Are you are interested in figuring out the big economic picture, or "skating to where the puck is going to be"? (as hockey great Gretzky once said) My millennial son turned me on to the following link which provides a great perspective, on where the economic puck is headed. And if you do NOT believe in "climate change", just watch the first 5 minutes. Help me understand how this is fake news! Seriously I am trying to keep an open mind. But GDP is slowing all over the world, and will continue to do so, so how do we cope and what do we do now?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX3M8Ka9vUA&feature=share
Scary yes, however there is HOPE! (I am starting to like "millennials"!) The thing is we have to accept where we are at, and NOT TRY AND LIVE IN THE PAST!
What we first need is perspective. Take a step back and see what has happened economically speaking since the 1st Industrial Revolution. (Steam Engine and mass production) What impact has the changes had on society, and what can we learn from the changes, good and bad.
The 2nd Industrial Revolution was spawned by the infra-structure created to move the mass produced goods around, as well as the communication systems created by the telephone/telegraph poles built alongside the railway tracks. This moved society from a tribal culture to more of a world outlook on things.
The 3rd Industrial Revolution, which is starting now, is all about sharing resources. A concept which is difficult for some to accept. The "Cyclical Economy", is all about re-using resources , as opposed to mining the earth and creating things.
Because we have been living in a "he who dies with the most toys wins" society for some time now, it is going to be a challenge to shift our thinking. You see when we resist change, all we are doing is delaying the inevitable.
Let us not slow down the changes that are required to keep our planet going for our grandchildren and their children. The fossil fuel companies will do everything they can to slow it down, as will other companies, as the current paradigm is growth at all costs.
We only have one shot to get this right and turn the destiny of planet earth around. We can do it!
Comments
Fear comes from our parents. They give all of us the Speech, ‘we love you but work hard, get a good education because you have NOTHING COMING, it is a Jungle out there and no one owes you anything.’ This what poisons the Spirit of Mankind. A wall rises up between you and everyone else and a conflict for survival. This is the moral and spiritual foundation that all of the isms build there foul ideologies upon. You are doomed if you do not follow this or that religion or ideology. It is the root of sin and we can change this and in so doing change our destiny …. it is collective Universal Birthright, read Hard Seed to rearm morally and spiritually…… we are exceptional because we do not think we are exceptional, we are equal and not alone ….
competition or cooperation, both your attention invite, one leadeth to destruction and the other to joy and life ….
Aside from the pollution aspect, we know that CO2 has been and will continue to be a net benefit to life on earth. When it stops being a net benefit is anyone's guess. It is debatable whether or not the temperature has increased globally. It is not something that human thermometers can feel. We are talking about fractions of a degree over decades. We have few records from the Southern Hemisphere. Scientists are continually jacking around the temperatures of the past to make them agree with the theory. Even the be all end all satellite temperatures are being adjusted. The rise in CO2 and not correlated to the rise in temperatures. We went through a nearly 20 year period of increasing CO2 and stable temperatures. Finally, we have seen no proof that rising temperatures are catastrophic.
If you could stop all transportation for a day per month it would go along way to a solution, if you believe humans are the primary cause of climate degradation.
It bothers many people that there is so much misinformation and fake News on this and many other subjects. For example, when the phrase "in recorded history" is mentioned, most people do not know how many years back that really means. It is not really that far back. It doesn't even reach the last ice age.
I remember an analyst commenting on tourists wanting to see the snows of Kilimanjaro before they disappear. Trouble is all that jet-setting to see the snows is a reason why they are disappearing in the first place. Traveling less by jet will also help the environment.
Paul Hanley also makes the point of cheap clothing. It is designed to be worn 10 to 20 times, then discarded as the fabric wears quite easily. If clothes were designed for 100 to 200 wears, it would require better fabric, which then makes it more expensive. But consumers don't want that.
There is so much more we can do as consumers to protect the environment. If we continue to blame the corporate world while not making those lifestyle changes, we are really not very good environmentalists.
That s a tough one for folks to swallow. However it is not like everyne has to run out and stop eating meat tomorrow. It is a gradual shift, however what politician is going to bring this one up?
In the link, it explains very well that the world economy cannot get any more efficient in the way we do things now. We do need to stop raping the planet, as we have been doing since the 1800's, reuse what we have, figure out how to get our energy from the sun, and only then will our offspring have a chance.
You and I, we will be ok though.
In the 3rd industrial revolution, the movement of people does get much more efficient. With all modes of transportation being automated, the efficiency increases exponentially. It is a gradual shift which will happen over the next 40 years.
