Diogenes Shrugged
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There seems to be some sort of a common understanding shared by the people running this show. Something uniting them in their calls for wars in so many places at once. Something that causes them to embrace torture and mass murder as good things. Something they feel vindicates their constant lying and deception. Something that not only forgives their incredible levels of theft from honest citizens, but enshrines it.
Is it greed? The people at the top have far more money than their families could ever hope to spend, so I can’t imagine why it would be greed. On the other hand, maybe it’s just a matter of the Rothschilds always getting their way simply because nobody’s price is ever too high.
Is it power? That would presume that the kicks one gets from jerking around millions of people are beyond what could be derived from wine, women, song, honest achievement or sport fishing.
Is it control? Sure, we humans are unruly, but we’d do just fine (actually much better) without the controllers.
Is it blackmail? Have all our “leaders” been threatened if they don’t go along with the big plan? Or perhaps it’s the ultimate blackmail – – the Sampson Option – – in which case, Israel does indeed rule the world. But that still leaves the question of what motivates the blackmailer?
Is it psychopathic ego? All the visible warmongers do seem to love the camera, the prestige, and inflated feelings of self-importance.
Is it supernatural “evil?” Some people blame Satan, some blame Satanism. The Devil makes the elites do what they do.
Is it religion? Maybe there’s a shared vision of the future from holy books. A promise of future utopia, if only we rid the planet of the ones God hates.
Is it empire, or worse, dynasty? The Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Bushes, Clintons and Pauls come to mind. A real-life “game of thrones.”
Is it petroleum reserves? Is it land? Is it other resources? Why have the anointed ones decided to act criminally and as enemies of mankind?
Is it population reduction? Are all the people in charge Malthusians?
Is it malice? Are they all sadists? Do they just love being the ones to make people suffer?
Is it fear? They do have good reason to be terrified by us, especially considering all they’ve done to make us terrified of them.
I’m sure all those motivations explain a lot of the crimes against mankind we see from the people pulling the strings, but I’m still unable to discern why so many of them seem to be on the same page, as if they all support a master plan – – an overarching conspiracy – – with dozens of subordinate, complementary conspiracies that dovetail.
Am I a conspiracy theorist? Of course. How could an informed person be otherwise? You’d have to be completely daft not to see it, or possibly an idiot. Take your pick.
The richest, most powerful movers-and-shakers of the world and their minions are the terrorists. You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.
https://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/mh-17-investigation-secret-august-8th-agreement-seeps.html
This is plausible, too.
I think it would be great if an impartial team of investigators would be allowed to travel to the site and examine the evidence, but that would require a cease-fire from the fascists in uniform. No explanation why the body was left to decompose in the hot sun for four hours. The press is being actively discouraged from filming at the scene. Hold on. Are we talking about Ferguson or Ukraine?
Just to show how broad-minded we are, let’s further complicate this picture.
The fact that Eric Holder got involved tells me that only one thing about Ferguson is certain: the public will never know the truth now.
If the cops had allowed peaceful demonstrations, had refrained from planting agent provocateurs among the protestors, had protected businesses from vandalism and looting, and had left the flash-bangs and tear gas at home, this thing probably would have registered somewhere above a swat raid on the wrong house, and below the unwarranted shooting of somebody’s pet dog. Is it possible that Ferguson is being fashioned into a crisis solely to divert media attention away from MH370, MH17, Gaza, Ukraine, Iraq, Benghazi, Ebola, or Michelle’s school lunch fiasco?
“We should all feel deep shame and guilt.”
Absolute nonsense. Those feelings should be strictly assigned to the perpetrators and the socialist / fascist / Zionist / nazi / Neocon / bankster / NWO / sociopathic supporters of the perpetrators, not to “us.”
What should “we” feel, then? We should all feel horrified, shocked and saddened, then frustrated and filled with anger (if not rage).
Just putting the guilt trip where it belongs. I’m not accepting a bit of it.
Lake Powell to the rescue. At least for now, they claim to have the Lake Mead situation under control.
https://www.mail.com/news/us/3042436-water-headed-to-struggling-lake-mead.html#.7518-stage-hero1-4Three points to make, and no time to make them.
1. What will the absence of any response to Dr Euan Mearns’s letter signify? That he wasted his time writing?
2. Lake Mead Article from ZeroHedge:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-12/las-vegas-will-go-dry-if-water-levels-drop-7-further-lake-mead-hits-record-lowsA commenter calling himself “magnumpk” linked this:
https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g4000/hourly/mead-elv.htmlSeven feet to work with and dropping four feet a month? It’s gonna be a long wait for the Spring runoff from the western slope of Colorado.
