“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful... that’s what matters to me.” [Steve Jobs]
Greg - Thanks for engaging in some back and forth.....I respect your input here and elsewhere and the words Resolution and Revolution are very similar and sometimes go hand-n-hand I suppose.
I'm "resolved" though to working towards solutions as I suspect essentially all readers here desire as well - peaceful if possible for sure since peaceful solutions have the best chance in the long run.....
While I agree with the concept of localisation, the 2021 census showed that out of a total of 59,597,500 people living in England and Wales and a majority of them lived in cities. Primary urban areas accounted for 56.4% of this total population – corresponding to about 33.6 million city residents in both nations combined.
For that 56.4%, a self sufficient local economy is not an option, neither can the rural areas accommodate an influx of the 33.6 million city residents. However, that is not an excuse for over centralisation of power in central government. We cannot all move to and buy a small holding in Wales, to form a self-sufficient community, let alone emigrate to SA.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, there is the "UNESCO Guidelines for the governance of digital platforms" initiative of 11 Nov 2023.
"Safeguarding freedom of expression and the right to information while dealing with dis- and misinformation, hate speech, and conspiracy theories requires a multistakeholder approach."
The real reason why UNESCO, "the leading UN agency for the promotion and protection of freedom of expression and to [sic] information, is launching Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms", is as follows:
While supposedly safeguarding freedom of expression, UNESCO is requiring governments to "deal(ing) with dis- and misinformation, hate speech, and conspiracy theories.." This, along with the WHO's Pandemic Treaty, is intended to control, totally, everything we say and do. It is worse than a dictator's dream!
Me too Bill, I share your distain. "These researchers argue that hate is inextricably linked to morality through negative moral appraisals. Similarly, the Duplex Theory of Hate argues that hate as an emotion may be composed of other more basic moral emotions—contempt, anger, and disgust—which are triggered by moral transgressions" (Sternberg, 2003).
The problem with the way human population is structured is not necessarily the size, the number of people, even though that is a huge factor, but ENERGY.
It might seem that the area occupied by city dwellers is relatively small, but the opposite is true. Like everybody, city people need to eat and consume other products, and all this stuff is produced, grow, extracted, and so on somewhere out there. Thus, there is a certain size of land out there scattered around the world that is needed to sustain everybody. The one factor that makes it possible for the world to go 'round like this is CHEAP ENERGY. Energy is used to grow food, produce stuff, and deliver it to everybody's proximity. Take energy/fuel away, and people will lose thereby provided connection to the chunk of land that caters to their needs.
The problem is that fossil fuels, the source of the aforementioned energy, are declining and sooner or later will run out. The just-in-time system we have now will no longer work. Extraction seems to have peaked already, supplies are on the decline. Yet, consumerist capitalism commands ongoing growth, which in turn necessitates energy. Clearly impossible.
This is the problem humankind is facing. Fossils can't be replaced with anything else so that the current way of life could be sustained without major changes.
The way it looks is that we're about to fall off a cliff. Probably in a matter of decade(s) or so.
Getting the hell out of the city, learning to grow food, to survive is the ticket. Whoever exits the rat race earlier will be ahead when the shit hits the fan.
Well, we're on the same page. Except that you're obviously an economist, a person schooled in the subject matter, while I'm not. I'm a musician, even though I work as a commercial translator, which has forced me to learn about a wide variety of subjects. Yet, just by using my brain and connecting the dots, I've reached pretty much the same conclusions. That includes the energy predicament and the financial economy phantasmagoria, including debt - i.e. shifting the cost of current consumption into the future based on the wishful thinking, mirage-like prospect that growth will cover the cost, which it simply cannot even in theory, at least not indefinitely. BTW, Michael Hudson speaks about financialization too, financial capitalism in contrast to industrial capitalism.
I find it hard to believe that the 'elites' wouldn't be aware of all this. I can well imagine that they don't have a solution, for there really isn't one, certainly not one the populace would keenly embrace, but they must know what's up, mustn't they?
I think the vast majority of humanity, Paul are so absorbed in their day-to-day survival activities my writings bypass them. Even my own children (4) and grandchildren (9) avoid reading my scribbles! But at least the wriiten word on the web persists. Sages throughout history are often discovered long after their demise.
My experience is that the more people live an independent, if not secluded, life, the more they see things clearly. I have a friend, university educated BTW, who works in the woods, does specialized tree felling, landscaping, stuff like that. Works alone. He's reached pretty much the same conclusions as I have, including the deadly-pandemic-of-an-asymptomatic disease con. Yesterday, a guy came be my girlfriend's bar, just sold a mountain chalet he ran for the last 15 years. Same thing - same conclusions on energy as per the above.