I just heard that California is passing a law allowing driver-less vehicles. The Uber folks will be salivating over that one.
The "Sharing Economy" sounds a lot like Toffler's "Pro-sumption."
The alternative is to recognize that everything is propaganda based, how it came to be that way and reverse it. Monetary reform is the only possibility of a good future for most of mankind. Once we accept the chip, its all over - we lost, mankind loses.
i see a different look though from the millennials in the video. They are thinking differently. Example; car ownership in this generation is much lower than the previous,(gen X) and far lower than the boomers. Voting with one's wallet will cause change.
Your "humans are all planetary rapists and are causing rising sea levels, global warming, etc." is nothing new. You can look back at news stories in the 1800's about the "world going dark due to whale oil shortage" and other sensational nonsense.
For the PAST 40+ YEARS we have been bombarded with "Imminent Doomsday Forecasts" that NEVER come true. You and people like you are like those idiots who go out in the woods and wait for Jesus to pick them up in a spaceship. Jesus never shows up, but they keep going back convinced that this year is the year it will happen.
You have been duped by pseudo-scientists that have been preying on the scientific ignorance of most people and getting billions of dollars in government research grants. In 2016 the federal government allocated $26 BILLION to "climate change". Since 1980 over $510 BILLION has been allocated to "climate change". Tell me what exactly have we gotten for this expenditure other than more "Imminent Doomsday Forecasts" and demands for more grant money???
The reduced number of people driving is a planned event, everything we see now was planned 40- 60 maybe a hundred years ago (See youtube Dr. Lorraine Day talking about another Dr. Day who took notes during a big globalist meeting). Listen to Dr Lorraine anyway - she will tell you what is wrong - if you can handle the truth.
You stop young people from driving by empowering the insurance companies to rape them.
Nearly half of our economy is directed to destroy us. Talk about cows farting all you want, but the wars do more damage to the environment.
We spend more money on oppressing and enslaving other countries for our banks than anything. Material has to be mined, processed, etc. This takes energy and its energy from fossil fuels. Bombs explode, things need to be rebuilt. People fart more when they are working. Less bombs means less farting because there is less rebuilding therefore we can save the planet with less farting and fewer cows around to fart through fewer wars and honest money.
Cows farting is just not significant. (Who makes this shit up?) Its scary that people think that farting cows are a serious threat to the planet !! It scares the hell out of me.
But Mike change happens slowly! It is not like we shut the curtain on one chapter and start another. Look at Easter Island. It took centuries for the population of that Island to decimate itself.
I ask you to look forward 40 years, and watch the video, it is about the road ahead!
No problem though for our generation Doug, we are ok. However things will get worse and worse as the decades pass, IF we do not change some of our human habits.
Those most fearful (of most anything) tend to resist any kind of change. I do not get it either as accepting change and making the best of what we have now, is an adult learned behavior. Resistance causes stress and suffering, and causes one to be in a worried state most of the time. This state of mind causes people to consume more goods. Perhaps that is the end game of those who are able to convince people that 97% of the scientists who have been studying the planet, are just wrong.
Everything will be ok as long as the Communists do not take over. :)
I watched about a third of the long YouTube video you referenced above. I'm familiar with Jeremy Rifkin, from having read his book, The End of Work.
Yes, he's an economist, so it's understandable that he would focus on the "global economy," in grand terms, since he advises "world leaders." However, so much preoccupation with "the economy" ignores the fact that it is a government-corporate-created entity and has little directly to do with real problems that real people face. Yes, we are all directly affected by "the economy," but not necessarily in a good way. Real people have to deal with the social engineering created by government-corporate collusion to sell oil and wars, build highways and cities, lay pipelines, build gigantic factories that pollute at home so the corporations can export more products and increase shipping.
We can't know what might have happened without the government/Wall Street dynamo to push the industrial revolution so fast. I do believe the millennials are more aware than the Boomers, but they are responding by becoming more minimalist, I believe, working less, spending less, and paying less in taxes. The explosion of internet-based technology and use does not grow food or build houses, which people still need to survive. That so many of the younger people seem interested and engaged in practical activities like organic farming and community initiatives is better evidence to me than that they are producing YouTube music.
Mike likes to convince himself that we can keep plundering the planet and go on living in "comfort".
Most people will do absolutely nothing until they are faced directly with the negatives of our actions, or simply write it off as "I'll be dead and gone before that happens".
