[Newfie]

It's similar in mass transit.

[evilgenius]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'A')t a certain level its understandable. The benefits of fixing a road system or bridge that services hundreds of thousands of commuters a day outweighs the needs of a few hundred who are serviced in a rural area. But what I have seen is perfectly serviceable urban roads and bridges that just need repair versus a complete new build or other expensive option.

[Revi]

I wonder if they will raise the debt ceiling today? We need to borrow our 2,739,726,027 a day so that we can continue our unsustainable lifestyle. It's not negotiable!

[Newfie]

Is this what I have been worrying about?

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN16P0FN

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')inancial leaders of the world's biggest economies dropped a pledge to keep global trade free and open, acquiescing to an increasingly protectionist United States after a two-day meeting failed to yield a compromise.

Breaking a decade-long tradition of endorsing open trade, G20 finance ministers and central bankers made only a token reference to trade in their communique on Saturday, a clear defeat for host nation Germany, which fought the new U.S. government's attempts to water down past commitments.

In the new U.S. administration's biggest clash yet with the international community, G20 finance chiefs also removed from their statement a pledge to finance the fight against climate change, an anticipated outcome after U.S. President Donald Trump called global warming a "hoax".

[Revi]

Here is an interesting article about the Debt Ceiling. It looks like it might be a mess!
https://dailyreckoning.com/countdown-to-crisis/

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'H')ere is an interesting article about the Debt Ceiling. It looks like it might be a mess!
https://dailyreckoning.com/countdown-to-crisis/

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'H')ere is an interesting article about the Debt Ceiling. It looks like it might be a mess!
https://dailyreckoning.com/countdown-to-crisis/

[Newfie]

This article by Ugo Bardi,min our home page, speaks to my fears. Financial collapse brings on starvation due to trade barriers. The USA and Canada should be reasonably OK, Europe not so much. For countries in Armfrica and Asia may be very bleak. Unless they try to forcibly take what we have. Russia may have a tough time of it.

http://peakoil.com/generalideas/zombie- ... our-future

[onlooker]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-2 ... -carefully
Good article from ZH about Geo-political flashpoints or triggers. Any stand out?

[evilgenius]

I don't think the zombie meme is so much about overpopulation as it is about polarization and lack of proper management. It is about overpopulation, I should say, but the response is channeled through polarization, and tinged with a desire for management that doesn't exist.

First of all, you have this conservative vs. liberal divide, and not just within the US. At every turn each side sees the other as some kind of monolithic horde. Each member of the horde is indistinguishable from the others.

Secondly, the expectation of management may be an accident of history. The Cold War and the post WWII era laid down an expectation of behavior on the part of politicians that set bounds within which they could act. They had to get along. They had to come to consensus. Without the dire threat of missiles coming over the horizon any day, and with the diminishing of the impact upon personal experience of the taboo generating fascist ideals and philosophy, the world feels the lack of management. Only there was never management, but a common understanding which passed for it.

There is no illuminati. There was never an evil cabal of industrialists or super-rich secretly controlling the world. There was only ever a collective understanding of the way things should work. That understanding came with some of the seeds of its own destruction, as almost universally people have always wanted communism to work even though it doesn't. They have always wished for something other than capitalism to replace the current order. They embrace capitalism, however, recognizing it as the common sense answer. This has caused a kind of fugue state within the mind of man, as he has become less willing to admit the faults that capitalism actually does have, and less able to admit his own moral voice into the argument. Therefore, capitalism has become an unmanaged force, running rampant under the free market label. Morality runs a permanent second to common sense operation. Anyone who decides that morality is more important to them has outlets, such as the abortion argument, to assuage them. If your moral sense is more developed, then you can talk about tax structures or opportunity, just don't talk about unions. Never admit that we have to arrive at consensus in order to properly manage our world, that would be anathema to the common sense answer because it could potentially imperil it. Solutions that involve both conservative and liberal ideals, honoring both, are not on the table.

What capitalism does as the population it deals with grows is very interesting. It concentrates power at the top. And why shouldn't it? But doesn't this create a wider gulf between the haves and have-nots? Of course it does, but that isn't important to capitalism, unless it is under a wider management. There are probably as many conservatives headed into poverty as liberals under this concentration, but each side is weakened in its own way and subject, therefore, in differing ways to propaganda issued by those who hold the concentrated power, via politics. Each side jabbers at the other, and the old framework under which some kind of management emerged spontaneously falls into more and more disorder. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The trouble is that freedom won't come from a revolution, that would only result in the new boss meeting the old boss. Freedom can only come from managing the situation.

[evilgenius]

The Arab Spring was mostly caused by global warming. Food prices went up and the people acted. They didn't act out of a desire for better government, or freedom. Yes, many of those who desired such things took advantage of the situation. Mubarak was tossed out. He wasn't exactly replaced by George Washington.

