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I can agree that there are no direct economic-technological forces pushing the elites to lie, implement destructive austerity, wage this class war fully. We could indeed have had social democratic societies, Keynessian economics, merry growth... for another 20-50 years perhaps!

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.

by das monde on Tue Jul 12th, 2016 at 10:44:03 AM EST
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Or, they could have, you know, pushed for investment in technological and economic policies that addressed the problems directly - dealing with trash problems, addressing water pollution directly, pushing for alternative energy in 1980 instead of 2000, 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.

by Zwackus on Tue Jul 12th, 2016 at 12:38:00 PM EST
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Again, composition matters. Is energy consumption declining because of increased energy efficiency or because of economic depression/recession? And how has the composition of that energy supply changed? The more renewables the better. The lower the carbon footprint the better.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Tue Jul 12th, 2016 at 04:05:14 PM EST
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Several years ago I was informed of a discussion with a Silicon Valley VC to the effect that, by 1980, it was no longer profitable to manufacture in the USA due to wages and benefits, so the wealthy were shifting their efforts off shore and planned to just grab as much as they could from the US economy, essentially switching from building wealth in the US to extracting wealth from the US. This seems to have been independent of peak oil or climate change concerns. But the plan described certainly seems to be what has unfolded.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Tue Jul 12th, 2016 at 04:11:00 PM EST
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I saw that personally, too.

Not all wealthy Americans think that way. But. Some do.

by John Redmond on Tue Jul 12th, 2016 at 05:03:55 PM EST
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In the 1980s the US plant was obsolete and needed to be replaced.  Plant cost was the same no matter where they parked it so they went off-shore to be able to buy labor in a low wage rate environment, e.g., Indonesia, and sell in high wage rate markets and pocket the difference.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
by ATinNM on Tue Jul 12th, 2016 at 06:29:09 PM EST
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More than systemic under-investment, computerization and robotisation were also creating a whole new generation of manufacturing capabilities which were very capital intensive and which required changed work practices and extensive re-training which are often easier to implement in a green field environment rather than with expensive 50+ aged workers. Labour costs actually became a smaller fraction of the total cost of production, but it was the willingness of (say) Chinese workers to work all hours, learn new skills quickly, and the lack of unionisation which made the move overseas attractive.

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

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Wed Jul 13th, 2016 at 10:13:01 AM EST
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In the old German phrase, the outsourcers 'grew too soon old and too late wise.'

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Jul 13th, 2016 at 03:05:47 PM EST
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