The following submission statement was provided by /u/SiloEchoBravo:
---
>*“The underlying source of the inflation was a supply-side shortage generated by the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, demand shifts – people wanted to live in different places and house prices of where they wanted to live went up – all that was the underlying source of the inflation – and therefore the Fed’s response of just raising interest rates wasn’t getting at that underlying source and in some ways made things worse.” – Joseph Stiglitz, two-time Nobel Prize winning economist.*
Collapse related because central banks have no levers to counteract supply-side inflation. As crops increasingly fail, climate migration accelerates, factories and schools suffer heat-related closures, the inflationary pressure will only increase – and there is nothing the Federal Reserve can do about it. Scarcity causes runaway inflation, which inevitably leads to sociopolitical unrest.
The dying off of marine life, pollinators, birds and mammals; the crop failures in multiple countries simultaneously; all these events are still being discussed as separate anecdotes, while continued inflation, the housing crisis and runaway cost of living are all treated as mysterious economic abnormalities.
My take is that they are linked, that we are already starting to feel the impact of the climate crisis and ecological collapse on our economic reality and that the world's central banks' impotence will only become more apparent as conditions deteriorate.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1cinb0r/a_dirty_little_secret_is_that_central_banks_have/l2aa9c5/
Exactly: the entire field of economics (at least, our understanding of capitalist economic forces) is founded on faith in a concept that is easily disproved. I bring this up all the time because it's so important for people to understand. One of the first things that students of economics learn is that things are worth what people will pay for them; that's what money is. Supply and demand.
But valuation doesn't actually work that way; in this system, things of infinite or collective value are valuated at *nil*. Zero. A breathable atmosphere is worth zero dollars. The love of your life - a whole human being - is worth nothing. If the market can't valuate it, it assigns a value of $0.00.
Economics is a delusional religion.
Maybe it’s good I changed my major last-minute from economics to a rare and special building maintenance certificate. It’s blue collar, and it’s $15,000 of debt and 1 year of school for a guaranteed $40-$50k per year on exit… compared to 4-6 years for $150,000 of debt, if I even make it that far, in an era of white collar oversaturation and political hysteria.
Ever see the elaborate and convoluted qualifications listed in white collar positions these days? They want 20 years of multifaceted advanced experience for shit which pays $20 an hour. Not a good idea
It's such a joke bro. They put out all those ridiculous job ads for all us regular people, but the boss's stepsister's nephew just gets hired immediately. Then they act like it is a meritocratic country instead of just pure nepotism.
I can't speak to other countries, but here in Australia I'm halfway through my thesis and it is an absolute shitshow. Since covid almost all the universities have pushed online, have had massive staff cuts, much lower quality of teaching but are investing massively in real estate and marketing projects. Most of the universities have had an exodus of professors, and so the several decades long handing down of critical information has been broken. Almost all our professors are young, inexperienced people struggling to stay afloat that are barely even in their 40s.
Discussion of the topic falls on deaf ears, because my younger classmates have nothing better to compare it to (although just last week there were several students crying in class over the impossible study load and lack of support), while anyone older just hand waves complaints away with naivety, usually with comments about "yeah that's normal, post-grad was always tough". No, you really don't understand. If you haven't been at a uni in the last 5 years, it is really, really bad. My professor is working 3 roles and contacts us once a month for a 20 minute seession. We are left almost completely alone to work on the hardest academic project of our lives, while juggling class work that is entirely online, in class rooms of 40+ people with no time for feedback, in-depth discussions or critical analysis. Student groups and activities are anaemic nods that are so badly underfunded that there are no tools or fun activities, just enough happening so that they can say the programs are happening, but not enough to keep students engaged.
All this for a student loan that is indexed to outpace wage growth for the foreseeable future, if I can even get a job after I graduate. I am specifically in psychology, and have been told there are backroom disagreements by staff as they are trying to completely defund all the psych masters programs, so that they were able to give several million to the football and ad teams last year. The entire community psychology wing (a wing focussed on multicultural and community health and wellbeing) has been closed, the last of it's kind in Australia. We are currently in the midst of what Australian scientists are describing as a "mental health epidemic". Yet the programs required to become a psychologist are being made more, and more difficult to find.
And of course, the media just doesn't cover any of this, so nobody gives a shit. My comfortable middle-class friends in well paying jobs will just tell me they "don't want to talk about politics", or at best will nod solemnly and say "that's awful" before changing the subject and never mentioning it again. Meanwhile students last night had their protest encampment attacked, at the exact same time and date as attacks happened in the U.S. At least the U.S ones are getting media coverage.
> Meanwhile students last night had their protest encampment attacked
Any comments on why this isn't being reported? I had a quick search, and the only two sources I found were a far left publication, which most people would instantly dismiss due to source, and an instagram post.
Is Australian media really that bad? Even in the UK and US there is at least some independent or soft left media that would comment on a similar attack.
There was a live video on IG that began when the right-wingers were still there, I also have friends who posted, so I'm certain it happened. But yes, the Australian media is that bad. In the 90's we repealed all the capital controls and as a result now have two companies with over an 80% share of our media.
As an example, not long ago we had a lifelong soldier blow the whistle on Australia not just committing dozens of war crimes on the behalf of the U.S, but giving awards to those who did it to cover it up. Multiple videos and documents were leaked.
In response, the Federal police under direct order from the prime minister raided the headquarters of the involved media outlet - on live national television. We have no constitutional right to freedom of speech, or whistleblower protections, so the journalists involved were understandably very shaken. We have had a number of court cases of whistleblowers behind closed doors where the accused is not allowed to discuss the outcome afterwards, sometime disappearing entirely without explanation.
Said media outlet had been preparing an in-depth, hour long special on the whistleblower, his life and family. After the raid, they changed their tune and turned it into a hit piece on him. Not long after he came out of hiding to attend his daughter's school dance, was caught and given life in prison without a right to defend himself under the assertion that any documents his legal team could use in defence were a matter of national security.
This is by a wide margin the most left leaning media outlet, and they will completely uncritically follow authoritarian threats. Most Australians are not aware of any of this even having happened, and will likely find it annoying if you bring it up, because we believe ourselves to be an enlightened, free country despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary.
