The bodies of the innocent children and teachers in Newtown, CT hadn't begun to cool before people started pointing fingers and placing blame about the causes of the shooting and how to prevent new ones. There was also the token moonbattery from people who look for a conspiracy under every rock, and can't accept that sometimes Bad Things Just Happen. The most significant part are the calls for new gun control laws, apparently much more ambitious and draconian that what was passed in prior decades. Essentially, anything that fits even remotely into the "assault weapon" category will be registered, banned from further sales, and "grandfathered in," so that when a person dies or wishes to get rid of the rifle, it will be turned over to the government.
Of course, there are quite a few problems with that idea. Does easy access to guns make it possible for a mentally unstable person to kill easily? Maybe, but plenty of mentally unstable people drive cars (road rage, anyone?). Do the actions of a miniscule number of people justify banning items that are safely and lawfully used by the other ninety-nine percent of people who own them? People might point toward violence in the inner cities and suggest that guns should be banned because of this, but will miss the point that drug prohibition fuels most of the violence there (in fact, if you factor out drug-related gun violence, our murder rate is fairly modest).
The other side of the coin is that gun bans are likely to meet with massive non-compliance and there is where things might get "interesting" (in the same way a shipwreck is "interesting"). The "militia movement" got a real boost back in 1993 when the "Brady Bill" went through, and attracted even more interest and membership in 1994 when the first "Assault Weapons Ban" was signed into law. Only the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 cooled enthusiasm for it. Things were considerably different back then -- the economy was still relatively on track, and we did not have the polarization and sense that things were starting to go "terribly wrong." Whatever his other failings, Bill Clinton was a good politician and was not "tone deaf" to what people were saying, unlike what seems to be the rule with both parties in Washington lately.
These days, we have talk of the "fiscal cliff," two (currently dormant but potentially radical) social movements in the form of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, painfully high unemployment, an economy that cannot get going again, a president who insists on "change" at a time when people are trying to "endure," real inflation, no way to value assets like real estate or stocks, the end of retirement, pick something. Trying to add gun control into the mix -- when most people tend to see their guns as the only real form of power or security that they have -- is at some point going to have a predictably and ugly result as people start talking to each other and agreeing that they will not follow the law.
Will all that talk lead somewhere? I don't know, just as I don't know if gun restrictions will have much of any effect on mass murder or if the proposed laws will survive the process of getting passed, or if they will survive a court challenge. However, it seems there is real potential there for people to completely disengage from active citizenship, and to being re-adopting the "militia mindset" of the nineties. I'm not talking about being generally frustrated with the situation in Washington, joining the Tea Party or OWS, etc, but actually considering the use of violence or real domestic terrorism as a "last resort." The fantasy of gun owners rising up against an oppressive government in a 1776-style affair is silly, but consider what effects there would be on the stability of the country if some people began shooting first and not bothering to ask questions later. Would entire regions simply decide to go their own way? I don't know, but significant changes in a nation usually come when people feel they are out of options, and it would be one step further down the road to social collapse.
As for readers of this blog who are looking for practical advice regarding firearms, if you already have these kinds of weapons and want to sell to avoid future hassles, the market is pretty hot right now. Insanely hot, as a matter of fact. If the laws pass and you keep any weapons on the list, even money says that they will eventually be confiscated anyway in a few years, after a mass shooting or two with a "legally registered weapon." On the other hand, the genie is out of the bottle and passing a law banning guns will by default only change the behavior of those willing to follow it. Criminals will eventually find it harder to acquire guns and ammunition, but I don't think it would be realistic for there to be any net effect on availability for at least a generation or more. Keep in mind, though, that the point of the Leibowitz Society is both to study our ongoing collapse and to preserve knowledge through the next Dark Age, not to get into random gunfights, so take that into consideration when doing your planning.
Finally, I just want to point out that these events should remind us of the value we place on the lives of those around us. Don't be a stranger, too. While we are often limited in what we can do to help others, turning away from people who are "on the edge" and ostracizing them may be a contributing factor in what they choose to do. Be connected and be involved in your community, and remember that love very often drives out hate.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Monday, December 31, 2012
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Over the Cliff
I haven't written here for a while. Call it campaign season fatigue, maybe, or a desire to work on something else for a while. I seem to get burned out on writing about collapse from time to time, but even if we're not interested in collapse, it's still interested in us. Or, maybe I'm just like that little girl who was fatigued to the point of tears over "Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney."
I don't see a lot of point in commenting on the recent elections, so I'll just say this much -- this contest proved the sheer intellectual bankruptcy of pretty much anyone involved in the whole electoral and governing process of the Western world's largest and most powerful nation. This also includes the voters, who want to pretend that they can have a cornucopia of various kinds of benefits and spending as they see fit to vote for. This idea runs across most of the political spectrum, too -- spending is spending, no matter how you try to justify the "worthiness" of what you're spending on.
As sad an affair as the election was (this being the case no matter who won), the worst is yet to come. Consider now the economic literacy of the American public, who are the ultimate owners of this process. No one seems to really even understand the difference between debt and deficit, or much care. "Reducing the deficit" is a phrase which sounds nice, until you stop and put it in more sober terms -- the Titanic is taking on only 5000 gallons of water per minute, instead of 6000. Having a running surplus of $100 billion a year might actually do something to address the problem of debt, but it is a "pie-in-the-sky" type of fantasy to expect this to happen.
Not much is being done about the debt and deficit in Washington, which makes a sizeable portion of the population freak out on a regular basis, but even they are missing the context that this whole discussion is occurring in -- we have reached the point of "peak wealth," where the wealth of the world is not increasing, but is steadily diminishing as resources begin to get scarcer and more difficult to recover, energy supplies are not able to match the demand, and so on. People have the silly notion that we can "print out way out" of the fiscal mess, but printing money is independent of real wealth, which is not increasing, but decreasing as people use up resources, destroy parts of the environment, etc. Remember that money is just a reflection of wealth, and is not tied directly to it.
This makes the "fiscal cliff" discussion all the sillier. If taxes are raised to one hundred percent of income, all deductions were removed, and spending was slashed across the board, then there might be a chance to avoid the upcoming economic crash. However, that's not a political possibility, and would probably render the nation broken beyond any ability to recover. Likewise, if it's business as usual for the next few years, we're going to see the currency eventually collapse into nothingness. An alternative solution might be to try to figure out how to find a path through a future of receding growth would be most desirable, but is not going to happen in today's political climate.
So, at best, because the "fiscal cliff" is not recognized for what it is -- an obvious and clear symptom of our ongoing retraction of wealth -- then anyone proposing a solution to the problem is singing the wrong song. The immediate economic problems (real unemployment at least twenty percent, inflation, etc) are going to intensify as well, because the discussion does not match the reality. Worse, this is going to be a feedback cycle where the proposed solutions get increasingly more radical and draconian, even as the resulting problems intensify. At some point, the crisis will be indistinguishable from the solutions to the crisis, and we will have reached a state of full collapse (think of it as Kurzweil's Singularity, but in the inverse of outcome).
Okay, so I did lie a little bit -- I will talk a little more about the election. Part of the Leibowitz Society's mission is to preserve the practice of applying rational thought to the world. People can criticize rational thought in the abstract, but on a practical basis, it is all we as humans have to relate to and make sense of the world around us. Yet, for all of the progress made in the last couple of millenia, we sometimes slip back into "magical thinking," the idea that somehow our personal actions will affect an unrelated occurrence. Voting this time around seems to have been an excellent example of this -- people voting for Obama on one hand because of a perception that he would improve their lives, and people voting for Romney on the other hand, because of the perception that he would fix the economy. In neither case did anyone ever ask the most basic of questions -- is it within anyone's power anymore to stave off a complete collase of our economy and society? The secession petitions are a ludicrous, if logical, extension of this thinking, too.
I will end this post with that thought and suggest that this is a good time to evaluate where we stand in relation to the world. Are we looking at alternate means of making a living? Are we keeping a clear and attentive mind about where the world is headed? Are we collecting books and accumulating knowledge to pass on to future generations? Are we focusing our energies and resources on "dual use" things? (i.e. hobbies that will become a way of life after a collapse) Are we gently evangelizing our friends and neighbors that all is not well?
And, last, are we keeping a cheerful heart and focusing on the things in our lives which do matter?
***
I have received a number of emails from people asking about my absence and what the status of the blog was, and regret not answering them, because I understand that the postings here resonated with many people. However, I am going to resume posting on this blog every Monday. I had not intended to restart where I had left off, but I do not think that, realistically, it is responsible to stop doing so, especially in the face of the path our worldwide civilization is taking. In spite of myself, I have spent the last few months studying and reflecting on collapse anyway, and look forward to continuing to share those insights with all of you.
I don't see a lot of point in commenting on the recent elections, so I'll just say this much -- this contest proved the sheer intellectual bankruptcy of pretty much anyone involved in the whole electoral and governing process of the Western world's largest and most powerful nation. This also includes the voters, who want to pretend that they can have a cornucopia of various kinds of benefits and spending as they see fit to vote for. This idea runs across most of the political spectrum, too -- spending is spending, no matter how you try to justify the "worthiness" of what you're spending on.
As sad an affair as the election was (this being the case no matter who won), the worst is yet to come. Consider now the economic literacy of the American public, who are the ultimate owners of this process. No one seems to really even understand the difference between debt and deficit, or much care. "Reducing the deficit" is a phrase which sounds nice, until you stop and put it in more sober terms -- the Titanic is taking on only 5000 gallons of water per minute, instead of 6000. Having a running surplus of $100 billion a year might actually do something to address the problem of debt, but it is a "pie-in-the-sky" type of fantasy to expect this to happen.
Not much is being done about the debt and deficit in Washington, which makes a sizeable portion of the population freak out on a regular basis, but even they are missing the context that this whole discussion is occurring in -- we have reached the point of "peak wealth," where the wealth of the world is not increasing, but is steadily diminishing as resources begin to get scarcer and more difficult to recover, energy supplies are not able to match the demand, and so on. People have the silly notion that we can "print out way out" of the fiscal mess, but printing money is independent of real wealth, which is not increasing, but decreasing as people use up resources, destroy parts of the environment, etc. Remember that money is just a reflection of wealth, and is not tied directly to it.
This makes the "fiscal cliff" discussion all the sillier. If taxes are raised to one hundred percent of income, all deductions were removed, and spending was slashed across the board, then there might be a chance to avoid the upcoming economic crash. However, that's not a political possibility, and would probably render the nation broken beyond any ability to recover. Likewise, if it's business as usual for the next few years, we're going to see the currency eventually collapse into nothingness. An alternative solution might be to try to figure out how to find a path through a future of receding growth would be most desirable, but is not going to happen in today's political climate.
So, at best, because the "fiscal cliff" is not recognized for what it is -- an obvious and clear symptom of our ongoing retraction of wealth -- then anyone proposing a solution to the problem is singing the wrong song. The immediate economic problems (real unemployment at least twenty percent, inflation, etc) are going to intensify as well, because the discussion does not match the reality. Worse, this is going to be a feedback cycle where the proposed solutions get increasingly more radical and draconian, even as the resulting problems intensify. At some point, the crisis will be indistinguishable from the solutions to the crisis, and we will have reached a state of full collapse (think of it as Kurzweil's Singularity, but in the inverse of outcome).
Okay, so I did lie a little bit -- I will talk a little more about the election. Part of the Leibowitz Society's mission is to preserve the practice of applying rational thought to the world. People can criticize rational thought in the abstract, but on a practical basis, it is all we as humans have to relate to and make sense of the world around us. Yet, for all of the progress made in the last couple of millenia, we sometimes slip back into "magical thinking," the idea that somehow our personal actions will affect an unrelated occurrence. Voting this time around seems to have been an excellent example of this -- people voting for Obama on one hand because of a perception that he would improve their lives, and people voting for Romney on the other hand, because of the perception that he would fix the economy. In neither case did anyone ever ask the most basic of questions -- is it within anyone's power anymore to stave off a complete collase of our economy and society? The secession petitions are a ludicrous, if logical, extension of this thinking, too.