3. Social Security is financed via paycheck confiscations. Ayn Rand paid into Social Security, so her collecting from Social Security does not entirely constitute a violation of her principles.
Ayn Rand got an awful lot right. Condemning her because she was liked by Greenspan strikes me as being both unjust and unsound. After all, I can think of plenty of terrorists from every religion who claim to like God.
Ilargi,
Sorry if I missed your meaning, but unless your objective is to literally leave Earth behind forever, I think friction would be the primary impediment requiring energy to overcome. Without friction, one could glide around almost endlessly without an energy input. It would be hard to get going, hard to turn, and probably quite painful to come to a stop, though.Deliberate western terrorism, not an unfortunate war accident:
NEW MH17 SENSATION: German experts point finger at Ukrainian air-force jets.
https://topinfopost.com/2014/07/26/mh-17-was-in-fact-flight-mh-370-lost-flight
“The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed.” – Paraphrased from Joseph Goebbels
I mean, after all, we are talking about nazis in Kiev, right? So taking a page from Goebbels would be S.O.P. for them.
Raleigh:
Thank you for the great expository of what certainly appears to be rampant sociopathy among Big Club members. What you say makes sense, but I’m still mystified as to why there seems to be cohesiveness in their plans for the world. If false flag disasters, gun confiscation, FEMA camps, planned epidemics, wars and bail-ins are some of the means, what are their common ends, and why? Do they all share a common fantasy of total, centralized control over the entire planet due to childish feelings of insecurity? Or are dishonesty and sadism just things that happen to a person once they reach a certain level of wealth or power?
My favorite Bible quote is Mark 8:36:
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Of course, the quote refers to a loss of immortality, but as an atheist, I define “soul” differently. To me, the soul is the sum of a person’s thoughts, actions and reactions over his lifetime. Each of us is a growing empire in a way, as we each exercise dominion over our own thoughts and actions throughout life. So why would the people in charge defile their own souls to achieve a hugely destructive and immoral common objective? I really can’t wrap my head around that.
You wrote, “These people are really at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy, fearful they’re never going to have enough, or that someone else will have more.” It’s possible that’s exactly the explanation I was looking for. The richest, most powerful person in The Club – – a moving target – – represents something the other members permanently want to match or exceed. A simple “King of the Hill” game mentality in the rich and powerful serves to explain all the madness in the world?
Maybe somewhere in the explanations lies an undiscovered Achilles heel. Still looking …
Variable:
Science isn’t a cult, but people calling themselves scientists can be gregarious however they wish. In order to misunderstand the world, there are many, many promising and comforting paradigms to choose from. In order to understand the world, evidence is required. As evidence changes, the understanding changes, and we call that particular paradigm “science.”
Ilargi:
I suspect you caught a bullet (from Alfalfafan) meant for me. Sorry if that was in fact the case.
Alfalfafan:
Sorry if you felt I was denigrating or making fun of Christians. My intention was to dismiss metaphysical explanations before they might have been offered, but certainly not to attack the people who harbor them. I regard all ideas, without exception, to be fair game – – nobody’s ideas are sacrosanct or unassailable. FWIW, my best male friend since 1980 also happens to be the most devout Christian I’ve ever met.
Boogaloo:
You don’t need religion or the threat of angry Supreme Beings to lead a moral life. I’m an atheist. My decision has nothing at all to do with groupthink, communism, TPTB or Satan’s seductive allure. Once you understand what science has established, and I admit that takes a hell of a lot more hard work than most people are willing to commit to, gods become utterly superfluous and unnecessary, and their introduction to any discussion only raises dozens of additional un-answerable fantasy questions. Not to mention a lot of one-upsmanship from those who fancy they’ll be living for eternity at the foot of an imaginary throne. And not to mention the religious wars that arise when you get different religions in the same room. Theocracy is most assuredly NOT the answer to mankind’s dilemmas.I made a bumper sticker several decades ago by hand. It read, “Christianity is totalitarian.” It could have mentioned any other religion, but they’re all the same that way. Totalitarian. (Incidentally, I said religion is totalitarian; I did NOT say the Christian God is totalitarian.) Perhaps it was a “good” Christian who smashed the back of my tricked-out, classic Camaro to destroy that bumper sticker, and perhaps that made God happy. Who knows. But the vandal, like Obama and Bush, et.al., got away Scot-free.
Atheism does not imply a political objective. I’m not part of any political group, though I do advocate for anarchism simply because mankind is incapable of devising a government that doesn’t wind up getting staffed by thieves and tyrants.