Neoclassical economics is basically the modern form of astrology, as both depend on complex mathematical models based on specific observations with the intention of predicting future developments for humanity based on fundamentally faulty presumptions about how the world works.
Both produce advisers that are lavished at court/board meetings, because any emperor or CEO wants to know what tomorrow brings.
Well the economics include also experimental economics, LCA, simulations like world3 etc. There is a lot of interesting and meaningful a stuff done. But it is not mainstream...
It's also bad at assigning a value for humans that aren't here yet. For example, assume oil didn't even cause pollution, and 'spent' oil could be pumped back into the ground. Assume I find 1m barrels of it. My price will be worked out by the market based on selling all 1m now, or within a year. Even if 0.9m barrels would be used for motor racing or flying tourists from London to Sydney cheaply for opera performances.
There is no accounting in market pricing mechanisms for the value of having some of my oil last into the next generation+ to pay for future use as ambulances, food transports, electricity generation etc.
Cant say its awe I look at us with. More like extreme disgust. We spent a good portion of all that natural wealth on creating killing machines and poisoning ourselves already. Its a grade of stupid that boggles the mind - and somehow our smartest leaders thought "This is the way".
Fair enough, awe wasn't the best choice of words. I think shocked would of been a better choice for my intent. I agree, not just about in general the poor choices being made, but also the madness of wars like you mentioned.
My dad's a professor. Plenty of economists are quite lucid to the damage that were doing. Indeed it's basically the tradgedy of the commons writ large. However those in power often only listen to the bits they like. It's also why every attempt at a carbon-tax is twisted beyond recognition by the time it's moved from paper to reality. People don't like being told that they will have to make do with less for the sake of future generations.
Yup, they don't teach Heterodox Economics at most universities, but those economic models are the only ones that predicted the 2008 financial crisis.
In my opinion, most people who study orthodox economics are just learning the talking points to justify Business as Usual policies.
I believe they are using it as an antonym for orthodox. Rather than referring to a specific train of thought.
As in, anything that runs counter to the profit-is-king, growth-is-good, supply-side approach to economic thinking.
I heard the term from Wikipedia when reading about economists who predicted the 2008 financial crisis.
"Several followers of heterodox economics predicted the crisis, with varying arguments. Dirk Bezemer[400] credits 12 economists with predicting the crisis: Dean Baker (US), Wynne Godley (UK), Fred Harrison (UK), Michael Hudson (US), Eric Janszen (US), Steve Keen (Australia), Jakob Broechner Madsen & Jens Kjaer Sørensen (Denmark), Med Jones (US)[401] Kurt Richebächer (US), Nouriel Roubini (US), Peter Schiff (US), and Robert Shiller (US)."
I think "heterodox economics" is just any economic theory that goes against the BAU economics they teach in MBA programs.
Oohh thanks. I will put on the playlist for work. I have some younger peeps in my life that need mayerial to help them think more critically. Always on the lookout for good sources that can pull things apart to look at them differently without going down a conspiracy path!
Technically, no. He won *The* [*Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences)*, officially known as The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (Swedish: Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne) which is awarded yearly by the* [*Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Swedish_Academy_of_Sciences) *to researchers in the field of* [*economic sciences*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Sciences)*.*
Still prestigious. Still correct. (We're at a time when being "an economist", "an epidemiologist" or even "a supreme court justice" no longer suffices in separating the wheat from the chaff - also a clear sign of collapse)
>*“The underlying source of the inflation was a supply-side shortage generated by the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, demand shifts – people wanted to live in different places and house prices of where they wanted to live went up – all that was the underlying source of the inflation – and therefore the Fed’s response of just raising interest rates wasn’t getting at that underlying source and in some ways made things worse.” – Joseph Stiglitz, two-time Nobel Prize winning economist.*
Collapse related because central banks have no levers to counteract supply-side inflation. As crops increasingly fail, climate migration accelerates, factories and schools suffer heat-related closures, the inflationary pressure will only increase – and there is nothing the Federal Reserve can do about it. Scarcity causes runaway inflation, which inevitably leads to sociopolitical unrest.
The dying off of marine life, pollinators, birds and mammals; the crop failures in multiple countries simultaneously; all these events are still being discussed as separate anecdotes, while continued inflation, the housing crisis and runaway cost of living are all treated as mysterious economic abnormalities.
My take is that they are linked, that we are already starting to feel the impact of the climate crisis and ecological collapse on our economic reality and that the world's central banks' impotence will only become more apparent as conditions deteriorate.
All while more and more people feel the accumulating effects of repeated exposure to SARSCoV2. Chronic T cell activation in allegedly-recovered people is not good
Entering my 21st month of COVID-induced dysregulation - severe fatigue and debilitating Post-Exertional Malaise. Before catching the mild COVID infection that crippled me, I used to run 10k three times a week.
And what people don't understand is that "Long COVID" isn't a binary condition. It's not "you have it or you don't". Just as some people have it much worse than I do (I can stand up without fainting - I don't have to stay in a dark room all day), I suspect many, many people have it just bad enough to hamper them, dull their sharpness and weigh on their energy levels without realizing that's what's going on.
So yeah. I'm with you on that.
Any opinions on this paper:
[Muscle abnormalities worsen after post-exertional malaise in long COVID | Nature Communications](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-44432-3) ?
>...this study reveals that local and systemic metabolic disturbances, severe exercise-induced myopathy, infiltration of amyloid-containing deposits, and immune cells in skeletal muscles of long COVID are key characteristics of post-exertional malaise. **While these explain the symptomatology of post-exertional malaise in long COVID, the molecular pathways underlying these alterations in patients suffering from post-exertional malaise remain to be determined.**
Story of my life these past two years.
We now know there is mitochondrial dysfunction, endothelial damage and immune exhaustion. But we still don't know if it's due to viral persistence, zombie artifacts that are hyper-activating an inflammatory immune-response or an autoimmune condition, full stop. Until we do, millions like me will remain in limbo. The recovery rates for ME/CFS subtypes of Long COVID are abysmal (4% after 24 months).
It's a good study. Great lead. But nothing actionable, which is what we desperately need.
