In a rigged market, in the absence of “price discovery”, you will find “supply discovery” instead. Lack of investment will raise the prices while ensuring we don’t use up our precious oil and coal resources on stupid things like SUVs. But it’s going to be tough, no mistake about that.
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@bj-brown : Those are two phenomenal essays, and I thank you for linking them! The second, in particular, puts a solid finger on a nebulous conception of current life experience that has bedeviled me for some while. And it’s passionately written, too, in grounded voice. Always a plus.
But the first link is essential framing for it, so thank you for that alignment of essays, too. This gives me much to think about and another, valuable way to frame life - and to understand in a fresh way the anguish of my youngest adult son who is so clearly a brilliant, create fellow unable to sit comfortably in his IT job that he knows he’s supposed to value, and appreciate for the social perks it provides.
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I really enjoyed those essays, thank you. However, unless I’m reading it wrong, the below paragraph seems to imply that believing in the constitution makes one a status-quoist.
“ And the argument of the status-quoists isn’t simply defensive. They admit that many ideas and institutions are in bad shape, but they believe that change comes best from within—not because they are satisfied with the world as it exists, but because the status quo is the least bad option. Most new endeavors fail, they point out, and the ones that already exist have survived for a reason. Foundings are rare, difficult, and highly contingent—both Jewish tradition and the American constitutional system are based on the idea that what’s old is wise, that the past has a legitimate claim on the present, that change should be incremental and toilsome, and that it’s easier to destroy or run away than it is to remain and reform.”
I believe strongly that our institutions are broken beyond repair but I am a huge advocate for our constitution. Seems most folks I know, who would identify as a brokenist, feel the same.
I’m wondering what folks thoughts are here?
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Brilliant essays, thank you Barbara!
“Now, to observe that a critical mass of American society is broken does not mean that America is falling like Rome or descending hopelessly into chaos like Weimar Germany.”
I confess I’m far less hopeful than the author. Her solutions seem to boil down to “let’s just be better people, and plant more trees and make great art and not talk politics,” which is salutary on an individual level, but the systemic rot is simply too deep for that to have any kind of macro effect, at this point. We’re living in the last days of Rome.
She really does see The Problem, though. And it’s going to shift my thinking from now on. Thanks so much for sharing.
At any rate. I am officially now a “Brokenist.”
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Respectfully Disagree
it keeps being said “they don’t understand”. this is utter nonsense. “they” understand perfectly well. “they” wrote “the limits to growth”
"they " control all energy on the planet. they control every market on the planet. "they " control every government on the planet.
"they want 5+ billion people off the planet by whatever means necessary.
show me the incentive and i will show you the outcome. hmmm no where have i heard that before?
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Or a windfall tax on Hunter Biden. He did nothing but be born into a cartel to earn $56,000 a month and millions over his integrity-free wasted life.
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same question I was going to ask
Where Are The Lobbyists?
I was going to make the same comment someone else made - why on Oil and Gas, but not on Pharma, who have had a more massive windfall (although the definition Chris cited may not hold … maybe they were responsible in part for the lab created pandemic which led to their recorded profits,), especially as their windfall came from the tax payers. Or to put it another way why are the millions that the oil & gas put into lobbying no longer working? And why are the oil & gas industry companies going along with the WEF and signing up to their own demise? Similar questions for the fertilizer industry… Something doesn’t smell right here… like these mega powerful industries must be in on the plan… they wouldn’t just lose their influencing buying power like this…
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Thank You
Hey Chris,
Thanks so much for taking my request and doing a deep dive.
I hit on many of the topics you covered here in conversations over the weekend (although not with the fellow who was throwing around “conspiracy theorist” because, as you pointed out, there was no point).
This episode will be so valuable to share with those who were actually capable of having a conversation even if they disagreed with what I was saying.
Thanks again!
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Earthiest, I am a Brokenist and a Constitutionalist also. (Thank you, Barbara, for posting the link to the Tablet article.) To me the line of demarcation is collectivism vs individualism, with the Constitution as a fundamental document outlining a form of government dedicated to individualism. Collectivism seems to me to be easily co-opted for short term “good” as defined by those in power and is on the side of “vaccination,” policing social media for wrongthink, eating crickets for the good of the planet…but also based on an idea central to all decent societies, which is the necessary sublimation of one’s own personal desires, on needed ocaasion, to what is best for the community. And individualism has a dark side too… unfettered individualism devoid of conscience is the narcissistic robber baron pillaging nature and his fellow man.
About the brokeness, I am 100% on board. As I travel to hospitals I see the deterioration around the edges, and sometimes in the center. It is as if a million termites are humming at the periphery, devouring everything they come across, and sometimes they get into a support beam. For example, the decision to treat patients with severe covid with the limited resource of antibodies based on race…that was a support beam that broke. Medical decisions based on race are an abomination that no just society can tolerate, and yet we have. At one time America had the best medical system in the world…and then we broke it. Travel through any large city and you can see road signs fallen into the weeds, broken guardrail along the highways, trash-strewn streets, random unpunished attacks on our fellow citizens, obviously stolen elections…how broken we are now.
I don’t think we get back to a Constitutional republic without mayhem and violence, and I expect that to be perpetrated on the Individualists by the Collectivists, until the point that everyone can see the stakes, and people are forced to choose sides. Just yesterday I saw on TV about one of the J6 protestors, in prison now, whose cancer was ignored until he went from stage 1 to stage 3. That is pretty much a death sentence meted out against someone who didn’t even, as was his fundamental right, enter the capital building. This on top of the murder of veteran Ashley Babbit…they are already killing us…
Bailouts
… are an example of government intervention in the market to compensate companies for their losses.
We shouldn’t have either bailouts or taxes on companies. Both screw up market dynamics.