I will end this post with that thought and suggest that this is a good time to evaluate where we stand in relation to the world. Are we looking at alternate means of making a living? Are we keeping a clear and attentive mind about where the world is headed? Are we collecting books and accumulating knowledge to pass on to future generations? Are we focusing our energies and resources on "dual use" things? (i.e. hobbies that will become a way of life after a collapse) Are we gently evangelizing our friends and neighbors that all is not well?
And, last, are we keeping a cheerful heart and focusing on the things in our lives which do matter?
***
I have received a number of emails from people asking about my absence and what the status of the blog was, and regret not answering them, because I understand that the postings here resonated with many people. However, I am going to resume posting on this blog every Monday. I had not intended to restart where I had left off, but I do not think that, realistically, it is responsible to stop doing so, especially in the face of the path our worldwide civilization is taking. In spite of myself, I have spent the last few months studying and reflecting on collapse anyway, and look forward to continuing to share those insights with all of you.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Musings
Just a few quick tidbits, today.
I went to the mall yesterday to buy a couple of items. It's not a place I willingly spend time at, but when you need it, you need it. Inside, I was struck by the number of empty storefronts. Foot traffic was light, but given that it was the middle of the week in summer, not implausible. What I found funny was that there was a new mini-strip mall being put up right in front of the mall, on mall grounds. Wait a minute. Why not just use the existing space in the mall? But, really, this isn't much different from suburbanization. The city offers a greater diversity of social life and entertainment, yet people have been willing to abandon common sense to move to the suburbs into ticky-tacky houses, then trying to recreate the city living experience in the suburbs through all kinds of "shopping districts," parks, and whatnot. Even as the price of goods begins to shoot up as a logical consequence of energy scarcity, people are still holding onto these obsolete ideas.
Second is George Zimmerman. I don't know what branch of legal theory thinks that clients running off at the mouth is a good idea (Jerry Sandusky engaged in this particular sort of self-immolation at the beginning of the year, too), but I guess shooting Trayvon Martin is now part of "God's Plan." In truth, I hear this used more and more as an analytical tool. I'm not a particularly religious person, although I generally don't have a problem with religion as a worldview or ethical tool. However, I do have a problem with people who begin to ascribe things which are logically explainable as being the end result of some unseen divine process. This really points to nothing but mental laziness at a minimum, or delusion as a maximum. Either way, it points to a backsliding of people's willingness to use reason. And, I really have a problem with people who try to invoke God when they are on the hook for something. Look for this sort of thing more in the future, as people try to explain away events by suggesting they're part of "God's Plan" or optionally suggest that "God will save us." If anything, God gave us reason and memory, but people seem to have completely quit using those.
Next is the impending post office default. There are two ways of looking at this -- one is that the post office is a dinosaur and relic, in the face of email and package delivery services. The other is that this is an organization which is directly mandated by the Constitution to exist (I think the only other one is the Navy), yet is on life support. What does this really say about the stability of our government endeavors? If we can't salvage something that was one of the first things originally mandated by law, where does that leave the rest of the whole house of cards? Maybe this is the point where we can all feel a little like Simeon at the temple -- the sign that the prophecy of collapse is being fulfilled before our very eyes, whether we are ready for it or not, want it or not.
Last is the few news items that seem to be related to the acceleration of the collapse of the consumer class. Inflation is definitely here, one of the canaries in the coal mine. The price of meat, for example, is up around ten percent, and this was before the effects of the drought are really going to start to be felt. This is going to be part of the "death spiral" of consumerism -- people will start discarding the optionals and favor the essentials, something that has already shown up in the collapse of retail sales in June. I predict that you're going to start seeing a lot of things like "Five easy and delicious recipes using dried beans and rice" in the major media outlets. Of course, the feedback cycle of reduced consumer spending will hammer everything else in the economy, causing more people to be out of work, thus causing more businesses to go under and spending to go down, etc, etc. America has made a lifestyle and religion out of personal consumption, and built the entire social lifestyle around it. How readily are we going to go back to being satisfied with a game of checkers and wearing homespun?
I went to the mall yesterday to buy a couple of items. It's not a place I willingly spend time at, but when you need it, you need it. Inside, I was struck by the number of empty storefronts. Foot traffic was light, but given that it was the middle of the week in summer, not implausible. What I found funny was that there was a new mini-strip mall being put up right in front of the mall, on mall grounds. Wait a minute. Why not just use the existing space in the mall? But, really, this isn't much different from suburbanization. The city offers a greater diversity of social life and entertainment, yet people have been willing to abandon common sense to move to the suburbs into ticky-tacky houses, then trying to recreate the city living experience in the suburbs through all kinds of "shopping districts," parks, and whatnot. Even as the price of goods begins to shoot up as a logical consequence of energy scarcity, people are still holding onto these obsolete ideas.
Second is George Zimmerman. I don't know what branch of legal theory thinks that clients running off at the mouth is a good idea (Jerry Sandusky engaged in this particular sort of self-immolation at the beginning of the year, too), but I guess shooting Trayvon Martin is now part of "God's Plan." In truth, I hear this used more and more as an analytical tool. I'm not a particularly religious person, although I generally don't have a problem with religion as a worldview or ethical tool. However, I do have a problem with people who begin to ascribe things which are logically explainable as being the end result of some unseen divine process. This really points to nothing but mental laziness at a minimum, or delusion as a maximum. Either way, it points to a backsliding of people's willingness to use reason. And, I really have a problem with people who try to invoke God when they are on the hook for something. Look for this sort of thing more in the future, as people try to explain away events by suggesting they're part of "God's Plan" or optionally suggest that "God will save us." If anything, God gave us reason and memory, but people seem to have completely quit using those.
Next is the impending post office default. There are two ways of looking at this -- one is that the post office is a dinosaur and relic, in the face of email and package delivery services. The other is that this is an organization which is directly mandated by the Constitution to exist (I think the only other one is the Navy), yet is on life support. What does this really say about the stability of our government endeavors? If we can't salvage something that was one of the first things originally mandated by law, where does that leave the rest of the whole house of cards? Maybe this is the point where we can all feel a little like Simeon at the temple -- the sign that the prophecy of collapse is being fulfilled before our very eyes, whether we are ready for it or not, want it or not.
Last is the few news items that seem to be related to the acceleration of the collapse of the consumer class. Inflation is definitely here, one of the canaries in the coal mine. The price of meat, for example, is up around ten percent, and this was before the effects of the drought are really going to start to be felt. This is going to be part of the "death spiral" of consumerism -- people will start discarding the optionals and favor the essentials, something that has already shown up in the collapse of retail sales in June. I predict that you're going to start seeing a lot of things like "Five easy and delicious recipes using dried beans and rice" in the major media outlets. Of course, the feedback cycle of reduced consumer spending will hammer everything else in the economy, causing more people to be out of work, thus causing more businesses to go under and spending to go down, etc, etc. America has made a lifestyle and religion out of personal consumption, and built the entire social lifestyle around it. How readily are we going to go back to being satisfied with a game of checkers and wearing homespun?
Monday, December 19, 2011
Deep Kimchi
Every year about this time, we're treated a stoned-out montage of images from the past year, of celebrities who have died (can't think of any...did Amy Winehouse die this past year?), natural disasters (expect plenty of Japan and Fukushima here), various images of wars and other crap. I don't know, maybe it's a handy milestone for some people, a chance to encapsulate all the pointless things they were ignoring for the past solar orbital period.
I think the highlight of the reel this year will be the death of Kim Jong-Il, the man who has ruled over North Korea in a way that would make even Vlad Tepes a little uneasy. Therefore, expect the year-end montage to include images of America's Least Visible War (tm) -- Korea -- to dominate the cycle this go-round. Cause of death was a heart-related ailment. I'll let everyone speculate on their own about the nature, timing, and cause of it.
I've always wondered about the North Koreans, though, what their actual state of mind is. The North Korean broadcasters announcing his death were in tears, but are they crying because there is a soldier offstage with a loaded Makarov who may prove to be their harshest critic, or did they genuinely love the man and buy into the vision of the world which has been pomulgated in North Korea since the late 40s, of the God-hood of the Korean "Maximum Leaders?"
We would be tempted, living in the West, which has generally been free of such delusions since the Enlightenment, to suggest it is fear that keeps people in line and spouting such nonsense, but the Middle Eastern nations have been run by people no less brutal than Kim Jong-Il and have seen one uprising and coup after another since the Cold War. Clearly, some people take to the brainwashing a little better than others, but David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter does a good job at offering insights into the North Korean mindset at the time, and probably up to the current day. Poor, rural, once a great kingdom, but now sandwiched between the warring powers of Russia, China, and Japan (and also the United States, to some degree, now), it's not hard to see how the nation became what it is, after taking a different road from South Korea.
I'm not sure that North Korea isn't necessarily not a blueprint for the future in some cases, especially as modern civilization continues down the road to a new dark age. The siege mentality due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, the tendency to elevate a person to a semi-divine status if they cleverly position themselves as a "savior," ignorance of the wider world as isolation grow and communication breaks down, all seem like ingredients which might be far more common in the future than anyone might guess at the moment.
***
I want to take a brief moment to wish all of you a Happy Holiday, be it Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, and so on. Whatever we are going to have to deal with in the future, and whatever the circumstances of our daily lives, we need to reflect and remember that we still have reasons to celebrate and things to find joy in, even in the commonplace. Take a few days off from thinking about where we're going and just appreciate where we are and where we've been. Hug your spouse and your kids. Give your dog or cat an extra scratch behind the ears. Enjoy the days. The best to all of you and your families this year.
I think the highlight of the reel this year will be the death of Kim Jong-Il, the man who has ruled over North Korea in a way that would make even Vlad Tepes a little uneasy. Therefore, expect the year-end montage to include images of America's Least Visible War (tm) -- Korea -- to dominate the cycle this go-round. Cause of death was a heart-related ailment. I'll let everyone speculate on their own about the nature, timing, and cause of it.
I've always wondered about the North Koreans, though, what their actual state of mind is. The North Korean broadcasters announcing his death were in tears, but are they crying because there is a soldier offstage with a loaded Makarov who may prove to be their harshest critic, or did they genuinely love the man and buy into the vision of the world which has been pomulgated in North Korea since the late 40s, of the God-hood of the Korean "Maximum Leaders?"
We would be tempted, living in the West, which has generally been free of such delusions since the Enlightenment, to suggest it is fear that keeps people in line and spouting such nonsense, but the Middle Eastern nations have been run by people no less brutal than Kim Jong-Il and have seen one uprising and coup after another since the Cold War. Clearly, some people take to the brainwashing a little better than others, but David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter does a good job at offering insights into the North Korean mindset at the time, and probably up to the current day. Poor, rural, once a great kingdom, but now sandwiched between the warring powers of Russia, China, and Japan (and also the United States, to some degree, now), it's not hard to see how the nation became what it is, after taking a different road from South Korea.
I'm not sure that North Korea isn't necessarily not a blueprint for the future in some cases, especially as modern civilization continues down the road to a new dark age. The siege mentality due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, the tendency to elevate a person to a semi-divine status if they cleverly position themselves as a "savior," ignorance of the wider world as isolation grow and communication breaks down, all seem like ingredients which might be far more common in the future than anyone might guess at the moment.
***
I want to take a brief moment to wish all of you a Happy Holiday, be it Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, and so on. Whatever we are going to have to deal with in the future, and whatever the circumstances of our daily lives, we need to reflect and remember that we still have reasons to celebrate and things to find joy in, even in the commonplace. Take a few days off from thinking about where we're going and just appreciate where we are and where we've been. Hug your spouse and your kids. Give your dog or cat an extra scratch behind the ears. Enjoy the days. The best to all of you and your families this year.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Stupor Committee
One of the signs, I think, of a civilization entering a Dark Age is the number of "WTF moments" that come up on a regular basis, when things happen that don't make sense, when you know the wheels are coming off. Step back some 1600 years and imagine yourself as an average person in the latter days of Imperial Rome: "Hey Sulla, did you hear that we're giving up Britain because we can't defend it any longer?" "WTF do you mean we can't defend something, Flavius? We're Romans!" Or, if you prefer, imagine being a Mayan during their collapse: "WTF do you mean we can't grow crops in the same soil we've been using for generations?" And so on.
