Kunstler: The Way Out.
It’s not what most people think: a return to some hypothetical “normality,” with the ghost of Ronnie Reagan beaming down like a sun-god under his lopsided pompadour, and all the happy self-driving GM cars toodling back and forth from WalMart-to-home loaded to the scuppers with new electric pop-tart warmers and 3-D underwear printers. (Or drone deliveries of same from Amazon.com.)
I mean, surely the thinking folk out there must be asking themselves: what is the way out of this Federal Reserve three-card-monte, one-percenter-stuffing, so-called “economy,” and what is the destination of this society when that mendacious model for living fails?
I digress for a moment: there was a chap named Richard Duncan on the pod-waves this weekend (FSN Network) putting out the charming idea that quantitative easing (QE — governments “printing” money to buy their own bonds) had the effect of “cancelling debt” and that it could continue for decades to come. I don’t doubt that there are Federal Reserve officers who believe this. The part they leave out — and Mr. Duncan also left it out until pressed — is that there are consequences. Consult the operating manual of the universe, and you will find that there really is no free lunch or get-out-of-jail card.
The truth is, when you rig a money system with price interventions, distortions, and perversions, they will eventually express themselves in ways destructive to the system. In the present case of world-wide QE and central bank monkey business, these rackets are expressing themselves, finally, in wobbling currencies. In many nations, people are deeply unsure of what their money is worth, and how much it might be worth a month from now. This includes the USA, except for the moment our money is said to be magically appreciating in value compared to everyone else’s. Aren’t we special?
Get this: nothing is more hazardous than undermining people’s trust in their money.
All of this financial perfidy conceals the basic fact that the human race has reached the limits of techno-industrialism. There are too many people and not enough basic resources to grow more of them — oil, fishes, soil, ores, fertilizers — and there is no steady-state “solution” to keep that economy going. In other words, it must either grow or contract, and it can’t really grow anymore (despite the exertions of government statisticians), so the authorities are trying to provide a monetary illusion of growth, when instead we’re in contraction.
Yes, contraction. The way out is to get with the program, shed the dead-weight and go where reality wants to take you. In the USA that means do everything possible to quit supporting giant failing systems — Big Box shopping, mass motoring, GMO agribiz, TBTF banks — and get behind local Main Street integrated economies, walkable towns, regular railroads, smaller and more numerous farms, local medical clinic health care, artistry in public works, and community caretaking of the unfit. All this surely implies a reduced role for the national government, and maybe the states, too. You could call it a lower standard of living, or just a different way to live.
I don’t think we’ll go there via rational political discourse. The current instabilities around the world are so sinister that they are liable to lead to even more strenuous efforts at the top to pretend that everything’s working, and even war is one way to pretend you’re okay (and the “other guy” isn’t). Of course, war has already broken out, in the MidEast and Ukraine, and it has everything to do with the sequential failure of nations, in one way or another, to overcome the limits of techno-industrialism. America will be dragged kicking and screaming to the realization of what it needs to do. The 2016 election will be the convulsion point.
Monday, March 30, 2015
Sorry, ultranationalist suckers—Modi going back on campaign promise to provide universal health care http://t.co/iYzx5mRkaU
— exiledonline.com (@exiledonline) March 27, 2015Sunday, March 29, 2015
#Hist1161 the @JournAmHist Podcast series is a great, open resource on US History: http://t.co/FthH16NkNA
— Brandon Morgan (@CNMBrandon) March 27, 2015#Foodwaste represents missed opp to improve food security. Reducing food wastage footprint: http://t.co/tLMghxMb2n #UNFAO #savefood
— FAOKnowledge (@FAOKnowledge) March 26, 2015Discussing Racism in the SBC
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2015/03/27/395815996/southern-baptists-dont-shy-away-from-talking-about-their-racist-past
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Librarians to Follow on Twitter
http://www.mattanderson.org/blog/2013/01/22/125-librarians-to-follow-on-twitter/
Various Tweets on Archiving and Radio
Shepperd: media preservation (esp of radio) allows historians to research groups underrepresented in paper trail of most archives #AVSymp
— Jesse Johnston (@jesseajohnston) March 27, 2015I think of the many radio broadcasts in Hawaii alone that are probably lost forever.
Shepperd: Radio between 1917 + 1946 remains virtually untouched in the historical record. #AVSymp
— ArchivesAmericanArt (@ArchivesAmerArt) March 27, 2015Friday, March 27, 2015
A better question: Why did you think that tie would go with that jacket?
Here we go.
Robertson: ‘Was the co-pilot a Muslim? Why did he want to kill all those people?’ http://t.co/5wcwjlYzuy pic.twitter.com/gBGNf9bqKs
— Imraan Siddiqi (@imraansiddiqi) March 26, 2015Spreading the Word 2
My newest: Germanwings crash speculation & airline union-busting from Reagan to Merkel @PandoDaily http://t.co/f4TIINAMrE
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) March 26, 2015Spreading the Word
600 corporations writing secret #TPP doesn't sound like #democracy! #NoFastTrack for #TPP! http://t.co/iJ2OQuOm9Z #p2 pic.twitter.com/v4imx65jhe
— Expose The TPP (@ExposeTPP) March 24, 2015Monday, March 23, 2015
Various Tweets from @archivesnext
"A digital file that represents a non-copyrightable object [like a screw] will be protected by copyright even if..." (head explodes)
— Michael Peter Edson (@mpedson) March 23, 2015Astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin 1st female dept head @Harvard http://t.co/FJt1pOOTYW #histSTM #WomensHistoryMonth pic.twitter.com/XRkwB2bwDH
— Alexi Baker (@AlexiBaker) March 21, 2015Mass State Archives: new site for digital records incl @DevalPatrick correspondence http://t.co/POtnXxFrSE cc @BostonGlobe #maracnea15
— Paige Roberts (@paige_roberts) March 21, 2015BRICS Bank
http://www.globalresearch.ca/%E2%80%8Brussia-ratifies-100bn-brics-new-development-bank/5433304
Armond White Acknowledging Madonna
#Madonna by popular demand. Her most mature video. Read now. http://t.co/UHGa9mTUvR pic.twitter.com/VdUdoGLJ33
— armond white (@3xchair) March 18, 2015Queen and King of music videos. Read it now. http://t.co/WZu6sopdQm pic.twitter.com/rTLcMEQOvi
— armond white (@3xchair) March 14, 2015Sunday, March 15, 2015
Pierre Omidyar, Again
There's probably something to occasion this teeth-gnashing about Pierre Omidyar. I'd say Richard Smart had a lot more charm and personality.
Basically Omidyar is the Vinod Khosla asshole of Hawaii http://t.co/YubDlOgQg8
— exiledonline.com (@exiledonline) March 15, 2015Saturday, March 14, 2015
Dublin Review of Books
Sometime I'll have to clean up my list of links, but I added a link to its Book Review section.
Dublin Review of Books
Dublin Review of Books
Richard Heinberg: "Only Less Will Do"
Who knew violin manufacturing at a mass scale had such an impact as what he describes?
http://www.postcarbon.org/only-less-will-do/
http://www.postcarbon.org/only-less-will-do/
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