Of course, the entities that profit from these negative factors will do all in their power to keep the money rolling in, even by the obvious extensive brainwashing techniques that we witness daily.
The record for extreme weather was made through the 30's. The world is going to keep changing, volcanoes, floods, etc - long after man is gone. Mankind will die of stupidity and arrogance long before the environment gets us.
We are exiting a cold period. Greenland will be green again and the world will be happier because it will be effectively bigger.
I think so too. I've read the policy papers from the think tanks. People are getting too rich and technology is a power multiplier. The existing rulers are afraid that if this trend continues they could be overthrown.
I don't watch the "news" or "popular science". I like to know the truth. I like to hear what elites say to each other.
A good book on who runs the planet is JK Galbraith's "Money.." published in the 70's. The Report From Iron Mountain tells us a lot. The Next Global Revoltion does too, as does The Open Conspiracy by HG Wells. This stuff is real, not TV and "expert" fiction.
Most of the so called AGW scientists have Phd's in business admin and biology. Their models are silly. See my blog to learn who the AGE experts are.
To learn the truth, avoid rumours. Go and find actual scientists on youtube. See their lips moving as they speak. They tell you its all a fraud and they ARE actually climatologists.
No oil exec is going to throw his grandchildren future away for a yacht. But there are liars in government, they have been coked up, drugged up, made to do stupid cruel things, then blackmailed to go along. Its how its done.
My vision is quite the opposite. Small businesses instead of big ones. Polluter pays, but only for the pollution he causes, not anyone else's. For me, what you call the "third industrial revolution" will be about doing things others are voluntarily willing to pay for. And those that stole what you call "toys" from those who earned them will be seen as the criminals they are. My vision has we humans - individuals, families and voluntary societies - making our planet into a home and garden fit for a civilized species.
And beyond that, who is this "we" of which you speak?
"A study from the University of Graz says that contrary to popular opinion, vegetarian and vegan diets don’t make people healthier. In fact it found that vegetarians are ill more often, more susceptible to physical and mental disorders and generally have a lower quality of life than people who eat meat. They’re more at risk of cancer, have more heart attacks and are more likely to suffer from psychological disorders.
The study examined 1,320 people divided up into four groups separated by diet – vegetarians, meat eaters with lots of fruits and vegetables, people who ate relatively little meat, and people who ate a lot of it. Accounting for smoking and physical exercise, the researchers concluded the big difference in susceptibility to disease was dependent on diet.
Vegetarians, the study found, were more than twice as likely to have allergies as meat-eaters, they were three per cent more likely to contract cancer, and a massive 150 per cent more likely to have a heart attack. Vegetarians were also hit harder by 14 of the 18 illnesses monitored in the study – which included diabetes, migraines, and osteoporosis.
People who maintained a vegetarian diet were also found to be twice as likely to be ‘mentally disturbed’ reports several websites, and generally have poorer mental health. The University of Graz study says that vegetarians were twice as likely to suffer from anxiety or depression (a similar study from University of Hildesheim found that vegetarians suffered more from depressions, anxiety, psychosomatic complaints and eating disorders)."
[I find none of the above surprising.]
The Report from Iron Mountain has been outed as a hoax.
You should maybe read it and think for yourself instead of listening to other people tell you what you should or should not look at. Obviously you haven't read it. It was written in the 60's, authenticated by JK Galbraith, who was a participant.
The got leaked out. What do you expect them to say "Yeah, its all true. you got us". You can read the document, use your mind, apply what you read to what has happened over the past 50 years and see that the document is real by using reason.
And i do agree that there will be a lot more small entrepreneurs in the future. Which I think is great.
The 3rd Industrial Revolution is not my creation, just a perspective I find interesting and inspiring.
Today we don't have the ability to get through Van Allen see Orion Project / NASA. I don't know how they did it back then...special quarter inch aluminum that bends when an 11 year old (me on a trip to the Cape to see the Moon Rocket) pushes on it? Maybe NASA just forgot how they got to the moon back then.
http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/report_from_iron_mountain
Re: Report From Iron Mountain
"The mystery of who had written the report was revealed in 1972 when Leonard C. Lewin [a freelance writer] declared in an article in the New York Times that he had penned the entire report. In other words, there was no Special Study Group and no government plot to maintain a state of war. The entire report had been a hoax. More details of the creation of the hoax were given in 1996 when Simon & Schuster reprinted the Report with a new introduction.