We have quite a few of those ourselves on a regular basis now, but I think the cherry on top of the WTF sundae is the so-called "Deficit Reduction Super Committee" and the kabuki theatre surrounding it right now. Putting it in a little perspective, the DRSC is supposed to cut 1.2 trillion dollars over the next ten years. Doing the math, that's 120 billion dollars a year in cuts. Compared to a deficit which is at least 1.3 trillion dollars a year, it's essentially nothing. It's like being shot with 11 bullets instead of twelve. If this isn't a WTF? moment, I don't know what is.
Of course, there's the usual talk around deficit reduction, where everyone wants their turf guarded, when the special interests don't want to see their slice of the public pie cut. The problem here, of course, is that the pie itself is mostly air sandwiched between two crusts, the filling long ago having been removed and the lid of the pie carefully replaced so that no one would notice. It's now a system running on promises -- the promise of enough money coming into the treasury, the promise that people who have bought bad debt will get repaid, the promise that there is enough leadership and will to somehow patch a failing system that's running out of time. Everyone in the country wants their own benefits from it, but no one asks what it'll cost or if they should give up a little bit, along with everyone else.
So WTF? is anyone thinking that cutting out 120 billion a year in spending is going to make much of a difference in the ballooning debt and rapidly sinking dollar. And WTF? comes to mind when anyone thinks that it matters if these guys manage to agree to anything that will close that gap, while ignoring the rest of the monster deficit. It's like hiking 500 feet up the side of Mt. Everest and claiming that it's been conquered.
Speaking of Britain, we're a little like the Romans living there in 408 A.D. At some point, the nation is going to have to face bankruptcy and it's anyone's guess as to what happens then -- I think the conversation might be "WTF do they mean 'you're on your own'?"
We have quite a few of those ourselves on a regular basis now, but I think the cherry on top of the WTF sundae is the so-called "Deficit Reduction Super Committee" and the kabuki theatre surrounding it right now. Putting it in a little perspective, the DRSC is supposed to cut 1.2 trillion dollars over the next ten years. Doing the math, that's 120 billion dollars a year in cuts. Compared to a deficit which is at least 1.3 trillion dollars a year, it's essentially nothing. It's like being shot with 11 bullets instead of twelve. If this isn't a WTF? moment, I don't know what is.
Of course, there's the usual talk around deficit reduction, where everyone wants their turf guarded, when the special interests don't want to see their slice of the public pie cut. The problem here, of course, is that the pie itself is mostly air sandwiched between two crusts, the filling long ago having been removed and the lid of the pie carefully replaced so that no one would notice. It's now a system running on promises -- the promise of enough money coming into the treasury, the promise that people who have bought bad debt will get repaid, the promise that there is enough leadership and will to somehow patch a failing system that's running out of time. Everyone in the country wants their own benefits from it, but no one asks what it'll cost or if they should give up a little bit, along with everyone else.
So WTF? is anyone thinking that cutting out 120 billion a year in spending is going to make much of a difference in the ballooning debt and rapidly sinking dollar. And WTF? comes to mind when anyone thinks that it matters if these guys manage to agree to anything that will close that gap, while ignoring the rest of the monster deficit. It's like hiking 500 feet up the side of Mt. Everest and claiming that it's been conquered.
Speaking of Britain, we're a little like the Romans living there in 408 A.D. At some point, the nation is going to have to face bankruptcy and it's anyone's guess as to what happens then -- I think the conversation might be "WTF do they mean 'you're on your own'?"
Monday, November 14, 2011
The Guns of August
It's been a while since I've posted anything here, mostly for the reason that every time I sat down to write something about the ongoing Euro crisis, which is probably the most significant event in world history since the fall of the Berlin Wall, things changed and I felt like it was impossible to really get a clear picture of where things were going. However, after seeing the news percolate over the last couple of months, I think it's possible to figure out where we're going with this. I'll skip the drum roll and the dramatic build-up and get straight to the point about it -- what we're seeing the Eurozone is the political class being unable to find a way out of the crisis because there is no way out of the crisis.
It's a little like hanging from a tree branch on the side of a cliff, with a hundred foot drop below you and a rabid grizzly bear above you. You can either climb up and get eaten, fall to your death below, or hope for some kind of miracle. Or, in Europe's case, you can throw the PIIGS under the bus and destroy any lasting chance at recreating the sense of Pan-Europeanism that died with World War One, you can watch the currency get detroyed, or you can hang on and hope that some economic miracle happens between now and inevitability.
I don't know if it's a lack of leadership, or a lack of will to simply get on with pulling the plug and figuring out what happens afterwards. The rotation of national leaders is about as effective as changing the coach on a sports team where everything else in the franchise (and perhaps league) is horribly broken. Do people think that ousting Berlosconi will magically make Italian debt turn into butterflies? Do they think that new blood is going to prove any thicker than the old?
Unfortunately, it's not all that hard to see where this is eventually going to lead. While it probably wasn't mentioned much during the formation of the EU, one thing that has always been implicit in the idea of a united Euope is that it would effectively mean an end to the fratricidal wars which have wracked the continent for millenia. After all, how can you go to war with someone who shares your currency, whose economy is tied to yours, and whose survival depends on your survival as well?
Sadly, a stake the size of Transylvania is about to be plunged into the heart of this idea. Pundits have made some light of the grumblings of Germans about Greeks and vice-versa. People who have a poor grasp and sense of history don't really understand the size of the colliding mountains behind these small, initial sparks. Southern Europe has always been in seen to be the ancient, cultured part, Northern Europe to be the hard-working economic giant. What happens to the idea of European unity when bank runs ensue and it once again takes a wheelbarrow full ofmarks euros to buy a loaf of bread?
The old scores to settle -- which were shelved first in the face of the Soviet Threat, then for the promise of United Europe, are bound to reassert themselves as people first look for someone to blame, then realize that the pie is shrinking and those who aren't willing use force to take their share aren't going to have any left at all. Add to this the pressures brought on by Peak Oil, environmental damage, overpopulation, the clash of cultures, the clash of ideals, pick something, and it's not really crazy to talk to think that we'll hear the Guns of August once again in our lifetimes, maybe even this decade.
It's a little like hanging from a tree branch on the side of a cliff, with a hundred foot drop below you and a rabid grizzly bear above you. You can either climb up and get eaten, fall to your death below, or hope for some kind of miracle. Or, in Europe's case, you can throw the PIIGS under the bus and destroy any lasting chance at recreating the sense of Pan-Europeanism that died with World War One, you can watch the currency get detroyed, or you can hang on and hope that some economic miracle happens between now and inevitability.
I don't know if it's a lack of leadership, or a lack of will to simply get on with pulling the plug and figuring out what happens afterwards. The rotation of national leaders is about as effective as changing the coach on a sports team where everything else in the franchise (and perhaps league) is horribly broken. Do people think that ousting Berlosconi will magically make Italian debt turn into butterflies? Do they think that new blood is going to prove any thicker than the old?
Unfortunately, it's not all that hard to see where this is eventually going to lead. While it probably wasn't mentioned much during the formation of the EU, one thing that has always been implicit in the idea of a united Euope is that it would effectively mean an end to the fratricidal wars which have wracked the continent for millenia. After all, how can you go to war with someone who shares your currency, whose economy is tied to yours, and whose survival depends on your survival as well?
Sadly, a stake the size of Transylvania is about to be plunged into the heart of this idea. Pundits have made some light of the grumblings of Germans about Greeks and vice-versa. People who have a poor grasp and sense of history don't really understand the size of the colliding mountains behind these small, initial sparks. Southern Europe has always been in seen to be the ancient, cultured part, Northern Europe to be the hard-working economic giant. What happens to the idea of European unity when bank runs ensue and it once again takes a wheelbarrow full of
The old scores to settle -- which were shelved first in the face of the Soviet Threat, then for the promise of United Europe, are bound to reassert themselves as people first look for someone to blame, then realize that the pie is shrinking and those who aren't willing use force to take their share aren't going to have any left at all. Add to this the pressures brought on by Peak Oil, environmental damage, overpopulation, the clash of cultures, the clash of ideals, pick something, and it's not really crazy to talk to think that we'll hear the Guns of August once again in our lifetimes, maybe even this decade.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Balkanization
In spite of the best efforts to get Europe's economic crisis under control, it's looking more and more like we're approaching the latest act in Europe's long retreat from anything resembling prosperity, optimism, strength, purpose, progress, and order. In other words, entropy can only be held at bay for so long, before it completely overtakes any given system.
The award for being most nakedly out of touch with reality has to go to Angela Merkel, who states that faith in the idea of European unity would be destroyed by a Greek default. What faith do people have in the EU, anyway? This is when you know a politician has to go, when they state things like this, which are about as accurate and relevant as production figures from the old Soviet "five year plans." Even Baghdad Bob wouldn't have bothered with drivel like that.
The levers of power in Europe have always had the tinge of inbreeding and incest about them, from the heads of different royal families being related (World War One was indeed a very bloody squabble between cousins), to the confusing claims and counter-claims on the English and French crowns, going all the way back to Charlemagne splitting his empire between his three sons and giving historians no shortage of things to write about for a millenia. The difference with the age of nobility and the modern age is that it's now the bankers who are in bed with each other, while not having enough legal degrees of separation. The latest sign of this is the IMF requesting more money from member states to solve the European debt crsis.
If anything, this should be the largest red flag, the loudest siren, the biggest shot across the bow, for anyone who thinks that a united Europe still has a future -- or, indeed, that Europe has much of an future at all. States which are bankrupt are having to give money to an organization which is also pretty much broke, to bail out other states which are bankrupt...this is the financial equivalent of stretching a rubber band to its limit, then trying again, but cutting it in half so that it goes twice as far.
The increasingly shrill warnings coming out of the European leadership aren't without some merit, though, even if those warnings are coming far too late. Europe has always been at odds with itself. A unifying religion (Catholicism) kept it somewhat together until the Reformation did away with that model and the continent was wracked with centuries of war as the yoke of the church was thrown off and replaced with the yoke of ambition. Unifying philosophies (the Enlightenment and Nationalism) kept Europe together for around a century until it bled itself white through the competition of nations in two World Wars. Now, the idea of the Cornucopian welfare state is running up against the hard reality of the decline of resources, the end of European global economic dominance, the lack of a Soviet threat to keep people all looking over the same shoulder, and it's anyone's guess as to which way the dominos will start to topple. The European leadership isn't so stupid as to not know that history readily wants to repeat itself, just blinded by their own ambitions.
It should be hard to say what the future holds for Europe when (not if) the EU breaks up and old ideas begin to reassert themselves, but it's really not. How long is it going to be before radical heads of state (of both the right and the left) find themselves with newfound political vigor, supported by a base of people who will come to see that all the promises made by European politicians are as empty as the national treasury? How long will it take for these new radicals to start looking for others outside of their borders (or within, for that matter) to blame? How long will it be until one leader or another decides that the only path for national survival is to seize things that someone else has?
Much has been made of the ominous possibilities that might follow an American collapse, but looking overseas probably demands as much attention. In either case, the cause is still the same -- a population that assumes that the lights will never go off or the oil wells will run dry, led by people who realize that the person who speaks truth will be lucky to keep their head, much less their elected office. When we think that somehow, even if our own nation and sphere of influence implodes, that there will still be pockets of learning and civilization elsewhere in the world, we should remember that when collapse comes, it is not going to be local and limited, but global and profound.
The award for being most nakedly out of touch with reality has to go to Angela Merkel, who states that faith in the idea of European unity would be destroyed by a Greek default. What faith do people have in the EU, anyway? This is when you know a politician has to go, when they state things like this, which are about as accurate and relevant as production figures from the old Soviet "five year plans." Even Baghdad Bob wouldn't have bothered with drivel like that.