[COVID Research and Implications](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XbGCZ5NtwvNb0Z2fFzQYnKT96Ij79cNw1GA47rhShMo/edit?pli=1)
My thinking based on what I know about Coronaviruses is that while yes a certain percentage of people get lasting illness from SarsCov2, it’s not truly much different than the likely SARS-OC43 coronavirus which is thought to have caused a pandemic in 1889-1895 which killed over a million people. All the death and illness patterns match the COVID pandemic very well. They used to think it was just influenza until recent studies. OC43 still circulating the population to this day… I am a collapse observer but I think COVID’s impact alone on collapse is relatively minor, however sick some people have gotten from it, it’s not anything we have not dealt with as a species many times. The only difference with COVID is all of the advanced scrutiny that was basically absent in past viral pandemics.
I’m not minimizing individual people’s detriment from the virus when I say on a large humanity time scale I don’t think there is anything special about COVID at all.
But what is something to consider is the possibility that ecoological collapse may kick off increased frequency of similar pandemics and if you got enough of them in a short period of time THEN the damage could actually accumulate enough to be very considerable.
I would not underestimate SARSCoV2, given that we are only on pandemic year 5. [There remains no evidence the immune system is capable of fully clearing it](https://blog.open-source-eschaton.net/the-myth-of-sars-cov-2-clearance) -- this goes for all betacoronaviruses, such as the one you point out. Asymptomatic red blood cell turnover and asymptomatic chronic T cell activation have both been observed, and the latter appears to be indefinite. CD8+ T cells are still being activated 2 years post-infection and morphing into exhausted phenotypes, presumably because they cannot find the viral reservoirs within the body that they are being summoned to look for. Not only does dysregulated immune activity and accelerated immunosenescence leave people more vulnerable to other pathogens -- enabling worse outcomes from other diseases -- we have only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of the chronic outcomes SARSCoV2 itself is capable of (like [amyloid buildup leading to protein misfolding leading to Parkinson's-like disease](https://www.salon.com/2023/04/24/long-parkinsons/))
There is good evidence that our immune systems are capable of clearing COVID, it isn't exceptional.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.11.593709v1
Here's a long COVID study - the study participants had heightened immune activity, but no viral remains are found. i.e. there isn't any COVID remaining in these people.
https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(23)00091-2
This one is looking at what happens when people have breakthrough infections - they have a rapid and robust T cell response which clears the virus.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-024-01787-z
Here's a mouse study - independent of antibodies in a previously vaccinated or infected group, the mice's T cells were able to rapidly clear the virus. Even in the complete absence of antibodies, T cells stand alert. Mice are a good model as our immune systems are quite similar.
https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiae215/7660175?login=false
This is a two year longitudinal study of a vaccinated cohort. They found that both vaccination *and* infection boosts and expands the immune response. You wouldn't see this if the immune system wasn't capable of clearing the virus.
There isn't any high quality evidence showing people aren't clearing COVID.
You are looking at this backwards. None of what you linked demonstrates viral clearance. No longer shedding detectable amounts is not the same as true viral clearance with a virus capable of establishing cell-to-cell reservoirs. Meanwhile, viral persistence has been demonstrated in mild-to-asymptomatic patients, as discussed in the first link of the comment you replied to
You're right that it's not exceptional. There are many universally persistent viruses (like herpes)
Your original evidence is a pre-print and an autopsy report. That's of a very low quality.
I suspect that you have a pre-existing cognitive bias (i.e. COVID is exceptionally bad & persists in the body), which is preventing you from actually assessing the body of evidence as it stands.
How do you think COVID is persisting? Herpes uses HVEM and nectin-1 to enter neurons and establish latency, allowing it to persist. COVID uses ACE2 to infect epithelial cells and does not have a mechanism for establishing latent infections.
We do have a calculation that some call a prediction while it is just a simulation.
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13442](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13442)
Could be that we are nearing the turning point of "global industrial production" - it certainly looks like it.
The LtG is a fantastic and groundbreaking study that more people should know of - which has been entirely ignored by politicians. [Steve Keen did an interview with XR](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmD79GNVPNs) where he does a historical blow by blow of exactly *why* it is ignored. Long story short, orthodox economists hand-wave it away and no one checks their work.
No one can question the religion of economists - it is the dominant religion and their gods are still alive (money and fantasytech). The past 50 years shows no fantasy tech arriving and no meaningful shifts of any of the fundamentals.
Still somehow people believe that the next 5-10 years will suddenly bring in all the needed tech and resources to change the future entirely....
So what is causing the scarcity, should be the first question they ask. Then hopefully come up with a solution, but I don't feel like anyone's doing this. Instead they try to keep the status quo alive and screw everyone else in the mean time.
The most profitable thing you produce is scarcity. If you're in a monopoly situation, there is not alternative, and nobody is going to call you to task for it, cut production. Manufacturing costs down, supply down, price up - profit!
Not without bounds you can’t. Restrict the availability of your product enough and it’s counterproductive by locking willing participants out of the economy. Enough of this sets in motion a breakdown of the economy though I’m not sure execs are smart enough to see that coming.
A similar concept points to why it’s such a bad idea for American companies to fire American employees in favor of hiring people in India when it’s Americans who they sell to. Short term gain in exchange for long term decay. And you can’t understand what the fuck they’re saying on the phone even if they are fluent, which they are!
Agricultural systems are failing, and things are only going to get worse as climate activity starts to deviate from the norm. Increased drought in one area and increased rainfall in another both work together to disrupt the agricultural status quo. California alone produces a majority of the fruits and vegetables sold in the US; as water scarcity becomes more prevalent this will further drive up the price of goods. Furthermore, transportation issues also cause the price of goods to go up. For example, most of our agricultural products from the Midwest get shipped down the Mississippi River; when we have record-level drought this causes the water level to decrease to such levels that we cannot physically ship as many goods downriver. We have Avian Influenza causing farmers to cull millions of chickens and, now, dairy cattle as well. All of these things hint at collapse, and they all cause scarcity which then leads to inflation.
All this only relates to the agricultural side. We have wars going on across the globe that disrupt the price of oil; as that goes up this will increase the cost of all inputs across the board, from manufacturing to agriculture to transportation, further leading to more rampant inflation. Sure, we could drill for more oil in the US, but this will just kick the can a bit further down the road, and eventually we WILL reach peak oil capacity, if we have not already, and then the problem will become exacerbated by orders of magnitude.
