Pipyman, are you referring to my post? I hope I’m misunderstanding.
FYI, I love this site and I’m about as far from being a ‘troll’ or ‘paid to infiltrate’ as one could possibly be. I love reading Chris and Adam’s work, and davefairtex whose daily gold commentary I read almost religiously.
Honestly, I think you’re getting a little over-concerned with these site infiltration worries. I just thought his suggestion that the ‘block’ button should be used was suggesting someone didn’t have a right to express their opinion. Sorry Dave if I was mistaken.
If you like, I can give you the many reasons that I read rather than post. But I don’t think I have that obligation and I shouldn’t be assumed to be a troll. I consider myself a part of this community despite disagreeing occasionally.
The button applies to himself, not the site. I didn’t accuse you of anything. Of course everyone gets the right to their opinion and the right to speak. Here anyway…
However, thats a strength and a weakness in these times. PP will undoubtedly practice it, the powers that think they be will infiltrate it, imitate it and destroy it…
Yes, sounds more plausible to me than AI.
Call me paranoid, I don’t care, but I’d rather be that than naive.
I’m sure they’re all RT employees ? Although, it does sound like something the soviets would have done.
The 1845-1860 time period in the US was marked by people on both sides of the coming Civil War doing their best to define “them” and “us”, gather as many allies as possible, and take and hold as much territory as possible before the actual fighting began. Places like Kansas were particularly brutal as the pro- and anti-slavery factions were evenly matched and they were not obviously geographically part of the main territory of either side.
I think something similar is happening now as we approach Civil War 2. The big complication now is, with few exceptions, there’s no clear territorial boundaries (most of California is one of the exceptions). So “we the people” are sorting ourselves out ideologically as people in the political middle are being pressured from both left and right wings to come over to their sides. The internet is a big battlefield in that respect. I think that’s part of what Davefairtex and others are seeing. Everyone’s on edge even if they’re not a partisan trying to line up support for your side and throw wrenches into the other side’s machine.
I say we continue to respect and listen to anyone here who can be respectful and come with well reasoned posts. That being said, I think it’s also reasonable to find partisans here trying to either convince us of their views or simply to cause disruption and make us ineffective.
Unless something changes our trajectory we’re going to enter the kinetic phase which will have much more in common with Rwanda and Bosnia, than our own Civil War 2.
I tried to respond to Dave’s post directly re: “sidekicks” but the system wouldn’t allow for it. (??) I think GerrySM is a real individual, quite possibly the “alter ego” of Crapper given distinct similarities in response techniques. I think he/they are very skilled, high-level paid trolls whose mission is not to persuade, but to disrupt, distract and otherwise hijack PP discussions and the site overall.
GerrySM in particular effectively employs projection in which he accuses others of the very trolling techniques that he employs. Perhaps coincidentally, his/their posts are remarkably similar to those from a troll-in-residence at the now defunct ENEnews (energy news) site a few years ago. That troll went by several aliases and devised numerous clever ways to get around moderator attempts to block him. No doubt that his relentless and skilled trolling contributed to the demise of the site.
I too, feel that there’s been a “shift” in the tone and content of some of the PP posts. But I’m very hesitant to label any poster as a troll unless they’ve repeatedly, blatantly demonstrated trolling behavior, including posting malicious, disruptive, disparaging, offensive comments and overly dominating the threads. I think GerrySM reaches that threshold.
PP is a great resource with a unique and vibrant community. While Adam and Chris are patient and thoughtful moderators, they have been known to cite serious deviations from the PP guidelines and rules when necessary. PP members can do their part by not “taking the bait” from obvious trolls, by simply ignoring them and maintaining civil and on-topic discourse with others. Eventually, starving trolls really do move on to other sites where they can successfully practice their dark art.
California being the hardest, my internet was down since early this morning and restored about 2 hours ago. There’s some chatter that 7 AT&T servers are down causing the outage, with some estimates of days before full restoration of services.
https://downdetector.com/status/att/map/
thc0655 wrote,
And yet, “we the people” couldn’t care less. Sad. We deserve everything that’s coming to us, and so do the central bankers.Yes and no. I think far more people than we suspect DO care but are confused and have no idea where to turn or what to do. It's OK for us in our PP watchtower — if nothing else we see the tsunami coming a bit ahead of everyone else —but the average citizen is kept so busy with life that they have no time to analyse and consider alternatives. We know a thoughtful, intelligent young woman in her final year of a marketing course at one of the local universities. She worries about her fellow students, so many of whom are unable to read anything longer than a couple of paragraphs or concentrate on a video longer than a few minutes. Recently I helped organise a public lecture about the linkages between soil science and climate change. The speaker was given 75 minutes for the main presentation with a food break halfway. Our student friend was aghast: "you'll never get young people to sit still and concentrate for that long! They'll never come to the lecture!" Well, just a few did, and actually sat there and listened the whole time. But most of the audience were middle-aged and senior. Digital native youngsters mediate their entire lives through their little iPhones. Our politicians know this and feel safe in ignoring this growing segment of the electorate which cannot think outside its iBox. The kids are like the adults: they have no time, bombarded constantly with information and interruptions. A lot of glittering generalities above I admit, but not entirely wrong. But then there is such a thing as wilful blindness. I recommend again the book Wilful Blindness, Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, by Margaret Heffernan, ISBN 978-1-84737-770-8. Her findings apply at all levels: history, science, business, government, family.