The levers of power in Europe have always had the tinge of inbreeding and incest about them, from the heads of different royal families being related (World War One was indeed a very bloody squabble between cousins), to the confusing claims and counter-claims on the English and French crowns, going all the way back to Charlemagne splitting his empire between his three sons and giving historians no shortage of things to write about for a millenia. The difference with the age of nobility and the modern age is that it's now the bankers who are in bed with each other, while not having enough legal degrees of separation. The latest sign of this is the IMF requesting more money from member states to solve the European debt crsis.
If anything, this should be the largest red flag, the loudest siren, the biggest shot across the bow, for anyone who thinks that a united Europe still has a future -- or, indeed, that Europe has much of an future at all. States which are bankrupt are having to give money to an organization which is also pretty much broke, to bail out other states which are bankrupt...this is the financial equivalent of stretching a rubber band to its limit, then trying again, but cutting it in half so that it goes twice as far.
The increasingly shrill warnings coming out of the European leadership aren't without some merit, though, even if those warnings are coming far too late. Europe has always been at odds with itself. A unifying religion (Catholicism) kept it somewhat together until the Reformation did away with that model and the continent was wracked with centuries of war as the yoke of the church was thrown off and replaced with the yoke of ambition. Unifying philosophies (the Enlightenment and Nationalism) kept Europe together for around a century until it bled itself white through the competition of nations in two World Wars. Now, the idea of the Cornucopian welfare state is running up against the hard reality of the decline of resources, the end of European global economic dominance, the lack of a Soviet threat to keep people all looking over the same shoulder, and it's anyone's guess as to which way the dominos will start to topple. The European leadership isn't so stupid as to not know that history readily wants to repeat itself, just blinded by their own ambitions.
It should be hard to say what the future holds for Europe when (not if) the EU breaks up and old ideas begin to reassert themselves, but it's really not. How long is it going to be before radical heads of state (of both the right and the left) find themselves with newfound political vigor, supported by a base of people who will come to see that all the promises made by European politicians are as empty as the national treasury? How long will it take for these new radicals to start looking for others outside of their borders (or within, for that matter) to blame? How long will it be until one leader or another decides that the only path for national survival is to seize things that someone else has?
Much has been made of the ominous possibilities that might follow an American collapse, but looking overseas probably demands as much attention. In either case, the cause is still the same -- a population that assumes that the lights will never go off or the oil wells will run dry, led by people who realize that the person who speaks truth will be lucky to keep their head, much less their elected office. When we think that somehow, even if our own nation and sphere of influence implodes, that there will still be pockets of learning and civilization elsewhere in the world, we should remember that when collapse comes, it is not going to be local and limited, but global and profound.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Somme Ideas
World War One has faded into distant memory as the last few survivors have passed into memory and their eternal rest, with the death of the last English veteran of the war. The horror of the war, eclipsing any war before or since, is a footnote in the history books, perhaps as it should be. Clearly, humanity didn't learn anything from it, as the men who saw it first hand were all too eager, perhaps even anxious, to fight another one only two decades later, to settle old scores and right old wrongs.
In the mind of those who are at least somewhat familiar with the war, the Battle of the Somme is probably most representative of the conduct of the war. Repeated bloody Allied assaults on fortified and well-prepared German positions, at with only moderate gains and massive casualities, became the model of the conflict in the public mind. Tragically, the Somme was the only another link in a chain of bloody battles, where the same "over-the-top" and "hearts of oak" mentality prevailed again and again, until the French army mutinied in 1917 and refused to participate in futile attacks.
It's hard to really fathom the mindset of the generals involved and why this repeat slaughter happened. There are a number of theories, including the problem of military conservatism, unfamiliarity with the true lethality of weapons at the time, political pressure, and so on. I think it was simply that the leadership could not even begin to grasp the size of the problem and had no way to deal with it outside of trying the same thing over and over in the hopes that somehow it would work.
Just as the tragedy of World War One was that the leadership could not learn from their mistakes, and could only think of repeating them in the hopes that somehow, somewhere, it would finally work, we see the same mindset and approach in modern America with the economy. After multiple stimulus packages and massive government spending in the hopes of somehow creating jobs, of getting the economy rolling and avoiding another recession/depression, the next idea that is going to be tried is...more stimulus packages and massive government spending. A $450 billion dollar jobs bill proposed by Obama is the stuff from which tragic jokes are made. The only reason that it's not being laughed out of Washington is because the Republicans are made from the same cloth, only they believe that warfare, not welfare, is the key to economic health.
While it's tempting to say "Well, it's just money, and not lives," we have to remember that this kind of spending is going to lead to economic and social collapse, sooner or later. There are around three hundred million people in modern America, most of whom are far removed from the land and any means of food production, not to mention that this population well exceeds what pre-industrial agriculture could functionally maintain. What would happen in the case of a fast economic crash, with all the following chaos and inability of people to obtain food at any price, similar to Germany post-World War One?
Like World War One, I think the problem is also that the political and economic leadership really has no idea of the size of the problem and how to address it. On one hand, there is a restive public that threatens to vote out anyone who cannot deliver the sun, the moon, and stars at no cost. On the other hand, there is a changing reality, where the excess reserves built up by over five hundred years of pre-industrial and industrial economic activity are finally exhausted, when land and resources are running scarce and the only answer seems to be to burn them faster.
What needs to happen? What are the solutions? Are there solutions? Those are three questions I won't address, because the very first thing that needs to happen on the public stage -- that of admitting that there IS a problem, that the old models will no longer work -- hasn't even happened yet. Just like generals marching soldiers into the maw of death at the Somme because their playbook has only one page, we citizens of the industrialized world are being marched straight into the maw of collapse, because our own "leaders" seem to have only one fix to these kinds of problems -- more of the same until there is no more left.
In the mind of those who are at least somewhat familiar with the war, the Battle of the Somme is probably most representative of the conduct of the war. Repeated bloody Allied assaults on fortified and well-prepared German positions, at with only moderate gains and massive casualities, became the model of the conflict in the public mind. Tragically, the Somme was the only another link in a chain of bloody battles, where the same "over-the-top" and "hearts of oak" mentality prevailed again and again, until the French army mutinied in 1917 and refused to participate in futile attacks.
It's hard to really fathom the mindset of the generals involved and why this repeat slaughter happened. There are a number of theories, including the problem of military conservatism, unfamiliarity with the true lethality of weapons at the time, political pressure, and so on. I think it was simply that the leadership could not even begin to grasp the size of the problem and had no way to deal with it outside of trying the same thing over and over in the hopes that somehow it would work.
Just as the tragedy of World War One was that the leadership could not learn from their mistakes, and could only think of repeating them in the hopes that somehow, somewhere, it would finally work, we see the same mindset and approach in modern America with the economy. After multiple stimulus packages and massive government spending in the hopes of somehow creating jobs, of getting the economy rolling and avoiding another recession/depression, the next idea that is going to be tried is...more stimulus packages and massive government spending. A $450 billion dollar jobs bill proposed by Obama is the stuff from which tragic jokes are made. The only reason that it's not being laughed out of Washington is because the Republicans are made from the same cloth, only they believe that warfare, not welfare, is the key to economic health.
While it's tempting to say "Well, it's just money, and not lives," we have to remember that this kind of spending is going to lead to economic and social collapse, sooner or later. There are around three hundred million people in modern America, most of whom are far removed from the land and any means of food production, not to mention that this population well exceeds what pre-industrial agriculture could functionally maintain. What would happen in the case of a fast economic crash, with all the following chaos and inability of people to obtain food at any price, similar to Germany post-World War One?
Like World War One, I think the problem is also that the political and economic leadership really has no idea of the size of the problem and how to address it. On one hand, there is a restive public that threatens to vote out anyone who cannot deliver the sun, the moon, and stars at no cost. On the other hand, there is a changing reality, where the excess reserves built up by over five hundred years of pre-industrial and industrial economic activity are finally exhausted, when land and resources are running scarce and the only answer seems to be to burn them faster.
What needs to happen? What are the solutions? Are there solutions? Those are three questions I won't address, because the very first thing that needs to happen on the public stage -- that of admitting that there IS a problem, that the old models will no longer work -- hasn't even happened yet. Just like generals marching soldiers into the maw of death at the Somme because their playbook has only one page, we citizens of the industrialized world are being marched straight into the maw of collapse, because our own "leaders" seem to have only one fix to these kinds of problems -- more of the same until there is no more left.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Brother Against Brother
As part of writing this blog, and researching much of the material which goes into it, I've had the opportunity and need to talk to a wide range of people with an equally wide range of opinions. This includes people who either back the Tea Party viewpoint or the pro-Obama viewpoint.
The thing which stands out in many of these discussions, is that there is no reconciliation between one viewpoint and another. People on the right accuse people on the left of wanting to use government to oppress them and destroy them financially. People on the left accuse people on the right of wanting to "take over" the system and trample freedom in the name of some hidden agenda. The facts no longer matter, the notion that each side genuinely believes it is trying to do what is best for the nation, is lost on the other. The hatred between each camp is palpable and is not decreasing.
Things like this get glossed over in the good times, when there's no real pressure and competition for how to distribute limited resources. When everyone is fat and happy, there's no need to worry about who's fighting over scraps. Now, however, with uneployment and despair reaching catastrophic levels, a president with no ability to lead the nation out of the mess, a congress which is paralyzed by partisanship and whoring after lobbyist dollars, the pressures are growing until the inevitable is going to happen, a spark of some sort, the first rock through a window, which is going to set off a spiral of violence until a de facto state of civil war exists.
The first American civil war came perilously close to tearing the nation apart and has had repercussions that have not stopped to the present day. This was in a time and place when there was a giant western frontier for people to escape to and rebuild new lives in a place of plenty. Now that there are no ready-to-exploit frontiers left, no safety valve for radicals of both sides, what is going to be the end result? A nonstop grind of civil conflict until there is not one stone standing on top of another?
It is in times like these when knowledge is lost and ideas die, in favor of the daily struggle to survive. Look at any of the "third world" nations wracked by civil wars in recent decades. What is there except using food as a weapon, making homebuilt AK-47s in the basement, and getting high in between clashes in the streets between one "militia" and another? Do we think that we're any more immune to this than any other nation or culture?
While it doesn't necessarily seem that civil war and collapse would necessarily intersect with the storing of knowledge for rebuilding in the distant future, consider that the Khmer Rouge made a habit of putting plastic bags over the heads of people who wore glasses or didn't have callouses on their hands. Would a few bins of carefully packaged books be enough to condemn someone? Even if that were not the case, do we expect that anything resembling a public library would survive civil upheaval, or would they be torn down and disposed of along with all other institutions, such as universities, that one faction or another saw as objectionable?
The thing which stands out in many of these discussions, is that there is no reconciliation between one viewpoint and another. People on the right accuse people on the left of wanting to use government to oppress them and destroy them financially. People on the left accuse people on the right of wanting to "take over" the system and trample freedom in the name of some hidden agenda. The facts no longer matter, the notion that each side genuinely believes it is trying to do what is best for the nation, is lost on the other. The hatred between each camp is palpable and is not decreasing.
Things like this get glossed over in the good times, when there's no real pressure and competition for how to distribute limited resources. When everyone is fat and happy, there's no need to worry about who's fighting over scraps. Now, however, with uneployment and despair reaching catastrophic levels, a president with no ability to lead the nation out of the mess, a congress which is paralyzed by partisanship and whoring after lobbyist dollars, the pressures are growing until the inevitable is going to happen, a spark of some sort, the first rock through a window, which is going to set off a spiral of violence until a de facto state of civil war exists.
The first American civil war came perilously close to tearing the nation apart and has had repercussions that have not stopped to the present day. This was in a time and place when there was a giant western frontier for people to escape to and rebuild new lives in a place of plenty. Now that there are no ready-to-exploit frontiers left, no safety valve for radicals of both sides, what is going to be the end result? A nonstop grind of civil conflict until there is not one stone standing on top of another?
It is in times like these when knowledge is lost and ideas die, in favor of the daily struggle to survive. Look at any of the "third world" nations wracked by civil wars in recent decades. What is there except using food as a weapon, making homebuilt AK-47s in the basement, and getting high in between clashes in the streets between one "militia" and another? Do we think that we're any more immune to this than any other nation or culture?
