Doing God’s Dirty Work

 

The world’s citizens are waking up to the realization that the Coronavirus- SARS Covid-19, isn’t going to magically go away. This is disappointing because so many twilight moderns have become true believers in the dark arts like their slovenly, flea-ridden ancestors in medieval Europe. Prior to the printing press and three-masted sailing ships there was superstition; faith healers, priests and witches. These became obsolete, but not all at once; we (re)learned perspective then close observation, to learn how to see; to understand the nature of reality and then, enlightenment, (literally) ‘let there be light’. Afterward came a revival of classical philosophy and art, of materialism, then (a bastardized) ‘practical’ philosophy of materialism, the quasi-historical dialectic between materialism vs blind faith; then mechanics followed by engineering and now, full circle back to magic as engineering has revealed itself as a kind of schtickish shiny object offering the world little but overpopulation, Facebook and utopian lies. Ethics and honor are blasted hulks, replaced by ‘Realpolitik’ and cynicism; economics offers the ideological-numerological armature of society gone to rot, a kind of rationalizing astrology combined with public relations:

The outbreak is growing: Two of the highest daily tallies in new global cases were reported this week.

The number of coronavirus cases continues to grow globally, with two of the highest tallies in the history of the pandemic recorded this week, driven by outbreaks in Latin America, Africa, South Asia and the United States, which still posts some of the highest counts of new cases.

— New York Times

Brazil ignored the warnings. Now, while other countries fret over a second coronavirus wave, it can’t get past its first.

Carlos Machado, a senior scientist with Brazil’s prestigious Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, wanted the language to be strong. At the request of Rio officials, his team was assembling a list of recommendations. He needed to make clear what would happen if they didn’t immediately impose a complete lockdown.

“It would result,” the team warned in the early May report, “in a human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.”

— Washington Post

A human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions is underway … and an understatement. Are we getting what we deserve? A: Probably. At the very least, we get to hold Mother Nature’s beer while she kicks the crap out of us: Brazil is one of a number of impoverished, poorly managed countries including India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh. These are places lacking basic services; electricity, adequate supplies of clean water or sanitation for billions and little in the way of safe housing for people to ‘social distance’ themselves to. Even in best of times — which these are not — employment for millions is irregular and exploitive. Workplaces are unregulated enterprises offering slave wages requiring constant worker attention or else. Public spaces and transit are overcrowded. Medical services are limited to those who can afford fees. For the rest, care is sparse to non-existent: occasional clinics, faith healers and mystics. The choice many of the world’s workers face is stark: to scratch a desperate living in unsafe conditions, to risk infection and death, or to starve.

Scorecard of Corona virus (Covid-19), Economic Impacts.

COUNTRY TYPE OF GOVERNMENT DISEASE OUTCOME (CURRENT CASES)
TOTAL FUTURE CASES ESTIMATE
TOTAL FUTURE DEATHS ESTIMATE ECONOMIC OUTCOME
CHINA Single-party police state Sporadic outbreaks followed by generalized epidemic as economy breaks down (Unknown <4Mn)
100mn
3mn Trade collapse will lead to exponentially increasing case totals
INDIA Hindu-nationalist/dysfunctional republic Uncontrolled Infections (Unknown)
300-400mn
10-12mn Trade collapse. War vs neighbors & loss of territory
UNITED STATES Corporate plutocracy Sporadic outbreaks followed by generalized epidemic as economy breaks down (>2mn)
70 Mn
2.2mn Long-term deflationary depression w/ >40mn jobs lost
INDONESIA Dysfunctional republic Uncontrolled Infections (Unknown <1mn)
>50mn
1,5mn Trade/Economic collapse, breakup of country
PAKISTAN Theocratic nationalist/dysfunctional republic Uncontrolled Infections (<1mn)
60mn
2mn Trade collapse & depression
BRAZIL Dysfunctional single-party state Uncontrolled Infections (<1Mn)
60mn
1.8mn Collapse of society/military takeover
NIGERIA Dysfunctional Petrostate Uncontrolled Infections (Unknown)
>70mn
2.1mn Economic collapse, return to military government
BANGLADESH Dysfunctional republic Uncontrolled Infections (Unknown)
50mn
2mn Failed state
RUSSIA Single-party police state Uncontrolled Infections (<1mn)
44mn
1.3mn Renewed post-Soviet breakup & loss of territory
MEXICO Petrostate Uncontrolled Infections (Unknown <400K)
40mn
800K Failed state
TOTAL —— —— (<10mn)
944mn
28mn ——

This chart is not scientific or a prediction, it indicates one set of potential outcomes among many. It is likely the case totals and deaths in most countries will be much higher. Assessment is based largely upon number of residents, economic pressures and the establishment habit of framing the epidemic as a kind of economic crisis.

Ten countries are ranked by population, together they are home to 4.5 billion people. Seven of the ten have large slum populations (@ 23 percent). The time range runs from the beginning of the epidemic in 2019 to the point where total case numbers are reduced by herd immunity which is conservatively assumed to be ~30%. Guidance is the great 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’ epidemic that infected about 30 percent of the world population before fading.

Herd immunity is a measurement of the efficiency of disease transmission. Corona and other epidemic viruses require continuous, unbroken access to new human hosts within a specific time frame to survive. Immunity for a group (herd) occurs when a sufficient number of the group develop disease resistance and cannot be reinfected, or else they die, breaking the chain of transmission. This effectively immunizes the entire group as there are too few unexposed individuals – relative to the total – for the disease to propagate. Herd immunity is conventionally understood to occur when 70-90 percent of total vulnerable population has survived infection or have been vaccinated.