There is something interesting to the Arab Spring that people don't mention enough, I think. That has to do with the people's attitude toward the role of money in general and the process of political rule and approval. First of all, the Arab Spring took place amidst a backdrop of largess economies, where the powers that be placate the masses with handouts in order to curry either favor or passivity. There isn't any real engine for choice at work in those country's political structures, no way to bring up and bolster people with certain ideologies or that represent interests that lie outside of the organic tribal or place order of things. Once a person has gained power in those places they seem to have it for life. In this regard, it's a big deal that Mubarak was ousted, but telling that his Islamic replacement didn't last. It's also telling that his Islamic replacement came from the order on hand, the place, and not from a more complex ideological foundation representing a drive for freedom or a more democratic social order.

Secondly, the attitude toward money is weirdly two faced in this situation. Money works very well as an arbiter in supply and demand economics. It provides a single gauge to measure the success of offerings, to determine whether people really want a thing that is put out for their consumption. Money is not, however, a very good determinant of morality, which is what it has been asked to do in these largess economies. It was a moral call that launched the Arab Spring, when the Tunisian vendor immolated himself. Then the revolution in Libya went after Gaddafi. Mubarak went into the hospital. Syria fell apart. All of these things are striving after some moral purpose, but rely upon economics for their existence. The reason, that is to say, that these situations individually prosper is that the people are unhappy with the results of the largess structure. Their group was on the outs, or there wasn't a more equitable distribution of the funds as they were divided up. Nobody was talking like Thomas Jefferson. That is to say, they aren't touting development of political structures within which they might pass on power, even to a group diametrically opposed to them, in a peaceful manner. They aren't talking about equality, but about bettering the share of their group. Each group seeks to get their hands on the public sector prize, not how to properly divide control of that between all the groups. They want money to do what it is not good at.

[onlooker]

Some good points Evil. I assume by public sector prize, you mean the reigns of governmental power. The situation in the whole of the Middle East is chaotic. Tribal and religious affiliations and long standing feuds inform some of this chaos. But, above all is the meddling of the great powers and the desperate situation of the people. My reading of the desperate act of immolation, is one of total desperation. The people are seeing little hope and desperately are trying to gain power for themselves and their group, so they can at least be a little better off. Government and the monopoly on force is where people correctly know the power is. So, they seek to gain political representation ie. power. For the most part, people see as a zero sum game, meaning winners and losers. This is accurate but simplistic. The real winners as always are the elites in the military, in upper classes and in the oil industry. They are the ones who get to live comfortable even affluent lifestyles. The rest of the people are barely given subsistence relief or handouts. Given, that it is very hard to enter into elite circles without substantial money, the situation will not change, except for a massive revolution and the enthronement of persons or a person from the lower classes who wishes to radically change the entire structure of society. That would be fiercely opposed by the mentioned elites and by the powerful countries.

[evilgenius]

It's the Export Land Model at work. If they use their own resources to create industry that employs people, making them well off enough to demand power, then the West won't have enough of what it wants. The thing is, in the context of the fracking induced oil glut currently going on, that may not be true. It could be that allowing the Middle Eastern countries to use their own oil in order to build and fuel an infrastructure that not only employs people, but gives them something to lose in the face of radical extremism, was the correct answer all along. The region suffers now in the vacuum created by the lack of that use. There is nothing about fracking that couldn't have been developed years ago, should the incentives have been in place. There was the Cold War, but that's essentially been over since 1989. What's in place is a management system (meme) that operates out of fear that there won't be enough. It does not believe in the capacity of renewables to have a significant structural effect. It loves coal. It loves nostalgia, in fact. It treats the masses as if they are incompetent, and have to be coddled rather than educated. It listens to the voice of money as if it were equal to that of the people. It does not examine its own motivations, for it is not a person.

[asg70]

"It treats the masses as if they are incompetent"

That's because they ARE incompetent.

[evilgenius]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('asg70', '&')quot;It treats the masses as if they are incompetent"

That's because they ARE incompetent.

[Newfie]

I've often thought that humanities greatest failure is its inability to plan.
We are not stupid, we may be ignorant, but there is less excuse for that daily.
We are short sighted.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('evilgenius', '
') Freedom can only come from managing the situation.

[onlooker]

"I don't trust my assumptions as much anymore in these external events having the power to force a more enlightened managed response."
I think the responses will be as varied as the particular unique situation/status of different areas and regions. Remember as some have said collapse will NOT be homogeneous in either time or space.
What is worrying about the United States is its long standing ethos of Individualism. All things being equal, places that are prepared in a unified manner and with common purpose will do better than those that aren't