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Page added on April 23, 2018
Kunstler: Stop and Assess
America has become Alzheimer Nation. Nothing is remembered for more than a few minutes. The news media, which used to function as a sort of collective brain, is a memory hole that events are shoved down and extinguished in. An attack in Syria, you ask? What was that about? Facebook stole your…what? Four lives snuffed out in a… a what? Something about waffles? Trump said… what? Let’s pause today and make an assessment of where things stand in this country as Winter finally coils into Spring.
As you might expect, a nation overrun with lawyers has litigated itself into a cul-de-sac of charges, arrests, suits, countersuits, and allegations that will rack up billable hours until the Rockies tumble. The best outcome may be that half the lawyers in this land will put the other half in jail, and then, finally, there will be space for the rest of us to re-connect with reality.
What does that reality consist of? Troublingly, an economy that can’t go on as we would like it to: a machine that spews out ever more stuff for ever more people. We really have reached limits for an industrial economy based on cheap, potent energy supplies. The energy, oil especially, isn’t cheap anymore. The fantasy that we can easily replace it with wind turbines, solar panels, and as-yet-unseen science projects is going to leave a lot of people not just disappointed but bereft, floundering, and probably dead, unless we make some pretty severe readjustments in daily life.
We’ve been papering this problem over by borrowing so much money from the future to cover costs today that eventually it will lose its meaning as money — that is, faith that it is worth anything. That’s what happens when money is just a representation of debt that can’t be paid back. This habit of heedless borrowing has enabled the country to pretend that it is functioning effectively. Lately, this game of pretend has sent the financial corps into a rapture of jubilation. The market speed bumps of February are behind us and the road ahead looks like the highway to Vegas at dawn on a summer’s day.
Tesla is the perfect metaphor for where the US economy is at: a company stuffed with debt plus government subsidies, unable to deliver the wished-for miracle product — affordable electric cars — whirling around the drain into bankruptcy. Tesla has been feeding one of the chief fantasies of the day: that we can banish climate problems caused by excessive CO2, while giving a new lease on life to the (actually) futureless suburban living arrangement that we foolishly invested so much of our earlier capital building. In other words, pounding sand down a rat hole.
Because none of that is going to happen. The true message of income inequality is that the nation as a whole is becoming incrementally impoverished and eventually even the massive “wealth” of the one-percenters will prove to be fictitious, as the things it is represented in — stocks, bonds, currencies, Manhattan apartments — hemorrhage their supposed value. The very wealthy will be a lot less wealthy while everybody else is in a life-and-death struggle to remain fed, housed, and warm. And, of course, that only increases the chance that some violent social revolution will take away even that remaining residue of wealth, and destroy the people who held it.
What lies ahead is contraction. Of everything. Activity, population. The industrial economy is not going to be replaced by a super high tech utopia, because that wished-for utopia needs an industrial economy underneath to support it. This is true, by the way, for all the other “advanced” nations. China has a few more years of dependable oil supply left and then they will discover that they can no longer manufacture solar panels or perhaps not even run the magnificent electronic surveillance system they are so artfully building. Their political system will prove to be at least as fragile as our own.
The time may even come when the young people, of the USA especially, have to put aside their boundary-smashing frolics of the day and adjust the pre-cooked expectations they’ve been handed to the actual contraction at hand, and what it means for making a life under severely different conditions. It means, better learn how to do something really practical and not necessarily high tech. Better figure out a part of the country that will be safe to live in. Better plan on hunkering down there when the people stuck in the less favorable places make a real mess of things.
156 Comments on "Kunstler: Stop and Assess"
makati1 on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 7:10 pm
“This is a government that treats its citizens like faceless statistics and economic units to be bought, sold, bartered, traded, tracked, tortured, and eventually eliminated once they’ve outgrown their usefulness.
This is a government that treats human beings like lab rats to be caged, branded, experimented upon, and then discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects.
This is a government that repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn.
This is a government that wages wars for profit, jails its own people for profit, and then turns a blind eye and a deaf ear while its henchmen rape and kill and pillage.
No, this is not a government that can be trusted to do what is right or moral or humane or honorable but instead seems to gravitate towards corruption, malevolence, misconduct, greed, cruelty, brutality and injustice.
This is not a government you should trust with your life, your loved ones, your livelihood or your freedoms.
This is the face of evil, disguised as a democracy, sold to the people as an institution that has their best interests at heart.”
