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Why we are right now seeing so many problems with respect to wealth disparity and low commodity prices (Answer: World per capita energy consumption is already falling, and the energy/economy system needs to reflect this problem somehow.) Why the quest for growing technology leads to growing wealth disparity (Answer: The economy must be configured in more of a hierarchical pattern to support growing "complexity." Growing complexity is the precursor to growing technology.) Why rising debt is an integral part of the energy/economy system (Answer: We could not pay workers for making long-lasting goods and services without using debt to "pull forward" the hoped-for benefit of these goods and services to the present, using debt and other equivalent approaches.) Why commodity prices can suddenly fall below the cost of production for a wide range of products (Answer: Prices of commodities depend to a significant extent on debt levels. A major problem is that when commodity prices rise, wages do not rise in a corresponding manner. Rising debt levels can mask the growing lack of affordability for a while, but eventually, debt levels cannot be raised sufficiently, and commodity prices fall too low.) The Brexit vote may be related to falling energy per capita in the UK. Given that this problem occurs in many countries, it may be increasingly difficult to keep the Eurozone and other similar international organizations together.
It's class warfare from the top down. Typical wages are stagnant because politicians and central banks have expended enormous amounts of effort on keeping them low or dropping. Wealth is concentrating because politicians and central banks expend enormous effort on concentrating it.
Rising trade only matters to the extent that politicians often go out of their way to write the treaties governing that increase in ways that deliberately fuck over labor (ISDS. The emphasis on IP over tax enforcement, ect.)
TINA is a lie. All variants on TINA is a lie.
Every time you hear a new narrative why the way the suffering of the workers and little people of the world is necessary and unavoidable, remember - it is a lie.
There is nothing except malice preventing us from having a rising standard on living and employment based on improved recycling and manufacturing techniques. Atoms are infinitely recyclable, and energy is not scarce.
As ever, it's not that it's 100% wrong of course. But even some of the things that are right come from non sequiturs, which does not exactly fill you with confidence. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi
Imagine this: Some captivated Elites take the Club of Rome Report seriously, and decide that global consumption of resources has to be reduced, even the global population perhaps. They literally see no alternative. Why would they have to discuss this thorny topic with masses in all countries? So they tell governments intimately: all ideologies, welfare aspirations, social values, human rights are nothing compared to having an inhabitable planet. And so the TINA reversal towards a Hobbessian struggle begins. The USSR block is quickly dismantled, the Western politics is slowly but consistently pushed by transparently mean conservative governments and charismatic Third Way moles. How it come that TINA forces emerged (and strengthened unopposed) since 1970-80s while the social, democratic post-WWII values were totally betrayed?
Surely, destruction of the environment is seemingly only accelerating in these last decades. Contrary to perceptible evidence and parsimonious logic, I have to assume here uncanny planning, obfuscation. Some people like to do whatever it takes, if the goal is inescapable. Ain't economic depressions more human than world wars? The disregard towards the long term sustainability is too comprehensive to be true, no? Would we here know limits of misdirection for that purpose?
Whatever the timeline for real results, social-economic policies have clearly shifted, and Tverberg's graphs depict that energy consumption is decreasing in UK, Spain, Japan, etc.
Now, if the motive was, "The world is screwed, so I'm going to steal as much as possible so that in the future, I know that I will live, and have the pick of the remaining plebes to be my slaves." But as far as a "save the Earth with a backhanded slap" narrative, neoliberalism makes no sense.
Not all wealthy Americans think that way. But. Some do.
Of course once they had acquired the skills, the Chinese set up their own factories with the same technology and the "borrowed" intellectual capital to effectively compete with the original out-sourcers. Too late, the out-sourcers realized their own technologies where being used to compete against them, and in many cases, sought to insource again or transfer to a less entrepreurial culture with less availale capital to replicate the technology. Index of Frank's Diaries
Mostly we just have to stop being so stupid in how we use our resources. That is the real challenge, along with appropriate distribution of wealth. And overriding all of this is the importance of climate change - which has to be slowed and then reversed. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
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