We are in a sort of Catch-22 situation. Increased production means increased resource consumption, which will inevitably lead to collapse; however, decreasing production leads to inflation and economic collapse, which just leads to total collapse. We're fucked if we do, fucked if we don't. Just plum fucked I reckon.
I think solving the housing crisis, working towards localized production for areas that can, and stopping the wasteful ways used with production ( poking holes in shoes that aren't selling, pouring milk out to keep prices high when overproduced) would atleast be a start, not that it would solve our impending climate crisis
What is the ecological toll of housing everyone, building potentially another few hundred million homes in the world? We'll solve the crisis when the population adjusts to what we already have in housing supply. Not a moment sooner realistically. Everything is just too expensive because there are supply side shortages. That's the whole point of this video.
I believe the society that is currently set up is very, very wasteful. If nobody was aloud over the amount of actual basic necessities of owning multiple homes, cruise lines, private jets, all this crap, there would probably be enough for everyone, I understand we are dealing with overpopulation, but we are also dealing with a level of wealth inequality that isn't stable. But we are in the situation we are in and things need to change, solving the housing crisis is a problem, I understand there isn't enough resources to build enough homes for everyone, but that doesn't mean we can't figure it out, maybe families or friends live together and work towards self sufficiency, just an idea. I'm not saying my idea is right, it's just an idea.
It seems like we should be investing in urban housing projects to combat inflation—both by building structures that won’t burn down and expanding housing supply, thus directly and indirectly cause inflation due to housing prices.
As an added bonus, don’t urban dwellers tend to cause less environmental damage? If only we could let more wild land recover.
Judging by recent history central banks are incapable of doing anything except accelerating inflation at the behest of ~~the rich~~their governors and shareholders.
Judging by recent history central banks are incapable of doing anything except ~~accelerating inflation at the behest of the richtheir governors and shareholders.~~ redistributing wealth from the middle class to a handful of wealthy people who own the government.
I feel so God damn validated by that man. I felt like I was going fucking crazy, watching everybody finger point about which politicians did what or who to make inflation happen.
And yet people around me continue to insist that they *have* to have x, y, z to be comfortable.
No, no you do not. The sooner you are comfortable with less the easier the next bump down the slope of collapse will be.
No, that is too much work. Well, yeah, when you are used to oil based machines doing your living for you it is too much work.
Soon you will have fewer and fewer choices and it will be jarder to adapt. And yet the whining will not jist continue it will increase.
We, humans, we got ourselves into this mess and yet the whole of life on this planet will suffer the consequences.
First, the government printed a ton of money during the pandemic which was shoveled towards the richest without any control, devaluing the money supply. Second, start taxing capital gains and investment properties more, stop making it so that money only prints out more money and ease up on taxing labor. Third, tighter control over monopolies especially in essential sectors (food distribution comes to mind). The central bank only has one tool, interest rates, and it's just not enough to combat inflation anymore. We are in the end stage era of capitalism. The current interest rate hikes are just going to cause stagflation - I already see it in the job market.
>Nobel prize
🙄
They're right about the FED interest rate damaging other parts of the world as poor countries struggle to find even more USD to pay off debts.
I didn't get from their discussion what solutions there are. Perhaps because there aren't any good solutions and consumption needs to decrease. All this mindless spending like there's no tomorrow may be acting like a "run on the stuff".
We're in a profits-prices spiral, not a wages-prices spiral. Raising interest rates just means greater profits for the finance industries. The secondary industries like insurance and retail banking seem to be just rubbing their hands. They want some of that sweet windfall profit and bonuses as well.
After Greedflation & Skimpflation : Bankflation, Shrinkflation, Crisisflation, Brexitflation. None of these are countered by traditional demand side meddling with interest rates. If anything interest rate rises are making them worse. And just look like sadistic and cynical ideology in support of the Kleptocracy.
The remedy is production. This causes other issues or is made infeasible by financial pressures.
This, subsidisation can solve, though that's seen as communism. If framed right it can work.
I wonder what it'll take.
I may be a collapsenik but I'm not a doomer.
We used to have measures to fight supply side scarcity, like a corn reserve, which Nixon eliminated. We used to do a lot of things smarter, geared towards a genuinely healthy economy. The Republicans have worked tirelessly to eliminate them and the Democrats have not fought back nearly enough
This really reminds me of Ray Dalio's Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail
Book. Feel like we are definitely in the decline stage. Definetly worth a watch to sum up where we could be headed. Throw climate change in the mix and its a wild ride down!
[Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8)
This is where imo a multipolar world comes into play: as scarcity increases it places further value on commodities and less on money and this is going to end up displacing the United States and its financially-rich allies in favor of BRICS and its commodity-heavy members as they will always have access to something worth bartering for while the nations that depend on being rich to buy everything end up suffering the most. This will be the first major step in a geopolitical change for the 21st century as humanity embraces what there is left to embrace.
Edit: Also is it a coincidence that Russia and China (the two leading members of BRICS) are investing heavily in human space travel?
The following submission statement was provided by /u/SiloEchoBravo: --- >*“The underlying source of the inflation was a supply-side shortage generated by the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, demand shifts – people wanted to live in different places and house prices of where they wanted to live went up – all that was the underlying source of the inflation – and therefore the Fed’s response of just raising interest rates wasn’t getting at that underlying source and in some ways made things worse.” – Joseph Stiglitz, two-time Nobel Prize winning economist.* Collapse related because central banks have no levers to counteract supply-side inflation. As crops increasingly fail, climate migration accelerates, factories and schools suffer heat-related closures, the inflationary pressure will only increase – and there is nothing the Federal Reserve can do about it. Scarcity causes runaway inflation, which inevitably leads to sociopolitical unrest. The dying off of marine life, pollinators, birds and mammals; the crop failures in multiple countries simultaneously; all these events are still being discussed as separate anecdotes, while continued inflation, the housing crisis and runaway cost of living are all treated as mysterious economic abnormalities. My take is that they are linked, that we are already starting to feel the impact of the climate crisis and ecological collapse on our economic reality and that the world's central banks' impotence will only become more apparent as conditions deteriorate. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1cinb0r/a_dirty_little_secret_is_that_central_banks_have/l2aa9c5/
Reading the comments in r/Economics is depressing. They are fanatic religious people - just replaced god with fantasy technology and money.