Apparently, the genesis of the report occurred in 1966 when Victor Navasky, editor of the Monocle, a magazine of political satire, noticed a New York Times article reporting that the stock market had dipped because of a 'peace scare.' Navasky mentioned this to Lewin who then came up with the idea to write the report. The two of them presented the report to E.L. Doctorow, editor of the Dial Press. Doctorow agreed to publish the work as nonfiction.
Navasky claimed that the purpose of the hoax had been 'to provoke thinking about the unthinkable—the conversion to a peacetime economy and the absurdity of the arms race.'"
*****
John Kenneth Gailbraith had joked about being invited to join the conspirators. He later admitted his words had been a joke only.
Doug Plumb might occasionally try exercising some of that hard-nosed skepticism he pretends to champion.
Of course, that must be true. You read it in the Times right? How could it not be true ? If the oligarchs had one of their writings made public, they wouldn't deny it. I can't make you read it. You don't have too. Time tells all.
You can read it or not, but if you have actually studied political science instead of reading contemporary crap, you could see from knowing Aristotle or Plato that its probably true. I'm not suggesting that you try and read Kant or Quigley. The Report is not that difficult of a read.
We won't figure anything out and if we did, they would not listen and we do not have the mental horsepower of well trained thing tanks. Creating a society would be very difficult, writing a constitution that is not flawed in some serious way would be very hard.
Most people know less than nothing about law because most of what they know about law is wrong.
We do have an innate ability to detect BS. Its quite often very easy even on the most elaborate of lies, particularly after the passage of time. We could exercise critical thought on what we hear. I just proved they didn 't go to the moon..God gave us the gift or reason which is the tool we use for BS detection.
Just look at the great dialogue happening on Iron Mountain and all! As long as we allow ourselves to think freely and not be impacted by "the group's think"- whatever group we may identify ourselves with, I think we will figure it out!
I know someone who is practically a neo-Luddite, until he has and more-or-less masters the various devices he fights against with such incredible tenacity. Remote controls for TVs, computers, and now smart phones are some of them. He only recently "discovered" a washing machine and dryer. Funny dude, and smart in many ways; one of the few people I know that could live without electricity for more than a few hours, lol.
Assume your friend has perhaps had limited contact with people? Just look at some of the groups that live the old fashioned life, like Mennonites. They are aware of new technology, however the people they hang with don't use it, so out of sight out of mind. Funny thing is though, they have adopted cellular technology. hmmm
The Times is where Gailbraith's joke first appeared, too.
I've already read Kant and Quigley. I have Quigley's "Tragedy and Hope" and "The Anglo-American Establishment" sitting on my bookshelves.
Choosing to swallow Quigley whole is not an example of exercising skepticism. He was a kook, too. The main difference between him and you is that he understood the adjective "stupid" is compared regularly: stupid, stupider, stupidest.
Why do you bother to initial-cap the first word of a sentence (e.g., "First of all . . .") but you don't bother to capitalize the personal pronoun "I" (e.g., ". . . i think we all agree that diet is a key to health").
I don't get it.
Funny, some of it made me think of WB and other blogs.
Excellent. I will spread the video and seek dialogue.
Thank you and your millenial son.
Mustafa'
re "Choosing to swallow Quigley whole is not an example of exercising skepticism."
Quigley can teach you a lot about politics in the modern age. His book is not an opinion piece. Its a very good history book, with some parts missing. What did you not believe?
Thanks for the formatting feedback. I am not much of a typist, so probably just laziness on my part. I did not mean to capitalize the first letter. And sometimes as I am typing fast, the i comes out this way and I think my decision to not correct and capitalize the pronoun "I" , is because the small i is less egotistical.
Whether the current climate conditions were caused by man or not, is really not the issue. What we are going to do about it is!
re:
" is really not the issue. What we are going to do about it is! "
Yup, IMO, Its not a question of how I feel, ....anger, hope, contempt ...
The question is "what is the action?"
That is partially why I am here.
Thought provoking article and informative comments!
You didn't mean to? But it required an additional key-stroke for an initial-cap and you did it for every word that began a new sentence. Obviously, it was intentional, not some "oversight."
I think my decision to not correct and capitalize the pronoun "I" , is because the small i is less egotistical.
Here's why you're wrong: by not capitalizing the first-person-singular personal pronoun "I", you are intentionally drawing attention to the spelling, and therefore, drawing attention to yourself; hence, the practice is more egotistical, not less.