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2018/04/24/is-the-u-s-government-evil-you-tell-me/#more-174967
Definition of America: See above…
makati1 on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 7:13 pm
MM, no panic coming. Sorry. I understand the world. You are only learning. Russia will sell them all the oil China needs for many years to come for yuan or gold.
makati1 on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 7:16 pm
BTW MM: You are behind the times. I’m not in the city anymore. I live in a small house near the farm while we get the road and house constructed. Another voluntary step down the ladder to self-sufficiency for me. Something I recommend that you do while you can.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 7:17 pm
Madkat
Russia is going to peak soon. There days are numbered. You deny there are limits to growth. Can’t handle the truth? Don’t seek it… Becoming old has made you weak and confused.
Kangaroo Dies After Visitors At Chinese Zoo Hurl Rocks To Force Her To Jump
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/kangaroo-dies-visitors-chinese-zoo-225537676.html
Scum fuck Chinese are at it again. I hope we nuke their asses back to the stone ages.
makati1 on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 7:43 pm
MM, you keep parroting the Us propaganda as if it were fact. The saying that if you repeat a lie often enough it will be believed. Sorry that only works on those who don’t think for themselves and who live inside the Us MSM Iron Curtain.
Growth has already ended in the Us. The real Us GDP has been shrinking for years. The value of that paper in your wallet has been decreasing for ~100 years and is worth less than 10% of what it was worth in my youth.
An ounce of gold in 1962 cost $35. Today it costs $1,332+. That is real money, not the faux paper the Us uses.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 7:47 pm
Madkat
I know your snowflake generation of drugs, sex, and rock and roll, and no condoms. ruined America for my generation. And you failed to stop the war machine. Now you skip town and shack your wrinkled old fist at us..You made this monster. You did nothing to stop it.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 7:49 pm
Madkat
German Military (leaked) Peak Oil study: oil is used in the production of 95% of all industrial goods, so a shortage of oil would collapse the world economy & world governments
http://www.energybulletin.net/sites/default/files/Peak%20Oil_Study%20EN.pdf
That means you pal! Sorry there is no escaping this collapse! Better build a panic room! As an old man you will be the low hanging fruit and zombie food!
makati1 on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 7:56 pm
MM, you KNOW nothing. You parrot, not think. Maybe those meds are not working or you got some contaminated pot or meth? Did mom cut your allowance? Threaten to kick your lazy ass out? Cannot buy that suicide gun because you are on the NSA watch list? GF dump you?
Your third grade rebuttals are laughable.
Boat on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 8:15 pm
Clog
Damm, first you were gonna just fence in the Gulf but now we’re gonna be terminated. All in less than a week my future went to shyt.
So who is in charge of this dirty deed, Putin?
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 8:21 pm
Madkat
You didn’t refute my evidence and study..attacking me and trying to slander me is “Not an argument”…Stick to pounding nails old man. You are not bright enough to understand science or debate. That is why you had to make a living with your hands, not your mind, like I do.
makati1 on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 8:40 pm
Mm, what evidence? An eight year old “leaked” report from a country that was kissing the imperial ass at that time and still is. The world is a whole lot different than it was in 2010. Try reading something from this year.
DMyers on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 8:41 pm
We’re approaching a monetary crisis,i.e., money ain’t worth shit. Kunstler recognizes this. I credit him for that. “Clean Green”, the toilet paper that brought you happiness and leisure.
Alternative energy will not satisfy, another well considered aspect of the current “future”.
That’s not cynicism or pessimism. It’s an honest appraisal. We need a lot, lots and more than that. Alternative may permit survival, but godang, it just won’t satisfy. Can’t get no satisfaction. The demise of the empire, as foretold by Mick Jagger. Without the hope of satisfaction, the will to live crumbles. And so it will be for the West.
“I can’t get no…da da da…I can’t get no….da da da…I can’t get no….da da da…SATISFACTION…..
GregT on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 8:42 pm
MM,
“We need mass immigration to keep our economy growing to make up for the low fertility rates.”
The main reason why the economy needs to grow, is fiat money, created out of thin air, with interest attached. AKA usury.
If nations were able to coin their own currencies, there would be no need for infinite exponential growth.