I want a real answer to my question, not gibberish about supreme beings, magic, bad vibes, the significance of the number seven, karma, planetary positions or unicorns. I don’t believe for a minute that Obama and Bush will be punished after they die, nor that they’ll be forgiven. I do believe they’ll get away with their crimes, though, thanks to cronies like Holder and Boehner and Roberts being in charge of their judicial fates.
BTW, torture heads the list, and I personally would never advocate for its use on anybody under any circumstances whatsoever. Execution, yes. Torture, no. Where does the list of evil end? It doesn’t, but evil can be made a whole lot less attractive if we start executing the villains.
The thing I have the hardest time trying to understand is why The Big Club I’m Not a Member of (thanks George Carlin) behaves as if its member list is exclusively populated with lying sociopaths who ALL AGREE that stomping on humanity is a good way to work toward the feudal, totalitarian New World Order they so deeply crave.
Up until 9/11, I was unaware that ANYBODY on Earth was quite so f***ed in the head as to think that way, but now it seems to have become the chief requirement for employment in politics, journalism, military and intelligence, policing, banking and finance, big corporations and some universities. At least, if you’re employed by one of those professions and don’t think that way, you’re NOT a member of The Big Club.
I read somewhere that the Rothschild dynasty is worth some multiple of a hundred trillion dollars. Are the Rothschilds bribing everybody in The Big Club to cooperate with their sinister plans? I also read that blackmail is rampant in The Big Club. Have they ALL been filmed raping and murdering other people’s kids? I read about the endless, well-stocked underground tunnels that will protect them from the coming epidemics, nuclear wars, mass starvations, etc. Are they each worried that their dissent from The Big Club program will leave them outside the tunnel doors? It’s as if all the politicians, media personalities and other Big Club members share a horrifying secret that none of the rest of us ever before had the slightest inkling about. What would that be?
Maybe they’re actually space aliens or lizards in disguise. I find it hard to believe that there are actually people who believe those explanations, but they would explain The Big Club more adequately than any other explanations I can conjure. Or maybe EVERYBODY in The Big Club just desperately wants radical population reduction. Crashing airliners, murdering Palestinians and Ukrainian “separatists,” and chemtrails aren’t putting much of a dent in the seven-odd billion rest of us serfs (or are we up to eight now), and don’t even keep up with all the new humans born every day, so that’s not much of a plan.
Some pundits say power and greed are sufficiently motivating to keep everybody in The Big Club on the same page. But what has their power and greed gotten them? They fly around the world telling lies, stomping on people, high-fiving other club members, and occasionally doing things the rest of us do (like play golf) when they aren’t engaging in pedophilia. Their lives look a lot like dog shit to me. Their souls look like dog shit to me. Their prospects for bright futures look like maggot-infested dog shit to me. These are lives without beauty, without honor, and without anything resembling “good.” But then, maybe I just don’t know how thrilling dishonesty, mass murder, child rape and being a self-actualized pile of dog shit can be.
If you know what compels the members of the Big Club to conspire so dishonestly, callously and egregiously against mankind in their tight-lipped conspiracy, please tell me. I want to know. By the way, “Satan” is at best a metaphor and in no way answers the question, so please don’t resort to fairy tales as an explanation. TIA.
My hat’s off to Ilargi for another superb essay. Not only am I in agreement, I’m wowed by the writing itself.
A couple of lines in particular really resonated.
“When people are vulnerable, you can make them believe just about anything.”
I couldn’t help but think about some of the most vulnerable: kids. They become patriots in the country they’re raised in. They believe in the god their parents believe in. They learn to hate the people their parents hate. They adopt the worldviews and attitudes of those around themselves (including pop icons and celebrities). For a lot of kids, some of these conditionings turn out to be horribly misguided. Which can mean horribly self-righteous, selfish, insensitive, stupid, or even dangerous.
This is important because misguided kids often become horribly misguided adults.
“But we are still led, in our justified grief and anger, towards hate for the very people we have set up to being killed by armies we ourselves finance.”
Well said, and the wicked irony of it causes me despair. The people who SHOULD read Ilargi’s essay will not, but what’s worse is that even if they did, it would not change their warped little minds.
Eric Zuesse posted an excellent article today that also speaks to the madness behind the situation in Ukraine. I’m trying to get everyone I know to read both articles.
https://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/americas-nazi-allies-israel-ukraine.html
I linked a video in the comments after Ilargi’s July 20 composition that turns out to have been misrepresented as the downing of MH-17. It appears the plane involved wasn’t even a Boeing 777. Sorry about that.
https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f80_1402065879Each of us has his own ideas what “hard evidence” and “proof” are, and those ideas are not all alike. Even scientific peer-review has been kicked in the teeth recently. Are photoshopped pictures “evidence?” Should we believe the urgent utterances of pompous authorities like Colon (sic) Powell?
