Raúl Ilargi Meijer
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Fair enough, chettt, but maybe the question is: what other “analysis” could be taken more seriously than this one? I can’t think of any, other than my own. And that”s not me tooting my own horn, I simply see all sorts of people jumping to all sorts of conclusions, likely because they’re all out of their league, while I only ask questions.
Tabernac,
You made me wonder whether anyone has ever checked if all individual bacteria and yeast maintain their fertility rates throughout the tragic cycle of the consumption of surplus energy. I don’t know of any such research, but neither do I see any reason to assume falling fertility rates are not a ‘natural’ part of any such cycle in any organism, be it yeast, mice, or people.
The underlying question would be if any such falling rate in any of these cases could arrest the drive towards more consumption, for the group, not the individual, until the inevitable.
TAE Summary,
Good to see you back. Been far too long. As always.
You sure that God will get the credit, though? Why not the blame?
And doesn’t life beget energy, instead of vice versa? Or is that the chicken and the egg all over again for Easter?
Hemingway! It’s been ages. How’s ma ville? Very true, what you picked out. We’ve gotten stuck in and fooled by planning 50-odd years ahead through pension plans and the like, but that’s such an aberration from anything and everything all our 1000s of generations of ancestors thought of, there was never any way that would work. It’s like some kind of delusionary time travel that don’t mean no-one no good. Living for today, and the fulfillment that day can bring, and making it so, is what we do best. So why did we stop?
Geolib
What you say about the narrative of collapse risks being true for your Single Tax religion: simply circling, re-quoting itself, harming itself. Why don’t you write a post on the topic for me, but not religious, I warn you, just explaining the cool calm collected and objective advantages that you think it would have for any given society. If you could add how or why you think present political systems would accept it, i.e. why it is not solely theoretical, that would be a bonus. And don’t make it too long, or force me to do too much editing.
Ken
We can get to 500 million if the net loss of people is 100,000 per day for the next 178 years or so.
It might be good to add that at present there are some 350,000 births and 150,000 deaths in the world each day.
All we need to do is turn those two numbers around and we’ll be good in 89 years. That does mean, however, that we’re going to need lots of volunteers. So stop being so selfish, people, and sign up in large numbers to save the planet.
Oh, that’s certainly true, p01; I just meant you don’t have to do those calculations in order to prevent the collapse because it will come anyway.
Raleigh,
Mankind may have invented mythological/religious stories of a deity that made us in his own image, stories that serve to make us feel elevated above all other life, and the crowning achievement of creation/evolution, but the reality is that we are no different from the yeast in the wine vat or bacteria in a petri dish, or any and all other organisms for that matter: when confronted with an energy surplus in a given environment, all species will multiply and proliferate until either they run out of space or the energy surplus runs out, and then there is a die-off.
To be exact: the die-off comes before a species can run out of space or energy, because the use of energy produces waste, and no organism can survive in a medium of its own waste (the corollary to the 2nd law of thermodynamics as defined by Herman Daly and Kenneth Townsend in their 1993 book “Valuing the Earth”). Thus, there will always be more space and more energy left even after the population has collapsed. And that collapse is inevitable. No need to worry about how many people need to disappear for any given amount of time.
I‘ve often called us the most tragic species, because we have an awareness, we can see ourselves do it, but that doesn’t mean we can stop ourselves from doing it. Perhaps we need to contemplate the limits of our awareness, perhaps if we were fully aware of what we do, we wouldn’t to the damage we do. Or perhaps our awareness simply is no match for the drive to consume all energy available to us, a drive we inherited from more primitive lifeforms. However it may be, what we call our awareness, and our power of reasoning, seem to be applied in the race to consume energy as fast as we can, not to slow down the rate of consumption, even if our survival might hinge on it. What’s ironic is that the drive to consume is very close, if not identical, to the drive to survive that all life possesses.
Note that this describes us as a species, not as individuals. And while individual humans can make “decisions” that may seem very commendable, what happens is that when an individual organism “decides” to lower his/her/its consumption rate, other individuals in the group jump in and take over, so overall consumption for the group keeps rising. This difference between group behavior and -possible- individual behavior is often misinterpreted, I think, to mean that we can make the group do what the individual can do.
Ken,
You’re undoubtedly right that stock markets are a major factor. It’s probably also that our forced move away from Blogger that plays a part, plus the fact that especially Nicole’s ‘extra curricular’ activities, even though they’re TAE activities, have taken time away from posting on the actual site.