It's a bit like say, "I go to work everyday without wearing any trousers because it's less egotistical to do so." Um, no. By intentionally doing something sartorially out of the norm, you are asking people to pay more attention to you than they ordinarily would, so it's actually more egotistical, not less.
Remember that, the next time you dress for work.
Dougie:
Do you believe Kant was the kind of philosopher who contradicted himself from one work to the next? Yes or no.
Most of Quigley's writings are nothing but hot-air bloviating (i.e., opinion) about the rise and fall of entire civilizations in several discrete stages (Golden Age, Age of Crisis, Age of Empire, etc.) clearly distinguishable from one another according to various criteria he invented. In this regard, Quigley was an American Arnold Toynbee. His off-the-cuff remarks in T&H about being a member of, and an eye-witness to, a group of international industrial and banking conspirators eager to control the world have never been confirmed by anyone else — readers are just supposed to take his word for it. Obviously, you're one of them because kooky statements by a crank with high academic credentials like Quigley's (Harvard, Princeton, etc.) help to reinforce kooky statements by cranks with no academic credentials like you ("I've read lots of Kant in my spare time").
I like the idea of cooperation across the planet. It is far better than all this daft mantra of competition and growth. Somehow we've got to move to a more sustainable future with greater equality. That means the model we have currently adopted of ruthless competition, winners and losers, has to change. Growth is so destructive. We are trashing the planet to make a few people exceedingly rich and the model is beginning to break down. Automation is putting huge numbers of people on to the scrapheap.
There has to be a better way.
I am now capitalizing my "I's"at least, so you will see I am working on correcting my grammatical acumen. :)
But overall perhaps I was making a statement, as I do believe there is too much "I" in this world and not enough "we".
Thanks for pointing that out. The brain works in mysterious ways sometimes.
You get the general idea. The current model is headed towards disaster as we cannot grow at the levels required for sustainability. i.e once the ultra-rich have stripped out all the growth and profit, what then?
No GDP GROWTH is slowing all over the word, it is not nearly the same thing. Very few economies are actually shrinking.
The issue simply is that during the build out from the industrial revolution, everyone needed cars, TVs, appliances because they didnt have them. Now that most people have them it is tough to GROW production at a compounded 4-5% a year.
Last year we produced as many cars in the US as we ever did. The issue is that production really isnt growing. If it were growing at 4% a year, in 20 years we would be producing 30 millions cars a year instead of 15. There is no demand for that.
While countries like China and India still are increasing per capita consumption, they are also increasing there ability to produce things. So places like the US and Europe, dont need to raise there production capacity, hence slow GDP growth.
There is an old investment adage, trees dont grow to the sky. Compounded 3-4% GDP growth cannot go on forever. Expectations with this assumption will likely be disappointed.
I agree. Hence, there is something to "secular stagnation," although tax and regulatory policy did not help.
Could work in theory. If it works even a bit, it could change the World. Let's see.
Given that at one point 5-6% growth was not uncommon in the US, the trend is still towards slower growth in general. Policy based on a baseline of 3% average growth in the US are sure to be in trouble.
It seems to me that in a healthy sustainable society, GDP growth would be 0 but the Gross domestic wellness level would be good. That too, doesnt necessarily need to grow.
That shift will take time, however it is happening even as we speak. It is just how quickly and that depends on people not fighting it, but accepting, adapting and just being happy.
"it is a paradigm shift in our societal thinking that needs to occur, in order to adapt to a no growth, cyclical economy.
That shift will take time, however it is happening even as we speak"
I agree with all of that. However, the constant narrative , higher GDP growth is better, creates and environment where such a paradigm shift can easily be highjacked. In fact, regarding Rifkins "guarded optimism" that is exactly what I saw. If the young( and the rest of us) do not realize what is happening while it is happening ( ergo the utility of your post), then this change can easily be hijacked so that in the third industrial revolution, the majority of us are slaves.
"However I am going to be glass half full on this, cause it just feels better. :)"
Optimism is good. realism to my mind is better.
I am not certain why my positions, to many, appear negative. To me, the question is
What is the action?
The action cannot be "optimism"
Again, that is partly why I am here, and engaged in other forums.
BTW, one of the subliminal messages in Rifkins talk was
Distritbuted Ledger Technology. But I didnt hear him speak of it. To me, this is where we are headed, and it provides a world of freedom from centralized tyranny.
Got Bitcoin?
Got Ether?
Got Monero?
https://www.rt.com/business/420624-flying-taxis-running-on-blockchain/
Blockchain organized flying taxis.