So I get a kick out of all the scolding and admonishment, advising that we wait for “hard evidence” and “proof” before formulating an opinion. Look, the power players were the ones telling us from the get-go what to think. Please save the lofty calls to reserve comments and judgement for them.
At the moment, the circumstantial evidence clearly points to Russian innocence and U.S. guilt. (I doubt Ukrainians even figure into this picture.) You’d either have to be very poorly informed or a Nazi zealot not to see that by now. That doesn’t mean there can’t be surprises, but if I’m supposed to remain quiet and reserve judgement for the next several years (or decades) while this thing plays out, then please explain why this website, or any website for that matter, accommodates comments after articles? Shouldn’t we all remain mum?
Would the world be a better place if everybody just shut up and waited indefinitely for cosmic truth to be delivered?
Incidentally, I’ll bet a week’s wages that the friends and relatives of the passengers aren’t sitting quietly, reserving judgement, and suspending suspicions pending some sort of “evidence” that is supposed to someday materialize.
Bluebird:
Modern bombs are not triggered using timers.
Also, I don’t see a BUK or SAM rocket trail.
ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaeSwhen4mQ&index=5&list=UUKqFo29EDYngB8QcWEJ3Smg
(Add an “h” to the beginning of that URL.)Ruska:
Thank you for that link. The reason for the delay in the arrival of the investigators is to permit sufficient additional decomposition to the corpses as to cloud the fact that the passengers were all long dead before the crash. Just my best guess. If the first people on the scene described stench and bodies in advanced decomposition, can you think of any reason for this to be a lie? In my most preposterous imaginings, I cannot. Russians play great chess, but nobody can predict the configuration of the board at the end of the game.https://nodisinfo.com/passport-staging-proves-malaysian-airlines-crash-scam/
When attempts to collect DNA evidence are refused, we’ll be told to believe the passport “evidence.”
Carbon: The scope and severity of the crimes committed by criminal banks, criminal corporations and criminal governments such as ours are anything but simple. Never rule out the truth merely because it doesn’t strike you as being simple!
Also, lip service is often paid to the “strongest evidence” shtick, as if we can anticipate peer-reviewed scientific studies being published in reputable journals on every facet of our existence if we just suspend our thinking and opinion-making long enough. Good luck with that; don’t hold your breath while you wait. Better to thoroughly re-evaluate how you establish for yourself the credibility of your sources, because even the most credible sources claiming “strong evidence” are sometimes wrong. And sometimes they’re even flatly dishonest.
From what little, if anything, each of us thinks he’s been able to discern from news reports and blogs, we each formulate our own working hypotheses. We’re each entitled to that, whether others agree with our hypotheses or not. Here’s my working hypothesis.
MH-370 vanished months ago. The search turned up nothing because the flight was hijacked. Whether the hijackers were hackers who controlled the plane remotely, or whether they were people physically on the plane, their objectives were aligned with those of the U.S. & Israel. Passengers were murdered, possibly by cabin depressurization at altitude.
MH-370 and its dead passengers were kept in cold storage until recently, when the jet was assigned a new number, MH-71. Then, in order to create a “game changer” to justify genocide in eastern Ukraine and a war against Russia, in a false flag and a crisis that could not be allowed to go to waste, MH-71 was “shot down” in eastern Ukraine.
Note:
– Dead passengers were already in a state of decomposition before the crash. https://the-tap.blogspot.com/2014/07/people-dead-long-before-flight-took-off.html
– The western narrative, sans evidence, assigning blame to pro-Russian fighters, was reported far too soon after the crash. In fact, Kiev’s video implicating Russia was posted to YouTube before the plane was shot down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28MrASx-RiM
– No rocket trail could be seen, suggesting that any explosion would have been due to a bomb onboard the jet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUFjOi1ZpZVErr8EYxg8t1dQ&v=1fytpEF6-EQ#t=129
– The flight path was diverted into a no-fly zone above the battle zone, making pro-Russian militants plausible patsies. Western military jets provided an escort on that doomed flight path. https://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com/2014/07/bombshell-air-traffic-controller-in.htmlWhat I’ve outlined does not show a lack of respect for the dead or their families because it’s probably largely true. We owe it to the affected parties to entertain ALL possibilities because the vigorous cover-up now being undertaken by the west could very well relegate MH-71 to that long list of eternal mysteries that also includes the JFK assassination, the unexplained collapse of WTC-7, and the complete absence of dead children at Sandy Hook Elementary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMgIpC-bCfQ
Remaining agnostic and waiting for conclusive evidence before formulating an opinion is a fool’s game. We live in the Age of Deception. We will never all agree on what happened to MH-71, and this sort of thing will continue to happen over and over again because the perpetrators know from long experience that you, dear patriot, can be counted upon to be so easily bamboozled.