End the Fed.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 8:51 pm
Madkat
The study didn’t conclude the collapse would come right away. It said it would happen in the medium term. And you don’t usually wait until the last minute to do a study about your society collapsing. You try to do those kind of things ahead of time so you know what is coming…Hubbert’s original study was done 14 years before it happened. Your grasping at straws again because you have no evidence ie reason to belive the stupid shit that you do. Its pure wishful thinking. Must have rubbed off all those years you worked for the Mormon church! Maybe your magic Mormon underwear was on a little to tight?
makati1 on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 9:06 pm
First MM, why read an eight year old paper on a subject that is constantly changing? Waste of time. Not educational unless you view it as history.
“Medium term” is meaningless unless specified by dates. your “society has been collapsing for decades. Since before you were born. It started in 1971 when Nixon ended the gold backed dollar. Maybe you should read aobut that history?
I’m only stating fact, MM. You are trying to prove your assertion/fantasy with old junk.
Again, resorting to putdowns instead of real and current facts. Childish and unintelligent, but typical of you and Davy.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 9:12 pm
Madkat
The paper talked about what would happen when peak oil shortages hit. And they haven’t hit yet so its conclusions haven’t been tested yet. Just give it a few years. You will see.. You just can’t handle the truth. Tough up you old hag! You will be shitting your diapers real soon! Wait and see!
GregT on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 9:16 pm
“You didn’t refute my evidence and study..attacking me and trying to slander me is “Not an argument””
It isn’t your study MM, and the Bundeswehr report is not evidence. It is an analysis brought forward for further discussion.
“That is why you had to make a living with your hands, not your mind, like I do.”
If you were making a living MM, you would be at work.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 9:23 pm
Greg
A scientific report isn’t evidence now? Only in your deluded conspiracy filled mind. lol
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 9:28 pm
Trump says US wants ‘lasting’ footprint in Syria
http://www.france24.com/en/20180424-trump-says-us-wants-lasting-footprint-syria?ref=tw_i
letstupidpeopledie on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 9:46 pm
Collapse is happening everywhere around the world. I think it is pretty easy to see by people erratic and confuse behavior caused by the fear of death. Two example here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKGASCcG0j4
This girl below has no idea what are the laws of physics and how this world really work. She does not understand, international trade complicated manufacturing process and so on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92qL9z1UHzs
Collapse signs are all over the palace. People know something is wrong in their subconscious but cannot mentally articulate it into coherent narative
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 10:02 pm
letstupidpeopledie
Yes..This is why Hollywood is obsessed with Superhero movies and Zombie fetish. They are touching into peoples deepest and darkest fears, and hopes. But most people so desperately what the system to be fixed and work. They will believe in it till the bitter end.
makati1 on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 10:13 pm
“…peoples deepest and darkest fears…” MM? Need I quite your rants about eating babies, raping girls, etc? Seems you are one of those deluded Americans.
No, “most people” in the Us do NOT want and changes to their lifestyle. Those who do are doing it. 99.99% are just oblivious or in denial. If “most” Americans wanted change, it would be happening.
makati1 on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 10:17 pm
Greg, MM is living off of his mom because he cannot find a job, even flipping burgers. Perhaps he is not what he pretends to be? Intelligent? Educated? Certainly not mature. His rebuttal consists of “Tough up you old hag! You will be shitting your diapers real soon!”. No wonder he cannot keep or get a real job. LMAO
makati1 on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 10:18 pm
orrection: No, “most people” in the Us do NOT want any changes to their lifestyle.
Boat on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 10:54 pm
Mm
You post different links to so called science and many of them come up with different conclusions. You yourself day you don’t know for sure about the timng of events.So yes, a lot of science is wrong, or inclusive, weak data, bad inputs, to broad a scope etc
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 10:55 pm
Madkat
History is clear. In almost every major famine people ate their kids. See Russian famine, Irish famine, Domer Party, Easter Island, etc…This things and worse will happen again. Once again you are just proving how uneducated you are. You think since you are old you are some great wise man. Sorry you didn’t even graduate college. And when society collapses that dictator of your country will have you on the first cattle train to the hard labor camps!
