That should prop the dying beast for awhile....but it ain't no fix... when the markets conclude that all they did was inject the beast with a mega shot of cocaine, speed, heroin, meth and Red Bull... allowing him to stagger along for a few more miles... before he collapses in a heap and expires...
And the markets will come to this conclusion ... because what the CCP has done is commanded businesses in China to accept many billions of yuan and use that cash to bid up the market.... while tossing a few scraps at the mob to try to encourage them to buy property...
The thing is ... how do you buy property when you already went all in ... what you bought did not get built... but you still have to service the full cost... or what you bought has crashed in price by a third.
Let's see what happens when the euphoria wears off ... we'll probably see an even bigger wave of desperate policies thrown at this ... eventually you push on the string... and it pushes back...
I don't think they will allow this to happen though ... they do NOT want 8B on the streets ripping faces off... they will complete UEP and exterminate us first.
A really chilling story that I too have delved into. From my perspective in Norway, no one seems to bother. I made a count this week, when there is autumn leave from schools, an around 15 of our friend-families took a trip to mediterranean shores. Not a problem in sight! But a just recently read the Jacobsen-book you allude, and suddently wondered: Shouldn’t I myself «live to the Max», just gulp the world? I humbly post my thoghts here. https://open.substack.com/pub/agnarlirhus/p/armageddon-e76?r=iyltu&utm_medium=ios
Lovely illusions, but the last time our species was living in an ecologically balanced self-sustaining lifeway was when our ancestors were migratory Hunter-Gatherers/pastoralists and numbered worldwide about 2.6M, so 1/3,000th of our massively overpopulated numbers. What could go wrong? Everything?
Great summary. Thank you. I also believe our prospects are not bright. Everything is rapidly diverging from what we want for civilizational survivability. Societies globally will reset every five years or less until we hit null set. The fuel for acceleration of civilizational decline will be the rising global heat that will make massive storms a common occurrence. Rebuilding complex societies will become impossible.
One or two points I'd add. We are used to the idea or EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Invested), which is quickly reaching parity, but there is also the wider issue of fossil fuels being 'invested' in solar and wind energy, and electric vehicles and charging capacity, all with a much lower energy density. The energy equation means the actual energy that will be available for public consumption will soon be critically short.
In a 'normal' economic market model, that would mean that energy prices would rise fast and drastically, but obviously governments would step in to control prices and avoid riots, at least for as long as they could.
But governments do have priorities, especially for fossil fuels. The military, for example, always get first dip, so in times of conflicts (like we seem on the brink of) then fossil fuels might increasingly be reserved for the military, then the corporations, then the farmers and food producers and distributors, and only finally the general public. That could happen very fast indeed and, at that point, the fossil based civilisation crashes to a halt.
Part of that scenario is that fossil fuel production will continue past the point of zero EROEI, so more energy will be used to extract fossil energy than is available for use. It works if, for example, you use solar and wind turbines to power oil and gas well extraction and processing, on the basis that the oil or gas is more important. Such as in jet fighters and tanks.
As for the timescale; I see so many scénarios leading to cascading collapses that my personal assumptions grow shorter by the month. If we get to 2030 without cascading collapses, particularly in the USA (the most vulnerable fossil-based economy, I think) I'll consider us very lucky.
Your optimism relies upon the ruling classes of Western countries being intelligent (Morality is long out of the window if it was ever there). Bloody Pollyana. :P
Segueing into "intelligence", ALL life is natively intelligent. What most mouthbreathing monkeys mean when they say "intelligence" is actually tool use. Using an item to modify the environment for its own interest. AKA stealing the system's energy, usually to make more young of their own.
Our films simply cannot imagine landing on an alien planet, where the 'dominant' (Origins of that word are extremely Romanly suspicious) species not only lightly adapt their world, but also deliberately do not overpopulate and drive out the rest of the planet's Nature.
This would be considered a planet we would invade and do those things instead. See: Pandora.
THE problem is our cultural memes.
"Before them were lush forests, behind them only deserts."
Discovering or inventing a source of unlimited energy is probably the worst thing that could happen. If it worked, it would only lead to more devastation of Nature, more pillaging, more extraction, more processing, more of the toxic behavior the stupid two-legged idiot humans are engaged in.
Energy notwithstanding, the way people live is not sustainable, not conducive to anything good, not nothing. It's a sick behavior of an unhinged species that is high on stuff produced thanks to cheap abundant energy.
