I think tone matters a little. Perhaps I will sound like a sycophant, but Chris has never been antagonistic. As he understands and explains so many of the manipulated statistics and raw data, I would say he has a lot more dissonance to deal with than any of us. I’m sure it’s not easy for him. During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. - George Orwell
All I would say is that disagreements on both sides of the table be measured, polite, and fact based. There is certainly a place to ponder “what-ifs?,” to theorize on potential cause and effects, and to attempt to gauge and understand items that do not lend themselves to a numerical, black and white analysis. But these can’t be presented as facts with the expectation that others should believe in them simply because they are asserted. If we are going to engage in theorizing future outcomes, then we have to take a more sophisticated approach than simply saying “that’s the way it’s always been.” And if we are going to ask questions or raise doubts, they should be presented as such - knowing that doubts alone do not constitute proof or even evidence.
I think that making some predictions or working through hypothetical scenarios about the future can useful, particularly if the future comes and repeatedly gives us more evidence and facts to support our theories. But, in absence of evidence or facts, our future predictions are just dart tosses at the future and there isn’t much to discuss about them until the future comes and either supports or refutes them.
They couldn’t do a better job of crashing the US economy if they tried…or are they deliberately trying?
Who’s benefitting from this crisis, anyway? Those who are benefitting should be the suspects at the top of our list. We have well-documented evidence of who is responsible (http://www.realityzone.com/creature.html) but they own the major media outlets so, to head off a grass-roots uprising, they pull out the old divide-and-conquer play out of their well-worn playbook: rich vs. poor, black vs. white, Republican vs. Democrat, young vs. old etc. Case in point: the recent dribble Jimmy Carter poured out regarding Rep. Joe Wilson’s “you lie” comment.
We need to stop fighting amongst ourselves and recognize the true enemy.
Hice,
Your perception that we “all” have jumped onboard Dr. M’s bandwagon with blinders firmly in place is incorrect. Many posters here do not agree with everything Dr. M publishes. Take a little more time to look around and I think that you will find we have a very diverse community here.
“It’s pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness.”
pretty much, we’ve been divided and conquered. Change will have arrived when Americans recognize the true enemies instead of misdirecting their efforts against those that should be their allies. A culture of entertainment (even of the political sort) does not lay the foundation for a more prosperous future.
If the past decade or so hasn’t been enough to convince most Americans that DC is not going to generate meaningful and positive change on its own, then we should focus our efforts on other people. The path to solutions is to first seek answers, then identify problems, then finally propose evaluate potential solutions. We, as a nation, are not quite to step 1 right now…
I have observed a tremendous amount of debate and exchange in ideas in observing this site for over a year that I could never piece together just on my own; for example; the current inflation vs deflation debate thread. What makes Chris’s message and this site so powerful in my opinion are the references to data to backup facts, opinions, or beliefs. As an engineer and scientist, I base my conclusions on what the data supports and refrain where there is no data yet to allow conclusions. I will review any differing opinion that includes data to backup that opinion.
Here, Here!!
I don’t particularly appreciate the tone of Mathewr99, (seems wild, emotional and bordering on disrespectful), but I do like to here a voice of decent from time to time. (Keeps things fresh and stirs things up imo.)
I’m an English teacher (from the USA) teaching English in Warsaw, Poland. One of my clients is a bank manager at ING. I’ve presented some of the ideas from the crash course to him and he hasn’t been very receptive (surprise, surprise). Luckily he hasn’t been offended and has taken up the challenge of an intellectual debate with me while simultaneously improving his English.
Many of the things he’s said are things which I know to be false, but one of the most interesting points he’s made in our discussions so far is how, following the French revolution, some Frenchman calculated that the world could only support 1 billion people (sorry for the lack of source here). The point is, that even though the Frenchman’s calculations were apparently very accurate at the time, he made them in the early 1800’s based on 1800’s farming techniques and average yields etc. He did the best he could with the data he had to work with, but he had no way to predict the future and to take future innovations into account while he was doing his calculations. (Who could!?)
I believe Dr. Martenson, has offered us the best he has, and for this reason he has my respect and my attention. However, I’ve by no means become some sort of faithful religious follower of Dr. M. As much as I respect the producer of the crash course and all of his work, I know that he puts his blue jeans on just the same as I do. (If writing that last sentence makes me lose points in someone’s eyes, I don’t care.) I’m not here to win brownie points or brownify the tip of my nose. I’m here to learn, share and read and sometimes challenge the anti-status quo status quo. The Capitalism Debate
I don’t know anyone who would refer to capitalism as a “perfect” system. Many that I know agree it’s the best we’ve got so far. By the same token, I’m glad to see the debate. I’m surprised that Mathewr99 puts so much faith in the promise of new technology and in the same breath completely discredits the idea that human beings could and can create an even better system than capitalism. Why limit human ingenuity to airplanes and electronic gadgets? What if we could apply some of our current boldness to compassion and courage as well. Just imagine some of the huge breakthroughs we could have in better understanding our own psychology and physiology.
I’m currently living in a former Communist country (Poland) and it’s hard to believe how bad things were here before 1989. I would attempt to draw the debate away from Capitalism = Bad vs. Capitalism = Good to a more important debate over the relevancy of our current fiat monetary system.
As you all know, the word fiat is Latin for “let it be done.” It is money declared money by whatever ruling body or power wants it to be money. This idea of printing phony, Peter Pan, ponzi scheme monopoly money out of thin air for all eternity is childish. Let’s get real.
“I recently re-read Hayek, whose “Road to Serfdom” provides an economic reasoning behind the transition in Germany in the '30s and '40s to totalitarianism. While Minksy’s work is strongly applicable to the situation we are in, Hayek’s is even more so, for, as he writes, socialism is merely a transitory phase, a precarious middle-ground, between capitalism and totalitarianism. The path that the American government is on now is a one-way street to totalitarianism.”
Amen Brother.
I’ve seen this plot before and it looks to me that it is nonlinear, more like a step function than a smooth curve. This looks like it would correlate well to certain political regimes since the US came off the gold standard.
Mike,
I’ve seen this plot before and it looks to me that it is nonlinear, more like a step function than a smooth curve. This looks like it would correlate well to certain political regimes since the US came off the gold standard.
Remember most of our progress since that time has been built on non-sustainable methods, using energy that is not renewable. It is the same as receiving an inheritance and, as you spend it down, marveling at how your standard of living has improved. Yes it has, for a while.