While it doesn't necessarily seem that civil war and collapse would necessarily intersect with the storing of knowledge for rebuilding in the distant future, consider that the Khmer Rouge made a habit of putting plastic bags over the heads of people who wore glasses or didn't have callouses on their hands. Would a few bins of carefully packaged books be enough to condemn someone? Even if that were not the case, do we expect that anything resembling a public library would survive civil upheaval, or would they be torn down and disposed of along with all other institutions, such as universities, that one faction or another saw as objectionable?
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
London's Burning
On September 7th, 1940, the German Luftwaffe bombed London after a smattering of RAF attacks on Berlin. Particularly excited by this turn of events was Hermann Goering, who telegrammed his wife Emmy and bragged "I've sent my bombers to London! London's burning!" The irony, of course, was that the shift by the Luftwaffe to the bombing of London provided a respite to RAF Fighter Command that was essentially on the ropes by that point in time, running short on aircraft and especially short on pilots. Now, 71 years later after Germany failed to destroy England's defenses, London is once more on fire, but this time her own people are doing the deed.
There may be a handful of surviving RAF pilots who are now asking themselves just why they flung their Hurricanes and Spitfires into the sky against the Messerschmidts and Heinkels, if the end result was going to be angry mobs burning down shops, houses, and businesses. Did they suspect that the nation of England might well be destroyed by the barbarians from within?
There doesn't seem to necessarily be an easy way to categorize the riots. Nativists would try to point to immigration or race as being the source of the problem, but there were plenty of pictures of Anglo-Saxon looking folking swinging heavy objects at police cars or being dragged off by riot cops. Marxists, on the other side of the fence, would try to blame lack of economic opportunity, but can a convincing case be made when a Sony distribution facility was targeted and looted? (I tend to doubt that anyone is going to put "The Internationale" on their stolen iPods)
It goes without saying that there won't be any shortage of opinions on the cause of these riots (and other ones around the world). I don't think it's unlikely that we'll begin seeing the same sort of thing start to occur in America, either. However, one explanation lies in complexity theory, the branch of mathematics which deals with spontaneous organization of patterns. In short, complexity theory notes that patterns can arise where they didn't previously exist, generally caused by energy entering a semi-closed system. An example of this is a neon sign -- neon gas just sits in the tube until electricity is applied, when the molecules begin to glow. An even better example is a spontaneous traffic jam -- for no real reason, cars begin slowing en masse, until traffic slows to a crawl. Just as quickly, it can dissipate, the road becoming clear once more, without anyone really knowing the cause. Yet another example is the action of acts defending their colony or digging a nest.
While we see the effect of destabilizing industrial society in the riots, complex systems also seem to exist at a higher level in places like Washington. A poster commented here a couple of weeks ago about the debt crisis solving itself, if the government would simply quit spending. We look at the "debt ceiling deal," and ask just how each party can support something so meaningless, claim some victory, blame the other side, and kick the can down the road. On top of that, we ask how someone like Alan Greenspan can just say that the printing presses can keep running, or Bernake can just float a trial balloon about QE3? The answer is that our system of leadership has taken on a particularly rigid and chaotic pattern after years of energy inputs in the form of lobbying, power grabs over budgeting, and everything else that goes with fighting over the spoils in a late-state empire.
The pattern which has emerged is very much like that traffic jam -- nothing is going anywhere and no one really knows why, even though there's no wreck on the road, no construction to channel the traffic down to one lane. Nothing moves, nothing changes, it just keeps plodding on to the inevitable point where it collapses into chaos, once there is no more energy to feed into the system.
There may be a handful of surviving RAF pilots who are now asking themselves just why they flung their Hurricanes and Spitfires into the sky against the Messerschmidts and Heinkels, if the end result was going to be angry mobs burning down shops, houses, and businesses. Did they suspect that the nation of England might well be destroyed by the barbarians from within?
There doesn't seem to necessarily be an easy way to categorize the riots. Nativists would try to point to immigration or race as being the source of the problem, but there were plenty of pictures of Anglo-Saxon looking folking swinging heavy objects at police cars or being dragged off by riot cops. Marxists, on the other side of the fence, would try to blame lack of economic opportunity, but can a convincing case be made when a Sony distribution facility was targeted and looted? (I tend to doubt that anyone is going to put "The Internationale" on their stolen iPods)
It goes without saying that there won't be any shortage of opinions on the cause of these riots (and other ones around the world). I don't think it's unlikely that we'll begin seeing the same sort of thing start to occur in America, either. However, one explanation lies in complexity theory, the branch of mathematics which deals with spontaneous organization of patterns. In short, complexity theory notes that patterns can arise where they didn't previously exist, generally caused by energy entering a semi-closed system. An example of this is a neon sign -- neon gas just sits in the tube until electricity is applied, when the molecules begin to glow. An even better example is a spontaneous traffic jam -- for no real reason, cars begin slowing en masse, until traffic slows to a crawl. Just as quickly, it can dissipate, the road becoming clear once more, without anyone really knowing the cause. Yet another example is the action of acts defending their colony or digging a nest.
While we see the effect of destabilizing industrial society in the riots, complex systems also seem to exist at a higher level in places like Washington. A poster commented here a couple of weeks ago about the debt crisis solving itself, if the government would simply quit spending. We look at the "debt ceiling deal," and ask just how each party can support something so meaningless, claim some victory, blame the other side, and kick the can down the road. On top of that, we ask how someone like Alan Greenspan can just say that the printing presses can keep running, or Bernake can just float a trial balloon about QE3? The answer is that our system of leadership has taken on a particularly rigid and chaotic pattern after years of energy inputs in the form of lobbying, power grabs over budgeting, and everything else that goes with fighting over the spoils in a late-state empire.
The pattern which has emerged is very much like that traffic jam -- nothing is going anywhere and no one really knows why, even though there's no wreck on the road, no construction to channel the traffic down to one lane. Nothing moves, nothing changes, it just keeps plodding on to the inevitable point where it collapses into chaos, once there is no more energy to feed into the system.
Monday, August 8, 2011
The New Tets
In early 1968, the Vietnamese communists launched a surprise offensive against the American and South Vietnamese forces, which aimed at seizing control of various strategically important areas, as well as triggering an uprising against a politically dubious South Vietnamese government. The offensive, from a military standpoint, was a failure, being soundly defeated by the American and South Vietnamese militaries and badly weakening the North Vietnamese/Vietcong forces for a period of time. However, from a political standpoint, it was a rousing success, for the perception in America was that, in spite of the power of the American military, and demonstrating success in terms of controlling the battlefield, the communist forces were resilient enough to withstand everything that had been thrown against them and continue the fight, despite predictions from government representatives that the war was being won. Ultimately, the view began to shift that victory in the war was not possible.
Like the Tet Offensive, two events happened toward the end of last week which have the power to permanently alter the public perception of the American empire and cost it the lifeblood which sustains it -- the confidence of the American people.
The first is the death 30 Americans (and 8 Afghans), in a "rocket attack" on a CH-47 transport helicopter during a raid in a Taliban-controlled area in Afghanistan. In many ways, this attack is a symbolic throwback to the Tet Offensive in 1968. While only involving one chopper and a small number of deaths, it very much echoes the events in Vietnam where the public had been confident about the strategy of the American military and there was a perception that the communist forces had suffered so many defeats that it was only a matter of time before they were rendered useless as a military force. Likewise, with Afghanistan, the American public has been told for years that the Taliban was effectively defeated as a functioning military force, that the death of bin Laden was a major turning point, and it's only a matter of time before things are wrapped up and the troops could come home.
The loss of these lives is another reminder that the war is far from over, that the Taliban can still continue to fight. In both Vietnam, and in Afghanistan, the nature of the wars themselves is that victory is almost impossible to achieve -- it would come only when there was no one willing to pick up a rifle and go fight the Americans. And, like McNamara after Tet, Leon Panetta has come under pressure to explain the "credibility gap" between what the public has been told and the reality of the war.
The other earthshaking event for the American empire is the downgrading of the credit rating of the United States, or how confident people can be they'll get their money back if they lend it to America. Like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the struggle to turn the recession/depression around and get back to something like the boom years of the late 90s, or at least contain the damage, has been an ongoing effort, one in which the American public was told that we have turned the corner, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. However, all the economic reports and anecdotes have been pointing in the other direction and Moody's has finally just said what everyone who has been paying attention already knew -- that the staggering American debt was beginning to endanger the economy to the point where investment in the nation was beginning to become risky.
The United States has had a AAA rating for almost a hundred years, since 1917. Now, it is AA+ and will likely drop to AA once it is seen that the government is still unable to make singificant progress on tackling the debt and deficit problem. Likewise, the Chinese bond rating agency has re-rated America from A+ to A. The response to these has ranged from the tepid (Greenspan saying "we can print more money") to the profound (China saying "the dollar is finished). Nowhere in this is anything which can even begin to be calming to the average person in America who is now wondering if they will have anything of worth at all in the bank when they retire, or even when they go to the grocery next week.
Nations are allowed a catastrophe or two from time to time, as the citizens have a shared common culture and outlook, but empires like American aren't afforded these luxuries. People support an empire only as long as it is "winning," and look to desert it when it isn't. The Soviet Empire appeared to begin down the path of disintegration in earnest when its military might was questioned after not being able to win Afghanistan, and the incompetence of the Soviet management of domestic affairs took another shot after Chernobyl. A few years later, the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist as a political entity. Have the "New Tets" created the momentum to push America down the same path?
Like the Tet Offensive, two events happened toward the end of last week which have the power to permanently alter the public perception of the American empire and cost it the lifeblood which sustains it -- the confidence of the American people.
The first is the death 30 Americans (and 8 Afghans), in a "rocket attack" on a CH-47 transport helicopter during a raid in a Taliban-controlled area in Afghanistan. In many ways, this attack is a symbolic throwback to the Tet Offensive in 1968. While only involving one chopper and a small number of deaths, it very much echoes the events in Vietnam where the public had been confident about the strategy of the American military and there was a perception that the communist forces had suffered so many defeats that it was only a matter of time before they were rendered useless as a military force. Likewise, with Afghanistan, the American public has been told for years that the Taliban was effectively defeated as a functioning military force, that the death of bin Laden was a major turning point, and it's only a matter of time before things are wrapped up and the troops could come home.
The loss of these lives is another reminder that the war is far from over, that the Taliban can still continue to fight. In both Vietnam, and in Afghanistan, the nature of the wars themselves is that victory is almost impossible to achieve -- it would come only when there was no one willing to pick up a rifle and go fight the Americans. And, like McNamara after Tet, Leon Panetta has come under pressure to explain the "credibility gap" between what the public has been told and the reality of the war.
The other earthshaking event for the American empire is the downgrading of the credit rating of the United States, or how confident people can be they'll get their money back if they lend it to America. Like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the struggle to turn the recession/depression around and get back to something like the boom years of the late 90s, or at least contain the damage, has been an ongoing effort, one in which the American public was told that we have turned the corner, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. However, all the economic reports and anecdotes have been pointing in the other direction and Moody's has finally just said what everyone who has been paying attention already knew -- that the staggering American debt was beginning to endanger the economy to the point where investment in the nation was beginning to become risky.
The United States has had a AAA rating for almost a hundred years, since 1917. Now, it is AA+ and will likely drop to AA once it is seen that the government is still unable to make singificant progress on tackling the debt and deficit problem. Likewise, the Chinese bond rating agency has re-rated America from A+ to A. The response to these has ranged from the tepid (Greenspan saying "we can print more money") to the profound (China saying "the dollar is finished). Nowhere in this is anything which can even begin to be calming to the average person in America who is now wondering if they will have anything of worth at all in the bank when they retire, or even when they go to the grocery next week.
Nations are allowed a catastrophe or two from time to time, as the citizens have a shared common culture and outlook, but empires like American aren't afforded these luxuries. People support an empire only as long as it is "winning," and look to desert it when it isn't. The Soviet Empire appeared to begin down the path of disintegration in earnest when its military might was questioned after not being able to win Afghanistan, and the incompetence of the Soviet management of domestic affairs took another shot after Chernobyl. A few years later, the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist as a political entity. Have the "New Tets" created the momentum to push America down the same path?