I read somewhere yesterday that the Dutch hope to gather DNA evidence to identify the bodies. Since I’m out on a limb here, I’ll just go ahead and predict that that evidence, if it is collected and processed credibly, will provide the Black Swan Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s been describing. That evidence will be the game changer to end all game changers.
Paying cash to hinder a cashless society. That’s like paying carbon taxes to hinder atmospheric CO2 (while China and India ignore the issue). It’s throwing pebbles at Godzilla. If the wholesale deflationary collapse described by TAE ever becomes a reality, it might be better if you kept all the cash you accumulated and didn’t spend it along the way. Or maybe converted it all to cigarettes for your stay at Camp FEMA.
https://bastiat.mises.org/2014/07/the-better-than-cash-alliance-escalating-the-war-on-cash/
Good grief I’ve become cantankerous.
Sorry. Very frustrating. The links worked for me, but not in practice here. The top two videos in my comment above are shown below for cut-and-paste, if anybody’s interested. Omit the dashes before the www.
—–www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AOQLEM5eNY&index=4&list=UUhZRoC9bMegevAxFmee1oSA
—–www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONS9Aj6HLBw&list=UUhZRoC9bMegevAxFmee1oSA
So many misconceptions and faulty rationales both in the article and in the comments that I’m overwhelmed trying to decide where to begin complaining. All the generalizations about mankind, collective action, re-education, “us” and “we” make me feel as if I’ve been witness to a bunch of seventh-graders brainstorming a path to Communist utopia.
Let’s add 2 plus 2 together, shall we?
The reason why mankind fucks up everything he touches is described in less than one minute here between 9:15 and 10:10:
To paraphrase Mr. Binney, it is the struggle for money to build EMPIRE that provides the central objective behind collectives themselves. Think about that, because it’s not just true for the NSA. It’s true for all collectives, including corporations, religions, unions and media.
You already personally belong to a collective that’s well along in its plans to solve all the world’s problems you speak of. You know, the one described in fifteen seconds between 1:45 and 2:00:
So rejoice! Your collective has the situation well in hand! All the esoteric sociological, philosophical, economic and pseudo-scientific problems you’re contemplating will soon be solved. The solution? The same solution every major EMPIRE eventually resorts to – – in four minutes between 32:00 and 36:00 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDEwYlNbnhk
It might not resemble your favorite pipe-dream solution, but it’s broadly the solution that’s GOING to be implemented. Think you can change that now? Not a chance in hell.
Finally, climate isn’t the problem, but if it concerns you, carbon dioxide levels will begin falling soon after the coming wars, genocides and die-offs. You can patriotically speed the whole process along by turning in your guns, ratting on your neighbors and family members, and being on time for your appointed vaccinations, chip implant and interview.
Two plus two equals four. For obvious reasons, power positions in empires always end up being occupied by liars, thieves and monsters. I hope that helps.
The last link squarely pins the collapse of Caribbean corals on overfishing. The resulting decline of parrotfish populations and a mysterious disease affecting sea urchins back in the 1980’s have evidently rendered photosynthetic corals unable to compete with algae for sunlight.
But I just have to laugh. This article still manages to pay awkward homage to global warming – – an irrelevancy – – five times. I wonder how many readers come away from this article thinking it was ABOUT global warming. The brainwashing has been quite a success.
To quote Ilargi (above):
“We live in the age of triggering responses from people’s unconsciousness, where they are most vulnerable, both individual and collective, almost 100 years after Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays, for very different reasons, figured out how to do that.”Ilargi,
There’s nothing sad about Emperor Penguin article you featured. The same people who couldn’t predict their boats would get stuck in polar ice a few months back are making ice predictions for year 2100 and beyond. Who’s kidding who?My two favorite lines:
“Dynamics differ between colonies, but “the global population is projected to have declined by at least 19 per cent,” after growing 10 per cent up to 2048, it added.”
“In fact, the Ross Sea penguin population will continue to grow until 2100, after which the trend will reverse.”
This, from the same agenda-minded “scientists” who quietly and routinely “adjust” their data, and who just got caught at it yet again.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229150
Why My Approach Is (By Far) The Best Approach
I do worry about the timing of imminent debt collapse (that never seems to arrive), and about the timing of decreasing EROEI in a post-peak world (that continues to remain awash in oil). Isn’t it a bit early to start lamenting feeble predictions of penguin populations fifty or a hundred years from now?
