. Decades. But you see; the problem is not connecting the dots. It’s getting the picture colored correctly, cut out, on all the correct lines, and then folded into the right shape- so that something HAPPENS. That- is a different problem.
HZB – hey, sounds good. So- have you tried to hire some one to actually operate a hoe, or shovel all day? Good luck! The scarcity of will is not all on the hiring side.
As usual, Nicole, I agree with what you say, virtually across the board. In terms of where we will find ourselves, in 10 years though- I’m coming to the belief that the largest factor will not really be any of the commonly cited problems; from climate change to peak oil; but rather the increasing global inability to make decisions of any kind, or take action; of any kind.
We are at near total societal paralysis. Globally. Which, I would point out, you pointed out quite a while ago as the “increasing crisis in confidence”, if I remember your wording. We don’t trust each other anymore- and it’s only getting worse. In the US, and I think increasingly in Europe, we spend one election cycle repealing the legislation of the previous cycle- and passing nothing new. We still spend a lot of effort identifying problems; and arguing about which is most urgent- but- action? We take none, regardless.
I find that even scarier than the 103°F heat a couple days ago, and the fact that my neighbors’ corn will reach total failure, if it doesn’t rain in the next few days (and there’s none in the forecast).
I like your Chinese pun. If I can suggest a variant; the Chinese family name, given first, is always one syllable; but often, perhaps usually, the personal given name is two syllables. So, in this case, perhaps Pon Zi-Fen would do? Then you get a double bi-lingual pun; “fen”, you see, is pronounced “fun”; and is also the Chinese monetary equivalent of “cents” or “pennys”.
The only hope for China is that indeed they can be very very fast learners. When I first worked there, in 1988, it was actually about 1951 there. Today it’s about 2004, I think. They’ve got 1.2 billion chances for smart people, however, and there’s every chance in the world that 5 years from now, we’ll be living in 1934, and the Chinese may have moved on to 2074. I hope we find out.
Just everybody keep in mind there is grave and proven deadly danger of disappearing into your own navel; permanently, down this road. Ick. 🙂
Snuffy-
No checkee,No techie
No diem,No seeumYeah- but- there seems to be a counter-trend-
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/02/us/02iht-currents02.html
Have you run into this yet? It’s an o-so-human tendency. We see it in the farmers market we participate in- the eggs get cheaper every week.
In the WSJ, Spain admits they’ve “lost access” to capital markets. The admission is pretty huge. Following the patterns established by Iceland, Ireland, and Greece- the revelations of reality will not be far behind.
https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303830204577448023082690142.html
Hiya, Stoneleigh! I’m not dead yet either! 🙂
“scuppered that and a ruling that it was illegal to disconnect people’s electricity supply for non-payment sent the collection rate even lower.
“Now the power company is not getting the revenue from the electricity bills and it has now had to be bailed out by the government to avert a nationwide energy crisis.”
Wow. Serious craziness. If I were there, running a power company, I’d be seriously tempted to mail the keys to the power plant to the local mayor, with a note “Ok, so; YOU run it.” – and disappear.
It does look like the insanity is accelerating. But it does amaze me at how slowly it hits. The momentum behind the old pathways is astonishing.
Yup, I was well and truly gotched. Ah, well; fun while it lasted, and truly- harmless all around I think.
What is of most interest to me is the number of people who WANT this kind of thing to be true (me among them).
Why do we WANT it? Hoping for hope, I think.
Snopes is citing opposing experts, no decision.
https://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/humanbirdwings.asp
But, it looks, sounds, feels, and tastes real to me.
Still struggling to learn how to communicate here… wanted to share the current “Tom The Dancing Bug” strip; very relevant. I see others inserting videos, etc…
hm; well; not what I expected; but you can click on it; then enlarge it… sort of…
“You are saying that China has stolen and improved an idea from the UK!!!!”
Well. Or, the UK stole it from Rome, they stole it from Persia, who stole it from.. China, probably…. 🙂
“Glennda” post=1145]I’ve heard that plain popcorn without salt and of, course, no butter works very well. They say mice and rats won’t eat it plain.”
I’d suggest you find a new “they” to listen to. 🙂 As a biologist/farmer/ and person with a business that ships stuff- I can assure you mice and rats will definitely eat it plain.
It’s a very common fallacy in biology- you put cake; and ice cream, in front of the gerbil. The gerbil eats only the cake. It’s incorrect to assume it won’t eat ice cream, however; you just need different circumstances.
Hm; why don’t comments made to this thread show up automatically in this view? They’ve been up in the other view for a half hour or so…..
Anyway; speaking of unspeakable statistics; this from WaPo:
“A newborn baby dies every 20 seconds in India and four out of 10 children are malnourished. Last month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the state of the health-care system a “national shame.””
Ok; that’s horrifying. Automatically, I’m doubting it’s true. Can somebody check? Has the population of Homo reached that point on the planet already?
A new and fascinating “justice” story from the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/go-to-trial-crash-the-justice-system.html
Dangerous. Will they follow up the story? So far, they haven’t been following the one about the officer arrested for truth; at least not where i can find it.
El Gal: “Well, I probably bought some phony statistics as real.”
We all do. Seemingly by preference. Of course, we’ve been sold the rosy versions since early childhood; but that’s not the entire reason; childhood tales do include very dark stuff (Grimm, in fact) yet- we somehow preferentially believe the happy versions.
I find this an interesting behavioral conundrum; particularly in light of another behavioral universal. I’ll state them together.
Given two conflicting facts about “society” in general; most people will prefer to accept the happier version, on most occasions.
Simultaneously; presented with two conflicting assessments regarding your “self” (“You’re beautiful!” vs. “You’re stupid, fat, and ugly!”) – the great majority of us will instantly believe the negative assessment is more true; and agonize about it for decades.
I think those two statements are accurate. Possibly the evolutionary advantages lie in not instantly attacking and killing the liars in charge, which would certainly cause a constantly high level of societal chaos; and self-critical thinking might be expected to generate self improvement.
But it’s not a lot of fun. And connections to reality are exceedingly tenuous, at all times.
(aside; I DO like and appreciate the ability to edit posts.)