The 70-90 percent figure assumes that social- and business interactions leading to disease transmission are evenly distributed. Because interactions tend to be specific to places and groups, because resources are likewise concentrated, because transmission is time sensitive; for all these reasons the distribution of available hosts is uneven. Some places will see the higher percentage of infections (immunity overshoot) while areas and groups might see 20 percent infections or fewer (effective herd immunity).

At un-adjusted 30 percent for these ten countries, their population of 4.5 billion X .30 would mean 1.35 billion infections. Of this group 3 percent would die: 1.35 billion X .03 = 40.5 million deaths. 3 percent fatality rate is assumed due the compounding effect of poverty, the inundation of medical services and generally impaired health of individuals leading up to the epidemic.

If herd immunity is 70 percent for these countries, their population 4.5 billion X .70 would equal 3.15 billion infections with that number X 3 percent mortality = 94+ million deaths.

Because of China’s lower infection rate due to public health strategies and improved material conditions and total cases for these ten countries are suggested as 944 million infections with 28 million deaths, the bulk of cases and deaths in India.

In 1918, herd immunity was 30 percent of a world population of 1.8 billion equaled about 600 million infections, of that number as many as 100 million died. Extrapolated to current population X 4 would equal 2.4 billion infections worldwide and nearly a half-billion deaths. A human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, indeed!

Herd immunity is important because it is at present the only way the virus infections can be reduced to a level where ordinary day-to-day activities can resume. There are no drug treatment alternatives. It is possible, the virus might over time mutate and become less lethal or infectious. Immunization is simply artificially induced herd immunity. So are isolation strategies or quarantines; these are effective but only if they are targeted by way of testing and universal. ‘Lockdowns’ are effective but only if they are of long enough duration for the disease to ‘burn itself out’ by denying the virus access to new hosts.

Governments have generally been unable to respond effectively to the epidemic. Managers tend to concern themselves with the economic well-being of themselves and favored elites while offering non-elites table scraps and/or the knout. The virus confronts managers with a kind of challenge governments are not designed to manage. Success against the virus requires attention being paid to the most vulnerable. The countries that have quashed the outbreak include Vietnam, Taiwan, New Zealand, South Korea and Singapore. These governments haven’t filtered for wealth but for infections. These governments also took rapid and decisive action against the virus threat. China’s response was not particularly rapid but has turned out to be effective. This is less to do with Beijing’s iron-fisted government and social controls, more with a robust public health establishment and a long and painful history of epidemics. In any event, the cost of managing the virus in China — both in money and prestige — has been extreme:

The cost to China output during first 3 months of 2020 is 9.3% of GDP, the first negative output since the opening of the country in the 1970s. China’s trade partners are seeing similar drops in output. (Chart by Trading Economics)

… so extreme that ‘managing’ Corona for another year or so will bankrupt the country, leaving its billion and a half inhabitants with no better defenses than Brazil.

A Chinese material advantage is the replacement of millions slum housing units with new apartments and more-or-less universal access to clean water. This matters, but as the experience of the US indicates, these things by themselves are not sufficient to be proof against the disease. As China’s trade partners endure their own economic crises the ability of Beijing to meet Covid-related costs will deteriorate and outbreaks there seem likely to become more severe over time until herd immunity is achieved.

The Market for Deaths: Failure by Inaction

 

The American Covid strategy can be boiled down to a cynical and largely economic approach: the elderly, immigrants, blacks, low-wage gig economy workers, prisoners and other chum are cast into the fire so as to gain herd immunity for those left over … that, and having the Federal Reserve buy bonds.

The outcome of this non-strategy is the world’s highest national tally of cases and the highest death toll, this in the country with the highest GDP, the greatest wealth by assets, the most advanced medical services (and most costly). It did not have to be this way: Chinese authorities restricted travel to-and-from Wuhan city on the 23d of January. That action by itself irrespective of any noise from the Chinese government should have highlighted the danger. Governments don’t isolate cities or entire regions from the rest of a country unless there is a damned good reason. Washington had only to impose a 14-day quarantine on travelers entering the US and treat those infected … That’s it! The virus would have been isolated in ports of entry and hospitals. The massive and growing case tally, the deaths, the economic damage would have been minimized. But, management needed to act quickly, that was their job … instead, nothing was done for months. There were lies and posturing, distractions for unaware Americans, followed by confusion and shortages of basic items such as face masks.

 

A virus that travels on airplanes as casually as a carry on bag, on container ships, cruise liners, in automobiles and every other means of transport: on surfaces, on our money; how do we keep it at bay? It is everywhere in the world, even Antarctic waters. Where is refuge? How do we respond when the virus responds to ‘reopening the economy’ by expanding exponentially?

 

In a way, none of this is surprising. Administrative dawdling is of a piece with post-Soviet pseudo-libertarian economic dogma: that governments don’t actually need to manage anything, that they must avoid interference in private business; that there is a market for everything including death, that economic forces and laissez faire will sort things out. All this even though the entire rationale is demonstrably false, that externalities and distribution effects are ignored, that costs are costs whether they are the product of managing the disease or the disease itself. Meanwhile, behind the froth and splatter our so-called free markets are quietly nationalized. After all, our poor quadrillionaires need the money!

