patrick.net

bmwman91 says

Personally, this whole notion of never-ending growth is ludicrous. How many generations will be better off then their parents? It certainly cannot keep up forever.

bmwman91 says

There is absolutely no such thing as limitless growth, at least not on something as finite as our small planet.

Just don't tell any of that to the Global Capitalist Utopia crowd. They never take the "zero sum game" factor into account. They actually think that the "pie gets bigger" as the economy "expands." Sure, if resources are relatively abundant, then the pie gets bigger.

Resources were "relatively abundant" in the New World after the Europeans slaughtered the natives and took their land. That's probably why the capitalist narrative worked so well here in America as opposed to Europe, where resources were much more scarce (or owned by permanent aristocracies).

wthrfrk80 says

Unless we're willing to bomb the rest of the world into the Stone Age, our quality of life will continue to go down, big-time. Globalization only accelerates this decline.

That's basically how I see it. Again, I don't LIKE it, but it seems futile to think that it can be fought against.

I kind of see the quality of life or wealth distribution in the world like the thermodynamic concept of entropy. It takes a lot of effort to concentrate a really high quality of life in one place with everything surrounding it being lower. There will be a natural tendency for everything to even out across the board as poorer places try to become richer and the rich places either get complacent or don't fight hard enough to keep poor places poor. Since all humans have the same basic needs and drive to prosper, there will always be a tendency for wealth to be redistributed, although it can obviously be slowed or reversed with enough force (which costs a lot and it looks like it costs more than it brings in, in the long run...which is a pretty good analog to entropy).

On top of that, maintaining a high-end civilization still requires grunt workers, but high-end societies don't encourage people to do grunt work, so they sort of sow their own undoing unless they are set up to use slave labor (some class of people with no rights as humans). Right now America has Mexicans to do all of the jobs that nobody here really wants to do since it is easier to collect a free government check every month. It can't keep up forever though.

bmwman91 says

I kind of see the quality of life or wealth distribution in the world like the thermodynamic concept of entropy. It takes a lot of effort to concentrate a really high quality of life in one place with everything surrounding it being lower. There will be a natural tendency for everything to even out across the board as poorer places try to become richer and the rich places either get complacent or don't fight hard enough to keep poor places poor.

I like your entropy analogy. I can tell you're a mechanical engineer too!

I suppose our only saving grace is natural resources. Sure, our industry and technology can be sent overseas, but our abundant farmland and coal cannot. So as long as we can maintain a decent military to defend these resources, we might be ok. Also, the natural "moat" of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans helps.

Unfortunately we've already depleted most of our oil. So we have to make Saudi theocrats rich in order to get it. But of course you can't eat oil, so we're probably better off than the Saudi's in the long run.

That assumes Global Warming doesn't kill our farmland with drought.

bmwman91 says

That's basically how I see it. Again, I don't LIKE it, but it seems futile to think that it can be fought against.

Wait you make a distinction between what you WANT to be true and what probably IS true?

I can't believe you're really from California. ;-)

wthrfrk80 says

Wait you make a distinction between what you WANT to be true and what probably IS true?

I can't believe you're really from California. ;-)

LOL

Well, there are many reasons why I am looking at leaving. I grew up here and the place seems to be getting nuttier and nuttier, however improbable that may be. Maybe I am just noticing more as I get older though.

wthrfrk80 says

But of course you can't eat oil, so we're probably better off than the Saudi's in the long run.

Without energy, all our crops will rot in the fields - think Mad Max.

bmwman91 says

Why, I remember back in the good old days them colored folk

That's a bit tacky, given how unrelated to the topic your sarcastic remark is. It's not about nostalgia; all I can tell you is my parents and my friends' parents had it much easier to make a nice living. Globalization has changed all that--because it was false prosperity. I don't think globalization is going to reverse, so it would follow that we will not revert to those principals which allowed the world of 1987 to exist.

This is why I don't buy the 4-cycle theory--it no longer applies beginning with the generation that followed the Boomers because globalization did not exist in human history until the last 20 years. Yes, internationalism existed in the 20th century, but that is hardly the same thing.

dunnross says

Without energy, all our crops will rot in the fields - think Mad Max.

I was assuming human (slave) labor would do it. By that time, whites will be a minority. Who do you think the slaves will be? Hint: it won't be the blacks.

Why have "slaves" when you can convince them that they are employees?

Peter P says

Why have "slaves" when you can convince them that they are employees?

Good point. They could be forced to live in company houses and shop at the company store.