Ilargi,
For quite a long time now, you and Nicole have placed short-term U.S. treasuries at (or near) the top of the list of places to keep personal wealth for now. Karl Denninger wrote an interesting perspective on bonds today that might affect your thinking, and I was wondering if you would please comment on whether that might be the case. Thanks much.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229115Raleigh,
You linked a very disturbing and eye-opening article there. I’m wondering how all these complex globalist partnerships are expected to survive after energy costs rise, the consumer base disappears, and the predicted wars and disruptions to social order interfere with production & commerce. Something tells me the global corporatist paradise they’re constructing might run about as well as a new Space Shuttle sans fuel tanks and guidance systems. Also, government money = taxes & inflation = extorted from the country’s consumer base. So if giant international corporations make a habit of suing nations, they’re actually just stealing from their own consumer base. It would be more straightforward to just raise prices, but I guess that wouldn’t support all the attorneys they plan to hire. Sheer criminal madness.TheTrivium4TW,
Good post. Perhaps the “healing” will require deflationary debt collapse followed by a new monetary system, in that order by necessity? No way to convert all that bad debt to a new monetary system.Excerpted from the Internet without attribution:
“William James, the father of modern psychology, said, ‘There is nothing so absurd, but if you repeat it enough, people will believe it.’“Adolf Hitler, like James, recognized the power of repetition in getting people to believe lies. The ultimate Hitlerian propaganda technique is the principle of the big lie. Hitler declared ‘…that the very greatness of the lie is a factor in getting it believed … a great lie is more effective than a small one…’ In brief, the bigger the lie, the more likely it will be believed by the masses.”
– Thus we had Taliban cave dwellers who trained on jungle gyms demolish the World Trade Center and newly-fortified wing of the Pentagon with box-cutters.
– Thus we had the Sandy Hook massacre where nobody died and a Boston marathon bombing where nobody lost limbs.
– Thus we have carbon dioxide awarded a higher role than either the sun or water vapor in producing climate change.
– Thus we have billions of people who believe in one speechless Supreme Being or another while wars are fought and atrocities committed to defend His ego.The list of ridiculous, but commonly believed lies goes on and on and on.
Probably the thing that rankles me most is that I’ve actually started to question whether the moon landings were real. The U.S. government – – past and present – – has lost all credibility, just as have the banks, the brokers, the police, the courts, the medical and pharmaceutical industries, the science-industrial complex, and once again, the list goes on and on and on.
You get by in life either being a producer or a parasite. We already tolerate a lot of parasites without much complaint. For instance, infants, old people, and the physically and mentally challenged. After exempting those people from the list of parasites, you get by in life either by procuring your winnings honestly or by theft. When the scales of humanity tip toward theft, sustainability is impossible. Lies are a form of theft.
Yes, the oceans do serve as a heat sink. That isn’t news, and it has absolutely nothing to do with carbon dioxide.
1981 : Scientists Warn Of Unprecedented Warming In The 21st Century
1985 : Senator Al Gore Warned Of Seven Feet Of Sea Level Rise
PBS : Climatologists Predict Global Warming Will Kill Us All By The Year 2000
Contraction brings painful austerity. As a consequence, people naturally struggle for growth. This is understandable, especially from those who have personally suffered from austerity. And it’s especially understandable if they have kids. Growth makes it possible to save something (a surplus) for a rainy day.
A graph of parabolically increasing growth slides upward through an inflection and gracefully tapers off toward a horizontal asymptote representing the ideal of steady state, no-growth stability.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s the wrong graph. It’s an easy mistake to make, but that curve is actually the left leg of a bell curve. Maximum growth will be followed by contraction. It will not – – indeed, it cannot – – hit an asymptote and stay there. And worse, the right leg of the bell curve will not be a mirror image of the left, it will most likely be steeper.
The shape of that bell curve probably describes a lot of different things, all joined at the hip. Like economically recoverable oil reserves, human population, environmental destruction, economic freedom, hope for the future, total debt, and even things hard to measure like the sum total of human happiness. When will the peak come? No idea, but I think I need to be more careful what I wish for.
What has looked for so long like disaster ahead now appears to be light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, at the moment, that’s still the headlight on the locomotive, but after it runs over us we’ll see daylight.
“Spitznagel: ‘I definitely agree that the only conception of the state that makes any sense is the “night watchman” variety, which exists only to enforce the rules of the game rather than trying to pick the winners and losers (whether it’s financial institutions or monoculture crops).'” But that’s always the problem, isn’t it – – just who will decide what the “rules of the game” will be?