The framing of the virus has been a construct of economic assumptions and modeling lifted from analysis of money and credit flows within finance. The virus is seen as a kind of ‘money man problem’, a contest between self-interested, rational actors on the road to equilibrium. A denial strategy is to treat unpleasant facts as opinions and assertions and to offer unsubstantiated contrary opinions and assertions. One set of opinions cancels out the others; in the meantime interests making the contrary assertions continue business as usual — getting bailouts — while the various arguments recede into the 24 hour media cycle.

The DC establishment follows the denial strategy exactly. Who can argue and for what? After all, everyone is entitled to an opinion, one is as good as the other, right? The course of illness is shoehorned into the conventional credit cycle narrative: there is a beginning, middle then … happily ever after. There is the run up (blame), the actual (brief) moment of panic then recovery. Within the narrative, markets have ‘priced in’ the virus-related economic costs already and now is time ‘buy the dip’. Our half-hearted gesture toward isolation was simply theater; it was far too brief and with too many exceptions to have a positive longer term effect. Our fortitude fell apart under the weight of boredom. Bottom line is the bottom line: we’ve decided without actually deciding anything to take our beating, throw caution to the wind and get on with things, consequences be damned.

After all, a dollar is a dollar and to that end we all must do God’s dirty work or it will never get done, we’ll never get rich, we’ll never get that new car or the trip to Disney World; goodbye, Grandma, we don’t care.

45 thoughts on “Doing God’s Dirty Work

  1. Ken Barrows

    Prayer, of course, is not enough to resolve our problems. One must also buy (borrow if you don’t have income) copious shares of FAANG stocks. That should be sufficient to keep driving around in circles forever.

  2. Mister Roboto

    The crux of the problem is that what Chris Martenson has christened the “Honey Badger Virus” is much more virulently infectious and much more lethal and vicious for those who are highly susceptible to its physiological depredations, than anything we have ever dealt with in the modern world. We’re fortunate that Covid-19 falls way short of the viciousness of the medieval Black Death, but unfortunate in that it appears to be rather more formidable than even the Spanish Flu.

    We’re probably going to learn the hard way that vastly increased complexity in our economies and societies can end up meaning vastly increased fragility. Yes, the massiveness of industrial-technological society also results in inertia than gives it the ability to withstand a lot of shocks, but for how much longer can this advantage hold out in the face of something like Covid-19?

  3. Mister Roboto

    Also, it’s very possible we could send the virus packing if everybody would just wear a face-mask, but good luck getting USAmericans to universally show that kind of self-discipline and community-mindedness. And countries with a surplus of dirt-poor people such as India and Brazil would need governments willing to distribute masks to all those people, good luck with that also.

  4. peaker

    I don’t get it. For years this blogger and others like Martenson have been on about the fragility of technology. Now, when things are really getting shaky it’s all about a virus. Go figure.

    1. reante

      hi peaker.

      I feel your pain. That’s the beauty of the masking. The conspiratorial among us always knew they would mask peak oil and probably with war. In hindsight war with Iran was a great misdirection play for a viral war of terror untouchable by the war on terror. The non-conspiratorial, nature bats last and virus gets center stage. For the conspiratorial, the trademarked flattening of the curve is elite code for the flattening of the backside of the Hubbert Curve cum Senecan Cliff: the degrowth agenda is not one that can be advertised…yet.; too many old people around with pre-existing conditions of the health and political varieties. Degrowth is a process.

  5. ellenanderson

    This virus leaves me speechless but still alive. The very idea that there is a ‘being’ or ‘thing’ called “The economy” with an existence that is somehow independent of human health is so monstrously stupid that it makes me want to bang my head against a wall.
    Furthermore, I am appalled to discover that the vast majority of anti-establishment voices I have been listening to for the past twelve years (and many of my friends) are just libertarians, crackpots and right wingers. We are paying dearly for banishing Marx and Engels and Luxembourg from public discourse.
    All we have to do to stop this is to wear masks! Not even expensive masks. People all over the world are just stitching them up. What is all of this fuss?
    Thanks for posting Steve. I am so appalled by what is going on that I have been speechless. Thanks for carrying on with your posts in the face of everything. We need to develop an anti-industrial anti-capitalist left wing and fast!

    1. Mister Roboto

      You took the words right the fuck out of my mouth, Ellen. With the exception of the occasional entry on this blog, “The Daily Impact”, and Chris Martenson, I have mostly consigned reading “boomer-doomer” bloggers to the category of “things I did when I was a young man but don’t anymore”.

      PS: I just found out that I can access “The Automatic Earth” again, after not being able to for a long time thanks to my obsolete operating system. I should give them a look-see and find out if they’ve gone all right-wing militia-nutter, too.

      1. ellenanderson

        @MR – I think you will find right wing nutterdom on AE as well.
        Of course it is hard to be a traditional socialist because the whole notion of ‘work’ ‘working class’ in America is so slippery now that all of the factory jobs have gone to China. If the waste based industrial capitalism is incompatible with a future for life on earth then what work are we supposed to do? How to reorganize and decentralize while remaining in solidarity with people all over the world. I guess we need to make less stuff and grow better food and try to make sure that the goal of our political system is to allow humans to have decent shelter and live healthy lives.
        There are young people talking about this stuff for the first time in many decades. Most of them in Brooklyn though. And the Sanders campaign trained some young organizers – just not enough yet. The death of Michael Brooks on Monday was a really tragic loss to the nascent left.
        I have become a big fan of Jacobin Magazine. Here is a link to some lectures on capitalism and socialism that may make some sense. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxlNhP2f0kUIm7ef2Meddadj1rxEtLpBH