A few comments:
- Not into tribalism, but rather ideas, esp. those that challenge mine. So I find Xango/Roger/Davy’s comments apropos not “troll-ish” (I’m not saying I agree with them). In fact, I was hoping people would reply to them.
- I find PP one of the few places that offer an alternative world-view narrative., esp. one with a focus on PM/resources/oil. Again, this doesn’t mean I agree with said narative. I comment once in a while seeking intelligent feedback, much in the vein of Xango/Roger/Davy above.
- For those keeping tribal score: just because one is not aligned with PP economic/environmental/energy predictions (e.g. MMGW, PO, or imminent economic/environmental collapse) does not mean they are a Bot. Heck, even a cornucopian cashing in on the FED’s bubbles may read PP to remind them to keep 10% NW in PM (w/a private well/garden :-).
(a)RodgerMitchell: “… lacking inflation, dollar creation is no concern at all”.
Are you nuts? Inflation doesn’t lead currency creation, it follows it. And it’s not linear, it’s psychological. It flips like a switch in the population almost overnight. Before inflation takes hold there’s usually YEARS of excess printing. Then the economy becomes structurally dependent upon it (which is where we are today). Then inflation starts and it’s politically impossible to reign it in (advice: short all Western currencies by going long gold and/or Bitcoin, depending on your risk profile). Then hyperinflation sets in… then our doom is experienced by the general populace. This future is now baked in our pie.
The West is banktupted morally, spiritually, and environmentally. We’re cannibalizing everything for the present (our oil, our top soil, our culture, even our very ethnicity). Everything is financialised for consuming in the present to enrich the Elites.
Money printing now is cannibalizing the privilege of having a respected fiat currency. Our future is at best Argentina, but more probably Germany’s Weimar Republic. If you cannot see that then you shouldn’t cross the road without adult supervision (or may you should? Lol!).
(b) Sparki1: " I think GerrySM is a real individual, quite possibly the “alter ego” of Crapper given distinct similarities in response techniques. I think he/they are very skilled, high-level paid trolls whose mission is not to persuade, but to disrupt, distract and otherwise hijack PP discussions and the site overall."
Time to take off your tinfoil hat Sparkie1. Here’s the lowdown on me: I’m an environmentalist who sincerely doesn’t believe the science behind the man-made C02 global warming theory. If I’m wrong, then I’m sincerely wrong. But when I see Obama-King Canute-the-2nd, lecture us for years on rising seal levels and then buy a mega-million dollar mansion on the sea front as an “investment for future generations” then I call BS on his years of environmental grandstanding. In my books Obama-King Canute-the-2nd joins the ranks of the global warming High Priest Al Gore with his private jets, mega mansion, billion dollar investments who preaches to the rest of us to lower our carbon foot print. Greta Thunberg “blame everyone but China” is the latest fiasco in this line of high-carbon hypocrites.
Side note: ever wondered why China was give a “non-compliance, free get-out-of-jail card” in the Kyoto Protocol treaty? Let me suggest our elites were already being paid off with the export of our industries to that very country. The Kyoto Protocol in effect was to legally force carbon consumption transfer from the West and into China … and the working man and small business in the West was going to be disenfranchised by our incompetent, corrupt, degenerate and traitorous elites. That’s why the words put into Greta’s mouth were purged of any mention of high-polluting “China”.
I believe climate disruption is coming, and it’s going to be bad… famine causing bad. Millions starving to death bad. My science is in the stars… the sun mainly but also the planets. So-called climate science (aka the “science is settled” so we don’t have to listen to opposing scientific opinion) has been massively corrupted. But whatever the truth, global warming is now a cult. It’s fully aligned with the hard left: anti-white, anti-male, anti-heterosexual, anti-nation, anti-unborn, anti-West and finally… anti-Christ.
I visit factories every day (my business is industrial automation). The man-made global warming cult is ridiculed by the layman, and rightly so! You want to denigrate them as “Deniers”? Ha, ha! They’ll see you at the ballot box and deliver a Trump / Brexit style black-eye! Man-made global warming has been fully co-opted by the elite and corrupted for their purposes which is why all oposing discussion has been shut down and demonetised in the corporate media (including Wikipedia, Youtube, Google, etc).
