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The Heresy of Technological Choice

November 19, 2015

The Heresy of Technological Choice

Among the interesting benefits of writing a blog like this, focusing as it does on the end of industrial civilization, are the opportunities it routinely affords for a glimpse at the stranger side of the collective thinking of our time. The last few weeks have been an unusually good source of that experience, as a result of one detail of the Retrotopia narrative I’ve been developing in the posts here.

The detail in question is the system by which residents of my fictional Lakeland Republic choose how much infrastructure they want to have and, not incidentally, to pay for via their local tax revenues. It’s done on a county-by-county basis by majority vote. The more infrastructure you want, the higher your taxes are; the more infrastructure you can do without, the less of your income goes to the county to pay for it. There are five levels, called tiers, and each one has a notional date connected to it: thus tier five has the notional date of 1950, and corresponds to the infrastructure you’d expect to find in a county in the Midwestern states of the US in that year: countywide electrical, telephone, water, and sewer service; roads and related infrastructure throughout the county capable of handling heavy automobile use; and mass transit—specifically, streetcars—in the towns.

The other tiers have less infrastructure, and correspondingly lower taxes. Tier four has a notional date of 1920, tier three of 1890, tier two of 1860, and tier one of 1830. In each case, the infrastructure you’d find in such a county is roughly what you’d find in a midwestern American county in that year. With tier one, your county infrastructure consists of dirt roads and that’s about it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Developed’ nations now $50 TRILLION in debt; literally, figuratively bankrupt for infrastructure, public services

October 22, 2015

‘Developed’ nations now $50 TRILLION in debt; literally, figuratively bankrupt for infrastructure, public services

4-minute video: Ready to rise from your economic slavery?

I continue to factually assert that Benjamin Franklin already “discovered” government can operate without taxes, these superior mechanics were considered so important by Thomas Edison and Henry Ford that they dedicated their 1921 summer vacation as a media tour to communicate directly to the public, and Yale economist Irving Fisher found 86% of economics professors across the US in agreement that creating debt-free money for direct payment for public goods and services is superior to our system of creating what we use for money as debt owed to private banks.

I also factually assert that the US $18 trillion debt, and the so-called “developed” and “leading” nations have total central government debt pushing $50 trillion ($50,000,000,000,000; the linked graphic updated with 2015 data). This accelerating debt is directly connected to these “former” colonial nations creating what is used for money as debt through bank oligarchies. These mechanics are like adding negative numbers forever; causing ever-increasing and unpayable aggregate debt.

Two minute video for you to visualize the US national debt:

This system we have is literally and figuratively bankrupt.

It’s also literally irresponsible (unable to respond) in face of deaths from preventable poverty since 1995 being greater than all wars and violence in recorded human history.

Better read the above sentence twice.

Now, please experience the feeling of what kind of leadership would allow ongoing and staggering numbers of children to suffer slow and gruesomely painful deaths when solutions are known, easy to apply, and all for less than 1% of the so-called “developed” nations’ income.

Maybe that kind of “leadership” is expressed by three former US Treasury Secretaries interviewed by Sheryl Sandberg, a former Chief of Staff for a fourth former US Treasury Secretary in this one-minute exchange with grandiose laughter about their euphemism for poverty, “income inequality”:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Money is Just Sleeping … Let us Wake it Up!

June 24, 2015

The Money is Just Sleeping … Let us Wake it Up!

J.C. Juncker Sets Out to “Wake Up Liquidity”

In a recent article on the never-ending Greek Kabuki theater, we have come across parts of an interview EU budget commissioner Kristalina Georgieva has given to AFP, in which she explains J.C. Juncker’s cunning plans to “kick-start” the European economy by pumping €300 billion he doesn’t have into infrastructure projects and other assorted white elephants (we have previously discussed this Stalinesque plan, as well as what usually happens when even some of the “best stewards of EU funding” are “investing in in infrastructure” – see The EU’s Ghost Airports for the ghastly details). The interview contained the following gem:

“The Juncker plan is to wake up the liquidity sleeping in our financial system, to give courage to our money, to pump investment into the real economy,” Georgieva said.

Liquidity
The always open spigot, spitting out what is apparently valiumed money.

So the idea is that the enormous mountain of money created by the ECB and depicted below is somehow “just sleeping” and if only someone – ideally JC Juncker – manages to wake it up and give it the necessary courageto get wasted on projects no-one needs or wants, the economy will magically improve. Prosperity is practically around the corner! Riiiiight.

euro area TMSEurope’s huge pile of ECB confetti – just sleeping! The total is the red line, the annualized rate of change the blue line. Yes, that red line is going parabolic, via ECB, click to enlarge.