  6. ellenanderson

    C’est bien dit, Candide (er I mean Steve.) But reading along with Mauldin and his ilk, I don’t think the fed is really nationalizing sectors of the economy. They may be taking ownership in a very expensive way but what they are really doing is paying a lot for “businesses” so that they can sell them back on the cheap to the few capitalists who have been rendered very rich. That way their losses will be hidden and written off – or so they think. It seems to me that none of the big losses have yet been recognized. The Fed is going to try to hide them.
    The plan, insofar as there is a plan, must to be give the bankers (who are the owners of financial capital and physical resources) control of everything. That is, to further concentrate capital in a few hands. But we suspect that the bankers will not be able to manage everything because the dying capitalist system has become a losing proposition due to the huge problems with finding, storing and using the real stuff. I have no idea how this will work out but it doesn’t look so good to me for the rich. Of course it does not look good for the poor forever. And the bourgeoisie is cooked.
    This grandma is not going anywhere. She is sewing/wearing face masks and growing potatoes. Il faut cultiver notre jardin. I wish there were a better word for degrowth. Decroissance sounds so great in French. Can there even be socialism in a degrowing world? We really need to think about what a left wing response to this could possibly be. I suppose it means giving up cars and trips to Europe with the kids. It means stopping the circulation of capital, forgiving debt and eliminating lending at interest. Try telling that to America, Chapo Trap House and Swampside Chatters!
    Wake up lefties!!!! Keep going Steve.

    1. reante

      hi ellen,

      In the defense of those with whom you are appalled, I will say that they probably believe the virus is manmade and this is another 9/11-type inside job as war cover for financial collapse as was widely predicted, so it’s only natural that they would be opposed to going along with the mass theater, on matter of principle. That’s the simplest explanation.

      As to the Left movement you seek, it’s the elephant in the room. I’ve been peddling the optimistic idea this year, to no avail, that the extreme division in the country is fake march to civil war so as to set the stage for a ‘unity’ government of decent character that everyone can live with. The new democratic party will be socioeconomically populist yet socially conservative and militant yet anti-industrial. It will be both socialist and nationalist out of necessity. For that reason I refer to it as National Socialism, which in the past has referred to itself as the True Left so as to distinguish itself from Marxism. The leader of this movement is the honorable Tulsi Gabbard, the dark horse in white, a fine beast if ever there was one.

  7. ellenanderson

    @reante Tulsi is an impressive woman for sure. Amazingly centered and self possessed. I agree with her anti-war stance but I don’t really know what her economic position is. I supported her with a little money in the primaries. I had hoped she might get the VP slot if Bernie got the nomination. She supported Bernie in 2016 and has now endorsed Joe Biden. She is young still so hope she will evolve.
    I happen to believe that it is important that socialism (or whatever you want to call it) is internationally based. Like it or not, our world is connected. Unless the financial system is changed so that capital cannot circulate all over the world and be pulled away from societies that are trying to take care of their citizens rather than to make profits for the elite, no society will be free to pursue socialism on its own. Also, there is the issue of resource allocation that needs to be done with justice in mind.
    As for the pandemic, you are correct that people don’t trust the government and with good reason. It appears that the federal government has basically no public health system at all and clearly does not care about the people. Except, of course, they want us to go back to work to provide funding for the elites. So they are pushing for a vaccine and are totally surprised when half the population says “You first, not me.” But the clinical evidence for masks is out there for all to see. People are making their own and handing them around and it seems pretty positive. Not if you are a libertarian though! In that case your freedom is under assault! Oh please…

  8. reante

    Tulsi is a closet economic nationalist, by which i mean someone who believes that a nation’s public treasury should have control over it’s money supply. Her biggest political mentor, Dennis Kucinich, published an article in 2017 on ending the Fed. Mr. End the Fed Ron Paul endorsed her for president also. This is why she is popular with white (economic) nationalists.

    Obviously the Fed as we know it is going away along with finance capitalism. As to socialism, when asked if she is a capitalist she replies that capitalism and socialism are just labels and that she believes in a fair economic system. Notably she publicly disagrees with Bernie’s federal jobs guarantee and advocates for UBI instead. Socialism after all is just a highly-regulated form of capitalism instituted so as to minimize economic inequality (unfairness).

    I do believe she will be Biden’s surprise vp pick and then she’ll take over for the addled clown sooner rather than later. She may even get to beat Trump herself in November. Sounds crazy I know but that’s what the crystal ball says. She represents the safest bet for the elites that I can see, as we enter the maelstrom. That bet being that the diametric opposite of themselves will hopefully make people forget all about them now that their racket has run its course. From empire to autarky so help us god. Time to cut the fat.

    I’m out on a limb here but the fat lady ain’t sung yet!

  9. Bachs_bitch

    Hi Steve! Bit late to the comments party but thanks for keeping this blog updated. Unfortunately I have to agree with you that your mortality estimates are very conservative, esp factoring in a ‘second wave’. And my super-secret sources at the WHO tell me their communications department has been streamlined to 3 people, someone’s brother’s 2005 Dell Optiplex and a one-eyed carrier pigeon. You know that feeling in your body when the air pressure starts dropping?

    Partially in light of recent posts, I should point out that fascism is the political expression of a middle class, which otherwise lacks a political expression because it’s economic role is a function of modes of production that lie outside itself. The clerk who moves money around and the engineer who supervises the construction of luxury condos out of cold-rolled steel do not have to directly meet with or manage the people who mine iron, drill oil or spend most of their waking lives near blast furnaces.