Monday, July 25, 2011
Tectonics
This summer is shaping up to be one for the history books, and not in a good way. Another drug-addled musician joined the "27 Club," some headcase with a vaguely racist-nativist agenda kills nearly 100 people in Norway, record heat is cooking crops and tempers in most of the lower 48. While nothing is on the radar at the moment, I wouldn't be surprised if we wake up one morning and hear about a Category 5 killstorm barreling its way toward the Eastern Seaboard.
However, all of the topical bad news of the day is still overshadowed -- in spite of the media's best efforts -- by the impending economic financial implosion in America and the Hobson's choice it poses for people in political office. The choices have boiled down to extending the debt ceiling and seeing the dollar slowly sink, or not raising the debt ceiling and seeing the dollar melt down overnight. This is what the media and politicians are not presenting to people -- that there is no way out with the two "options" being floated right now for people.
The logical choice would be to simply stop spending money that the nation doesn't have. This is what most people do when they're faced with bills they can't pay. If they're smart, they don't go get another credit card. For the American government, it would mean drastically cutting defense and social spending, pushing it down to levels where it would be possible to stop adding to an already massive debt and maybe even start cutting that debt a little, here and there.
There is of course a small problem with this. Objectively speaking, the United States is an empire, not a nation. It maintains military bases in many different parts of the world, something that is almost unique at this point in time, and exercises a great deal of influence over many governments through economic incentives. In addition to maintaining external control, America itself is not really a nation in the sense of a shared culture and values, with the Civil War being an obvious example of this heterogeneity and the problems it can cause. The "War on Poverty" itself was simply a massive attempt to soothe the pain of and address the injustices directed at the African-American segment of the American population before it tried again to assert itself politically, and so on.
Ultimately, America cannot disengage from where it already is, without first dealing with the issue that the definition of America itself would change, and this is what the real heart of this political battle is all about. The right wants to support military spending, the left wants to support social spending, and neither type of spending can be sustained in the long run. This is the fate of empires...extending themselves to the point where they can't be maintained and destroy themselves in the process of trying to make it just a little longer, like the person who can't stop spending. For people who have studied ecology, this is referred to as "carrying capacity" -- the population we have now (both literally and in terms of ideas and institutions) has been built around something which could not be sustained.
While people have mentioned that a default might be a good thing, to reign in spending, the issue here is that doing so is going to very quickly expose the fault lines in American public life. Far too many people have their fortunes and fates tied to the American government, to the dollar, and to the systems that have been created around these two entities. Could the pieces of lives and institutions be picked back up quickly enough once the dust of the economic chaos settled? Or would we see a confusion with no clear way forward? I think it would take only a very short time before people start mentally and emotionally, if not physically, heading for the exits. It won't be longer after that all the systems which have been put in place and maintained by those same people will cease to exists.
It's never easy to know how to act in times like these, but I think one piece of advice makes sense -- disengage as much as possible. Look to minding your own life and realize that the thunder you're hearing is the long-forecast storm finally arriving. Get away from anything which requires a sound dollar and make sure you have plans in place for the day when there is nothing on the store shelves and what you need must be obtained through barter or local labor. Understand that you are going to do with a much simpler lifestyle if you are not living simply. If you already are, then be content in knowing that you're likely going to be okay in the long run. Last, understand that all things come to an end, sooner or later, including nations and empires, and that what is really most important is likely in front of you anyway.
However, all of the topical bad news of the day is still overshadowed -- in spite of the media's best efforts -- by the impending economic financial implosion in America and the Hobson's choice it poses for people in political office. The choices have boiled down to extending the debt ceiling and seeing the dollar slowly sink, or not raising the debt ceiling and seeing the dollar melt down overnight. This is what the media and politicians are not presenting to people -- that there is no way out with the two "options" being floated right now for people.
The logical choice would be to simply stop spending money that the nation doesn't have. This is what most people do when they're faced with bills they can't pay. If they're smart, they don't go get another credit card. For the American government, it would mean drastically cutting defense and social spending, pushing it down to levels where it would be possible to stop adding to an already massive debt and maybe even start cutting that debt a little, here and there.
There is of course a small problem with this. Objectively speaking, the United States is an empire, not a nation. It maintains military bases in many different parts of the world, something that is almost unique at this point in time, and exercises a great deal of influence over many governments through economic incentives. In addition to maintaining external control, America itself is not really a nation in the sense of a shared culture and values, with the Civil War being an obvious example of this heterogeneity and the problems it can cause. The "War on Poverty" itself was simply a massive attempt to soothe the pain of and address the injustices directed at the African-American segment of the American population before it tried again to assert itself politically, and so on.
Ultimately, America cannot disengage from where it already is, without first dealing with the issue that the definition of America itself would change, and this is what the real heart of this political battle is all about. The right wants to support military spending, the left wants to support social spending, and neither type of spending can be sustained in the long run. This is the fate of empires...extending themselves to the point where they can't be maintained and destroy themselves in the process of trying to make it just a little longer, like the person who can't stop spending. For people who have studied ecology, this is referred to as "carrying capacity" -- the population we have now (both literally and in terms of ideas and institutions) has been built around something which could not be sustained.
While people have mentioned that a default might be a good thing, to reign in spending, the issue here is that doing so is going to very quickly expose the fault lines in American public life. Far too many people have their fortunes and fates tied to the American government, to the dollar, and to the systems that have been created around these two entities. Could the pieces of lives and institutions be picked back up quickly enough once the dust of the economic chaos settled? Or would we see a confusion with no clear way forward? I think it would take only a very short time before people start mentally and emotionally, if not physically, heading for the exits. It won't be longer after that all the systems which have been put in place and maintained by those same people will cease to exists.
It's never easy to know how to act in times like these, but I think one piece of advice makes sense -- disengage as much as possible. Look to minding your own life and realize that the thunder you're hearing is the long-forecast storm finally arriving. Get away from anything which requires a sound dollar and make sure you have plans in place for the day when there is nothing on the store shelves and what you need must be obtained through barter or local labor. Understand that you are going to do with a much simpler lifestyle if you are not living simply. If you already are, then be content in knowing that you're likely going to be okay in the long run. Last, understand that all things come to an end, sooner or later, including nations and empires, and that what is really most important is likely in front of you anyway.
Monday, June 20, 2011
No One Need Apply, Part Two
CNN recently ran an article about the employment situation in Zimbabwe. Apparently, the position of hangman has been vacant for years, but plenty of people are interested in it, just to guarantee a regular paycheck. I don't know the social attitude toward capital punishment in Zimbabwe, but it seems clear that the social attitude toward being unemployed shares an awful lot with the United States, as large numbers of people take jobs well below their professional skill level and education just to get by. One reason for the riots in Tunisia was a large class of former college students that were unable to find any work related to their education.
I've been waiting for some years for the "higher education bubble" to burst in America. Millions of young adults head off to college, still armed with the out of date mindset of a generation before (get a degree, someone will give you a job), all-too-willing to accept decades of debt slavery based on student loans underwritten with bad government debt. Four years later, or maybe six or eight, these same young adults find themselves with an inescapable debt (bankruptcy laws don't apply) and fewer and fewer job prospects. At my local chain bookstore, the staff consists largely of English majors who weren't able to find anything else but a minimum-wage job working a register and finding books on a shelf. This isn't necessarily confined to degrees which don't directly translate to professional training, either -- plenty of people with accounting degrees, law degrees, etc, are facing increasingly poor employment prospects.
There's a tendency to play the "blame the victim" game here, that people should've known that things sometimes come with strings attached and that there's no guarantee of success. However, what prospective students didn't realize -- and what our civilization as a whole is still failing to comprehend -- that the ground has shifted beneath their feet, that the world which they were raised in, and people still believe in, simply doesn't exist anymore. Lots of things are clear in the rearview, but maybe not so much when they're around the next corner.
It does beg the question of how things will change socially, as we have an increasingly large educated class with little hope of success or life beyond trying to figure out how to pay their minimum loan payments and not find themselves arrested for not coming up with the cash to Sallie Mae or whoever. Will we see a generation of "refuseniks" arise, who simply don't pay back their loans and form communities around this common burden? Or will they form political action groups to try to have mass student loan forgiveness? In an age when we're willing to bail out banks and given planeloads (literally) of dollars to foreign dicators, the latter idea doesn't seem so outlandish. Finally, will they be primary contributors to political disruption and mass dissent?
If anything, we can see that when the collapse of our systems is in the offing, then like the chaos of a collapsing universe, all sorts of new patterns emerge and things which were once unthinkable become commonplace. This was the view when the Soviet Union was headed off the edge of the cliff and it wasn't unheard of for soldiers occupying Eastern Europe to be picking over the refuse in garbage dumps for the essentials of life. It doesn't take much speculation to see that we're on the same track and that, if anything, we flew a lot higher and have a lot farther to fall before it's all over.
I've been waiting for some years for the "higher education bubble" to burst in America. Millions of young adults head off to college, still armed with the out of date mindset of a generation before (get a degree, someone will give you a job), all-too-willing to accept decades of debt slavery based on student loans underwritten with bad government debt. Four years later, or maybe six or eight, these same young adults find themselves with an inescapable debt (bankruptcy laws don't apply) and fewer and fewer job prospects. At my local chain bookstore, the staff consists largely of English majors who weren't able to find anything else but a minimum-wage job working a register and finding books on a shelf. This isn't necessarily confined to degrees which don't directly translate to professional training, either -- plenty of people with accounting degrees, law degrees, etc, are facing increasingly poor employment prospects.
There's a tendency to play the "blame the victim" game here, that people should've known that things sometimes come with strings attached and that there's no guarantee of success. However, what prospective students didn't realize -- and what our civilization as a whole is still failing to comprehend -- that the ground has shifted beneath their feet, that the world which they were raised in, and people still believe in, simply doesn't exist anymore. Lots of things are clear in the rearview, but maybe not so much when they're around the next corner.
It does beg the question of how things will change socially, as we have an increasingly large educated class with little hope of success or life beyond trying to figure out how to pay their minimum loan payments and not find themselves arrested for not coming up with the cash to Sallie Mae or whoever. Will we see a generation of "refuseniks" arise, who simply don't pay back their loans and form communities around this common burden? Or will they form political action groups to try to have mass student loan forgiveness? In an age when we're willing to bail out banks and given planeloads (literally) of dollars to foreign dicators, the latter idea doesn't seem so outlandish. Finally, will they be primary contributors to political disruption and mass dissent?
If anything, we can see that when the collapse of our systems is in the offing, then like the chaos of a collapsing universe, all sorts of new patterns emerge and things which were once unthinkable become commonplace. This was the view when the Soviet Union was headed off the edge of the cliff and it wasn't unheard of for soldiers occupying Eastern Europe to be picking over the refuse in garbage dumps for the essentials of life. It doesn't take much speculation to see that we're on the same track and that, if anything, we flew a lot higher and have a lot farther to fall before it's all over.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Flopping Around
I read an article (here) today about the new "Spider Man" musical and how U2 is trying to distance themselves from the production, stating that there is still some work to be done, even as the premiere is hours away. The musical itself has cost around $70 million to produce and has been panned by the critics. On top of that, it's apparently safer to be a lumberjack than it is to be a star in the show. In other words, it's shaping up to be the Titanic of musicals -- just the ticket to be a symbol of the faltering culture of a faltering time.
Looking at the upcoming U.S. presidential election, I confess that I feel the same way about it, too. The leading Republican candidate's main qualification is that he's been able to raise a lot of funds, without really specifying what he stands for. The incumbent Democrat president has apparently been overwhelmed by the scope and scale of the problems of the presidency (hint, Mr. Obama -- when none of your party's heavyweights are seeking the top job in politics, the job itself has probably become something of a lemon, with the tires falling off and an engine packed full of Stop-Leak and metal shavings). Some of the Republican runners-up include department store mannequins and stunt doubles from a torch-and-pitchfork mob. Ron Paul, probably the most philosophically sound member of the bunch, has been shoved to the back of the pack. Picking a new emperor is always a dodgy business. Now, it's becoming a parody.