Such irony. They EVADED mark-to-market yesterday when things still had value, but will be FORCED by tomorrow’s crash to mark-to-zero. Good job, you short-sighted, thieving knuckleheads. Once the forest fires really get going, I’d urge you all to run to higher ground where the dead trees – – your trees, by the way – – are thickest.
“… a crash is a system fixing itself back to health, something that has a lot of positive connotations, even if that is the only positive feature it has. Wait, there’s one other: our children will see a lot of the debts they are now being born with, disappear.” -Ilargi
Looking at a photo of my kids, I’m feeling better already.Boogaloo:
As I understand it, hyper-liquidity and hyper-velocity both accompany hyper-inflation. Dollars would be like hot potatoes – – spent as fast as they were acquired because their purchasing power would literally decline as the hours pass. I am unable to envision how anything could make such a situation occur other than making dollars illegal to own for some reason. Are you predicting exponential growth in quantitative easing? That would cause explosive growth in the money supply, but if that’s your prediction, how do you envision that money making its way into general circulation?
(I have some one-hundred-trillion-dollar bills from Zimbabwe in my safe. I can paste a President’s face on them, but as long as they remain in my safe, they cannot inflate the money supply.)
From where I sit, the Fed’s inflationary measures to counteract deflation are nearing an end – – the end being heralded by an absence of non-central-bank buyers of government bonds (as described by today’s TAE article). Your view has been espoused by countless respected pundits over the last six years, but I’ve never read a decent explanation of how hyperinflation is now supposed to occur on top of the decades-long inflation we’ve accrued in the form of un-repayable debts.
All new money comes into existence as debts (except for coinage, if Bill Still is right), so where is this massive pressure to loan hyper-inflationary quantities of money (at zero interest) or to take on hyper-inflationary quantities of new debts? After all, interest rates on loans cannot go lower without causing Wall Street bank bankruptcies because there’s no profit in loaning money at less than the already tiny rates. Please, if you can be specific, what am I missing here? The platitude, “they’ll print to infinity” (not quoting you, by the way) means absolutely squat. Again, I have some one-hundred-trillion-dollar bills from Zimbabwe in my safe.
Just when I think I understand things pretty well, somebody comes along and writes about those very same things in such a way that I suddenly start to understand them even better. Clear thinking giving rise to clear communication, I guess. It reminds me of a quote I saw recently attributed to Einstein: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” Ilargi certainly appears to have a good grip of the problem (unlike a lot of people I read).
But as far as possible solutions go, I don’t think there are any. That includes wars, revolutions, regime changes (impeachment?), white collar criminal prosecutions, new laws, a new reserve currency, new monetary systems, hyperinflation, devaluation, confiscation, precious metals, Bitcoin, helicopter drops, space aliens, lizard people, vengeful gods, genocides and jubilees. At least, no plausible solution other than monstrous debt collapse. I’m wondering if it will be an attempt at one of the bogus solutions that provides the trigger – – the Black Swan – – that sends this insane debt absurdity to the shredder.
Out on a limb here, but I’m thinking the trigger could be something as seemingly unrelated as an upcoming attempt to disarm Americans Australia-style. Some precipitating event like another Sandy Hook to garner public support, but without the play-acting and cover-ups. Or another 9/11, but much bigger. They’ll get nabbed in the act this time, and it’ll be curtains. And you’re not going to believe this … wait … uh oh … oh, shucks, the crystal ball just went dark. Sorry.
The economy will improve, but only if we all start shooting (more) heroin.
Of course, I’m speaking from the standpoint of the heroin pusher’s economy, but doesn’t that go without saying?
Everything the government does generates winners and losers. I suppose it goes without saying why it’s nearly always left unsaid who the winners and losers will be.
Pipefit, Thanks for your observations. My only reservation with what you say is that the additional $trillions you speak of are additional debt, not hard capital, and I expect to see them vanish with most of the other debt as deflation picks up speed. That first hill on the roller coaster feels pretty steep going up, but what a surprise when it’s even steeper down the other side.
So far as inflation goes, I’m thinking we might be near the last incremental hurrah. Hopefully we won’t have to sit on pins and needles for another six years before it becomes clear which direction this is all headed. On the other hand, I suppose we should enjoy what we have left of normalcy, while we still feel affluent enough to purchase sub-$5 gasoline and complain about it. So maybe another six years of waiting would be a godsend. Whatever, good luck to us all, and no matter what happens, don’t ever let yourself get caught without some cash on hand.