I think it should be pretty obvious that we are now in a far worse position than we were when the markets were deep red, precisely because of what was used to lift those markets. It may yet take a while for that to play out, though I’m sure the plug will be pulled when mom and pop least expect it. In that light, it’s a good idea for everyone to wonder for a second who mom and pop are in 2014.
Just lowering the birth rate doesn’t work, or at least not well. A healthy population is dependent on a healthy age balance. I don’t know how to solve the overpopulation issue, but I do know this is not the way to go. Then again, I also can’t see older people -boomers, the most numerous generation- go voluntarily in large numbers, though I’ve been suggesting it to them here at TAE.
I’ve written earlier that we may have to concede that we can’t solve this one, we’ll have to leave it to nature to do it for us.
Detail: China has 1.3 billion people, not 1.6. Still a difference of about the entire US population.
Not a clue, Indus. When we were still at Blogger, we had a vibrant comments section. Perhaps people find the WordPress one harder to find? Or maybe Nicole and I should post more comments? But still, a good thing that you like TAE so much. We’ll figure out all the rest in time.
D,
I may be useful to note than Nicole and I don’t define inflation as rising prices, but as the money and credit supply multiplied by the velocity of money. Rising (or falling) prices are merely an effect of this. There are tons of articles in our archives that explain this.
This means that you can’t have inflation in one part of an economy and deflation in another, It also means that central bank control over the process is limited, since no-one can force people to spend.
Indus, I’m not sure why you would think Nicole wrote this piece or other recent ones, but she didn’t. My name is at the top of them all.
As for the competence issue, our leaders are quite competent in serving their own issues, just not ours. But then, they – were – never meant to do the latter, so maybe I shouldn’t have used the word incompetent to begin with. And if I do, then in the sense of our political system not having the competence to select leaders that do act in our interest.
20% renewables would mean 80% non-renewables, i.e. status quo.
If you mean 20% of current energy is enough to live on, that’s partly right. If you want to get 100% of that from renewables, you will no longer have a central grid. Are we ready for that? You don’t solve that issue with a local grid here and there. You would have to reset the entire structures of our societies.
Taking down energy use to 20% of present levels also means general economic collapse; our economies need mass energy throughput to be viable concerns. Do we want economic collapse, and are we ready for it? I don’t think so. It would mean a lot of misery and fighting etc. Be careful what you wish for.
I don’t balk at renewable energy, but at the rosy stories being bandied around about it. Our societies are very much complex systems, and most well-intended measures will have unintended consequences. Which is why we need to ask questions, not just follow the circus.
I think we need to leave behind the idea that we can change entire countries, let alone the world. It’ll be hard enough to get things right at the local level.
Thorium has been a promise just around the corner for many decades. Yet there’s still not a single active (scaled up) thorium facility in the world. Which is not for lack of trying, or investment. India did a lot of work, China does some now. It’s still just a promise just around the corner, but don’t forget there’s a lot of money in promising.
Only vote for a party that vows to eliminate private banks under the current economic model of central banks. Am I missing something?
Yeah, there are no such parties anywhere. Beppe Grillo probably comes closest.
Also, banks don’t only not contribute much, they suck away a very substantial part of the value of real production in an economy.
Or is it: One petagram means 10 to the fifteenth power, i.e. 6 petagrams is equal to 6 billion tons.
That’s hilarious, carb.
Edited it: [ Ed: The current global carbon export flux caused by sinking particles in oceans stands at 6 petagrams per year. A petagram is a quadrillion grams, or about 1.1 billion US tons. Annual global carbon emissions from fossil fuels stands at about 9 petagrams. ]
Jal
Not a dime of stimulus has gone towards the people so far. But you think central banks and cabinets would do a 180?! I think maybe if they’d had any such intentions, they would have acted that way long before.
Raleigh et al,
I didn’t mean no deep state (if anything, more of course that exists, so why make it a topic), but when I see him claiming the deep state is fighting the banks, I want to see proof, since from where I’m sitting it’s at least as likely the banks are the deep state.
Didn’t mean all of your opinions in one go either, but a few words on what you think about the quotes you post when you post them, makes them more interesting in my view. Not that what you wrote now is not appreciated. I appreciate everyone’s posts here a lot, and find it a shame the discussion and participants don’t expand more, like in our Blogger days. Maybe the machine has to start huffing and puffing for real again to get there.