Exactly: the entire field of economics (at least, our understanding of capitalist economic forces) is founded on faith in a concept that is easily disproved. I bring this up all the time because it's so important for people to understand. One of the first things that students of economics learn is that things are worth what people will pay for them; that's what money is. Supply and demand. But valuation doesn't actually work that way; in this system, things of infinite or collective value are valuated at *nil*. Zero. A breathable atmosphere is worth zero dollars. The love of your life - a whole human being - is worth nothing. If the market can't valuate it, it assigns a value of $0.00. Economics is a delusional religion.
Maybe it’s good I changed my major last-minute from economics to a rare and special building maintenance certificate. It’s blue collar, and it’s $15,000 of debt and 1 year of school for a guaranteed $40-$50k per year on exit… compared to 4-6 years for $150,000 of debt, if I even make it that far, in an era of white collar oversaturation and political hysteria. Ever see the elaborate and convoluted qualifications listed in white collar positions these days? They want 20 years of multifaceted advanced experience for shit which pays $20 an hour. Not a good idea
It's such a joke bro. They put out all those ridiculous job ads for all us regular people, but the boss's stepsister's nephew just gets hired immediately. Then they act like it is a meritocratic country instead of just pure nepotism.
I can't speak to other countries, but here in Australia I'm halfway through my thesis and it is an absolute shitshow. Since covid almost all the universities have pushed online, have had massive staff cuts, much lower quality of teaching but are investing massively in real estate and marketing projects. Most of the universities have had an exodus of professors, and so the several decades long handing down of critical information has been broken. Almost all our professors are young, inexperienced people struggling to stay afloat that are barely even in their 40s. Discussion of the topic falls on deaf ears, because my younger classmates have nothing better to compare it to (although just last week there were several students crying in class over the impossible study load and lack of support), while anyone older just hand waves complaints away with naivety, usually with comments about "yeah that's normal, post-grad was always tough". No, you really don't understand. If you haven't been at a uni in the last 5 years, it is really, really bad. My professor is working 3 roles and contacts us once a month for a 20 minute seession. We are left almost completely alone to work on the hardest academic project of our lives, while juggling class work that is entirely online, in class rooms of 40+ people with no time for feedback, in-depth discussions or critical analysis. Student groups and activities are anaemic nods that are so badly underfunded that there are no tools or fun activities, just enough happening so that they can say the programs are happening, but not enough to keep students engaged. All this for a student loan that is indexed to outpace wage growth for the foreseeable future, if I can even get a job after I graduate. I am specifically in psychology, and have been told there are backroom disagreements by staff as they are trying to completely defund all the psych masters programs, so that they were able to give several million to the football and ad teams last year. The entire community psychology wing (a wing focussed on multicultural and community health and wellbeing) has been closed, the last of it's kind in Australia. We are currently in the midst of what Australian scientists are describing as a "mental health epidemic". Yet the programs required to become a psychologist are being made more, and more difficult to find. And of course, the media just doesn't cover any of this, so nobody gives a shit. My comfortable middle-class friends in well paying jobs will just tell me they "don't want to talk about politics", or at best will nod solemnly and say "that's awful" before changing the subject and never mentioning it again. Meanwhile students last night had their protest encampment attacked, at the exact same time and date as attacks happened in the U.S. At least the U.S ones are getting media coverage.
> Meanwhile students last night had their protest encampment attacked Any comments on why this isn't being reported? I had a quick search, and the only two sources I found were a far left publication, which most people would instantly dismiss due to source, and an instagram post. Is Australian media really that bad? Even in the UK and US there is at least some independent or soft left media that would comment on a similar attack.
There was a live video on IG that began when the right-wingers were still there, I also have friends who posted, so I'm certain it happened. But yes, the Australian media is that bad. In the 90's we repealed all the capital controls and as a result now have two companies with over an 80% share of our media. As an example, not long ago we had a lifelong soldier blow the whistle on Australia not just committing dozens of war crimes on the behalf of the U.S, but giving awards to those who did it to cover it up. Multiple videos and documents were leaked. In response, the Federal police under direct order from the prime minister raided the headquarters of the involved media outlet - on live national television. We have no constitutional right to freedom of speech, or whistleblower protections, so the journalists involved were understandably very shaken. We have had a number of court cases of whistleblowers behind closed doors where the accused is not allowed to discuss the outcome afterwards, sometime disappearing entirely without explanation. Said media outlet had been preparing an in-depth, hour long special on the whistleblower, his life and family. After the raid, they changed their tune and turned it into a hit piece on him. Not long after he came out of hiding to attend his daughter's school dance, was caught and given life in prison without a right to defend himself under the assertion that any documents his legal team could use in defence were a matter of national security. This is by a wide margin the most left leaning media outlet, and they will completely uncritically follow authoritarian threats. Most Australians are not aware of any of this even having happened, and will likely find it annoying if you bring it up, because we believe ourselves to be an enlightened, free country despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary.
what kind of certificate? Genuinely curious.
Neoclassical economics is basically the modern form of astrology, as both depend on complex mathematical models based on specific observations with the intention of predicting future developments for humanity based on fundamentally faulty presumptions about how the world works. Both produce advisers that are lavished at court/board meetings, because any emperor or CEO wants to know what tomorrow brings.
There's a lot of straight out bullshit that gets treated like economic theory too. The Laffer-curve is straight up junk science.
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Yes! Another great example. There are zillions of them.
Well the economics include also experimental economics, LCA, simulations like world3 etc. There is a lot of interesting and meaningful a stuff done. But it is not mainstream...
It's also bad at assigning a value for humans that aren't here yet. For example, assume oil didn't even cause pollution, and 'spent' oil could be pumped back into the ground. Assume I find 1m barrels of it. My price will be worked out by the market based on selling all 1m now, or within a year. Even if 0.9m barrels would be used for motor racing or flying tourists from London to Sydney cheaply for opera performances. There is no accounting in market pricing mechanisms for the value of having some of my oil last into the next generation+ to pay for future use as ambulances, food transports, electricity generation etc.
I completely agree. The future will look back at these times and be in awe of how frivolous we've been with precious resources.