I guess city people are part of the corporate meatgrinder unable to think (independently).
Yes, indeed Paul. People migrate to cities because that's where the money is but now, after the lockdown experience, many have discovered that they can 'Work from Anywhere' - like me in sunny Simons Town. For me, it's not about money, but more about quality of life. The new generations, like Gen Z, are finding out that 'Less is More'.
Fellow musician. Ocean waves provide many times our current production. For a novel I created a system just off Vanuatu that pumped water up into holding tanks during the day. "Clacker boards" covered in photovoltaic cells. Below the floating array was used to raise a shrimp species highly valued in Japan for export. Minimal automation to provide work for local youth.
Green New Deal fails quickly on wind and solar. Nuclear and methane allow transition to waves.
On a small scale, you can harness energy from waves or tide. You can probably create a small buffer for times when the energy is not available. Calculations would have to be done as to what the buffer would have be and is it's feasible.
I don't have any figures as to what the total amount of energy present in ocean waves is, but I sincerely doubt that there is a technological solution of capturing the power and delivering it to land and using it to drive the industries we have today.
Bear in mind that much of what we use today relies on fossil-driven machinery, where fossil fuels are just about impossible to replace. In other words, you can't make photovoltaic equipment without fossil fuels. You can't mine and process the materials without energy-dense fuel. Electricity, even if it worked in theory, won't do. Keep in mind that for a lasting fossil-free solution, the whatever technology is devised would have to be capable of reproducing itself after its initial service life ends. Meaning - say, you make the first generation with fossil fuels, but the second and subsequent generations (stuff wears out) will have to be fueled by the new system.
"At Davos, Ursula von der Leyen, that horrible, sneering witch, went on a long Bond-villain-like spiel about . . . Thierry Breton, an utterly humourless, pug-faced hall monitor of a man who looks and sounds like a toilet brush given human form." Yes! Enough is enough. Far past enough. ONWARD!
I implore you to divide your jeremiads into smaller bites. By the time I got to the end my head hurt and I couldn't recommend half of what you had written.
I'm all ears Bill. Always ready to learn new skills. The older I get I realise how little I know - Substack is a great source of knowledge and wisdom for me.
I spent most of my professional career as a high-value global management consultant. My clients had no time to read thud-factor documents. Thus I learned to use fewer words, which have more impact. My approach was to write free-form, stream of consciousness, in Word, then turn on review and start eliminating individual characters. I could see word counts. I did this over the decades and found less need to cut. It's slow at first.
Many thanks, Bill for your excellent advice. I qualified as a company secretary in 1967 and became a finance director in the early 70s. My board sold the company to Gallaher Tobacco in 1977 and I was head-hunted by Xerox who trained me as a Corporate Systems Consultant where I spent five happy years until I retired in 1982.
I then founded my accountancy practice in partnership with a wonderful friend and colleague and went on to found a computer company in 1985. I sold out in 1995 to sail the world and find paradise, which I found here in Simons Town in 1999. The rest is history.
I guess that my training and experience leaves me somewhat pedantic about journalism. Old dogs and new tricks come to mind! LOL
Thank you, Darius - your kind words are most welcome. I scribble for hours and I am never sure that they hit the target so your approval is my encouragement.
Forget the semantics chaps - we are all on the same page!
Yet another fine article by P&S.
Much of what you describe resonates in my own local activities over the last few years.
2024 is the Year of Resolution is my book.
Resolution is on the way.
BK
Revolution? I don't see it being just resolved.
I said "Resolution" -
not what you typed
~
edit:
I typed Resolution
Thanks for your clarification. I had, wrongly, assumed that you meant "Revolution".
I'll be interested to read how you think this will be resolved in 2024.
I think resolution beckons - it does to me.
Greg - to be fair, I cut a snippet of this and posted it here:
https://buffaloken.substack.com/p/israel-is-in-trouble
I wanted to "capture" it in the moment.
But please - I said and typed
RESOLUTION - not what you typed.
Thanks for that explanation. I understand your position.
Greg - Thanks for engaging in some back and forth.....I respect your input here and elsewhere and the words Resolution and Revolution are very similar and sometimes go hand-n-hand I suppose.
I'm "resolved" though to working towards solutions as I suspect essentially all readers here desire as well - peaceful if possible for sure since peaceful solutions have the best chance in the long run.....
Regards,
Ken
While I agree with the concept of localisation, the 2021 census showed that out of a total of 59,597,500 people living in England and Wales and a majority of them lived in cities. Primary urban areas accounted for 56.4% of this total population – corresponding to about 33.6 million city residents in both nations combined.
