{"id":63520,"date":"2022-09-17T08:00:34","date_gmt":"2022-09-17T13:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63520"},"modified":"2022-09-17T08:00:34","modified_gmt":"2022-09-17T13:00:34","slug":"europe-cannibalized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63520","title":{"rendered":"Europe Cannibalized"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Europe Cannibalized<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/div>\n<\/div>
Abandoned industrial building. Image credit:\u00a0Pixabay<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Europe is in the process of losing its industry. It didn\u2019t start this year, it was already going on for decades now. However, in 2022 the process has switched from a long slow grind to a considerably higher gear.<\/em><\/p>\n

E<\/span>nergy is the economy.<\/strong>\u00a0This is the key point in understanding not only economics, but geopolitics and history as well \u2014 especially the recent events in Europe and around the world. Too bad, that this rather self-explanatory observation has been completely left out of modern (i.e.: neoclassical) economics theory, where everything revolves around prices of goods and services, demand and supply, and ultimately: infinite growth on a finite planet.<\/p>\n

In the real world, however, every single economic activity requires an irreversible expenditure of energy: from cutting a client\u2019s hair, to melting or forging steel. Take energy away and all economic activity stops, starting with the ones using the highest amount of energy and continuing with the rest as the loss of one business leads to the loss of another.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"\"<\/div>\n<\/div>
List of the most energy intensive businesses. Source:\u00a0US Energy Information Administration<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is a very important point to understand here though. Complex self-adapting systems, like the Economy, very rarely collapse completely. As the knock-on effects take their toll, the falling of dominoes usually stops at a certain point. It\u2019s like an avalanche: it starts slowly beneath the surface. As the fundamentals deep inside the snow-pack slowly give way to gravity, a large piece breaks away: all of a sudden half of the mountain is on it\u2019s way towards the valley! However, there are many natural stopgaps in the process, and the avalanche remains concentrated to a certain area. It destroys everything in its path, but it eventually stops.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Europe Cannibalized Abandoned industrial building. Image credit:\u00a0Pixabay Europe is in the process of losing its industry. It didn\u2019t start this year, it was already going on for decades now. However, in 2022 the process has switched from a long slow grind to a considerably higher gear. Energy is the economy.\u00a0This is the key point in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,5],"tags":[1997,281,328,13351,694,32578],"class_list":["post-63520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-geopolitics","tag-economic-sanctions","tag-europe","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-price-inflation","tag-russia","tag-the-honest-sorcerer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63521,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63520\/revisions\/63521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}