Philistine says

That's a bit tacky, given how unrelated to the topic your sarcastic remark is. It's not about nostalgia; all I can tell you is my parents and my friends' parents had it much easier to make a nice living. Globalization has changed all that--because it was false prosperity. I don't think globalization is going to reverse, so it would follow that we will not revert to those principals which allowed the world of 1987 to exist.

This is why I don't buy the 4-cycle theory--it no longer applies beginning with the generation that followed the Boomers because globalization did not exist in human history until the last 20 years. Yes, internationalism existed in the 20th century, but that is hardly the same thing.

You and I are 100% agreement about the false prosperity enjoyed by the BB generation. That's a great, succinct way to describe it.

I am also with you on not buying the various cycle theories. I don't really see the logic in saying that our way of life is cyclical. Our way of life is/was a first, and while many societies throughout history have parallels, at no point in history was the entire world so "small." Most of the cycle-theories look to me like theories that were written and then historical evidence was selected to support them.

The cycle theories are utter BS. The world isn't so simple. Let's hear these cycle theorists predict the future if their models are so accurate.

The mass-consumption of fossil fuels and associated mega-prosperity has never happened before. When the fossil fuels run out, it's back to the dark ages. That's assuming humanity doesn't destroy itself before then.

tts says

There is most definitely nothing "normal" about working hard or harder than your parents and getting less for it though, certainly not in what is still surprisingly one of the richest countries in the world.

Actually it is pretty normal and that was how it worked in most of the world for a very long time. The only exceptions that I can think of are right after some of the plagues when workers could earn more money due to a labor shortage and when people were moving to the new world.

For example, for a long time in Europe, farmers used to subdivide their land to their ever increasing number of children, so that each successive generation inherited less land. This stopped when the farms became too small to subdivide, then the eldest son would inherit it an nobody else inherited anything. They had to become craftsman, soldiers, sailors, etc. Once The Americas were discovered they could move here and get good land cheap, so they did. I have seen documentaries where an entire town in Germany moved to the US for land, since they were all sharecroppers.

But since we have already over populated the "New World" there is no place for people to go for cheap land create their fortunes again, so unless someone gets that StarGate working, it's just not going to happen again anytime soon (unless another plagus comes along).

zzyzzx says

But since we have already over populated the "New World" there is no place for people to go for cheap land create their fortunes again, so unless someone gets that StarGate working, it's just not going to happen again anytime soon (unless another plagus comes along).

True. Maybe Avian Flu isn't such a bad thing after all.

Philistine says

globalization did not exist in human history until the last 20 years.

Human interaction over long distances has existed for thousands of years. The overland Silk Road that connected Asia, Africa and Europe is a good example of the transformative power of international exchange. Philosophy, religions, language, arts, and other aspects of culture spread and mixed as nations exchanged products and ideas. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans made important discoveries in their exploration of the World ocean and in beginning cross-Atlantic travel to the "New World" of the Americas. Global movement of people, goods, and ideas expanded significantly in the following centuries. Early in the 19th century, the development of new forms of transportation (such as the steamship and railroads) and telecommunications that "compressed" time and space allowed for increasingly rapid rates of global interchange.

finehoe says

Human interaction over long distances has existed for thousands of years.

True, but there was no internet or instant communitcation. Past global trade is nowhere near the modern concept of "globalization."

bmwman91 says

If you look at much of the rest of the world, this is entirely normal.
.....
I don't know where people get the idea that Americans are entitled to the highest quality of life anywhere, and that their kids are entitled to be richer than their parents.

Except the rich keep getting richer while everyone else gets poorer. Infinite growth is obviously impossible but we can also just as obviously still grow the national and global economy quite a bit before we start hitting the wall.

To sit back and look at the situation as it exists today and say, "STFU and deal with it, anything else is whining or whatever you want to call it LOLOLOL" is just disgusting.

There is plenty of historical evidence in the US that there is indeed something we can do about all this, all you have to do is read up on the Great Depression years and the efforts that labor unions went through to get us such things as a 8hr work day which are now taken for granted. The rich have so much power these days in part because organized labor basically doesn't really exist in the US anymore. Not like it did back then anyways.

zzyzzx says

Actually it is pretty normal and that was how it worked in most of the world for a very long time.

You're talking about specific points in time here, in some cases in the far past. There are periods were labor got screwed (as in quasi slave serf levels of screwed) and then there are periods when labor prospered quite well (starting with organized labor in the form of guilds where the journeyman system really got started up). Either which way it doesn't have to be that way today or in the future.

We don't have a problem with growing the economy, we have political problems which are creating the wealth disparity.