Pipefit: My analogy with dominoes was an attempt to convey what I’ve learned from this website in a simple fashion my little mind can comprehend. From what I’ve gleaned here, the quantity of money in circulation was originated – – and even rehypothecated (think about that) – – primarily as debts (ignoring for the moment that money itself, when issued by a central bank at interest, is a debt instrument from the onset). If most of the money in circulation represents IOU’s that will ultimately not be possible to service (due to rising interest rates) nor repaid (due to further unemployment, etc.), cascading defaults are inevitable. This will effectively return much of today’s money supply to the same “thin air” from whence it came, leaving much less money in circulation. At the bottom of the depression somewhere, most of the remaining money in circulation will be from savings not yet confiscated by Obama, and circulating debt monies that are actually being repaid (extinguished). The point being that the total quantity of money at that time will be minuscule compared to the quantity in circulation now.
My little mind recognizes this as a supply and demand problem. With such a small – and shrinking – supply of dollars, what will their value be relative to today? TAE has made a compelling case that they’ll be worth much more than they are worth now (i.e. their purchasing power will have increased markedly). But this is one of the places where predictions for the future get foggy for me. With dollars being so valuable and coveted, how do you see them being replaced with “IMF-World Bank depository receipts?” Do you see a reason why Americans would be embracing the IMF or World Bank as their savior at that time? After all, they’ll be holding on to the few dollars they have left with sharp talons and an attitude.
There is economics and then there is politics. TAE has described the economics, and in addition, the economics when the perilous energy factor later comes into play. Politics is another matter, and I go to other websites for speculation on that. But if a world war is in the cards, or a deliberately induced reduction of the human population for some reason, I would say all bets are off. The only voice I keep hearing in those cases is attributed to Albert Einstein: “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” So I’m already hoarding clamshells, tailoring loincloths and chipping arrowheads because, well, sometimes it’s just best to place your bets early.
The TAE description of rapid deflation involves cascading debt collapse, where one man’s inability to service his debt renders his “asset holder” unable to service his, and so on. I think of branching strings of dominoes (dominoes representing debts). Since 2008, government interventions have removed dominoes from the string and prevented large scale collapse, but missing dominoes have tended to grow back, making additional interventions appear necessary as long as they seem to work, at least until they don’t any longer.
Record-setting constructions with dominoes take a lot time to fall, even when huge numbers are falling rapidly. So guessing “when the big deflation will occur” might be misguided. The dominoes are always falling. The better question might be whether they’ll take out specific structures, and if so, when.
The structure doesn’t look as impressive from above, but maybe it would be better for everybody if we placed most of our debt-dominoes further apart because we have an awful lot fewer of them to begin with. Any ideas on how to successfully get people to avoid debt as a general practice for the next hundred generations? Memories of depressions are depressingly short, and laws like Glass-Steigel get abandoned. On the other hand, maybe the problem will solve itself once we get well past peak oil.
kito: “our population has only exploded because of the model of exploding debt and credit.”
Our population has exploded only because of exploding petroleum (energy) exploitation. FIFY. (Fixed it for you.)
“there is going to be a huge decrease in population once the excesses are trimmed. the only hope is that this somehow occurs in a non painful manner.”
Wow. Good luck with that. That’s “hope” with a double-digit exponent.
My personal concern is that radical population reduction might not occur as a consequence of negative growth, but rather as a deliberate effort on the part of people like Paul Ehrlich, Bill Gates, Ted Turner, and the usual rich, power hungry, psychopathic suspects.
technocrat: Tugging your beard here, but I think Diablo asked some good questions. I came up with a dozen of my own, but in the interest of brevity, I’m just curious how you might suppose a group of technocrats would address the leaky Mexican border. Being scientists and engineers, would you suppose another Great Wall? Or would the decision be left to the border towns according to how they wish to spend their chits? In any case, I would think that establishing conversions between things like electricity, gasoline, food production and wall building might be awfully tricky and subject to dispute.
There’s an awful lot of “we” and “us” talk around here at times that makes me feel pretty uneasy.
I’ve had the impression that the chief message at TAE is to get to know your neighbors and learn to cooperate in a bottom-up sort of way. You pull me to the farmer’s market this morning in my rickshaw and I’ll come till your fields this afternoon. Maybe we can get that crazy guy down the road to part with a little of his moonshine tonight if we agree to patch his roof or weld his broken rake.
If anybody here is thinking of changing mankind in some fundamental way, as with a well-placed pdf or pithy Tweet, dream on. That sort of thing has been tried to the point of exhaustion for millennia without success by a lot of people. If anybody here is thinking their pet political or economic philosophy can be forcefully imposed and administered successfully from the top down, you might as well advocate for global rule by North Korea. I’m not saying it won’t work here and there for a while, I’m just not sure life will be worth living any more.
(But if you can get me a job with the central planning committee, count me in.)
Please, somebody reassure me here. Tell me TAE isn’t just cleverly baiting us all to become good communists.