As for the repetition topic, I think that is probably largely in the eye of the beholder. If you don’t like hockey, or soccer, or football, or Formula 1, or figure skating, all these things easily get to appear extremely repetitive, but obviously not for everyone.
And yeah, it would be good if Nicole returns on a more regular basis to the site, I fully agree.
Raleigh et al,
I didn’t mean no deep state (if anything, more of course that exists, so why make it a topic), but when I see him claiming the deep state is fighting the banks, I want to see proof, since from where I’m sitting it’s at least as likely the banks are the deep state.
Didn’t mean all of your opinions in one go either, but a few words on what you think about the quotes you post when you post them, makes them more interesting in my view. Not that what you wrote now is not appreciated. I appreciate everyone’s posts here a lot, and find it a shame the discussion and participants don’t expand more, like in our Blogger days. Maybe the machine has to start huffing and puffing for real again to get there.
As for the repetition topic, I think that is probably largely in the eye of the beholder. If you don’t like hockey, or soccer, or football, or Formula 1, or figure skating, all these things easily get to appear extremely repetitive, but obviously not for everyone.
And yeah, it would be good if Nicole returns on a more regular basis to the site, I fully agree.
Raleigh,
I’m not terribly impressed by CH Smith’s deep state narrative, and I think it’s pretty much nonsense to claim that the deep state fights the banking system. As for Russia’s power waning due to LNG, that to me shows someone who’s not very literate when it comes to energy.
As for you yourself, I’d be more interested in your own opinions than a constant flow of articles from third parties. At least combine the two, I’d say.
… today you berate the UK politicians for not ensuring capital investment and therefore further exploitation of fossil fuels by big oil
Excuse me? That looks like left field and a half.
caper,
Please disregard the inflation stuff you read in the comments here. It’s hard for people to let sink in, now as it was years ago, though even simple price rises are slowing to say the least, let alone actual inflation, but, as The Automatic Earth has said through those years, a debt bubble must always lead to deflation, and a bigger one to deeper deflation. Sometimes it’s the easiest things that are hardest to process.
Hey caper, welcome. Thanks for your order. What I find hard at times is the continuing nonsense and illusions that reign the day. I think it would be much more helpful for us all to face up to our losses. Nicole won’t be in the maritimes in the near future, but perhaps later. And no, that”s not the worst part of the world to be when the whip comes down.
First, apologies to ted and Professor L&L, whose IPs were both rejected by our spam detection systems. I have no idea why. It’s an aggressive bunch, and g-d knows we need that (43699 Cached Bad IPs. all good for maybe a thousand attempts), the attacks remain insane, but throwing out regular commenters seems weird. The system now says for both “Cached Bad IP”, but only after accepting registration and tons of comments from that same IP for months.
I whitelisted their IPs, it should be fine now. If this happens to anyone else, plaese notify me at contact •at• theautomaticearth •dot• com
Quite a few good observations. What I was going for is:
1) It’s not so much a matter of political or ethical leanings, low (income) tax rates are evidently disruptive to societies. They must be, because they coincide with unemployment, low pay for workers, misery. While higher rates are conducive to prosperity. It’s simply what history says. But in today’s discussion, it’s often perceived as counter-intuitive.
2) Current US income tax rates are terribly low from a historical point of view. It’s important that people keep themselves from accepting them as “normal”. They’re not. At all. They haven’t been this low in over 80 years, and times with higher rates have consistently been more prosperous.
Other than that, yes, capital gains taxes need to be raised in sync with income taxes, since they involve income.
And it’s undoubtedly true that virtual money sloshing around in a system sticks to the top more than the bottom. And it doesn’t stop there: while sloshing around, it moves money from the bottom to the top, by mixing real with virtual. I’ve clamored for restructuring of all bank debt a thousand times, precisely because of this. The virtual money doesn’t just come from what central banks issue as stimulus, it also includes all the – often years old – lost wagers that haven’t been settled because banks are exempt from “normal” accounting.
The entire picture, when viewed as a whole, is guaranteed to blow up societies.
“I would like to see what was happening in terms of monetary policy, interest rates and inflation/deflation at all of those times you’ve highlighted, Ilargi. “
There’s your homework for the weekend, Variable.
It appears on my Firefox, seems to like a mouse over before popping up. I used a simple cross platform player.