The sheer madness of what fucking people are doing gotta stop, one way or another.
As far as getting a life, you might want to check out the phenomenon of psychological projection. Worry not about mine, focus on yours.
As to the aforestated, that happens to be the sad reality, regardless of whether the cognitive dissonance - or wishful thinking as per the delusional video you've referenced - you suffer from allows you to discern it or not.
Since the taller they are, the harder they fall applies, it can be expected that the most advanced (on their way down the tubes) societies will collapse first and/or in the most dramatic fashion. Like people in the global northwest. They're not only completely oblivious to the predicaments humankind will be facing (they probably think that an app on their smart phone will solve anything), but even if they are, most of them have no usable skills to do anything remotely practical.
It would be nice if people slowed down, downsized, and devolved into a civilization of cooperative beings, but it's much more likely that there will be groups of subjects ruled by warlords. Such is the nature of the human being. And maybe it's for the better because this democracy and personal freedom experiment of the past few hundred years has been an utter disaster, resulting in colossal wastage.
I agree with your comments about extraction, pollution, civilization destroying Nature etc, and that the current, consumerist paradigm is an unsustainable disaster.
However, it's impossible to know what will happen after industrial civilization has collapsed.
Many pre-civilization cultures (e.g. the Australian Aborigines) lived sustainably for several millennia, without warlords or brutality.
To say it's "much more likely" that people will live as groups ruled by warlords than as egalitarian co-operatives is to take a Hobbesian view of human nature. Such a view is distorted by the the last 10,000 years of history (a blip, in the total time humans have existed).
In the absence of enforced hierarchies, people naturally tend to co-operate.
Karl Popper empirically proved that the past can't be used to predict the future, and it's anybody's guess how things will develop.
In the immediate future, I expect governments to increase their grip over society, as people will go insane when they're not getting a fix of whatever they get high on - garbage food, gadgets, travel, the shit that spins the wheels of this consumerist world. People are crazy about the stuff - you could see that during CONVID, when they willingly let themselves be injected with some shit just to keep stuffing themselves with the crap.
What will happen later, I have no idea.
Not sure about your last sentence - people naturally tend to impose hierarchies onto themselves, much more that they tend to cooperate.
People are born into, and accustomed to, hierarchies, now. That doesn't mean they naturally tend to impose hierarchies onto themselves. They lived for millions of years without them.
This is a moot point, really. Nobody knows what sort of society whatever humans are left after the eventual collapse of the current civilization, if any, will form.
Be that as it may, however, judging from what I can observe, there are hierarchies left and right, and it's been the case as far back as I can see. Not sure why things should change dramatically. For a horizontal societal arrangement to be established - which, BTW, would be my preferred option, a sort of anarchy (opposite of hierarchy) - people would have to be equal and cooperative, which they're not. Not exclusively. They are both cooperative and competitive, both collectivist and individualist.
The thing is intelligence. One smart guy is worth more than a thousand dumbos. He'll employ some strategy to screw other people's heads, like pit them against each other (divide et impera) and rule over them. And provide protection at the same time. My guess is that more humans like it this way than the other way, where they have to assume more responsibility.
But who knows. Maybe people will learn once and for all not to fuck with thy brother and live cooperatively alongside one another. There's always hope, eh?
It's all depressingly logical, and it would not appear we will be able to create anything magical to the rescue. That is the given. So, now what? That is the question.
The thing to look to as possibility isn't THE answer but it's the best way to get an answer. That would be for humanity to become a cooperative species. Get all hands on deck to do what we can. Think together. So, by me, for what to do that I write about on NOW WHAT?, is to look for how to get a wholesale change of humanity's mind, from being self-serving to where we care about each other as much as we care about ourselves,
This is the outcome I am predicting https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-ultimate-extinction-plan-uep... would not be surprised if we are all dead before 2025 ends...
China has now fired the bazooka to combat this
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/overcapacity-and-price-wars
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-chinese-economy-is-crumbling
That should prop the dying beast for awhile....but it ain't no fix... when the markets conclude that all they did was inject the beast with a mega shot of cocaine, speed, heroin, meth and Red Bull... allowing him to stagger along for a few more miles... before he collapses in a heap and expires...
And the markets will come to this conclusion ... because what the CCP has done is commanded businesses in China to accept many billions of yuan and use that cash to bid up the market.... while tossing a few scraps at the mob to try to encourage them to buy property...