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Greed And Windfalls
Companies ought to be seeking profit. Over the long run some lose money for years but more than make up for it in short periods. If not for those outliers there’s be no reason to be in business. Tax them for those periods and you consign them to closing their doors.
Companies get called “greedy” for periods in which they make large profits. What about when they don’t make large profits? Did they lose concern with making profits? Of course not.
I also have an issue with the notion of “windfalls” which imply the business made a profit that had nothing to do with their effort. A business makes choices amid uncertainty, and the future can break for or against their interest. But when fortune favors them, it is because they’re prepared to a certain extent. That effort in preparation allows them to profit when conditions change. That effort and the risk involved is what justifies their right to a profit.
If I anticipate rural land will be more valuable in ten years because of rising food prices and buy a few acres, is it a windfall if my prediction is correct? Or is it a windfall if I buy property without that concern and it goes up in value anyway?
Either way I’m entitled to the value I can get from selling it, should I choose. It’s nobody’s damn business whether the profit is due to accident or careful planning, and nobody else is entitled to a claim on it. Period.
That is the meaning of property rights. My property, my choice. I don’t have to ask permission to sell it or to keep the profits.
Same for an oil company. Let them charge what they want.
It’s interesting in this context to look at anti-trust arguments from the past. Charge less then a competitor and you’re accused of undercutting. Charge more and you’re ripping off the customer. Charge the same and you’re colluding.
An oil company could try charging $100/gal today. They’d find no buyers because there is a market with multiple suppliers.
So what is the “proper” oil price? The only way to figure that out is by competing on the market: price discovery. Every attempt by governments to force a lower or higher price impacts supply.
If government forces lower prices, companies sell out quickly and without profits can’t reinvest, leading to shortages and bankruptcy and fewer new competitors.
If they force higher prices, with higher profits, the market responds with a flood of supply. It’s a giant misallocation of capital. (Think monopolies by government grant, or subsidies.)
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The 4th Demension Explained By A High Schooler
This kid gives me hope for our future.
4th Dimension Explained By A High-School Student - YouTube
I think some folks see WEF and affiliates as one United cabal. I disagree. There are numerous factions who sometimes work together.
If Rockefeller/ big oil pulled all the strings, why allow MSM or politicians to push this narrative?
Maybe there’s a 4D chess move here, but more likely this is a push by politicians to shake down big oil. Big business and politicians have been in bed for decades but there is push and pull in their relationship. This could just be a bit of rebalance in their mutual power.
So big oil donates and lobbies and this goes away. A couple votes go the other way and the tax is gone.
If the tax sticks around it indicates big oil is not all powerful.
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Nice Suit!
https://peakprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/sharpdressedman-1669235002.5192.jpg
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The problem is the morons we have running things don’t understand Anything about anything useful. Most of them couldn’t find their own ass with both hands and a map.If I posted this on Twitter I bet it would go viral ??
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Go for it! This is about as social media as I get so I can’t do it.
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I think there is a difference between our politicians and the nwo folks, at least most of them. The politicians might be “running things” but they are most certainly following the script of their handlers. Many of our congress critters can’t string more than 2 sentences together without help. Shit look at PA “electing” the mentally challenged guy. The man is obviously not up to the challenge of governing the country. My mother had the same kind of stroke years ago and lost her career as a nurse because of it. I love her but she was never the same and never was able to fully recover before she passed away years later. I put forward that most, not all, of our leaders ARE 2 IQ points shy of a potato but that is by design. It makes them easier for other “shadow interests” to control things.
Respectfully, your punctuation and grammar suck.
Let me fix it a bit for you:
We understand well enough. We rewrote “The Limits to Growth”. (1)
They control all energy on the planet. They control every market on the planet. THEY control every government on the planet. (2)
"They want 5+ billion people off the planet by whatever means necessary. (3)
“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome” is self-evidently false. (4)
Footnotes:
(1) At least I did re-write the computer model in the book, and a bunch of peak oil people appreciated my effort. Search “The Oil Drum” archives for Doly Garcia, I wrote the stuff under my single name. (My full name is Maria Dolores Garcia/White). My take on why the book is famous in conspiracy theory circles? Because of the deafening silence that followed it. I’ve had online conversations with two of the main authors of the book, and it was abundantly clear to me that they must have been pecked down about as much as Chris must have been pecked to become an anti-vaxer type. Being so close to something that could potentially be widely recognised as the truth does not go unpunished. The only people allowed to be god-like are people who already have vast amounts of power. Average PhD type gets actually close to the truth, they get mercilessly pecked down for the crime of knowing better than those in power, and forced to recant in some way or another. Have I suffered myself consequences for my little crime of thinking I know something? Oh, yeah. I could tell you stories, but why bother? I’m a nobody.
(2) I’m not accepting "they " as valid. Not pronounceable, as far as I know. And most punctuation tricks are emotional whores, anyway. And they are different from THEM. As a first approximation, THEY are about the same as “them”, but that’s just my take.
(3) The last time a personal friend talked to me about THAT, it was still the standard 1 billion people. Though, I think they should put a decent timeframe for it, like “within the coming decade”. I certainly can compute very realistic scenarios of downsizing humanity by 1 billion people by the end of the century that I think most people would quite happily go for. Lots of people went quite happily for trying to catch a potentially deadly virus, for Chrissakes!
(4) Not knowing what’s possible for those incentivised, knowing about incentives tells you little. All civilisations that collapsed had plenty of incentives not to collapse.
Let’s remind everyone that Thanksgiving 2005 was a famous early peak oil prediction. It didn’t happen then, but oil production doesn’t appear to have risen beyond the 2019 peak. And there are versions of the peak (per capita oil production) that did happen around 2005.
I am where I’m at.
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