    So fascism is what happens when the middle class reaches a sort of traumatic consciousness of its place within industrial civilisation, when that civilisation can no longer afford to create jobs and consumption out of surplus value – extracted from the earth and from billions of people out of sight and mind. By definition, it cannot be a solution to industrialism, because it is a feature of its demise. This ‘traumatic consciousness’ can also be directed towards something other than fascism, but it should be clear by this point that Bernie, Corbyn and Jacobin op-eds are not the way to do that.

    The mere recognition that there are rich and poor, or even that corporations exploit people (any idiot understands that) cannot constitute class consciousness. The “left” has completely mystified the question of class consciousness. They see in every labor strike, in the slightest twitch for reform, examples of proletarianism. “Leftist” scholars have created a cottage industry out of conducting anthropological expeditions into the “white working class”, seeing in every remembered folk song or cultural nuance some profound but hidden nuggets of a uniquely American/English/French/Catalonian working class consciousness. Others find proletarian vision in every joke about the bosses told during coffee breaks. This is not politics of any kind, whatever else it may be.

    My provenance in the champagne-trotskyist lower-middling ranks of the W European bourgeoisie has sickened my Smeagolesque brain unto death with the eldritch revelations of the One Ring, the immortal science of Kierkegaardism-Brechtism. But even I know that there is nothing mystical, elusive or hidden about real working class consciousness. It is the simple awareness that any system that needs to restrict the definition of ‘humanity’ to a favoured class of consumers is a parasitic illusion. “More for us at their expense” is not the same slogan as “liberate humanity.”

  10. Bachs_bitch

    “Tulsi is a closet economic nationalist, by which i mean someone who believes that a nation’s public treasury should have control over it’s money supply.”

    The abiding strategy of the leading capitalist nation (first Britain, now USA) has always been to run current account deficits vis-a-vis their own rivals (in order to industrialise them and open its markets to their more productive/lower unit cost manufacturing goods). Moreover, those deficits were funded by price and income deflation, and free trade -compatible labour conditions imposed upon primary commodity exporting dependencies.

    If the leading capitalist economy resorts to protectionist measures in order to insulate its own market against the goods emanating from either its rivals or emerging economies, whether for domestic employment or balance of payments reasons (or both), then the international monetary system would become unviable, triggering a generalized protectionism + trade warfare which would implode industrial civilisation. This is especially true in the current era of JIT capital and commodity movement. MAGA is an illusion based on nostalgia about another illusion.

    1. reante

      thanks BB.

      I take it ( perhaps wrongly) that you brought up fascism in relation to my musings on National Socialism, because the two have been lumped together in mainstream political discourse in the name of obfuscation (propaganda).

      I so, then I will begin by saying that fascism in my mind, and per Mussolini, should only be used to describe the for-profit corporate mode of production. If we define it we can talk about it.

      Populism is, like fascism, also has been propagandized to death, for elite reasons. The democratic elite intentionally misdefine populism as authoritarianism so as to mask their own financial authoritarianism. Populism is simply structural economic concern for the working class, with the implication being that any given country can by definition only look out for its own working class, hence populism is ultimately a nationalist concern. Populism is anti-elitist.

      So elite fascism would be the moniker assigned to international finance capitalism, or globalism, and populist fascism would be what Mussolini wrote about whereby for-profit corporations be worker-owned cooperatives oriented towards the greater glory of the nation(alism).

      Agreed?

      MAGA is one aspect of a globalist ruse that facilitates the elite transition of their globalist economy to its polar opposite in a national socialist economy, out of necessity, because national socialism has proven to be the most efficient economic system at not collapsing when adequate surpluses become harder to come by.

      MAGA is fake populism advertised as populist (nationalist) fascism, primarily deployed in order to make the globalist-to-nationalist transition due to the limits to globalist growth.

      Bernie’s and BLM’s Marxism is (in the mind of
      the national socialist end) fake socialism deployed in order to make the capitalist to socialist transition. Marxism must be used because national socialism is the political skeleton in the closet and it’s true name must never be uttered. Marxism is fake socialism because it is imperial socialism, and it is anachronistic for the same limits-to-growth reason that is globalism: too much complexity.

      The emergence of national socialism is obviously no panacea, BB. It’s design is to facilitate the ‘populist, ecological’ controlled demolition culture of industrialism.

      Trade warfare cannot exist in the absence of trade thus trade warfare is merely a symptom of the decoupling process. Bilateralism and three- and four-way trade will replace global extraction.

      Regions of industrialism will implode immediately.

  11. ellenanderson

    @bb – too bad that there is so little opportunity to discuss this stuff. I put up a link to a Jacobin youtube presentation that I think you will like.
    I do think that we have to approve of incremental improvements so long as they are not destructive of our ultimate goals. Sometimes I think that the collapse of industrial civilization should be one of those goals sooner rather than later. Other times I don’t think so. The Sanders campaign produced improvements in our political discourse and maybe ultimately will lead to some improvements in public health. Maybe.
    I myself made life choices such that I have had to work for a living though not in a factory. Does that make me working class? Does it make me a peasant or a bourgeois? I could have made other choices unlike many poor people and I probably would have been richer. So who am I and what right do I have to claim a connection to socialism?
    Maybe we need to think more about solidarity and about what class means in a world where the economic system is clearly coming apart. I do think that most jobs suck and that there is nothing noble about identifying with mind numbing labor even if it is at a coop where you are a worker owner. So working less and producing less and consuming less is a worthy goal IMHO. If it leads to collapse, oh well. But, of course, I could easily be slipping into eco-facism?
    It is so easy to hold forth and pontificate.