Apart from the problems with this plan we have already discussed, which consist mainly of the fact that governments cannot sensibly invest, because rational economic calculation is situated somewhere between totally alien and utterly impossible for them, there is another problem with this idea Juncker (and many others) apparently don’t understand.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We need a new economic system

May 27, 2015

We need a new economic system

As the 2016 election begins to come into focus, economic populism appears to be the order of the day. The Center for American Progress, the Campaign for America’s Future and National People’s Action,Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Bill de Blasio and the Roosevelt Institute have all in the last few months released programmatic calls to action highlighting the need to tackle economic inequality. This is, of course, laudable — it’s not every day that virtually the entire spectrum of Democratic Party insiders and outsiders concurs that our increasingly unequal distribution of income and wealth is a central problem to be addressed. But are calls for reform and redistribution enough?

I am opposed to very little of what is being presented in these various platforms and proposals. They are, for the most part, perfectly sensible ideas — such as financial transaction taxes, increases to the minimum wage and using government funds to build and repair infrastructure such as roads and railways — that would be, for the most part, noncontroversial if we were living in an era of sensible politics. But the fundamental fact is that we are not.

Instead, we are living in the era in which the corporate institutions at the core of our politics, along with the radical financial inequalities our system now produces, have undermined the power relationships that once allowed for traditional reforms. The labor union — the fundamental institutional power base for tempering the excesses of a corporate economy — is regrettably in terminal decline, down to 6.6 percent of workers in the private sector. Long-term structural shifts in the political economy have rendered the program of regulation and reform more or less inoperative.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

War crime: NATO deliberately destroyed Libya’s water infrastructure

May 16, 2015

War crime: NATO deliberately destroyed Libya’s water infrastructure

The military targeting of civilian infrastructure, especially of water supplies, is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, writes Nafeez Ahmed. Yet this is precisely what NATO did in Libya, while blaming the damage on Gaddafi himself. Since then, the country’s water infrastructure – and the suffering of its people – has only deteriorated further.

The deliberate destruction of a nation’s water infrastructure, with the knowledge that doing so would result in massive deaths of the population as a direct consequence, is not simply a war crime, but potentially a genocidal strategy.

Numerous reports comment on the water crisis that is escalating across Libya as consumption outpaces production. Some have noted the environmental context in regional water scarcity due to climate change.

But what they ignore is the fact that the complex national irrigation system that had been carefully built and maintained over decades to overcome this problem was targeted and disrupted by NATO.

During the 2011 military invasion, press reports surfaced, mostly citing pro-rebel sources, claiming that pro-Gaddafi loyalists had shut down the water supply system as a mechanism to win the war and punish civilians.

This is a lie.

 

But truth, after all, is the first casualty of war – especially for mainstream media journos who can’t be bothered to fact-check the claims of people they interview in war zones, while under pressure from editors to produce copy that doesn’t rock too many boats.

Critical water installations bombed – then blamed on Gaddafi

It was in fact NATO which debilitated Libya’s water supply by targeting critical state-owned water installations, including a water-pipe factory in Brega.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Resilient Urban Systems: Where We Stand Now and Where We Need to Go

April 25, 2015

Resilient Urban Systems: Where We Stand Now and Where We Need to Go

By the year 2050, close to seven billion people will be living in urbanized areas worldwide, which is almost double the number of urban inhabitants of today. Provision of adequate infrastructure service to this massive urban population in order to ensure their health, wealth, and comfort is going to be a daunting challenge for engineers, planners, and socioeconomic decision makers in the coming decades. However, the challenges faced by the developing and developed worlds are dissimilar in nature. While the developed world is coping with aging infrastructure, the developing world faces the challenge of keeping up with the brisk pace of urbanization and the consequential rise in infrastructure demand. In 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) awarded the US infrastructure an overall grade of D+ and estimated that USD $3.6 trillion needs to be invested by 2020.1

When considering how to reshape, redesign, or create urban areas to be more sustainable, it is imperative to include urban infrastructure systems (UIS) in the decision-making process. UIS are durable features of the urban form and exhibit a strong form of path dependence. UIS have a pronounced effect on the general topology of the urban system and how the urban area continues to grow spatially over time. UIS, with a typical design life of 50 to 100 years, continue to dominate the urban form and mediate the citizens, goods, services, energy, and resource flows into, within, and out of the urban areas for decades after the design decision has been made. For example, transportation planning often has a prescriptive effect on the growth pattern of an urban region. Empirical estimates suggest that one new highway built through a central city reduces its central-city population by about 18 percent.2