For that 56.4%, a self sufficient local economy is not an option, neither can the rural areas accommodate an influx of the 33.6 million city residents. However, that is not an excuse for over centralisation of power in central government. We cannot all move to and buy a small holding in Wales, to form a self-sufficient community, let alone emigrate to SA.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, there is the "UNESCO Guidelines for the governance of digital platforms" initiative of 11 Nov 2023.
https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/guidelines-governance-digital-platforms
"Safeguarding freedom of expression and the right to information while dealing with dis- and misinformation, hate speech, and conspiracy theories requires a multistakeholder approach."
The real reason why UNESCO, "the leading UN agency for the promotion and protection of freedom of expression and to [sic] information, is launching Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms", is as follows:
While supposedly safeguarding freedom of expression, UNESCO is requiring governments to "deal(ing) with dis- and misinformation, hate speech, and conspiracy theories.." This, along with the WHO's Pandemic Treaty, is intended to control, totally, everything we say and do. It is worse than a dictator's dream!
Thanks, Greg you are over the target. IMHO they will keep on until stopped and perhaps this is not that far away.
While “hate speech “ has been much in the news, it has never been adequately defined. The best I can tell is “something I don’t like.”
Me too Bill, I share your distain. "These researchers argue that hate is inextricably linked to morality through negative moral appraisals. Similarly, the Duplex Theory of Hate argues that hate as an emotion may be composed of other more basic moral emotions—contempt, anger, and disgust—which are triggered by moral transgressions" (Sternberg, 2003).
The problem with the way human population is structured is not necessarily the size, the number of people, even though that is a huge factor, but ENERGY.
It might seem that the area occupied by city dwellers is relatively small, but the opposite is true. Like everybody, city people need to eat and consume other products, and all this stuff is produced, grow, extracted, and so on somewhere out there. Thus, there is a certain size of land out there scattered around the world that is needed to sustain everybody. The one factor that makes it possible for the world to go 'round like this is CHEAP ENERGY. Energy is used to grow food, produce stuff, and deliver it to everybody's proximity. Take energy/fuel away, and people will lose thereby provided connection to the chunk of land that caters to their needs.
The problem is that fossil fuels, the source of the aforementioned energy, are declining and sooner or later will run out. The just-in-time system we have now will no longer work. Extraction seems to have peaked already, supplies are on the decline. Yet, consumerist capitalism commands ongoing growth, which in turn necessitates energy. Clearly impossible.
This is the problem humankind is facing. Fossils can't be replaced with anything else so that the current way of life could be sustained without major changes.
The way it looks is that we're about to fall off a cliff. Probably in a matter of decade(s) or so.
Getting the hell out of the city, learning to grow food, to survive is the ticket. Whoever exits the rat race earlier will be ahead when the shit hits the fan.
All exactly right Paul, thank you for expressing reality. I wrote about it some time ago:
https://austrianpeter.substack.com/p/the-financial-jigsaw-part-2-the-end?s=w
Well, we're on the same page. Except that you're obviously an economist, a person schooled in the subject matter, while I'm not. I'm a musician, even though I work as a commercial translator, which has forced me to learn about a wide variety of subjects. Yet, just by using my brain and connecting the dots, I've reached pretty much the same conclusions. That includes the energy predicament and the financial economy phantasmagoria, including debt - i.e. shifting the cost of current consumption into the future based on the wishful thinking, mirage-like prospect that growth will cover the cost, which it simply cannot even in theory, at least not indefinitely. BTW, Michael Hudson speaks about financialization too, financial capitalism in contrast to industrial capitalism.
I find it hard to believe that the 'elites' wouldn't be aware of all this. I can well imagine that they don't have a solution, for there really isn't one, certainly not one the populace would keenly embrace, but they must know what's up, mustn't they?
I think the vast majority of humanity, Paul are so absorbed in their day-to-day survival activities my writings bypass them. Even my own children (4) and grandchildren (9) avoid reading my scribbles! But at least the wriiten word on the web persists. Sages throughout history are often discovered long after their demise.
My experience is that the more people live an independent, if not secluded, life, the more they see things clearly. I have a friend, university educated BTW, who works in the woods, does specialized tree felling, landscaping, stuff like that. Works alone. He's reached pretty much the same conclusions as I have, including the deadly-pandemic-of-an-asymptomatic disease con. Yesterday, a guy came be my girlfriend's bar, just sold a mountain chalet he ran for the last 15 years. Same thing - same conclusions on energy as per the above.
I guess city people are part of the corporate meatgrinder unable to think (independently).