While the Leibowitz Society doesn't take political sides, the problem remains that a nation without solid leadership in difficult times is going to find itself in worse and worse trouble as people try to figure out which way the wind is blowing during a hurricane. We need to start figuring out how our systems are going to work when cheap oil is gone and the dollar becomes worthless, not how we can try to keep the barbarians beyond the "limes" of Kabul or Cairo, or how we can keep building homes that will never see an occupant or cars that will have nothing to run on that the average person can afford.
Looking at the upcoming U.S. presidential election, I confess that I feel the same way about it, too. The leading Republican candidate's main qualification is that he's been able to raise a lot of funds, without really specifying what he stands for. The incumbent Democrat president has apparently been overwhelmed by the scope and scale of the problems of the presidency (hint, Mr. Obama -- when none of your party's heavyweights are seeking the top job in politics, the job itself has probably become something of a lemon, with the tires falling off and an engine packed full of Stop-Leak and metal shavings). Some of the Republican runners-up include department store mannequins and stunt doubles from a torch-and-pitchfork mob. Ron Paul, probably the most philosophically sound member of the bunch, has been shoved to the back of the pack. Picking a new emperor is always a dodgy business. Now, it's becoming a parody.
While the Leibowitz Society doesn't take political sides, the problem remains that a nation without solid leadership in difficult times is going to find itself in worse and worse trouble as people try to figure out which way the wind is blowing during a hurricane. We need to start figuring out how our systems are going to work when cheap oil is gone and the dollar becomes worthless, not how we can try to keep the barbarians beyond the "limes" of Kabul or Cairo, or how we can keep building homes that will never see an occupant or cars that will have nothing to run on that the average person can afford.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Braver New World
One of the signs of an impending Dark Age seems to be a loss of meaning or "way" in society. We go through the motions, but we lose any sense of relevance of our actions. Part of this is because we see that what we do will make little difference in the overall course of human civilization and part of it is because we aren't even aware that we have the capacity to effect change. Or, if you want it boiled down to the essence, we suffer from apathy and ignorance.
Politicians, the media, educators, often get the blame for this state of affairs, but it really makes no more sense to blame them than it does the sun and the moon for someone's bunions. Politicians spend most of their time trying to get out ahead of where the herd is going and say something that will win some votes. The media spends all their time trying to battle fiercely for ratings or readership, fighting a rear-guard action against the new media of the web. Educators take children from homes where education is valued somewhere on the same level as leprosy and try to teach them something, anything, while battling public policy and dodging political potshots.
I'm not really sure where we could put the blame, where we would define the cornerstone event that led to this problem. Maybe Huxley was right, that it is impossible to find a limit for man's capacity to endlessly amuse himself. Prosperous societies never seem to be able to sustain that prosperity. Is it because people get distracted and don't notice when problems start to crop up? Or do they just prefer to kick the can down the road because the problem is too huge to address?
I'm really, really not sure what chance America -- and most of the developed world -- has anymore at sustained intellectual growth. The heroes of yesteryear -- scientists, inventors, tycoons, engineers, explorers -- have been replaced by sports stars, pop stars and actors, all who live shoddy personal lives and can't string two thoughts together. People like these are what kids aspire to become, while demeaning the contributions of people who actually matter and change the world as we know it.
Some readers might look at this as being one step removed from a "get off my lawn!" type of screed, and maybe it is. Whatever people may say, there is still likely a vague sense of a loss of purpose and instead they feel unease at being bombarded 24/7 by new and greater distractions, hedonism as a virtue, the lack of adult thought and behavior from most people, the constant search for an endless childhood.
On the other hand, I think most will agree that we've gone from being a society where things do matter, where we understand what our place in the world is and that we can change it, to a culture of general irrelevance. The mechanisms of corrective change in the course of our society have completely evaporated and we're left with what is going to be an increasingly bumpy downhill ride even as we see that there's no driver at the wheel any longer.
He's off eating Cheetos and watching America's Got Talent.
Politicians, the media, educators, often get the blame for this state of affairs, but it really makes no more sense to blame them than it does the sun and the moon for someone's bunions. Politicians spend most of their time trying to get out ahead of where the herd is going and say something that will win some votes. The media spends all their time trying to battle fiercely for ratings or readership, fighting a rear-guard action against the new media of the web. Educators take children from homes where education is valued somewhere on the same level as leprosy and try to teach them something, anything, while battling public policy and dodging political potshots.
I'm not really sure where we could put the blame, where we would define the cornerstone event that led to this problem. Maybe Huxley was right, that it is impossible to find a limit for man's capacity to endlessly amuse himself. Prosperous societies never seem to be able to sustain that prosperity. Is it because people get distracted and don't notice when problems start to crop up? Or do they just prefer to kick the can down the road because the problem is too huge to address?
I'm really, really not sure what chance America -- and most of the developed world -- has anymore at sustained intellectual growth. The heroes of yesteryear -- scientists, inventors, tycoons, engineers, explorers -- have been replaced by sports stars, pop stars and actors, all who live shoddy personal lives and can't string two thoughts together. People like these are what kids aspire to become, while demeaning the contributions of people who actually matter and change the world as we know it.
Some readers might look at this as being one step removed from a "get off my lawn!" type of screed, and maybe it is. Whatever people may say, there is still likely a vague sense of a loss of purpose and instead they feel unease at being bombarded 24/7 by new and greater distractions, hedonism as a virtue, the lack of adult thought and behavior from most people, the constant search for an endless childhood.
On the other hand, I think most will agree that we've gone from being a society where things do matter, where we understand what our place in the world is and that we can change it, to a culture of general irrelevance. The mechanisms of corrective change in the course of our society have completely evaporated and we're left with what is going to be an increasingly bumpy downhill ride even as we see that there's no driver at the wheel any longer.
He's off eating Cheetos and watching America's Got Talent.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
The Great Contraction
It's been a while since I've posted here -- 80-90 hour workweeks get in the way of doing much else, but at least that's slacked off, finally. In the meantime, we've seen the Japanese earthquake, a record-challenging years for tornados in America, riots and new wars. The economy is still the minefield that it's been for years now. Really, what does it feel like for people these days? I look at my own job and am willing to deal with the nightmare hours in order to keep it, while it's still around. It's like standing out in the rain to get a little more of the harvest in, before it's all washed away. Does anyone else have that sense that the systems we see in place are one bad day away from failing completely?
I just finished looking at (this) story about Wall Street not being able to predict what's going to be a hot item and what's not. Money managers are scrambling and trying to find out what The Next Big Thing is going to be, so they can retain some shread of credibility. The problem is that we're no longer in an economy where we can throw dollars at anything and have it stick, no matter how bad it is. This shouldn't be a real surprise to anyone who's actually part of the real world, not the bank/legal/government/money complex.
Yet, the punchline of the article is as follows -- "Any bears out there better be careful because the dividend yields on these stocks look awesome relative to all the other investment vehicles out there," Yastrow said. "So bears are going to have to find a new way to express their discontent with the U.S. economy." Obviously, this proves that some people can say anything with a straight face. Translated: "Yes, the economy is in trouble and we can't figure out what's profitable, but we're still (randomly) doing better than anything else." Maybe. In other words, we have a slightly less lethal kind of cancer to offer.
Ironically, Yastrow is quoted as saying we're on the verge of a great, great depression earlier in the article.
One of the key factors in the creation of a Dark Age is when systems of commerce break down. We see political systems rupture, but politicians and governments can come and go without upsetting things to the point where a society is completely destroyed (speaking generally). However, when the means of production and commerce are disrupted, the whole society is likely to follow. People don't care much about abstract ideas as long as food's on the table. When they are starving, they migrate, they revolt, they rob and steal and there is little left standing afterward.
Now, we're seeing people who simply don't recognize the reality of the situation still running the show. Worse, they're believing their own propaganda. The fact that there is little to no real good economic news, that people are trying to find a safe haven for their money and none is available...it all points to an ugly fact that the days of growth are over and we've clearly settled into the long twilight.
Enjoy this summer -- not sure if the next one is going to be quite as carefree.
I just finished looking at (this) story about Wall Street not being able to predict what's going to be a hot item and what's not. Money managers are scrambling and trying to find out what The Next Big Thing is going to be, so they can retain some shread of credibility. The problem is that we're no longer in an economy where we can throw dollars at anything and have it stick, no matter how bad it is. This shouldn't be a real surprise to anyone who's actually part of the real world, not the bank/legal/government/money complex.
Yet, the punchline of the article is as follows -- "Any bears out there better be careful because the dividend yields on these stocks look awesome relative to all the other investment vehicles out there," Yastrow said. "So bears are going to have to find a new way to express their discontent with the U.S. economy." Obviously, this proves that some people can say anything with a straight face. Translated: "Yes, the economy is in trouble and we can't figure out what's profitable, but we're still (randomly) doing better than anything else." Maybe. In other words, we have a slightly less lethal kind of cancer to offer.
Ironically, Yastrow is quoted as saying we're on the verge of a great, great depression earlier in the article.
One of the key factors in the creation of a Dark Age is when systems of commerce break down. We see political systems rupture, but politicians and governments can come and go without upsetting things to the point where a society is completely destroyed (speaking generally). However, when the means of production and commerce are disrupted, the whole society is likely to follow. People don't care much about abstract ideas as long as food's on the table. When they are starving, they migrate, they revolt, they rob and steal and there is little left standing afterward.
Now, we're seeing people who simply don't recognize the reality of the situation still running the show. Worse, they're believing their own propaganda. The fact that there is little to no real good economic news, that people are trying to find a safe haven for their money and none is available...it all points to an ugly fact that the days of growth are over and we've clearly settled into the long twilight.
Enjoy this summer -- not sure if the next one is going to be quite as carefree.
Monday, March 21, 2011
The Ninth Legion
A number of readers are probably familiar with the novel, The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliffe, and the movie, The Eagle, based on her work which is being released in a few days. In short, it deals with the disappearance of the Roman Ninth Legion in the north of Britain.
While historians have kicked around theories about what happened to the Ninth, the most likely one is that it was destroyed in fighting against the northern Britons. In turn, the Emperor Hadrian came to Britain to survey the situation, resulting in a realization that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to subdue the Britons, and resulting in construction of Hadrian's Wall.
This event was important in two respects. The first was that it showed that there was to be a high-water mark for what Romans could control in Britain (the Antonine Wall proved to be overreach and was abandoned after twenty years). The second was that there was a recognition in general that there was a limit to what could be achieved through the force of Roman arms.
There is always a temptation to compare modern events to historical ones, to try to achieve some understanding of the present course based on the past. Sometimes the comparisons are valid, sometimes they are similar in appearance only. The sudden Western intervention in Libya is one of those events.
There is a belief that Rome's wars were solely wars of expansion and conquest. The reality is that most of Rome's wars were seen by the Romans at the time as being wars to try to establish security. While, yes, slaves and gold were nice benefits to military victory, the more important thing was making sure that a raging horde of Samnites or Celts didn't come knocking on the frontier.
Likewise, we're in a position where we're waging perpetual war for perpetual security, but in this case, it's about oil security, not physical security. Without territory, Rome could not maintain its stability. Without oil, we cannot maintain our economic stability. Libya's military is not a threat to ours -- Libya is simply in the middle of a small civil war. The problem from the perspective of the West is that oil facilities are usually destroyed, along with other infrastructure, as people fight over these valuable assets. In return, oil output from nations engaged in civil war drops dramatically. This ultimately leads to economic damage to the industrial world.
The problem, in the long term, is that we are getting overextended. We cannot close the debt gap and we have no real serious discussion about trying to get spending under control. At some point, this is going to catch up to us, but it's also questionable if we even have a choice but to try to stabilize the Middle East.
Interesting times away...
While historians have kicked around theories about what happened to the Ninth, the most likely one is that it was destroyed in fighting against the northern Britons. In turn, the Emperor Hadrian came to Britain to survey the situation, resulting in a realization that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to subdue the Britons, and resulting in construction of Hadrian's Wall.