Would we appoint multimillionaires Pelosi, Feinstein, Boehner and Rubio to oversee the redistribution of the debt (Because they have already squandered the wealth)?
Break up the banks in small enough pieces and all the usual suspects’ political cloud will evaporate. But yeah, Pelosi won’t do that, she would evaporate. It’ll mean people in the streets of America, and no Edward Bernays.
Carb waster,
I have no new machine yet, running on two old ones for now, had the broken one repaired (new battery, HD and fans), but it’s all just temp. I need to relaunch Firefox 10 times day because Flash keeps loading up and slowing it to a crawl. There’s a 100+ tabs open, but I know no other way to work as much and as fast as I want to. I run 10.6.8, since any newer Mac OS invalidates my Photoshop, I can’t work without that, and a new version is more expensive than any computer I can think of. I’d like to be able to work faster, but I’m getting by for now.
ted,
Will the banks be bailed out again this time?
The major ones, yes, they’re in charge of the whole circus, not the Fed or the government. And they’ll gobble up a bunch of smaller banks in the process, certainly European ones, now the EU is about to start their next stress test. The centralization into ever bigger banks will simply continue until some country decides to have a Glass-Steagall-‘R-Us.
If the equity markets cease to be productive for banks will they start to lend out the money they have.
Lend it out to whom? Everyone will see lots of “assets” go poof in the night, what collateral will be left to secure loans with?
I can’t understand the language of the FED they say they will keep interest rates at zero but how can they do this?
The Fed’s control over interest rates is hot air entirely dependent on faith. Markets will let the illusion stand as long as the Fed feeds them for free, and as long as all parties confidently believe it will keep on doing it going forward. When it threatens to stop, real asset values must and will come into focus once more, and the markets will set interest rates.
Ian,
I may at times paint with a broad brush, but so is my poetic freedom. Labeling the use of the word “pretty” misogynist propaganda is something I’m happy to leave sitting on your conscience. Personally, I think you’re lightyears out of line, but perhaps you think such is your poetic freedom. Rest assured, I would never throw such accusatory terms around as casually as you do. Still, since there is nothing even resembling misogynist propaganda, I can’t remove it.
Koso,
A coin with many sides. The US is still a net importer, but the trade deficit may be narrowing more due to the temp bubble in domestic energy production than the – in relative terms – strong USD.
For one thing, a high dollar makes Obama’s dream of doubling exports in a 5 year timeframe a silly mirage, and exports are absolutely key in times of high debt levels.
Without artificial interest rates, the USD might be even higher, a “natural” course of things between stronger and weaker economies. Moreover, the dollar is not high at all vs the Euro, which is at $1.37 today, while it might be better off at par.
The US knows China will push to keep the renmimbi low, so it doesn’t have to do much there. As long as it doesn’t rise vs the Euro, Fed and Treasury probably think they have the best they can get – without extreme measures-.
One more thing: since the USD is the reserve currency, and most commodities plus a lot of debt are denominated in dollars, Washington can in theory simply print to pay for increasing costs. Note: unlike QE, that would risk devaluing the dollar, because it would mean money/credit actually entering the real economy.
Thanks for the kind words TRJ.
I post Ambrose stuff because I like the data he has, and hope people will know who he is: not us. And you’re right: all that “capital” he talks about is a leveraged illusion, and fodder for the taperworm. Poof!
Well, Greenpa, I have used the word ‘mob’ alongside ‘shadow banking system’, for obvious reasons, and I think they’re a huge threat to politburo control. But since we can’t keep track of the mob, just filing it under shadow banking is maybe the smart thing to do. They’re of course part of Beijing as well, and probably taking over as we speak. I see no reason to keep the apparatchik model going, though.
The Chinese people had been allowed a taste of money and freedom. From there on in, it’s just a matter of time. As one my daily links said yesterday: complex systems need freedom of action. Now they’ve let it come this far, for Beijing clamping down would mean killing off the economy, if not all out warfare with the underground systems, shadow banking, mob. Going to war with Japan? Kills the economy. Smaller prey? Would not be accepted. Total state control doesn’t rhyme with an economy based on profits. A 1000% rise in money supply is nothing something you easily reverse. And then there’s voices calling for more of the same, because the Chinese don’t spend their money fast enough. Half the politburo is already in bed with with the shadows, and for the other half reinstating full force is not an option anymore. Hard to predict how it will turn, but back to same old same old looks undoable.