Today wealth isn't so tied to land, certainly not in the US. Historically in the US having open land that was available to move into was more of a pressure relief valve on society than anything else. What we've seen since then is the creation of the suburbs and even exurbs today to act as a pressure relief valve on society to escape the cities...which has created all sorts of new problems but that is another topic altogether.

That is also to some extent a political issue too, and its fixable as well. Which is why its so awful for you guys just to sit back and say, "all of this is inevitable" because it isn't, not even vaguely.

wthrfrk80 says

Unless we're willing to bomb the rest of the world into the Stone Age, our quality of life will continue to go down, big-time. Globalization only accelerates this decline.

This is pretty depressing that you can only see bombing whole countries back the stone age as a possible solution.

You guys realize that if people were better paid demand would rise which would grow the economy for the US and most other countries right?

And we already talked about nuclear energy before, the US and world doesn't have to depend on oil or coal. Thorium is available everywhere cheaply and can work in a modified CANDU style reactor, which apparently India is already working on. Its taking them a long time to do it because of the politics of nuclear but its quite possible to build them faster than noted in the article. I think France built about 6-7 a year when they were transitioning over to nuke back in the 60's.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/01/india-thorium-nuclear-plant

Like many other things today the problem with getting mass produced thorium reactors going is political.

tts says

The rich have so much power these days in part because organized labor basically doesn't really exist in the US anymore. Not like it did back then anyways.

tts says

We don't have a problem with growing the economy, we have political problems which are creating the wealth disparity.

Correct. Because the "working class" hasn't had any real representation since 1968, when the "New Deal Coalition" was destroyed by the "New Left."

tts says

This is pretty depressing that you can only see bombing whole countries back the stone age as a possible solution.

It may be depressing. But that doesn't mean it's not correct. The American labor unions had a "monopoly" on global industry until the rest of the world rebuilt their industry. As we all know, that monopoly is long-gone. And slave-labor sweatshops are back, at least in China and other "developing" countries.

tts says

You guys realize that if people were better paid demand would rise which would grow the economy for the US and most other countries right?

Are you talking about Americans? Chinese?

Good luck getting China, where "life is cheap" to go along with that.

If Americans are better paid, that just means more demand for Chinese sweatshop labor. Which might increase wages there, perhaps.

How are wages going to rise? Will we raise the minimum wage? Unionize? March on Washington?

Remember, neither party represents the interests of average Americans. Democrats are the party of rich urban and university pseudo-intellectuals. And the Republicans represent corporate interests and the top 0.1%.

wthrfrk80 says

The cycle theories are utter BS. The world isn't so simple. Let's hear these cycle theorists predict the future if their models are so accurate.

The mass-consumption of fossil fuels and associated mega-prosperity has never happened before. When the fossil fuels run out, it's back to the dark ages. That's assuming humanity doesn't destroy itself before then.

There are many cycle theories that are well supported empirically. War cycle among the lead. Whether that translates to generational theory I have more skepticism. But you do realize that Strauss and Howe were uncannily accurate with the 4th Turning predictions thus far. So much so I have to withhold judgement until more data and time pass.

Screwed? Not if they get mad and fight back. I don't mean about b.s. like SOPA or PIPA either... both $15m spending bills. You can bet if they were trillion dollar bills, Congress would have found a way to carve themselves into partisan niches and pass it, even if it meant staying up late on Christmas eve.

Federal policy has been designed to screw the younger generations for going on a dozen years now: from the intentional, organized bursting of the dot-com bubble (granted, a bubble that had to be burst), to outsourcing of high-paying high tech jobs for young people to foreign nations with massive human rights violations and whose majority population are lacking even the most basic of tech like running water, toilets, and electricity. The feds continued by inflating a real estate bubble through fraud, then attempting to reinflate it through more fraud, more misinformation, and by stealing from taxpayers in order to help interested parties maintain a constrained supply of housing on the market. They finally topped it all off by passing obamacare, another transfer of wealth from young people and future generations to the old.

You can blame both parties for this, but the responsibility lies with democrats because they always paint themselves as the party of the people, not government or corp. They were totally complicit in this. Of course, to have anything to be complicit about in the first place, you'd need the advancement of "liberal"-progressive or "neocon" policy which supports an expanding government bureaucracy and more management over the domestic economy and world affairs, and finally technocrats who really do believe they are smart enough to run the world properly because they've done it in a petri dish in their lab.

And that's how we got to where we are today.