This event was important in two respects. The first was that it showed that there was to be a high-water mark for what Romans could control in Britain (the Antonine Wall proved to be overreach and was abandoned after twenty years). The second was that there was a recognition in general that there was a limit to what could be achieved through the force of Roman arms.
There is always a temptation to compare modern events to historical ones, to try to achieve some understanding of the present course based on the past. Sometimes the comparisons are valid, sometimes they are similar in appearance only. The sudden Western intervention in Libya is one of those events.
There is a belief that Rome's wars were solely wars of expansion and conquest. The reality is that most of Rome's wars were seen by the Romans at the time as being wars to try to establish security. While, yes, slaves and gold were nice benefits to military victory, the more important thing was making sure that a raging horde of Samnites or Celts didn't come knocking on the frontier.
Likewise, we're in a position where we're waging perpetual war for perpetual security, but in this case, it's about oil security, not physical security. Without territory, Rome could not maintain its stability. Without oil, we cannot maintain our economic stability. Libya's military is not a threat to ours -- Libya is simply in the middle of a small civil war. The problem from the perspective of the West is that oil facilities are usually destroyed, along with other infrastructure, as people fight over these valuable assets. In return, oil output from nations engaged in civil war drops dramatically. This ultimately leads to economic damage to the industrial world.
The problem, in the long term, is that we are getting overextended. We cannot close the debt gap and we have no real serious discussion about trying to get spending under control. At some point, this is going to catch up to us, but it's also questionable if we even have a choice but to try to stabilize the Middle East.
Interesting times away...
Friday, March 11, 2011
Black Swans Flying
So, I got up this morning and looked at the news -- a major earthquake in Japan, 8.9 magnitude, tsunami warning, tsunami damage, all the "good" stuff that no one wants to see happen. The latest is that Hawaii is under a tsunami warning, with no one sure of how big it will be when it hits. Obviously, the thoughts, and prayers or well-wishes, of the world are with the people in the Pacific Rim.
Most people are familiar with "Black Swan Theory," wherein there are major turning points of history that no one could've predicted or expected, a "Black Swan" event. We seem now to be in a time when we're seeing one event after another -- the manmade ones of Middle East civil war and the crash of 2008, now the various extremes of the natural world, from poor crop yields from strange weather, and strong earthquakes.
Japan, of course, is used to its position of being a modern nation on a seismically active island. Still, it is sobering to see the damage caused and read about the deaths in a place we always think of as being an orderly, efficient and well-run sort of place. Things, of course, will return to normal sooner or later, or so we would expect.
However, human society is a complex series of systems, social, religious, political, economic, and so on, and this earthquake is coming at an unstable time. When energy is injected into a complex system, strange and unpredictable things may happen. Just as we didn't expect that the triggering event for the next dip of the multi-dip recession would be caused by a Tunisian fruit seller who had lost his fruit cart, then his will to live, we may not yet see what the real effect of this event is, either, for some time. How bad will the economic fallout be? Will a political crisis somewhere be caused by this, which will spiral out of control like the Middle East has? Will this be another triggering event of the total collapse of modern industrial civilization?
In the meantime, we can only watch and see what happens, prepare and take information in as it becomes available, and help the best we can, either financially or physically.
Most people are familiar with "Black Swan Theory," wherein there are major turning points of history that no one could've predicted or expected, a "Black Swan" event. We seem now to be in a time when we're seeing one event after another -- the manmade ones of Middle East civil war and the crash of 2008, now the various extremes of the natural world, from poor crop yields from strange weather, and strong earthquakes.
Japan, of course, is used to its position of being a modern nation on a seismically active island. Still, it is sobering to see the damage caused and read about the deaths in a place we always think of as being an orderly, efficient and well-run sort of place. Things, of course, will return to normal sooner or later, or so we would expect.
However, human society is a complex series of systems, social, religious, political, economic, and so on, and this earthquake is coming at an unstable time. When energy is injected into a complex system, strange and unpredictable things may happen. Just as we didn't expect that the triggering event for the next dip of the multi-dip recession would be caused by a Tunisian fruit seller who had lost his fruit cart, then his will to live, we may not yet see what the real effect of this event is, either, for some time. How bad will the economic fallout be? Will a political crisis somewhere be caused by this, which will spiral out of control like the Middle East has? Will this be another triggering event of the total collapse of modern industrial civilization?
In the meantime, we can only watch and see what happens, prepare and take information in as it becomes available, and help the best we can, either financially or physically.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Beck and Fall
Most readers are at least aware, in passing, of Glenn Beck and his programs and books. He has a radio show, a number of books published, and a weekday program on Fox news. Having gone from a self-described alcoholic and drug user, to being one of the country's leading political pundits, is quite an accomplishment, regardless of what anyone thinks of his opinions and views. Much of his show consists of talking about conspiracies between various groups of people, strategies to intentionally collapse the nation so warmed-over 60s-style Frankfurt school radicalism can take over (although most of the disciples of that viewpoint have moved on to enjoying their own slice of the pie -- being a revolutionary seems to be like being a professional lottery player...not worth the effort unless you win the whole enchilada). Now and then, he takes a token shot at the Right and George Bush, before putting more pictures on a blackboard and drawing lines between them.
Over the last few days, there's been a trial bubble floated about Mr. Beck leaving Fox, based on a number of factors, including declining ratings and a veering away from the "mainstream conservative" politics that Fox generally represents, and leaning toward more of a populist form of conservatism. If anything, it means he'll probably abandon a medium which really hasn't been as friendly to political commentators as one might've expected (see the experiences of Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage on TV), and will return to radio and print, which is where the "alternative" news media got started and where people like him seem to thrive best.
Why the meteoric rise and the almost-as-meteroric fall? The real problem, I suspect, is not with the man, the means of the medium, but the message. People would like to be able to scapegoat one group or another for the problems of the nation -- unions, Christians, patriots, liberals, Muslims, pick something -- but the problems we face are ones we've all had a hand in creating. Support massive defense spending for "security?" Well, guess what, a large share of the national debt is yours. Support massive social spending for "compassion?" Ditto. A conspiracy's not a conspiracy any longer if it's out in the open and everyone knows about it. Even the banksters have to feel a little uncomfortable in those quiet evening hours, when they wonder if they're diversified enough to survive the fall of the dollar or if a mob with torches and weedwackers will show up outside their Hampton mansions.
On a deep level, I think that everyone knows that we're in serious trouble now and that there's no easy way out of it, if any way is possible at all. Talking about conspiracies now is like talking about it being cloudy out when there's a hurricane raging overhead. It's not as much fun to engage in "what if" games when the problem is right in your face and you're wondering if you can get out of the way of the falling pieces or if you'll be caught up in the debris as well.
At least Mr. Beck has probably gotten some people to reevaluate their lives and start thinking about a post-collapse future, so his time on the air has probably not been for nothing. Sadly, the rest of his time -- looking for hidden groups of people to blame for what's coming our way -- has been nothing but a distraction and an escape from the reality of why we're really where we're at.
Over the last few days, there's been a trial bubble floated about Mr. Beck leaving Fox, based on a number of factors, including declining ratings and a veering away from the "mainstream conservative" politics that Fox generally represents, and leaning toward more of a populist form of conservatism. If anything, it means he'll probably abandon a medium which really hasn't been as friendly to political commentators as one might've expected (see the experiences of Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage on TV), and will return to radio and print, which is where the "alternative" news media got started and where people like him seem to thrive best.
Why the meteoric rise and the almost-as-meteroric fall? The real problem, I suspect, is not with the man, the means of the medium, but the message. People would like to be able to scapegoat one group or another for the problems of the nation -- unions, Christians, patriots, liberals, Muslims, pick something -- but the problems we face are ones we've all had a hand in creating. Support massive defense spending for "security?" Well, guess what, a large share of the national debt is yours. Support massive social spending for "compassion?" Ditto. A conspiracy's not a conspiracy any longer if it's out in the open and everyone knows about it. Even the banksters have to feel a little uncomfortable in those quiet evening hours, when they wonder if they're diversified enough to survive the fall of the dollar or if a mob with torches and weedwackers will show up outside their Hampton mansions.
On a deep level, I think that everyone knows that we're in serious trouble now and that there's no easy way out of it, if any way is possible at all. Talking about conspiracies now is like talking about it being cloudy out when there's a hurricane raging overhead. It's not as much fun to engage in "what if" games when the problem is right in your face and you're wondering if you can get out of the way of the falling pieces or if you'll be caught up in the debris as well.
At least Mr. Beck has probably gotten some people to reevaluate their lives and start thinking about a post-collapse future, so his time on the air has probably not been for nothing. Sadly, the rest of his time -- looking for hidden groups of people to blame for what's coming our way -- has been nothing but a distraction and an escape from the reality of why we're really where we're at.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Feedback
Feedback is an important concept in many systems. Paraphrasing Wikipedia's definition, it's when past occurrence in a closed system will affect future occurences. The example people are most familiar with is what happens when a speaker is placed too close to a microphone and there's an indescribable, ear-shattering noise. Another less familiar example is the management of wildlife in an area. If there are plentiful food resources available one year, then it's likely that animals that use those resouces will increase. Unfortunately, what happens next is that the past events -- available food and an increase of animals -- puts a strain on the system, resulting in starvation and a reduction of population until the number of animals is roughly in line again with what the ecosystem can support. In drastic cases, feedback can result in the destruction of a system, as the system becomes unsustainable.
Likewise, the global economy has become a closed system, subject to feedback as well. Key to most discussions about the collapse is the availability of oil or other resources which power an energy-dependent economy. Part of the root of the current economic crisis, in addition to the hollow housing bubble, was oil being nearly $150 a barrel, with an increase of gas prices to four or five dollars a gallon in many places. At this price, economic activity drastically slows, as businesses find it more expensive to ship, more people have to spend a greater proportion of their income on fuel (especially people who live in rural areas which are already often poor), and people simply shop less because they're less willing to go fill up their car to shop. On top of this is all the cost which is past on due to higher delivery and production fees because of increased fuel prices.
The global economy has shown a few signs of stabilizing, if not recovering. Now, oil is nearly a hundred dollars a barrel again, because there is increased demand. So, what we now have is a feedback loop setting itself up -- oil price and consumption is a closed system, so therefore, when the economy is bad, oil prices are low because consumption is down. After a time, because prices are down, people will be able to use cheaper oil to stimulate economy activity. After a time, consumption will rise, the price of oil will go up, and we'll be back where we began. So, in other words, the feedback loop of oil price is going to be another factor which limits any kind of rebound the global economy, showing that the "recovery" is going to be nothing but a figment in the minds of people who desperately want to reassure the public. What this means is that the predictions made by "doomsayers" in years past are coming true and that we need to be mindful of the need to get ready for steadily worsening conditions.
Likewise, the global economy has become a closed system, subject to feedback as well. Key to most discussions about the collapse is the availability of oil or other resources which power an energy-dependent economy. Part of the root of the current economic crisis, in addition to the hollow housing bubble, was oil being nearly $150 a barrel, with an increase of gas prices to four or five dollars a gallon in many places. At this price, economic activity drastically slows, as businesses find it more expensive to ship, more people have to spend a greater proportion of their income on fuel (especially people who live in rural areas which are already often poor), and people simply shop less because they're less willing to go fill up their car to shop. On top of this is all the cost which is past on due to higher delivery and production fees because of increased fuel prices.
The global economy has shown a few signs of stabilizing, if not recovering. Now, oil is nearly a hundred dollars a barrel again, because there is increased demand. So, what we now have is a feedback loop setting itself up -- oil price and consumption is a closed system, so therefore, when the economy is bad, oil prices are low because consumption is down. After a time, because prices are down, people will be able to use cheaper oil to stimulate economy activity. After a time, consumption will rise, the price of oil will go up, and we'll be back where we began. So, in other words, the feedback loop of oil price is going to be another factor which limits any kind of rebound the global economy, showing that the "recovery" is going to be nothing but a figment in the minds of people who desperately want to reassure the public. What this means is that the predictions made by "doomsayers" in years past are coming true and that we need to be mindful of the need to get ready for steadily worsening conditions.
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