  12. Bachs_bitch

    Hi Ellen. Fascism/alt-rightism as well as professional “leftism”, and all permutations of them are insta-politics for first world zoomers and my generation (millennials). Class consciousness is here to stay, might as make some money out of it before it reaches boiling point. I’m not equating leftists with reactionaries, just pointing out that the nature of this era, and the nature of the most advertised forms of those movements in this era, renders them anodyne and overall meaningless. First as tragedy then as meme.

    Anyway, I’d say it’s possible to approve of the popular support for (left) reformism while criticising reformism itself, eg that it’s not going to happen because there aren’t new Americas to settle or Asias to plunder. The target shouldn’t be ordinary people drawn to Bernie or whoever. It should be the professional leftist ‘thought-leaders’ and members of the social economy in general, and the politicians attached to that, none of whom can be on the side of radical change because it is not in the their interests, the interests of their class.

    What really annoys me about that type of leftist is the way they both glorify and infantilise the “conservative white working class” to make it look like everyone basically agrees on the important stuff. Except for those damn non-specific trillionaire elites! It’s their job to make those people understand why they are digging their own grave if they listen to the guys or gals telling them “those scary people over there are taking away what we’re willing to give you, peasant”.

    My grandpa knew [famous French populist]’s dad. When he wasn’t (often literally) raping Africa with his buddies, defending the honour of les delicious chocolate plombières, he was beating up students and doing pantomime at Orléanist “remembrance” rituals back home. With the right mass/community organising these people wouldn’t dare venture out into the sun, but good luck with that if leftist leaders can’t even figure out if they disagree with these people for fear of enraging the “working class”! My own material interests in an actual revolution/collapse scenario would probably lie with a sort of centrist-progressive Bonapartism. Still, that doesn’t mean I have to delude myself about why anything less than international brotherhood in an international economy is a deal with the devil.

  13. reante

    I’ve been saying for some months that Black Genocide, the biggest current skeleton in the closet of the liberals and Marxists, will be brought out into the light this year and it will devastate the fake Left and help fuel the rise of National Socialism, the dark horse in white. As I said NS is socially conservative. The non-marxist radical Black Left and the black Christian Right have been voices in the wilderness, and beside themselves over the fact that go -funded Planned Parenthood has been murdering about half of all black children.

    Today Ross Douthat of NYT just wrote a piece about it. A storm is coming. Goodbye old democratic party.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/opinion/abortion-racism-margaret-sanger.amp.html

    Obviously the nyt as we know it will fall, too, as I believe it is still owned by a family of former cotton industry financiers.

  14. reante

    gov-funded, I meant.

    There also been a clear NS pattern forming in the cultural bedrock regarding the numerous unusual supreme court rulings over the last couple months, as well as some lower court rulings. Though I’ve said that NS is socially conservative, above all it is impartial in its egalitarianism, and egalitarianism trumps politics. An example of this is the ‘surprise’ ruling of the other day that firmly placed churches and concerts on equal footing with regard to what we formerly referred to as the constitutional right to assemble. It should be noted that Tulsi’s ecumenical religion, in it’s contemporary American manifest, anyway, extends it’s religious egalitarianism to secularism, Obviously it will be important for secular folks to continue to find some meaning in life minus consumerism, lol.

    Thanks Steve!

  15. ellenanderson

    The right is very strong for sure. That is the main reason why lefties have to be more inclusive and less factional. When you are up the in superstructure of ideas you can fight endlessly about all sorts of issues and enjoy the Cancel Culture that takes revenge even upon long dead perps.
    But the material world has some nasty surprises in store for us. I think that the right wing is much more prepared for them and that the left is in total disarray. ie – most preppers and libertarians are righties at heart and well aware of the possibility of collapse and are getting ready for it every man for himself. The left is hung up on making the industrial workplace more democratic and sharing the wealth. They are not willing to face the likelihood that we can’t have the industrial system and continue to have an earth that supports the lives of humans and animals. They need to think about what that might mean for a “caring” society where the well being of all humans (men and women) may need to be considered in the context of well being for the earth. Lefties can’t just say “I am retreating to my farm with my new young sweetie and my gold and a lot of guns.” So the left needs to set some parameters within which one can be considered “left” or “progressive” and start to work on alternatives.
    As everyone on this site knows, most people can more easily imagine the end of the world than living in a world without carz. And that includes people from the whole political spectrum. We need to consider how we ought to live. It’s really a moral question, isn’t it? But it has to be framed in the light of the real world options which are becoming clearer every day.

    1. Bachs_bitch

      I don’t think most preppers know what subsistence agriculture looks like in a collapse scenario where for ex agricultural subsidies disappear and the tropics aren’t exporting cheap food during winter. I don’t know if Steve considers himself to be a prepper but this kind of rational-holistic approach is not very common at all. Still, there should be more left people starting agro cooperatives. I know some upper middle class folks who have the European equivalent of a back-to-the-land commune. They’re very nice and left/liberal, mostly secular etc. though no less ignorant of the broader forces except vague (warranted) pessimism.

      1. reante

        A hard collapse scenario where agricultural subsidies disappear along with imports, without warning, is unlikely. In the event it did happen, having a mature homestead would be nice assuming it can be defended but the ability to defend oneself in general and get through the first year without commercial inputs is what’s necessary. Subsistence agriculture can be as simple as growing a gallon or two of milk per day per person in the growing season and a pound of meat and a pound of cheese per person per day in winter. Not difficult if you have the land and you’re using it productively which plenty of people out here are. Hunting an elk and a prime male bear loaded with fat in late August would also do it for a family of four. A couple fishing trips ten miles offshore if you get bulk diesel delivered to your house. This is where having one’s diet in line with natural law and not politics becomes important. Stable agriculture is low-input perennial agriculture. The two home staples of that are tree crops and stocked pastureland.

