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Are We Fiddling While Rome Burns?
Are We Fiddling While Rome Burns? Solutions abound, but they require the retirement of obsolete systems that defend entrenched interests and soul-crushing inequalities. It turns out Nero wasn’t fiddling as Rome burned–he was 60 km away at the time. Did Nero Really Fiddle While Rome Burned? The story has become short-hand for making light of a […]
We Need A Social Revolution
wikimedia We Need A Social Revolution Our future depends on our willingness to fight for it In the conventional view, there are two kinds of revolutions: political and technological. Political revolutions may be peaceful or violent, and technological revolutions may transform civilizations gradually or rather abruptly—for example, revolutionary advances in the technology of warfare. In […]
Why We’re Doomed: Our Economy’s Toxic Inequality
Why We’re Doomed: Our Economy’s Toxic Inequality Anyone who thinks our toxic financial system is stable is delusional. Why are we doomed? Those consuming over-amped “news” feeds may be tempted to answer the culture wars, nuclear war with North Korea or the Trump Presidency. The one guaranteed source of doom is our broken financial system, which is […]
Expediency and Magical Thinking
Earth’s Economy Glorifies Waste, Exploitation, Debt, Expediency and Magical Thinking Humanity appears to default to magical thinking when faced with untenable situations that demand systemic change. How would extraterrestrial anthropologists characterize Earth’s dominant socio-economic system? It’s not difficult to imagine their dismaying report: “Earth’s economy glorifies waste. Its economists rejoice when a product is disposed as […]
We Do These Things Because They’re Easy: Our All-Consuming Dependence on Debt
We Do These Things Because They’re Easy: Our All-Consuming Dependence on Debt A world in which “we do these things because they’re easy” has one end-state: collapse. On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave a famous speech announcing the national goal of going to the moon by the end of the decade. (JFK’s speech […]
Our Financial Buffers Are Thinning
Our Financial Buffers Are Thinning The fragility of our financial buffers will only be revealed when they fail in the next crisis. While buffer has a specific meaning in chemistry, I am using the word in the broad sense of a reserve resource that absorbs the initial destructive impacts of crises or system overloads. Marshland along a sea […]
The “News” Is Content-Free
The “News” Is Content-Free We’re “your” trustworthy news source, even though we’re all owned by six corporations or billionaires with political agendas. The “news” has loomed large in The News–a classic self-referential loop in which the media itself becomes its own content. While the controversy over what constitutes “fake news” and “real news” has itself become […]
What Problems Are We Solving by Increasing Complexity?
What Problems Are We Solving by Increasing Complexity? The incremental increase in systemic complexity is rarely if ever recognized as a problem that additional complexity can’t solve. The Collapse of Complex Societies fame has observed that societies increase complexity to solve pressing problems that cannot be resolved with existing solutions. What is complexity in this context? […]
If We Don’t Change the Way Money Is Created, Rising Inequality and Social Disorder Are Inevitable
If We Don’t Change the Way Money Is Created, Rising Inequality and Social Disorder Are Inevitable Centrally issued money optimizes inequality, monopoly, cronyism, stagnation and systemic instability. Everyone who wants to reduce wealth and income inequality with more regulations and taxes is missing the key dynamic: central banks’ monopoly on creating and issuing money widens wealth […]
A Stock Market Crash Scenario
A Stock Market Crash Scenario The one thing we can know with certainty is it won’t be easy to profit from the crash. After 8+ years of phenomenal gains, it’s pretty obvious the global stock market rally is overdue for a credit-cycle downturn, and many research services of Wall Street heavyweights are sounding the alarm about […]
We’re in a Boiling-Point Crisis of Exploitive Elites
We’re in a Boiling-Point Crisis of Exploitive Elites The “fixes” to the stagnation of postwar Capitalism in the 1970s were financialization, globalism, and the sustained expansion of debt–all have run out of steam. Many of us have written about cycles in the past decade: Kondratieff economic cycles, business/credit cycles, the Strauss–Howe generational theory (an existential national crisis arises […]
Debt Has No Consequences? Color Me Skeptical
Debt Has No Consequences? Color Me Skeptical The entire status quo is based on the delusion that rapidly rising debt will never generate any negative consequences. Here’s a chart of America’s national debt, extended a mere dozen years into the future: the current $20 trillion in debt will double to $40 trillion, and that assumes […]
The Path to Inflation: “Helicopter Money”
The Path to Inflation: “Helicopter Money” The general view in inflation is dead, essentially forever. Maybe. Maybe not. We all know real-world inflation for big-ticket expenses is far above the official rate of around 2% annually. Yet conventional economists are virtually unanimous that deflation is the danger and inflation is a “good thing” we need […]
Will the Crazy Global Debt Bubble Ever End?
Will the Crazy Global Debt Bubble Ever End? There are multiple sources of friction in the Perpetual Motion Money Machine. We’ve been playing two games to mask insolvency: one is to pay the costs of rampant debt today by borrowing even more from future earnings, and the second is to create wealth out of thin […]
Does the World End in Fire or Ice? Thoughts on Japan and the Inflation/Deflation Debate
Does the World End in Fire or Ice? Thoughts on Japan and the Inflation/Deflation Debate Japan has managed to offset decades of deflationary dynamics, but at a cost that is hidden beneath the surface of apparent stability. Do we implode in a deflationary death spiral (ice) or in an inflationary death spiral (fire)? Debating the question […]