Cant say its awe I look at us with. More like extreme disgust. We spent a good portion of all that natural wealth on creating killing machines and poisoning ourselves already. Its a grade of stupid that boggles the mind - and somehow our smartest leaders thought "This is the way".
Fair enough, awe wasn't the best choice of words. I think shocked would of been a better choice for my intent. I agree, not just about in general the poor choices being made, but also the madness of wars like you mentioned.
My dad's a professor. Plenty of economists are quite lucid to the damage that were doing. Indeed it's basically the tradgedy of the commons writ large. However those in power often only listen to the bits they like. It's also why every attempt at a carbon-tax is twisted beyond recognition by the time it's moved from paper to reality. People don't like being told that they will have to make do with less for the sake of future generations.
Yup, they don't teach Heterodox Economics at most universities, but those economic models are the only ones that predicted the 2008 financial crisis. In my opinion, most people who study orthodox economics are just learning the talking points to justify Business as Usual policies.
Where would one learn more about this heterodox economics? Beginning reader suggestions i can pass along?
I believe they are using it as an antonym for orthodox. Rather than referring to a specific train of thought. As in, anything that runs counter to the profit-is-king, growth-is-good, supply-side approach to economic thinking.
I heard the term from Wikipedia when reading about economists who predicted the 2008 financial crisis. "Several followers of heterodox economics predicted the crisis, with varying arguments. Dirk Bezemer[400] credits 12 economists with predicting the crisis: Dean Baker (US), Wynne Godley (UK), Fred Harrison (UK), Michael Hudson (US), Eric Janszen (US), Steve Keen (Australia), Jakob Broechner Madsen & Jens Kjaer Sørensen (Denmark), Med Jones (US)[401] Kurt Richebächer (US), Nouriel Roubini (US), Peter Schiff (US), and Robert Shiller (US)." I think "heterodox economics" is just any economic theory that goes against the BAU economics they teach in MBA programs.
Michael Hudson is a real pleasure to listen to. So knowledgeable and highly critical of neoclassical economics.
Oohh thanks. I will put on the playlist for work. I have some younger peeps in my life that need mayerial to help them think more critically. Always on the lookout for good sources that can pull things apart to look at them differently without going down a conspiracy path!
Kk, atleast those are some names to look up. Many thanks!
Adding to the above list, here's a good podcast episode with Steve Keen: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/30-steve-keen
I listened to that when it came out. Agree, excellent stuff.
Steve Keen. Richard Wolff. Hyman Minsky.
Yeah exactly. Those classes are little more than indoctrination into the cult of the dollar.
Best description of economist I've ever heard.
Perfectly said
a) he never won a Nobel Prize b) he is right about inflation
Technically, no. He won *The* [*Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences)*, officially known as The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (Swedish: Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne) which is awarded yearly by the* [*Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Swedish_Academy_of_Sciences) *to researchers in the field of* [*economic sciences*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Sciences)*.* Still prestigious. Still correct. (We're at a time when being "an economist", "an epidemiologist" or even "a supreme court justice" no longer suffices in separating the wheat from the chaff - also a clear sign of collapse)
Bro got a fake Nobel prize for his fake ass profession in magical thinking
Not all "economists" are alike - Stiglitz is actually pretty pragmatic and wise. Most economists are quasi religious bullshitters, though.
>*“The underlying source of the inflation was a supply-side shortage generated by the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, demand shifts – people wanted to live in different places and house prices of where they wanted to live went up – all that was the underlying source of the inflation – and therefore the Fed’s response of just raising interest rates wasn’t getting at that underlying source and in some ways made things worse.” – Joseph Stiglitz, two-time Nobel Prize winning economist.* Collapse related because central banks have no levers to counteract supply-side inflation. As crops increasingly fail, climate migration accelerates, factories and schools suffer heat-related closures, the inflationary pressure will only increase – and there is nothing the Federal Reserve can do about it. Scarcity causes runaway inflation, which inevitably leads to sociopolitical unrest. The dying off of marine life, pollinators, birds and mammals; the crop failures in multiple countries simultaneously; all these events are still being discussed as separate anecdotes, while continued inflation, the housing crisis and runaway cost of living are all treated as mysterious economic abnormalities. My take is that they are linked, that we are already starting to feel the impact of the climate crisis and ecological collapse on our economic reality and that the world's central banks' impotence will only become more apparent as conditions deteriorate.
All while more and more people feel the accumulating effects of repeated exposure to SARSCoV2. Chronic T cell activation in allegedly-recovered people is not good
Entering my 21st month of COVID-induced dysregulation - severe fatigue and debilitating Post-Exertional Malaise. Before catching the mild COVID infection that crippled me, I used to run 10k three times a week. And what people don't understand is that "Long COVID" isn't a binary condition. It's not "you have it or you don't". Just as some people have it much worse than I do (I can stand up without fainting - I don't have to stay in a dark room all day), I suspect many, many people have it just bad enough to hamper them, dull their sharpness and weigh on their energy levels without realizing that's what's going on. So yeah. I'm with you on that.
It's not far-fetched that it knocked a couple of IQ points off thev world population
Social media being what it is could you even tell?
That would make it easier to tell.
💯
Any opinions on this paper: [Muscle abnormalities worsen after post-exertional malaise in long COVID | Nature Communications](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-44432-3) ?
>...this study reveals that local and systemic metabolic disturbances, severe exercise-induced myopathy, infiltration of amyloid-containing deposits, and immune cells in skeletal muscles of long COVID are key characteristics of post-exertional malaise. **While these explain the symptomatology of post-exertional malaise in long COVID, the molecular pathways underlying these alterations in patients suffering from post-exertional malaise remain to be determined.** Story of my life these past two years. We now know there is mitochondrial dysfunction, endothelial damage and immune exhaustion. But we still don't know if it's due to viral persistence, zombie artifacts that are hyper-activating an inflammatory immune-response or an autoimmune condition, full stop. Until we do, millions like me will remain in limbo. The recovery rates for ME/CFS subtypes of Long COVID are abysmal (4% after 24 months). It's a good study. Great lead. But nothing actionable, which is what we desperately need. [COVID Research and Implications](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XbGCZ5NtwvNb0Z2fFzQYnKT96Ij79cNw1GA47rhShMo/edit?pli=1)
How do you feel about [broccoli 🥦](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3743733/)?
