by Doug Coulter » Fri Sep 12, 2014 9:27 pm
Todd Harrison (of minyanville fame) pointed out years ago that there are around 700 trillion (with a T) bucks worth of bad paper out there "holding things together" as the lower bound - it's probably closer to 2-3 times that. Many times the world's GDP, even using the fake inflated numbers for that. Yeah, when it happens, not if, it's going to be a mess, in large part because we've shown a lack of ability to manage such a thing while making it appear fair enough to not cause a violent revolution. It appears the Central Banks think they can sneakily inflate their way out of the problem, but it's apparent that's not working well at all - the excess liquidity is simply being used to add more leverage and therefore risk of a very harsh drop. Doesn't take much of a dip to create margin calls at 30::1 leverage, and not everyone can be by the door when someone shouts "fire".
Though I am a bit of a cynic, I also realize that even if things go completely south - I still have my skills, my tools, my land, and that human beings are remarkable at finding ways of "muddling through" stuff - history backs me up on that. Quite a few times we've lost 10% of us to plagues or other things, but we as a species have come through anyway. It could be worse this time, but... I would of course, prefer to be one of those who somehow muddles through, though I don't consider myself a prepper in the sense that most preppers seem to. I actually beat most of them at that game, but not because of that - this mess wasn't even in view when I began learning to live off-grid in '79 or so. Sure, I have all that stuff they think is valuable - the 3 B's, and in plenty. But when one of your B's runs out - and most of them would run out pretty quickly, what then? I have the all important S = sustainability - tools, skills. resources, loyal tribe. If this really goes south in a big way a few weeks or months isn't going to get it re surviving and coming out the other side smelling like a rose, eh?
Actually, this could lead into a philosophical discussion I've been thinking about and trying to get other smart people thinking about for a couple decades now.
Assumptions:
1. We really don't need this many people to create or extract all the resources this many people demand. Most of us could, in theory, not require employment at all. (we also don't need this many people on the planet, but I know no moral way to fix that one)
2. Capitalism (well, we've not had that in a pure form for a long time) doesn't know how to pay those who don't work.
3. The truth is, society is probably better off in some cases with a lot of people not working. I've been a CEO and I can say that there are plenty of those who are not only not worth their pay, but also hinder those who are from achieving what they are capable of - and while idle hands are the devil's playmate, letting them interfere with the productive ones continuously isn't a good answer either.
4. There is enough stored wealth in the very few extremely wealthy who actually run the world to simply build some factories that don't even need humans or lights except for occasional maintenance and we are on the verge of having all the tech to build them now.
5, They would do this in a heartbeat if there was a way they could be paid back in the kind of wealth they (think they, remember a lotta paper is bad) have now and continue to crave.
Problem: See #2.
I don't have the answer, I wish I or someone else did. It's a hard problem, and as Heinlein said - we don't have angels to work with here, we have people who have human nature, who are born with stomachs that get empty and are thus trained by just being alive better than Skinner's pigeons or Pavlov's dogs. I view a lot of the current mess as a result of messed up incentives - after all, if you don't perform, you get fired, but if you blow up the bank, you get bailed out, so why not take insane risks (and maybe get a bonus that sets you up for life)? That's just one - there are many more. In my own lifetime, I've seen teaching go from "do right, not wrong" to "don't get caught" as an overcompensation due to an over exaggerated separation of church and state (which is a good idea, while suppression of religion isn't, and I consider atheism to be one of them). I don't believe I should be made to pray, but I still don't see why I shouldn't be allowed to if I want, or why I should be denied the use of a classroom already there and costing the same whether there's people in it or not to do so, should I or others want to and volunteer our time for it.
Or why the taxpayer should have to pay to grind the ten commandments off a courthouse wall in the name of church/state separation. I view most atheists I meet as just another religion - a belief in a thing you can'r prove (really, they are anti-theists, not the agnostics they could honestly claim to be - but we've allowed our language to be perverted in even more important ways than that). And, having sampled nearly all of them, I find no one religion as practiced has all the answers, and that most of them have the most important things in common anyway, so I'll not pick one for anybody.
But I do know this - without one, there's no way possible to define right vs wrong -without recourse to some absolute, there's simply no basis, and that's our current main problem. Heinlein had a go, but failed. Everyone fails when they run up against a smart guy who can find the holes in their arguments. So far. All Heinlein could get to was "women and children first" which is based on the belief (there's that pesky word again) that our species has a duty to survive, or that it's the most important thing we do. How can we know that? Like the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy said, we think we're cool because we build big things and move heavy stuff around the planet fast (while evidently shitting in our own nest on a huge scale), while dolphins think they're cool because all they do is swim, play, and sing. Who is more important? I don't know how to answer that!
Solve the above and we all go home rich, by whatever definition you want to use for wealth. I don't use money/power alone, but they are nice too.
As of now, we can't even use the words liberal or conservative without confusion, because that confusion benefits those currently in power. I used to be able to say I was a conservative - but now that means crazy right wing nut religious statist. And liberals mean the same thing - they are not liberal at all, they want to define my every action and take my freedom, the only real difference is minor "wedge" issues like what I'm "allowed" by these busybodies to do in my bedroom or doctors office, as if all other problems were solved. Yeah, right. What makes them think any of them have the right to define such things? They aren't even as smart as most of us here, much less smart enough to "know what's best for us". Heck, in my own life, I've been poor, rich, a rock&roll star, a master trader, a homeless bum, a chemist, a professional inventor, a scientist, and engineer (I'm probably leaving out some things, yeah, I use to race too). Which me do they know what's best for? And I'm just one guy!
As CS Lewis wrote, if you can destroy a person's language, you can destroy that person. It's happening now. Conservative used to mean things like "look before you leap" or "spend less than you make" or "do the right thing". What does it mean now? We can't even talk without understanding the same words in the same way, they are "the holding places of the mind" for all our concepts.
It has also been said "give me the power over the educational system, and I can turn out any sort of citizen/consumer/slave you like". Look around and tell me what you see about the truth of that one. It is the source of some animosity between me and that system.
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.