Ask yourself this question: do you use the term “denier” for informed people who scientifically disagree with your persuasion on global warming? If so, you’ve been co-opted as a drone of the Elite! Even if you turn out to be right … you’re still their drone!
I think your explanation of Gerry/Crapper as a disruptor whose job it is to destroy a site through disruption sounds quite plausible. Certainly that’s the effect of what they do. And I sure did take the bait. Sorry about that, everyone.
Hmm. I wonder if I could train an AI to detect a disruptor. There’s a lot of work that has been done by google to detect spam, but…could such an AI pick up the specific, destructive semantic tricks used by Gerry/Crapper?
In looking to see if I could retrieve data on who has posted what here in the past, I took a look at the internet archive (web.archive.org) and it turns out, they have snapshots of PP dating back to the beginning of time. So I could download a snapshot as of (say) right before the changeover, and extract a list of usernames and what they posted over time. Not simple, but not all that hard. FWIW.
Another factoid: someone at the archive has included PP in a “fake news” archive. This appears to have the effect of taking much more frequent snapshots of the site; the goal of this, I’m guessing, is to make it more likely that “posted-then-edited/deleted” comments are recorded for posterity. Again, FWIW. The internet is forever.
Description of Archive “Fake News”:
This collection is based on a "seed" list of URLs from a Google Doc about "False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical “News” Sources" published on November 18th, 2016, by Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication and media at Merrimack College.And archive "Fake News II":
Archive-It Partner 1028: Mark Graham - Collection 12099: "Fake News" II (2019)https://web.archive.org/web/collections/2019*/peakprosperity.com
I think GerrySM is a real individual, quite possibly the “alter ego” of Crapper given distinct similarities in response techniques. I think he/they are very skilled, high-level paid trolls whose mission is not to persuade, but to disrupt, distract and otherwise hijack PP discussions and the site overall.When we studied this is Psychology, it was called "projection" — "the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others". I have nothing to do with Crapper, my message is diametrically opposed to his, and my grammar and style quite different. I post from Australia, but I am a US citizen who has lived there for decades. I apologize for calling Adam a "sidekick", but I simply could not remember his name. I should have said "partner" or "colleague". I am deadly serious about the danger to this site and many others of people who are professional trolls for the fossil fuel, energy and automotive industries. You need to have your antennae tuned to people who directly or indirectly deny the biggest existential threat facing mankind. I thought the issue of climate change was settled at this site, with Chris supporting the science and a long thread in the forums with guidance from a real climate scientist, so it's confusing and alarming to find people like AO posting here, who have an openly denier stance and voicing support for deniers like Armstrong.
I apologize for adding another off-topic message, but I sense a phase change too. Not only on PP, but also in other groups, in mainstream media, even among friends. As if a coming change is now felt by a much larger group of people. It scares them, probably because they feel a coming loss of a comfortable future. Replies -even face to face- are getting harsh and opposite. The denial phase of mourning?
It feels like the point in denial where the evidence is so overwhelming you can’t reside in that subconscious iteration of denial anymore. Rather, you have to use effort in the form of anger (usually) to beat yourself back into blissful ignorance…
Speaking from experience on my own journey.
The real question appears to be whether a completely artificial and manipulated market can even fail? In the past countries failed because there was legitimate competition. There were alternative currencies, systems, and true markets. There was ‘sound money’ in the form of gold backed currencies. Now, with the entire global economic system essentially one big illusion being controlled by a single, global elite…can they just print forever?
When something collapses that they don’t want to collapse…pump money into it and bring it back to life. When something collapses that they don’t like, just let it die. When systems fail, change the rules. When measures fall, change the way they are calculated. When public morale drops, pump out cheery propaganda 24/7 telling them that things have never been better.
If the whole world is falling together, there is no measurable way to determine it. Right? If the dollar falls 20% but everything else falls 20%, then nothing fell.
Do fundamentals matter? Do they even exist? I’m starting to question everything as nothing seems to really ever happen the way it should if they did.
If the whole world is falling together, there is no measurable way to determine it. Right? If the dollar falls 20% but everything else falls 20%, then nothing fell. Do fundamentals matter? Do they even exist? I’m starting to question everything as nothing seems to really ever happen the way it should if they did.This is why people say "Don't fight the FED". They control the measuring stick itself. And they are honest about it: Bernaki's famous "helicopter" speech set our tune: the FED will create inflation as desired for political reasons. You have been warned. So there is really no other way to "play" in the world of wealth creation but stocks, bonds, and real estate. The FED plays the tune. We dance. We've known this since 2008. QED.