        If you know how to garden and have some fruiting trees too, both of which are not uncommon in the country, your golden. After that first year of standing strong, when the area is mostly emptied out, subsisting in that much larger open space with your seed and breeding stock in tact will be bounteous. There are thousands of acres of filbert orchards within walking and cycling distance of where I live, way more than the remaining population could ever hope to eat.

        Going cold turkey is always better if one has the fortitude and the pre-positioning to do it. A slow collapse is much more problematic.

        After that

  16. ellenanderson

    Has everyone seen Planet Earth? Yes very unkind to Bill McKibbon but overall its assessment of the “alternative energy” deal is correct, I think.

    1. reante

      Planet of the Humans, Michael Moore. Yeah I seen it. Classic Moore, not a lot of attention to detail but I did, like you appreciate his going against the grain of the big ‘alternative’ energy racket.

      When that racket proves once and for all to be unaffordable, I believe NSAM will go to wood gasification once again. The US has the largest productive stand of timber in the world right outside my backdoor and massive forestlands besides. Wood gasification is extremely efficient and clean burning and easily adaptable to the transportation infrastructure, as proven by Germany in the 40s. Not saying everyone gets to convert their car to woodgas!

  17. ellenanderson

    I know a guy with a car that is fueled by wood gas. It does work. Of course running the economy at industrial scale with solar panels will require removal of all those trees.
    Wood gas furnaces (Tarn, I think) are very efficient. If we are thoughtful in North America we might well be able to go back to coppicing and pollarding and get enough wood sustainably to support people. Not, of course, 2.5 people on average living in 3,500SF houses. So these are things that the left needs to talk about.
    Personally I put in a large contra-flow masonry oven nearly 20 years ago along with a traditional underground root cellar. Those technologies are thousands of years old. For the same amount of money (the total of my meager 401K) I could have had a really big off grid solar array. But boy was it ugly and complicated and I could see that it would need maintenance and lots of spare parts. Masonry stoves are beautiful and so are root cellars. They are made by hand by local craftspeople with local materials. They don’t need fixing every year and they should last far longer than solar “farms.”
    I have been told that most of the world is fed by peasant farmers. Don’t know if that is true but at least they have a chance of being able to feed their families. Regenerative agriculture, permaculture, urban farming coops – all these things are alternatives to the end of the world theoretically.
    Absolutely agree that farming is really hard and heartbreaking too. Wait till the vet bills start to come in for the pretty new cows when they get sick. Your choice is to cough up enough $$ to help them pay their vet school loans or sit back and watch your animals suffer and die. In fact farming is all about life and death all of the time. Still, if we are really lucky that is where most of us will have to be headed. And every libertarian for himself is not going to work. Solidarity will work and grandmas will still be useful.
    Fun talking with you guys.

    1. reante

      Fun talking with you too, Ellen with the legendary oven. Hardwood coppicing and pollarding (in mixed pasturelands) is absolutely the key to wood gasification. Hell, it’s the key to any robust woodland management. I have abundant Oregon yellow maple coppice stands. Three years after the Doug fir timber harvest and the maple regrowth is 25ft high and 30ft wide, with some central stems nearing 3in in diameter. The loggers call these trees weeds. Best trees out here by far. Excellent forage, best all-around firewood, super-easy splitting, no splinters, ridiculously vigorous.

      I find there is much more togetherness out here among the good ole country boys than anyone else. The rednecks are the only ones left keeping it real out in the countryside. The land is still in their bones. Open-handed generosity is still in their bones. It’s all about outdoing each other with diy generosity. I am a full month late on butchering a yearling ram in part because wild meat just keeps coming my way. Freezers are getting cleared out for bear and elk season. Milk is going in the other direction.

  18. reante

    I shouldn’t say the rednecks are the only ones still keeping it real out here on the land. The best families of homeschooling evangelicals do a great job of it, too, and the mennonites. Big families of hardworking, disciplined independent producers. Cows goats hayfields timber big tilled gardens and mature orchards, gravity-fed water rights. They really crank it out. How I envy the power of agrarian-hearted religion sometimes. Good friends to have also.

  19. reante

    I don’t care for PV either, Ellen. It just extends the cheating if you ask me. Happy to go non-electric with everyone else when the time comes and generally prepared for it. Did fend off the smart meter and pay a monthly meter reading fee instead so they can’t cut me off quite so easily for having such a loud mouth online, lol.

    Farming IS hard and heartbreaking. Makes you grow up when you learn the hard way, and it turns out there are a lot of ways to learn hard. Losses. Wins and losses. Life and death are equal partners on the farm and that’s what carries the whole thing forward.

  20. ellenanderson

    Independent producers? Capitalism will make short work of them just as they did of all of the family farms many of us came from. I could tell you a very sad story about my German farmer ancestors.
    It’s a romantic picture though, isn’t it? Family farms are really coops in a way aren’t they? Plenty of good farm soils under the tarmacs and the parking lots of America. Shut them down and dig them up and share the land, the work and the profit just the way families do (some of which are headed by females too.)

