{"id":9646,"date":"2015-07-02T07:14:11","date_gmt":"2015-07-02T12:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9646"},"modified":"2015-07-02T07:14:11","modified_gmt":"2015-07-02T12:14:11","slug":"the-dream-of-the-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9646","title":{"rendered":"The Dream of the Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"post-title entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thearchdruidreport.blogspot.ca\/2015\/07\/the-dream-of-machine.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Dream of the Machine<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>As I type these words, it looks as though the wheels are coming off the global economy. Greece and Puerto Rico have both suspended payments on their debts, and China\u2019s stock market, which spent the last year in a classic speculative bubble, is now in the middle of a classic speculative bust. Those of my readers who\u2019ve read John Kenneth Galbraith\u2019s lively history\u00a0<em>The Great Crash 1929<\/em>\u00a0already know all about the Chinese situation, including the outcome\u2014and since vast amounts of money from all over the world went into Chinese stocks, and most of that money is in the process of turning into twinkle dust, the impact of the crash will inevitably proliferate through the global economy.<\/p>\n<p>So, in all probability, will the Greek and Puerto Rican defaults. In today\u2019s bizarre financial world, the kind of bad debts that used to send investors backing away in a hurry attract speculators in droves, and so it turns out that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/06\/29\/business\/dealbook\/panic-among-hedge-fund-investors-in-greece.html?_r=0\">some big New York hedge funds<\/a>\u00a0are in trouble as a result of the Greek default, and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/investmentresearchdynamics.com\/will-puerto-rico-cause-an-inadvertent-black-swan-derivatives-melt-down\/\">some of the same firms that got into trouble with mortgage-backed securities<\/a>\u00a0in the recent housing bubble are in the same kind of trouble over Puerto Rico\u2019s unpayable debts. How far will the contagion spread? It\u2019s anybody\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and on another front,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/robertscribbler.wordpress.com\/2015\/06\/29\/half-a-million-acres-burned-in-just-one-day-alaska-shatters-record-for-worst-june-wildfire-outbreak-ever\/\">nearly half a million acres of Alaska burned up in a single day<\/a>\u00a0last week\u2014yes, the fires are still going\u2014while\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/energy-environment\/wp\/2015\/06\/25\/giant-earthquakes-are-shaking-greenland-and-scientists-just-figured-out-the-disturbing-reason-why\/\">ice sheets in Greenland are collapsing<\/a>\u00a0so frequently and forcefully that the resulting earthquakes are rattling seismographs thousands of miles away. These and other signals of a biosphere in crisis make good reminders of the fact that the current economic mess isn\u2019t happening in a vacuum.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Dream of the Machine As I type these words, it looks as though the wheels are coming off the global economy. Greece and Puerto Rico have both suspended payments on their debts, and China\u2019s stock market, which spent the last year in a classic speculative bubble, is now in the middle of a classic [&hellip;]<\/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":[6,7],"tags":[3463,1758,6927,6926,3638,6928,3314,1252],"class_list":["post-9646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-archdruid-report","tag-john-michael-greer","tag-machines","tag-mechanisation","tag-philosophy","tag-sense-making","tag-understanding","tag-worldview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9646","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=9646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9647,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9646\/revisions\/9647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}