Boat on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 10:56 pm
Mm
Hell you have back tracking down to science. A Trump like qualify. Nasty ass science.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 10:57 pm
Boat
Don’t worry new technologies will be invented! Don’t be such a nervous Nellie! …/s
Boat on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 11:04 pm
College dosent mean shyt if you don’t graduate to a job to pay the debt. To many debt loaded college educated free loaders asking illeagls for change on the streets.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 11:06 pm
Boat
The party is over! Peak oil has passed
https://imgur.com/a/VFlpH2t
Boat on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 11:06 pm
Mm
Wind will be able to produce hydrogen cheaper than Nat gas by 2030. There is that. Lol
Boat on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 11:12 pm
Mm
Your chart is wrong. Oil production went up and set a new peak between 2016-2018. Don’t you follow oil? Go review the science.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 11:12 pm
There is NO WAY we can offset those kinds of energy decline. I mean NO CHANCE, ZERO, NONE.
https://imgur.com/a/VFlpH2t
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 11:17 pm
Boat
If humans have a future, its underground..
Boat on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 11:18 pm
Mm
That decline is just consumption. Climate change and electricity will eat oils lunch in a few years. Maybe even geopolitics, an asteroid. War, bla, bla, bla. Think of electric busses asbpav man and the dots as oil consumption.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 11:27 pm
Boat
Tesla Model X crashes through two walls and ends up in a gym, driver claims it accelerated on its own
https://electrek.co/2018/04/24/tesla-model-x-crashes-walls-gym-driver-claims-sudden-acceleration/
Keep dreaming Spook..What ever helps you keep your sanity!
MASTERMIND on Tue, 24th Apr 2018 11:29 pm
Boat
Shortage of resources for renewable energy and food production (Rhodes 2011)
https://www.scribd.com/document/375501088/Shortage-of-resources-for-renewable-energy-and-food-production-Rhodes-2011
Cloggie on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 12:05 am
Trump’s darling.
Media irritated about behavior of Macron.
Doesn’t Macron know that Trump is the enemy?
He isn’t Rothschildt’s candidate after all.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/emmanuel-macron-in-den-usa-der-liebling-von-donald-trump-a-1204631.html
Trump is delighted he has finally found foreign recognition. Americans love to make fun about the French, the very French who held Vietnam for decades and conquered and occupied Moscow, things the US can only dream about. Nevertheless Trump has enough respect for France and is enjoying this “golden shower of sympathy” from oncle Pierre to the max. Together with the pompous state banquet, the standing of The Donald just solidified bigly.
Le pictures:
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/donald-trump-und-emmanuel-macron-state-dinner-in-washington-fotostrecke-160270.html
1. DJT at least manages to grab his wife’s hand, although he isn’t looking very certain of himself
4. Yet another kissing session
5. Jared, somewhat fallen from grace, still usable for photo-ops
7. Henry “I don’t need your money” Kissswinger still manages to enter the scene without a wheelchair
makati1 on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 12:09 am
You must have a history different than the one I know. It must have been written by the Marques de Sade. Perhaps his novel “Juliette “? Try it. You will probably like it.
Yes, it has happened in history. But under limited circumstances and still not really documented other than that it was done by a minute percentage of the population. Those already insane or driven to that state. Not by moral, sane people.
The situation I recently learned of was the siege of Leningrad in WW2 where over a million people were starved to death over the three year siege. But the actual cases of cannibalism was limited to a few hundred people out of over one million. And then only until they were caught and executed by the sane population. Most just starved to death.
BTW: Since when does listening to a bunch of overpaid, never worked a day in their lives, so called ‘professors’ equal 73 years of doing both, working and living in the real world mean more? A piece of paper does not indicate either intelligence or learning, just paying the fees and kissing the prof’s ass for 4-5 years. You place too much faith in that piece of paper. You are finding out that it will not even get you a job at McDonalds. There is a true saying that: “Those who cannot do, teach”.
makati1 on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 12:10 am
“College dosent mean shyt if you don’t graduate to a job to pay the debt. To many debt loaded college educated free loaders asking illeagls for change on the streets.”
My thoughts exactly, Boat.
MASTERMIND on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 12:30 am
Madkat
You are just an old bitter “Incel”..That is why you want to see American collapse…
makati1 on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 12:41 am
MM, obviously I have been hitting a nerve in your case. You resort to more and more make believe putdowns rather than proving me wrong. The 12 year old is showing up more and more in your posts. Like Davy, you cannot defend your immoral, war mongering, decaying, drugged up, obese country so you try to kill the messenger. It doesn’t change the message.
Get a job. If that isn’t possible, sign up for six years in the military. Earn your right to be an American. Pay taxes. Raise a family. Then in 30 or 40 years, you too may have an accurate perspective of life and the real world. Maybe. But, by then, the Us will not exist as even a pretend 1st world country. It will be 3rd world at best and maybe not exist at all.