Randy, I want predictions. Anyone can fit curves to past data and claim "Eureka! A pattern!" So-called "technical analysts" try to do this all the time with stock charts. And yet they don't beat index funds.

Anon,

The Federal government screws young people because they know young people are stupid. They vote for "hope and change" and not anything specific. That's if they vote at all! They are dumb sheep. I know this because I was young once and bought into idealistic bullshit myself.

wthrfrk80 says

Anon,

The Federal government screws young people because young people are stupid. They vote for "hope and change" and not anything specific. They are dumb sheep. I know this because I was young once and bought into idealistic bullshit myself.

If there's one thing I can credit the Obama administration with doing, it's creating an environment where the government's theft on behalf of baby boomers and the dependent chattering classes has become so egregious that concern about the government's ongoing expansion and theft from all normal, productive walks of life have actually become mainstream. At the same time, Obama is just extending the ongoing theft by the government and implementing even more policy to lower the quality of life and increase indebtness of young people.

I can tell you if you show me a $400k/year firefighter or $200k/year police officer they aren't young people, and they were part of a group that watched with dismay at youngsters making $65k 10 years ago for making web pages. 10 years later, those gov workers and their unions all voted themselves 1%er salaries while everybody else's have stayed flat.

Young people's stupidity nee naivety is no excuse for the federal government to steal from it. It's true functioning civilizations care about and spend on the future not the past, but there's no point in whining about it. Some people just have to suffer to get a clue.

tts says

And they're starting to realize that too, so of course they're going to get angry and depressed when they get not only get no sympathy from older generations but get told to essentially "shut up and work harder for less".

We all started working hard for less.. eventually if you keep at it and dont give up, it pays off. Follow your bliss!

Philistine says

I don't think globalization is going to reverse, so it would follow that we will not revert to those principals which allowed the world of 1987 to exist.

Yes, you can! even if it costs more and is required to be made within US borders. Frankly no one in the US, Europe, or Asian nations can truly trust products coming from China. Much of the High Tech products, the back bone of many industries, exported to many nations 'have been hacked" and has compromised many users, government, military, corporate, finance, and individuals.

Its not a question of costs, but national security... so yes! you can and should reverse shipping mfg jobs overseas...Being "Made In USA".. you know it to be from a trusted source..

Fake semiconductors 'could cause tragedy'

"A faulty counterfeit analogue IC can cause problems ranging from a mundane dropped phone call to a serious tragedy in the aviation, medical, military, nuclear or automotive areas," he said in a statement.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17665527

Vast numbers of counterfeit Chinese electronic parts are being used in US military equipment, a key Senate committee has reported.

A year-long probe found 1,800 cases of fake parts in US military aircraft, the Senate Armed Services Committee found.

More than 70% of an estimated one million suspect parts were traced back to China, the report said

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18155293

Proof That Military Chips From China Are Infected?

For years, everyone has warned that counterfeit microchips made in China and installed on American military hardware could contain viruses or secret backdoors granting the Chinese military cyber access to U.S. weapons systems. These warnings/predictions recently expanded beyond counterfeit parts, now we’re worried that any Chinese-made components could be infected. The problem was that until this week, these warnings were educated guesses and theories. Well, a scientist at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom claims to have developed a software program proving that China — and anyone else — can, and is, installing cyber backdoors on some of the world’s most secure, “military grade” microchips.

Specifically, the American-designed, Chinese-made Actel/Microsemi ProASIC3 A3P250 — commonly known as the PA3 — chip was found by Cambridge researcher, Sergei Skorobogatov, to have a backdoor, or trojan, deliberately built into it. The PA3 is what’s called a Field Reprogrammable Gate Array (FRGA); an almost blank slate of a microchip that can be programmed by its owner to perform a variety of tasks.

Read more: http://defensetech.org/2012/05/30/smoking-gun-proof-that-military-chips-from-china-are-infected/#ixzz20wB5uM70
Defense.org

wthrfrk80 says

The American labor unions had a "monopoly" on global industry until the rest of the world rebuilt their industry.

But labor unions in the US didn't get smashed until the 1980's with Regan, the rest of the world had largely been rebuilt for decades prior to then. Wages had been effectively declining since the 1970's by that point but most labor organizers were unaware of what was going on until it was far too late and they had lost the political war before it even got started. Hell most people weren't even aware of that until recently either.

wthrfrk80 says

Good luck getting China, where "life is cheap" to go along with that.

Life is definitely cheap over there but their govt. has to keep growing the economy by raising wages, otherwise they're going to get another revolution on their hands. And they know it. Just a decrease in growth results in massive riots where factory managers are dragged out into the street and beaten to death in front of everyone.

wthrfrk80 says

How are wages going to rise? Will we raise the minimum wage? Unionize? March on Washington?