Yes, indeed Paul. People migrate to cities because that's where the money is but now, after the lockdown experience, many have discovered that they can 'Work from Anywhere' - like me in sunny Simons Town. For me, it's not about money, but more about quality of life. The new generations, like Gen Z, are finding out that 'Less is More'.
Fellow musician. Ocean waves provide many times our current production. For a novel I created a system just off Vanuatu that pumped water up into holding tanks during the day. "Clacker boards" covered in photovoltaic cells. Below the floating array was used to raise a shrimp species highly valued in Japan for export. Minimal automation to provide work for local youth.
Green New Deal fails quickly on wind and solar. Nuclear and methane allow transition to waves.
On a small scale, you can harness energy from waves or tide. You can probably create a small buffer for times when the energy is not available. Calculations would have to be done as to what the buffer would have be and is it's feasible.
I don't have any figures as to what the total amount of energy present in ocean waves is, but I sincerely doubt that there is a technological solution of capturing the power and delivering it to land and using it to drive the industries we have today.
Bear in mind that much of what we use today relies on fossil-driven machinery, where fossil fuels are just about impossible to replace. In other words, you can't make photovoltaic equipment without fossil fuels. You can't mine and process the materials without energy-dense fuel. Electricity, even if it worked in theory, won't do. Keep in mind that for a lasting fossil-free solution, the whatever technology is devised would have to be capable of reproducing itself after its initial service life ends. Meaning - say, you make the first generation with fossil fuels, but the second and subsequent generations (stuff wears out) will have to be fueled by the new system.
Excellent case for nuclear
I wrote about this dilemma a while ago Paul but thank you for raising this important problem:
https://austrianpeter.substack.com/p/the-financial-jigsaw-part-2-the-end?s=w
Excellent, entertaining, and accurate!
"At Davos, Ursula von der Leyen, that horrible, sneering witch, went on a long Bond-villain-like spiel about . . . Thierry Breton, an utterly humourless, pug-faced hall monitor of a man who looks and sounds like a toilet brush given human form." Yes! Enough is enough. Far past enough. ONWARD!
Thanks, Darius - but we are winning, yes?
Cheers
AP
I implore you to divide your jeremiads into smaller bites. By the time I got to the end my head hurt and I couldn't recommend half of what you had written.
Thanks Bill. It's a real problem and I try to limit 3,000 words but the subject is so complex I wish I had the skill to be more concise! :-)
I may be able to help with that.
I'm all ears Bill. Always ready to learn new skills. The older I get I realise how little I know - Substack is a great source of knowledge and wisdom for me.
I spent most of my professional career as a high-value global management consultant. My clients had no time to read thud-factor documents. Thus I learned to use fewer words, which have more impact. My approach was to write free-form, stream of consciousness, in Word, then turn on review and start eliminating individual characters. I could see word counts. I did this over the decades and found less need to cut. It's slow at first.
Many thanks, Bill for your excellent advice. I qualified as a company secretary in 1967 and became a finance director in the early 70s. My board sold the company to Gallaher Tobacco in 1977 and I was head-hunted by Xerox who trained me as a Corporate Systems Consultant where I spent five happy years until I retired in 1982.
I then founded my accountancy practice in partnership with a wonderful friend and colleague and went on to found a computer company in 1985. I sold out in 1995 to sail the world and find paradise, which I found here in Simons Town in 1999. The rest is history.
I guess that my training and experience leaves me somewhat pedantic about journalism. Old dogs and new tricks come to mind! LOL
Blessings
AP
Something I do is post a topic in segments
"...that horrible, sneering witch, went on a long Bond-villain-like spiel about misinformation and disinformation..."
You could have held a contest and 9 out of 10 here would have guessed her name.
This article renewed my sense of optimism for my grandkids at least.
Oh good jo - it was my intention :-)
Another great post!
Thank you, Darius - your kind words are most welcome. I scribble for hours and I am never sure that they hit the target so your approval is my encouragement.
Example Thank you. Your approval is my encouragement.
Are you familiar with the work of Simon Micheaux (https://www.simonmichaux.com/)? If not, check it out and say what you think. As far as energy, there is also Art Berman (https://www.artberman.com/). On the issue of fossil-driven population overshoot, there is William Rees. As far as economics, energy and finance are brought together by Gail Tverberg (https://ourfiniteworld.com/author/gailtheactuary/) and Tim Morgan (https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/).
It would be great to hear your opinion.
Yes, Paul - I worked with Tim when I wrote my book and he graciously allowed me to include an Epilogue. Gail Tverberg is also on the same page: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358117070_THE_FINANCIAL_JIGSAW_-_PART_1_-_4th_Edition_2020