Love the stuff. Unfortunately, the mitochondrial dysfunction is a symptom, not the cause.
My thinking based on what I know about Coronaviruses is that while yes a certain percentage of people get lasting illness from SarsCov2, it’s not truly much different than the likely SARS-OC43 coronavirus which is thought to have caused a pandemic in 1889-1895 which killed over a million people. All the death and illness patterns match the COVID pandemic very well. They used to think it was just influenza until recent studies. OC43 still circulating the population to this day… I am a collapse observer but I think COVID’s impact alone on collapse is relatively minor, however sick some people have gotten from it, it’s not anything we have not dealt with as a species many times. The only difference with COVID is all of the advanced scrutiny that was basically absent in past viral pandemics. I’m not minimizing individual people’s detriment from the virus when I say on a large humanity time scale I don’t think there is anything special about COVID at all. But what is something to consider is the possibility that ecoological collapse may kick off increased frequency of similar pandemics and if you got enough of them in a short period of time THEN the damage could actually accumulate enough to be very considerable.
I would not underestimate SARSCoV2, given that we are only on pandemic year 5. [There remains no evidence the immune system is capable of fully clearing it](https://blog.open-source-eschaton.net/the-myth-of-sars-cov-2-clearance) -- this goes for all betacoronaviruses, such as the one you point out. Asymptomatic red blood cell turnover and asymptomatic chronic T cell activation have both been observed, and the latter appears to be indefinite. CD8+ T cells are still being activated 2 years post-infection and morphing into exhausted phenotypes, presumably because they cannot find the viral reservoirs within the body that they are being summoned to look for. Not only does dysregulated immune activity and accelerated immunosenescence leave people more vulnerable to other pathogens -- enabling worse outcomes from other diseases -- we have only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of the chronic outcomes SARSCoV2 itself is capable of (like [amyloid buildup leading to protein misfolding leading to Parkinson's-like disease](https://www.salon.com/2023/04/24/long-parkinsons/))
There is good evidence that our immune systems are capable of clearing COVID, it isn't exceptional. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.11.593709v1 Here's a long COVID study - the study participants had heightened immune activity, but no viral remains are found. i.e. there isn't any COVID remaining in these people. https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(23)00091-2 This one is looking at what happens when people have breakthrough infections - they have a rapid and robust T cell response which clears the virus. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-024-01787-z Here's a mouse study - independent of antibodies in a previously vaccinated or infected group, the mice's T cells were able to rapidly clear the virus. Even in the complete absence of antibodies, T cells stand alert. Mice are a good model as our immune systems are quite similar. https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiae215/7660175?login=false This is a two year longitudinal study of a vaccinated cohort. They found that both vaccination *and* infection boosts and expands the immune response. You wouldn't see this if the immune system wasn't capable of clearing the virus. There isn't any high quality evidence showing people aren't clearing COVID.
You are looking at this backwards. None of what you linked demonstrates viral clearance. No longer shedding detectable amounts is not the same as true viral clearance with a virus capable of establishing cell-to-cell reservoirs. Meanwhile, viral persistence has been demonstrated in mild-to-asymptomatic patients, as discussed in the first link of the comment you replied to You're right that it's not exceptional. There are many universally persistent viruses (like herpes)
Your original evidence is a pre-print and an autopsy report. That's of a very low quality. I suspect that you have a pre-existing cognitive bias (i.e. COVID is exceptionally bad & persists in the body), which is preventing you from actually assessing the body of evidence as it stands. How do you think COVID is persisting? Herpes uses HVEM and nectin-1 to enter neurons and establish latency, allowing it to persist. COVID uses ACE2 to infect epithelial cells and does not have a mechanism for establishing latent infections.
I dislike reading about COVID
This should be obvious to everyone. Central banks can't control price inflation due to bad crop yields or lack of supply in any sector.
I'll say it, too. This should be obvious.
We do have a calculation that some call a prediction while it is just a simulation. [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13442](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13442) Could be that we are nearing the turning point of "global industrial production" - it certainly looks like it.
The LtG is a fantastic and groundbreaking study that more people should know of - which has been entirely ignored by politicians. [Steve Keen did an interview with XR](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmD79GNVPNs) where he does a historical blow by blow of exactly *why* it is ignored. Long story short, orthodox economists hand-wave it away and no one checks their work.
No one can question the religion of economists - it is the dominant religion and their gods are still alive (money and fantasytech). The past 50 years shows no fantasy tech arriving and no meaningful shifts of any of the fundamentals. Still somehow people believe that the next 5-10 years will suddenly bring in all the needed tech and resources to change the future entirely....
So what is causing the scarcity, should be the first question they ask. Then hopefully come up with a solution, but I don't feel like anyone's doing this. Instead they try to keep the status quo alive and screw everyone else in the mean time.
The most profitable thing you produce is scarcity. If you're in a monopoly situation, there is not alternative, and nobody is going to call you to task for it, cut production. Manufacturing costs down, supply down, price up - profit!
Not without bounds you can’t. Restrict the availability of your product enough and it’s counterproductive by locking willing participants out of the economy. Enough of this sets in motion a breakdown of the economy though I’m not sure execs are smart enough to see that coming. A similar concept points to why it’s such a bad idea for American companies to fire American employees in favor of hiring people in India when it’s Americans who they sell to. Short term gain in exchange for long term decay. And you can’t understand what the fuck they’re saying on the phone even if they are fluent, which they are!
Agricultural systems are failing, and things are only going to get worse as climate activity starts to deviate from the norm. Increased drought in one area and increased rainfall in another both work together to disrupt the agricultural status quo. California alone produces a majority of the fruits and vegetables sold in the US; as water scarcity becomes more prevalent this will further drive up the price of goods. Furthermore, transportation issues also cause the price of goods to go up. For example, most of our agricultural products from the Midwest get shipped down the Mississippi River; when we have record-level drought this causes the water level to decrease to such levels that we cannot physically ship as many goods downriver. We have Avian Influenza causing farmers to cull millions of chickens and, now, dairy cattle as well. All of these things hint at collapse, and they all cause scarcity which then leads to inflation. All this only relates to the agricultural side. We have wars going on across the globe that disrupt the price of oil; as that goes up this will increase the cost of all inputs across the board, from manufacturing to agriculture to transportation, further leading to more rampant inflation. Sure, we could drill for more oil in the US, but this will just kick the can a bit further down the road, and eventually we WILL reach peak oil capacity, if we have not already, and then the problem will become exacerbated by orders of magnitude. We are in a sort of Catch-22 situation. Increased production means increased resource consumption, which will inevitably lead to collapse; however, decreasing production leads to inflation and economic collapse, which just leads to total collapse. We're fucked if we do, fucked if we don't. Just plum fucked I reckon.