The thing is ... how do you buy property when you already went all in ... what you bought did not get built... but you still have to service the full cost... or what you bought has crashed in price by a third.
Let's see what happens when the euphoria wears off ... we'll probably see an even bigger wave of desperate policies thrown at this ... eventually you push on the string... and it pushes back...
I don't think they will allow this to happen though ... they do NOT want 8B on the streets ripping faces off... they will complete UEP and exterminate us first.
Fantastic trip into the future! It's much easier to read about it than it will be experiencing it!
Like if you have small kids and fear what the heck of a world they will live in just 5 to 10 years time
You want us to like your fear? You and your kids are on your own there.
A really chilling story that I too have delved into. From my perspective in Norway, no one seems to bother. I made a count this week, when there is autumn leave from schools, an around 15 of our friend-families took a trip to mediterranean shores. Not a problem in sight! But a just recently read the Jacobsen-book you allude, and suddently wondered: Shouldn’t I myself «live to the Max», just gulp the world? I humbly post my thoghts here. https://open.substack.com/pub/agnarlirhus/p/armageddon-e76?r=iyltu&utm_medium=ios
Lovely illusions, but the last time our species was living in an ecologically balanced self-sustaining lifeway was when our ancestors were migratory Hunter-Gatherers/pastoralists and numbered worldwide about 2.6M, so 1/3,000th of our massively overpopulated numbers. What could go wrong? Everything?
I think the population movement will be towards the south. Warm and miserable, beats cold and miserable.
Great summary. Thank you. I also believe our prospects are not bright. Everything is rapidly diverging from what we want for civilizational survivability. Societies globally will reset every five years or less until we hit null set. The fuel for acceleration of civilizational decline will be the rising global heat that will make massive storms a common occurrence. Rebuilding complex societies will become impossible.
Always great to meet a fellow optimist! 😬
One or two points I'd add. We are used to the idea or EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Invested), which is quickly reaching parity, but there is also the wider issue of fossil fuels being 'invested' in solar and wind energy, and electric vehicles and charging capacity, all with a much lower energy density. The energy equation means the actual energy that will be available for public consumption will soon be critically short.
In a 'normal' economic market model, that would mean that energy prices would rise fast and drastically, but obviously governments would step in to control prices and avoid riots, at least for as long as they could.
But governments do have priorities, especially for fossil fuels. The military, for example, always get first dip, so in times of conflicts (like we seem on the brink of) then fossil fuels might increasingly be reserved for the military, then the corporations, then the farmers and food producers and distributors, and only finally the general public. That could happen very fast indeed and, at that point, the fossil based civilisation crashes to a halt.
Part of that scenario is that fossil fuel production will continue past the point of zero EROEI, so more energy will be used to extract fossil energy than is available for use. It works if, for example, you use solar and wind turbines to power oil and gas well extraction and processing, on the basis that the oil or gas is more important. Such as in jet fighters and tanks.
As for the timescale; I see so many scénarios leading to cascading collapses that my personal assumptions grow shorter by the month. If we get to 2030 without cascading collapses, particularly in the USA (the most vulnerable fossil-based economy, I think) I'll consider us very lucky.
Interesting times!
Your optimism relies upon the ruling classes of Western countries being intelligent (Morality is long out of the window if it was ever there). Bloody Pollyana. :P
Segueing into "intelligence", ALL life is natively intelligent. What most mouthbreathing monkeys mean when they say "intelligence" is actually tool use. Using an item to modify the environment for its own interest. AKA stealing the system's energy, usually to make more young of their own.
Our films simply cannot imagine landing on an alien planet, where the 'dominant' (Origins of that word are extremely Romanly suspicious) species not only lightly adapt their world, but also deliberately do not overpopulate and drive out the rest of the planet's Nature.
This would be considered a planet we would invade and do those things instead. See: Pandora.
THE problem is our cultural memes.
"Before them were lush forests, behind them only deserts."
Or we make an amazing breakthrough in Hydrogen Fusion Energy and live happily ever after!
https://youtu.be/sKlDfVCRizI?si=AVDc4YXLjdDqdWwz
Discovering or inventing a source of unlimited energy is probably the worst thing that could happen. If it worked, it would only lead to more devastation of Nature, more pillaging, more extraction, more processing, more of the toxic behavior the stupid two-legged idiot humans are engaged in.
Energy notwithstanding, the way people live is not sustainable, not conducive to anything good, not nothing. It's a sick behavior of an unhinged species that is high on stuff produced thanks to cheap abundant energy.