    1. steve from virginia Post author

      Digging up those parking lots by hand would certainly keep a lot of people employed. As for what’s under: some might be decent but most of developed land is gravel, clay and grit. To prepare the ground for development, topsoil is scraped off and sold to golf course developers and garden centers or left to wash into rivers. What’s left is sculpted with bulldozers and skid-steers then pavement or sod is laid over.

      It’s hard to know where to start with farming as the scale of ‘successful’ farms (those that somehow manage to stay in business w/ commodity crops) is hard to reproduce. In general, the costs of large operations are shoved off onto housing developers who can bear them (farmers borrow using their land as collateral then sell out to developers). Smaller operations tend to feel their way but with loss of 2d jobs (which provide the subsidy for smaller farms) and loss of high paying commercial customers (such as gourmet restaurants) it will be interesting to see how many survive.

  21. reante

    Independent to me means non-commercial. They may sell half or full beefs and five or ten ton of hay they don’t need, extra goat or cow milk and it pretty much all stays in the church body, but they don’t depend on it for income. They’re tradesmen, small business owners. They got mortgages still oftentimes, bankruptcies in their past are not uncommon. The mothers and grandmothers, they’re high quality women and very warm. Teach piano and Latin to the children, the evangelicals do. Farmingwise they got it easy farming stumped, bulldozed, graded ground. We bought cheap, steep raw forestland. Just picked up a single shank subsoiler today on Craigslist, gonna do some pasture ripping on contour and call it keyline farming. Pretty excited at the prospect of improving the soil on our ridges and slopes.

  22. reante

    Who was it who used to argue here years ago about how much fat could be cut from the system? Was it Alan? Somebody else? I agreed in theory at the time but did not think it could be pulled off. I guess the jury is still out.

    It seems to me the number 30 is floating around. I can only pull up three instances of it right now, and two of them — second quarter GDP and oil consumption — are obviously linked. The third being the GOP’s wanting to cap unemployment at 70pc of wages. As for demand destruction the 30mbpd number was thrown around alot in April as being what the world’s producers really needed to agree to cut.

    Since in my mind this is all theater I’m starting to wonder whether they are trying to engineer this stairstep-down at -30pc of peak, with last quarter being the official notice. It would be a big bold step. When looking at the gargantuan waste-bssed US economy, obviously it has more than 30pc fat that it can cut and survive as an industrialized nation if it plays its political cards right, so there’s some margin for error. Developing nations are going to have to largely deindustrialize into chaos here pretty soon.

    Any other 30s out there? Does it seem like the right number? Or is there another number that’s busy forming a pattern?

  23. reante

    Hey Steve what do you think if the idea that the 1K/mo digital UBI for US citizens 18 and older (plus free birth control pills plus free morning after pill plus the reversal of roeVwade) is another version of your degrowth prescription of paying women not to have children?

    The above would keep unemployed people going but would not make children affordable to them.

  24. reante

    Steve seeing as how this is reante’s fourth in a row, lemme know if I’m posting up too much. Must be making up for lost time. (human) Divination is another way god gets the dirty work — the Earth work — done, and the ToD was a sublime instance of divination. True or not — and only time will tell — it looks to me like the elites are triangulating the politics of degrowth with a national socialist world order. If people want to call that coming order the NWO then that technically wouldn’t be incorrect since it is being coordinated by the soon-to-be-former globalists (after all, how else could it happen?), although politically speaking, and at the time of conception onwards, I’m arguing that the NWO moniker would become incorrect because the global economic system itself would be an engineered collection of nationalist economies individually trying to balance perceived material need with the need for war, because that is what political degrowth best looks like in a nuclear world. Will there be legacy imperialisms, like exchanging protection for oil? Of course. Will we still be counting coups? I dare absolute power corrupts absolutely.

    The Triangle of Doom is legendary technical model to those few in the know because it is an amazing refinement and adaptation of the universal truth of thermodynamics. Universal truths and the particular refinements within them stand outside of time; as such they are the product of divination.

    Since your blog is a self-described culture blog, I’m attempting, for better or worse, to flesh out the cultural triangulation within the doom. The thermodynamics are the leading indicator of triangulation – the universal cutting edge — and the political coordination is the top-down cultural cutting edge of the local industrial empire as trailing indicator.

    Once the global economy inevitably fell out of your divine triangle, the elite had to respond culturally or invite their own demise. Political coordination is their smoke-filled conversation, and the credit markets are their provenance. No credit, no new tanker for you!

    Steve you would know better than anybody how much the elites might be wise to cut from global GDP right off the bat, in order to optimize the balance between the need to maintain adequate social stability and the need to, oh, keep the fossil fuel- powered nuclear power stations cool for as long as possible.

    Here’s another 30, from a shipping website crossposted on the dreaded ZH. Coincidence or provenance?

    “The number of ship orders year-to-date is extremely low. VesselsValue data shows just 134 tanker orders through July, 28% below last year’s pace, despite historically high spot rates. Only 88 bulkers are on order, 31% below last year’s pace.”

    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ship-orders-collapse-will-rate-boom-follow

    1. steve from virginia Post author

      There is no limit on the number of posts here, comments are the realm of my long-suffering readers.

      I appreciate it!

  25. reante

    Reante learns at the overripe age of 44 that he doesn’t have a working crystal ball, just a dead dream. Sorry you guys had to see it.

    Or am I still bargaining with collapse because the thought that no one is driving the bus is just too terrifying lol?

    Hubris on my part to believe that the elite were smart enough to overcome their own hubris with foresight without first being humbled.

    Goodbye world. God help you all. Back into my hole I go.

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