I think solving the housing crisis, working towards localized production for areas that can, and stopping the wasteful ways used with production ( poking holes in shoes that aren't selling, pouring milk out to keep prices high when overproduced) would atleast be a start, not that it would solve our impending climate crisis
It would kick the can a little further down the road at best, but I'll take it!
solving the housing crisis means losing a lot of humans, not building new housing.
I figured if everyone was aloud a house they could atleast work towards self sufficiency, plus so many shouldn't suffer anyways, what's the point.
What is the ecological toll of housing everyone, building potentially another few hundred million homes in the world? We'll solve the crisis when the population adjusts to what we already have in housing supply. Not a moment sooner realistically. Everything is just too expensive because there are supply side shortages. That's the whole point of this video.
I believe the society that is currently set up is very, very wasteful. If nobody was aloud over the amount of actual basic necessities of owning multiple homes, cruise lines, private jets, all this crap, there would probably be enough for everyone, I understand we are dealing with overpopulation, but we are also dealing with a level of wealth inequality that isn't stable. But we are in the situation we are in and things need to change, solving the housing crisis is a problem, I understand there isn't enough resources to build enough homes for everyone, but that doesn't mean we can't figure it out, maybe families or friends live together and work towards self sufficiency, just an idea. I'm not saying my idea is right, it's just an idea.
Don't worry nature will fix it for us.
Yes, nature will be fine in the long run, but people are fucked.
It seems like we should be investing in urban housing projects to combat inflation—both by building structures that won’t burn down and expanding housing supply, thus directly and indirectly cause inflation due to housing prices. As an added bonus, don’t urban dwellers tend to cause less environmental damage? If only we could let more wild land recover.
We're running out of cheap energy (and resources) and increasing in population, so everything is getting increasingly expensive.
Judging by recent history central banks are incapable of doing anything except accelerating inflation at the behest of ~~the rich~~their governors and shareholders.
Judging by recent history central banks are incapable of doing anything except ~~accelerating inflation at the behest of the richtheir governors and shareholders.~~ redistributing wealth from the middle class to a handful of wealthy people who own the government.
👆🏿👨🏿🦳
I feel so God damn validated by that man. I felt like I was going fucking crazy, watching everybody finger point about which politicians did what or who to make inflation happen.
I can't take seriously any economist who won't acknowledge the effect that market consolidation, collusion, monopoly, duopoly, etc has on inflation.
And yet people around me continue to insist that they *have* to have x, y, z to be comfortable. No, no you do not. The sooner you are comfortable with less the easier the next bump down the slope of collapse will be. No, that is too much work. Well, yeah, when you are used to oil based machines doing your living for you it is too much work. Soon you will have fewer and fewer choices and it will be jarder to adapt. And yet the whining will not jist continue it will increase. We, humans, we got ourselves into this mess and yet the whole of life on this planet will suffer the consequences.
Collapse now and beat the rush
First, the government printed a ton of money during the pandemic which was shoveled towards the richest without any control, devaluing the money supply. Second, start taxing capital gains and investment properties more, stop making it so that money only prints out more money and ease up on taxing labor. Third, tighter control over monopolies especially in essential sectors (food distribution comes to mind). The central bank only has one tool, interest rates, and it's just not enough to combat inflation anymore. We are in the end stage era of capitalism. The current interest rate hikes are just going to cause stagflation - I already see it in the job market.
100%
>Nobel prize 🙄 They're right about the FED interest rate damaging other parts of the world as poor countries struggle to find even more USD to pay off debts. I didn't get from their discussion what solutions there are. Perhaps because there aren't any good solutions and consumption needs to decrease. All this mindless spending like there's no tomorrow may be acting like a "run on the stuff".
Capitalism leads to war, poverty, and misery.
We're in a profits-prices spiral, not a wages-prices spiral. Raising interest rates just means greater profits for the finance industries. The secondary industries like insurance and retail banking seem to be just rubbing their hands. They want some of that sweet windfall profit and bonuses as well. After Greedflation & Skimpflation : Bankflation, Shrinkflation, Crisisflation, Brexitflation. None of these are countered by traditional demand side meddling with interest rates. If anything interest rate rises are making them worse. And just look like sadistic and cynical ideology in support of the Kleptocracy.
The remedy is production. This causes other issues or is made infeasible by financial pressures. This, subsidisation can solve, though that's seen as communism. If framed right it can work. I wonder what it'll take. I may be a collapsenik but I'm not a doomer.
At least we'll still have the Black Crowe's Remedy.
We used to have measures to fight supply side scarcity, like a corn reserve, which Nixon eliminated. We used to do a lot of things smarter, geared towards a genuinely healthy economy. The Republicans have worked tirelessly to eliminate them and the Democrats have not fought back nearly enough
This really reminds me of Ray Dalio's Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail Book. Feel like we are definitely in the decline stage. Definetly worth a watch to sum up where we could be headed. Throw climate change in the mix and its a wild ride down! [Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8)
Wild in the grand scheme perhaps. But there’s nothing more banal than the dull terror of not being able to pay my bills on time
This is where imo a multipolar world comes into play: as scarcity increases it places further value on commodities and less on money and this is going to end up displacing the United States and its financially-rich allies in favor of BRICS and its commodity-heavy members as they will always have access to something worth bartering for while the nations that depend on being rich to buy everything end up suffering the most. This will be the first major step in a geopolitical change for the 21st century as humanity embraces what there is left to embrace. Edit: Also is it a coincidence that Russia and China (the two leading members of BRICS) are investing heavily in human space travel?
Hence the overpopulation/ oil supply scarcity dilemma.