The sheer madness of what fucking people are doing gotta stop, one way or another.
Get a life pathetic troll!
As far as getting a life, you might want to check out the phenomenon of psychological projection. Worry not about mine, focus on yours.
As to the aforestated, that happens to be the sad reality, regardless of whether the cognitive dissonance - or wishful thinking as per the delusional video you've referenced - you suffer from allows you to discern it or not.
Good analysis.
Since the taller they are, the harder they fall applies, it can be expected that the most advanced (on their way down the tubes) societies will collapse first and/or in the most dramatic fashion. Like people in the global northwest. They're not only completely oblivious to the predicaments humankind will be facing (they probably think that an app on their smart phone will solve anything), but even if they are, most of them have no usable skills to do anything remotely practical.
It would be nice if people slowed down, downsized, and devolved into a civilization of cooperative beings, but it's much more likely that there will be groups of subjects ruled by warlords. Such is the nature of the human being. And maybe it's for the better because this democracy and personal freedom experiment of the past few hundred years has been an utter disaster, resulting in colossal wastage.
I agree with your comments about extraction, pollution, civilization destroying Nature etc, and that the current, consumerist paradigm is an unsustainable disaster.
However, it's impossible to know what will happen after industrial civilization has collapsed.
Many pre-civilization cultures (e.g. the Australian Aborigines) lived sustainably for several millennia, without warlords or brutality.
To say it's "much more likely" that people will live as groups ruled by warlords than as egalitarian co-operatives is to take a Hobbesian view of human nature. Such a view is distorted by the the last 10,000 years of history (a blip, in the total time humans have existed).
In the absence of enforced hierarchies, people naturally tend to co-operate.
Karl Popper empirically proved that the past can't be used to predict the future, and it's anybody's guess how things will develop.
In the immediate future, I expect governments to increase their grip over society, as people will go insane when they're not getting a fix of whatever they get high on - garbage food, gadgets, travel, the shit that spins the wheels of this consumerist world. People are crazy about the stuff - you could see that during CONVID, when they willingly let themselves be injected with some shit just to keep stuffing themselves with the crap.
What will happen later, I have no idea.
Not sure about your last sentence - people naturally tend to impose hierarchies onto themselves, much more that they tend to cooperate.
People are born into, and accustomed to, hierarchies, now. That doesn't mean they naturally tend to impose hierarchies onto themselves. They lived for millions of years without them.
”Not sure about your last sentence - people naturally tend to impose hierarchies onto themselves, much more that they tend to cooperate.”
This is completely unfounded and a very strong case could be made for the exact opposite.
This is a moot point, really. Nobody knows what sort of society whatever humans are left after the eventual collapse of the current civilization, if any, will form.
Be that as it may, however, judging from what I can observe, there are hierarchies left and right, and it's been the case as far back as I can see. Not sure why things should change dramatically. For a horizontal societal arrangement to be established - which, BTW, would be my preferred option, a sort of anarchy (opposite of hierarchy) - people would have to be equal and cooperative, which they're not. Not exclusively. They are both cooperative and competitive, both collectivist and individualist.
The thing is intelligence. One smart guy is worth more than a thousand dumbos. He'll employ some strategy to screw other people's heads, like pit them against each other (divide et impera) and rule over them. And provide protection at the same time. My guess is that more humans like it this way than the other way, where they have to assume more responsibility.
But who knows. Maybe people will learn once and for all not to fuck with thy brother and live cooperatively alongside one another. There's always hope, eh?
Toxic loan was removed from our common language. (2008)
It is a petro carbon dollar with a weight in oz, how heavy is a carbon dollar?
What happens to the blue dot after the next 4.5 billion years? Ceases to exist or makes other dots blue too?
Thanks for reminding me of J. M. Greer!
It's all depressingly logical, and it would not appear we will be able to create anything magical to the rescue. That is the given. So, now what? That is the question.
The thing to look to as possibility isn't THE answer but it's the best way to get an answer. That would be for humanity to become a cooperative species. Get all hands on deck to do what we can. Think together. So, by me, for what to do that I write about on NOW WHAT?, is to look for how to get a wholesale change of humanity's mind, from being self-serving to where we care about each other as much as we care about ourselves,
What do sanctions on Iran and Russia, the Ukrainian and Israeli conflicts all have in common?
Natural gas. The cleanest of hydrocarbons for the 21st century.