Institute capital controls and reduce or eliminate "dark pools" in the economic system to make it more difficult for capital to take advantage of labor and mitigate the worst effects of Globalization. End "most favored nation status" trade agreements. Force corporate and bank leadership to invest and care more about the future of their respective companies by requiring them to hold shares in the companies they control for 10 yr or more. Institute a living wage while your at it and/or reduce the work week to 32 hours with an accompanied increase in hourly rates.

None of this is impossible to do or untried before and a surprising amount of it was once govt. policy prior to Regan and Clinton already believe it or not.

The problem with getting any of it done is the political situation. IMO we could easily go through another 3 terms of crappy Obama/Romney-esque politicians in the President's office and Congress before we start getting decent politicians again. 5 is more realistic, but who wants to wait 20 yr for things to get better right? So yea its easy to get bitter and depressed, I certainly do sometimes, but don't tell me that all this is inevitable or "has to happen".

thomaswong.1986 says

We all started working hard for less.. eventually if you keep at it and dont give up, it pays off. Follow your bliss!

Come on, you know I don't go for that "BOOTSTRAPS" stuff.

tts says

And they know it. Just a decrease in growth results in massive riots where factory managers are dragged out into the street and beaten to death in front of everyone.

If that's true, my respect for the Chinese people just went up 10X. Good for them!

tts says

Force corporate and bank leadership to invest and care more about the future of their respective companies by requiring them to hold shares in the companies they control for 10 yr or more.

Amen to that. If leadership isn't even invested in the company's future, why should they care?

Bootstraps won't get anyone anywhere. Not when there's a flood of cheap illiterate labor from Mexico coming across the border.

Pieces of paper that say "degree in Engineering/Finance/Medicine might get you somewhere. They at least give you an "economic moat."

wthrfrk80 says

If that's true, my respect for the Chinese people just went up 10X. Good for them!

There are some pretty crazy videos if you looking around on the internet for them. You'd be surprised with what turns up if you just put "chinese rioters" into Google Image Search. The Chinese and the S. Koreans really know how to stand up for their rights and aren't afraid to go toe to toe with the cops.

Best one I saw on youtube was where they blocked the streets with stolen buses so the cops couldn't get to them, then they stormed a corporate office, beat down the doors with sledges and turned fire hoses onto the corporate guys. Funny as all hell.

tts says

Come on, you know I don't go for that "BOOTSTRAPS" stuff.

i started with flipping burger and so have many others... you start somewhere
and you move on to the next thing.. sow your seeds today!

The economy doesn't work like that anymore. Now you can have a college degree and still be stuck with burger flipping.

You know that single discussion that I started? You can see if it you click the "Discussions" link under my handle there. That was what reality was like almost 2 yr ago now and its only gotten worse since then.

tts says

Now you can have a college degree and still be stuck with burger flipping.

Very true.
tts says

they stormed a corporate office, beat down the doors with sledges and turned fire hoses onto the corporate guys. Funny as all hell.

Imagine if Americans had the balls to do that. Where would we be today? I give OWS credit for trying.

wthrfrk80 says

Imagine if Americans had the balls to do that. Where would we be today? I give OWS credit for trying.

OWS had good intentions but they weren't willing to draw blood. They tried to keep everything as peaceful as possible. The Chinese workers don't have such inhibitions and the police know it, which is why they hold back on their pepper spray.

wthrfrk80 says

Randy, I want predictions. Anyone can fit curves to past data and claim "Eureka! A pattern!" So-called "technical analysts" try to do this all the time with stock charts. And yet they don't beat index funds.

Did you actually read 4th Turning? There are explicit predictions in there and they have come eerily true. So much so that even the authors are quick to point out that they think it's largely an "unfortunate coincidence". I remind you the book was written a decade before the predicted events transpired almost to cue.

And I think technical analysis is quackery, btw. Nothing more than confirmation bias.

bmwman91 says

I grew up here and the place seems to be getting nuttier and nuttier,

Lol only a REAL Californian would say day! And BMWman is right... its the migrants into the state that are driving crazy thinking on home prices and much of our economy...

wthrfrk80 says

Imagine if Americans had the balls to do that. Where would we be today? I give OWS credit for trying.

OWS was not getting anywhere because too many people were seeing it as the start of something big.

When everyone is out looking for that Black Swan, it gets scared and it will not appear.

Historic turning points occur only when practically no one expects them.