It’s critical to understand that the central banks cannot print up prosperity. All they can do, being redistributive organizations, is take purchasing power away from one side and hand it to another. So the key question to be asking now is: Who’s winning and who’s losing? Well, here in the US, we already know that it’s the tippy-top 0.1% that is doing almost all of the ‘winning.’ The next 0.9% are doing pretty well, too. But by the time we get just slightly below the top 10%, we run out of “winners”.It's also critical to understand real wealth is being created daily. Not fake wealth, but real wealth. The internet has made life better in uncountable ways. Autos are way more reliable than 30 years ago (how many flats do we get anymore?). And those who play the game correctly can participate in this wealth creation and generate financial returns like the wealthy do. All it takes is to understand the system.
Interesting thought and I think one that has been brought up in comment sections before. Can we have a record high stock market and %50 unemployment?
I totally believe Chris that over the next decade, we will not have the energy to keep
everything running. But what will it look like?
I feel like I need to buy a button many people wore in the movie The Truman Show.
HOW’S IT GOING TO END?
Robots and a growing technical society practically guarantee record stocks alongside record permanent unemployment. Based on the IQ bell curve things will probably settle out more like 75% unemployment (assuming the government not handing out fake/unproductive jobs). Not because we can’t use workers but because most workers cannot add any value in a highly technical economy. Hell, even lawyers and engineers (top 20% IQ) are feeling the unemployment pinch as robots chip away at their jobs. It’s one of the reasons we’ve been able to stave off Peak Oil longer than expected (rigs are more efficient using less people every year, not to mention advances in production engineering; what used to take X men to produce Y bbl oil is in absolute free-fall). Those high-paying jobs? Gone forever. All that wealth goes into the coffers of those who own Exxon stock paying fat dividends…
Bottom line: a person with without an IQ in the upper 1/3 isn’t very economically productive in this modern era. Yet we generate great wealth and have to allocate it somehow. Yang’s BUI and Tucker Carlson’s desire to ban self-driving cars to save jobs for uneducated men are political acknowledgments of this new reality. When the military won’t even take people below an average IQ anymore - in wartime! (the ASVAB is a shameless g-loaded (IQ) test the military uses to exclude the bottom half).
So in summary: anyone paying attention certainly expect massive permanent unemployment alongside great wealth creation and a booming stock market. It’s not a bug, but a feature, of technology. Assuming the Flynn Effect doesn’t kick into high gear somehow…
I’ve wondered the same things as brushhog and by and large, agree with most of what MKI is positing. But there are still a lot of unfilled employment opportunities out there. A couple of months ago, we had a clogged sewer line. There are only a few businesses providing this service in our area and they were all booked up solid. I finally got one of them to come out the next day when they had a cancellation. The two workers were pleasant enough and got the job done for what I thought was a very reasonable price (as compared to what I researched) but the skill level requirement to perform the job was low, the job did not require much in the way of equipment, and the workers were not near the high end of the IQ scale. The occupation is not prestigious but it is needed and seems to pay fairly well. Likewise, I see a considerable demand in our area for welders, millwrights, and boilermakers that is going unfilled. Most of the young people I know are simply not interested in doing these types of jobs.
On the other hand, we have more massage therapists and personal trainers in our area than you can shake a stick at and most of them, from my perception, do not appear to be making a great income. It’s not a career I would want to hang my future on. For sure, the days of the assembly line worker, driver (whether cab, limo, bus, truck, train, or airplane), etc. are limited and it doesn’t appear like there will be the same number of new jobs appearing to replace them. Similarly, the auto parts and auto mechanic industry will decline as EVs become more prevalent. Again, it doesn’t look like there will anything akin to auto assembly line workers and auto mechanics replacing buggy whip makers and blacksmiths in the near future. I could be wrong though. Who knew you could make a living from a YouTube channel and vlogging, for example. But for the less intelligent, less creative, less intrepid, the future does not look bright.
AO, I agree with you with a few caveats:
- The “everyone must go to college” meme 1960-200 did create a shortage of tradesmen today, but as jobs get tighter and tighter this seems to be reversing itself where I live. But I could be wrong here & haven’t seen any numbers.
- Plumbing, welding, electrical, HVAC are moderately IQ demanding. I do all of them and one really needs a mathematical IQ in the upper half to do them well (especially odd-job stuff that can’t be formulated into a checklist). I’m not saying there aren’t a LOT of idiots doing these jobs today (see #1 above) but over time these jobs will be harder to get and even harder to hold…and just as it’s psychologically hard for the non-social blue-collar guy to work as a nurse, it’s hard for the technically challenged to work in the trades. Sure one might get said job there but how long can they hold it?
- Everything is more replaceable and/or reliable today. Today, we swap out the fridge and hot water heater for the latest model, not fix them. Less workers, once more, while factories spew out cheaper and cheaper replacements with less workers.
In short, I agree with you but I think time will chip away at the exceptions. I sure hope I’m wrong, or that UBI or something like it levels the playing field for the non-elite. I just and too thick to see it happening anytime soon.