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Even When the Sociopaths Lose They Win

February 7, 2015

Even When the Sociopaths Lose They Win

How exactly do you cook a nutritious meal if all you have are spoiled ingredients? The answer depends upon your definition of nutritious and who is eating the meal……and, of course, your level of hunger and growing desperation. It is telling how much less discerning we become when the hunger pains boom in our belly and our mind becomes ever more focused on the single minded obsession of relieving our pain rather than pursuing our pleasure. Although at some point down the slippery slope relieving our pain is pursuing our pleasure.

If I carefully tend my garden, making certain the soil is thoroughly turned and pulverized, the seeds and seedlings properly planted, the area fertilized, weeded and watered and yet my garden’s yield is poor year after year after year, at what point do I begin to question the basis for my assumptions? And clearly there is an assumption of a better yield if I continue to do the same thing and expect different results.

Perhaps the soil is too acidic or alkaline, the area in shadow too long or the crop selection not suited for the soil or geographic location. The issue might be any or all of the above, or it might be something entirely different. Only a fearless and thorough examination of both the garden and gardener will reveal the systemic faults, and thereby the remedies to be employed.

It is a common belief in the West that revolution, at least when ‘successful’ (which usually means a forced change in leadership) produces reasonably good outcomes for the population at large. I contend this is wishful thinking and a deliberately seeded misnomer designed to obscure and conceal the ugly recognition that most often the new boss is quite similar in method and madness to the old boss. Change via revolution should not be conflated with better, nor should it be assumed better is the inevitable outcome.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Crossroads on Global Infrastructure

January 9, 2015

Crossroads on Global Infrastructure

Massive Global Infrastructure Projects Could Prevent Achievement of a Sustainable Economy While Undermining Life Support Systems of the Earth

Plans by the world’s most powerful countries are well underway to spend trillions of dollars for new mega-infrastructure projects to rejuvenate the global economy. The hope of the G-20 nations, the World Bank, China, and other powerful actors is that the infusion of several trillion dollars for infrastructure will boost the growth of GDP by 2.1% over current trends by 2018 and rescue a “sluggish” global economy.

The new feature of this approach to infrastructure involves expanded use of public money (taxes, pension funds, and aid) to offset the risks involved in huge projects. The approach also relies heavily on public-private partnerships, where the issue of accountability and failed projects has been a serious concern.

Those seeking a sustainable, true-cost, steady state economy should be alarmed at the new approach to global infrastructure because trillions of dollars spent on mega-projects in the energy, transportation, agriculture, and water sectors could put a sustainable, true cost economy further out of reach. Reviews of completed projects in these sectors have raised questions about corruption, cost overruns, fiscal accountability, human rights abuse, and the alarming destruction of natural resources.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Government Spending, Edging Up, Is a Stimulus – NYTimes.com

January 1, 2015

Government Spending, Edging Up, Is a Stimulus – NYTimes.com.

NAPLES, Fla. — For a long stretch, government spending cutbacks at all levels were a substantial drag on economic growth. Now, finally, relief is in sight.

For the first time since 2011, local, state and federal governments are providing a small but significant increase to prosperity.

“There’s not a lot of positive contribution coming from the government sector, but when you’re talking about economic growth, less of a negative is a positive,” said Chris Varvares, senior managing director and co-founder of Macroeconomic Advisers.

And so on a recent windswept afternoon, John Lynch, armed with a police radio and a giant net, stood along a fishing pier in Naples, on guard for pelicans that might become entangled in fishing lines.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Team Australia to pay billions for new oil-vulnerable infrastructure

October 29, 2014

Team Australia to pay billions for new oil-vulnerable infrastructure.

One would think that an increase of oil related taxes would be used to reduce oil dependency and fund public transport infrastructure, especially as the Iraq war has entered yet another critical phase. Not in Australia.

The government in Canberra has taken advantage of lower oil (and therefore petrol) prices to increase the customs tariff from 38.143 cents to 38.6 cents a litre in November 2014. This 1.2% is modest, but further bi-annual increases (in February and August) will add up over time.

Fig 1: Australian petrol prices for the last 12 months

http://www.aip.com.au/pricing/pdf/Weekly%20Petrol%20Prices%20Report%20-%2026%20October%202014.pdf

 The Government says “every cent” will be spent on new roads

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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