Boat on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 12:55 am
Mm
Never fear about running out of anything. I specialize in biometrics and metallurgy genomics using the pereotic table. The compound sitting in my ashtray not only will sustain life for any species for a month but add to a tank of fuel and it will multiple btu twenty fold.
Boat on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 1:09 am
Clog
Pretty sure you told me once the US occupied many countries since WWII. How come we get no credit for that. Lol Bases with fighter jets don’t count but outposts with muskets do. You claim a cannon, I’ll claim a bomber.
The power of the US, S Korea, check, Japan, check, EU, check. That’s a third
Of the world’s GDP.
Anonymouse1 on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 1:23 am
You are a complete, and utter moron, boatietard. You cant do basic math, and can barely articulate. The only thing you specialize in, is channel surfing and bible-thumping. You don’t even know what the words you hear on TV, and (sort of read), on this ‘internet’ thing, even mean.
FYI, those ‘compounds’ sitting in that ashtray are called ‘cigarette butts’. I cant say I am surprised you find them tasty and sustaining, so, by all means, you go right ahead and lick that ashtray clean boatretard.
GregT on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 1:44 am
“The compound sitting in my ashtray not only will sustain life for any species for a month but add to a tank of fuel and it will multiple btu twenty fold.”
Whatever compound that is sitting in your ashtray Boat, you’ve obviously smoked far too much of.
Anonymouse1 on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 2:09 am
Too advanced for a butt-munching retard to digest greg. He is too busy digesting the remains of those life-sustaining Marlboros he found floating in his ashtray.
Sorry if I got your brand wrong retard. Maybe you like the taste of ‘camels’ cig butts or some other brand better.
Davy on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 4:06 am
“BTW: Since when does listening to a bunch of overpaid, never worked a day in their lives, so called ‘professors’ equal 73 years of doing both, working and living in the real world mean more?”
3rd world, come on and get real. An undergraduate degree is the stepping stone to more. It teaches kids how to learn with research and expressing themselves. It opens their mind up to where they may want to specialize. You are bragging on yourself like you are special and making excuses for dropping out of college.
Davy on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 4:14 am
“Belgium: First Islamic State In Europe?”
https://tinyurl.com/y9wo9tk8
“The leaders of Belgium’s ISLAM Party apparently want to turn Belgium into an Islamic State. They call it “Islamist democracy” and have set a target date: 2030. “The program is confusingly simple: replace all the civil and penal codes with sharia law. Period”. — French magazine Causeur. “The European capital [Brussels] will be Muslim in twenty years”. — Le Figaro.”
“The ISLAM Party knows that demography is on its side. Ahrouch has said, “in 12 years, Brussels will principally be composed of Muslims”. In the upcoming Belgian elections, the ISLAM Party is now set to run candidates in 28 municipalities. On first glance, that looks like a derisory proportion compared to 589 Belgian municipalities, but it demonstrates the progress and ambitions of this new party. In Brussels, the party will be represented on 14 lists out of a possible 19.”
“The European capital,” wrote Le Figaro, “will be Muslim in twenty years”. “Nearly a third of the population of Brussels already is Muslim, indicated Olivier Servais, a sociologist at the Catholic University of Louvain. “The practitioners of Islam, due to their high birth rate, should be the majority ‘in fifteen or twenty years’. Since 2001… Mohamed is the most common name given to boys born in Brussels”.
makati1 on Wed, 25th Apr 2018 4:59 am
Davy, “the stepping stone to more”. Maybe 20 years ago, not today. Today it is a stepping stone to debt to the tune of over $1.3 Trillion dollars of student debt and growing. Suckers who fall for the same bullshit you try to push. A college education may be necessary for doctors and other medical professions and a few of the engineering areas, but not much else.
A waste of 4+ years when you could be paid to learn a skill that WILL be useful and needed in the future. 90% of the degrees today are in fields that will vanish when the SHTF. A degree today will not even get you a job at McDonalds. And, the few jobs that those degrees might have gotten you into are now held by the experienced, over 60 crowd who cannot retire. No openings. Sorry! The Us shipped all of the good jobs overseas or it brings in H1B workers and illegals that don’t get the usual wages and bennies an American would expect. The Great Leveling is working perfectly!