Decommission

[nameta9]

From:

kunstler.com/blog/2011/05/the-so … pring.html

JHK, I Liked this one a lot. My take on it is that the USA and in a different way and a more subtle extent, the EU and JAPAN are all being “Decommissioned”, are all slowly but gradually being taken apart, are all slowly decaying into “has beens”: their era of glory, the USA winning WWII, their model of consumer - capitalist economy being exported to and adapted to much of the EU and JAPAN (and world), who like little brothers to the USA are destined to follow the destiny of the USA whether they like it or not, the young families, the “baby booms”, the optimism, hippies and counterculture, the experimentation, the faith in PROGRESS, SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, THE MIND and the FUTURE, the reconstruction, the technology of the era allowing people to raise families with stable jobs, all the technology that had to still be applied and discovered, and so many other social, economical and most of all cultural - psychological elements etc. are all ENDING.

And they are ending BIG TIME, but slowly, like a frog that boils, no one notices. Close a plant here, outsource there, automate over there, lay off a few slobs there, hire some others here (so as it being barely noticeable), and so on.

My large scale theory and narrative of all of this is simply the Technological Economy applying all of its know how and power and technology and science to all productive endeavors, killing a lot of work, and destined to kill a lot more in the future: I honestly, no matter how hard I try, cannot see what and where and what kinds of jobs can compensate all of those that are and will be lost. The entire idea of 8 hours a day in a place, constantly doing some kinds of manipulations, informational or physical seems to be more and more remote, and especially someone paying for it, and paying a living wage, I just can’t see how.

You say it is oil that is the single point of failure, that external hard core limitation that will kill our entire civilization. Well, I don’t know. I tend to think sometimes that you may be right, but really, cannot know and don’t think many can know, no matter what, the world is just to large, the way corporations, governments and other entities operate to extract oil is just too complex and vast to predict. And then my take on it is that somehow, no matter what, alternative energy systems will be implemented, will be forced, all kinds of alternatives will be attempted, even social organizational.

One thing is for sure, the USA, EU and JAPAN are slowly decaying like old men, no doubt about that, probably some hope is in the vast areas of the developing world, Latin America, parts of India and China, Indonesia, etc.

[nameta9]

OCSE, World Bank, FED, European Bank whatever, their formula for Portugal, Greece, etc. is “liberalization” of the economy, “privatization”, etc. More “free market”, that is supposed to generate “growth”. Nothing further from the truth, there is no imaginary cause and effect between these two items, in fact they never specify what should become privatized (probably only the profits), they say university must be paid more, private water so you pay more, freer “labor market” (there has never been a time in Europe where the labor market has been so free, easy fire, peanut salaries, etc.) everything is a one way street: hose the poor.

And especially this won’t create growth, but further contraction as in people getting poorer because they have to pay the “private” hands more money for everything, but the robot economists all chant the same prayer, what total idiots, these economists deserve so many punches in the face.

Growth is over in the USA, EU and JAPAN, AND HAS BEEN OVER FOR DECADES ! A country grows when it goes from poor to middle class, when everyone buys their first car, TV, their first furniture, etc. After the market saturates, growth ends naturally, there is nothing you can do about it,the only thing that grows is private profits and unemployment because the application of technology kills more and more jobs.

And don’t give me the example of the USSR or the communist countries, their experience was one of a kind, with a given technology and environment, the success of capitalism against them was mostly the success of consumerism and more application of technology to increase productivity in the west as compared to the former east: so stop talking about private is better, state run is bad, and so on, it no longer applies and is all false. Just because the USSR failed doesn’t mean any of the modern Right Wing Thug theories are correct in any possible way, they are all total lies helping the rich choke on ever more trillions.

[nameta9]

The chant is always cut taxes, more “free market”, more privatizations, liberalizations, etc. But no one really ever say what “cut taxes” really means, it means cutting jobs, especially public jobs, cutting ever more jobs, because taxes serve to pay people. And then, pray, tell me, what jobs will all of those fired do, especially since the economic system structurally creates less and less work? How is that supposed to “help the economy”, especially help the “economy grow”: what idiots, it is all a lie, cutting taxes will just fire ever more people, and make the economy contract as fewer people have salaries, fewer people can buy things, less consumption, etc.

But for some reason, everybody has been brainwashed that it is important to “cut taxes”: this is really just saying “it is important to fire as many people as possible”, that way “the economy can finally grow”. Doesn’t anyone see through all of this BS ? All of that money that went to pay people through taxes will just be hogged up by the capitalists and rich, as if they already are not drowning and suffocating in trillions of dollars, that money “saved” by paying less taxes will just end up in the hands of the rich, it is not going to do anything better, it is not going anywhere better.

And then this BS of privatizing and liberalizing the economies of Portugal Greece just serves to do the same; kill jobs, put more money in the hands of the rich, since by “liberalizing” the economy you make it more “efficient” which always means more job cuts, by privatizing the private hands can now fire ever more people, since they don’t want to pay them and they don’t need to anymore, etc. This will just create less and less jobs, economic contraction, etc.

We need more taxes, more jobs created by the government by the millions. More taxes, ever more: and don’t give me the excuse of the ex-communist countries demonstrating that state run is not good: a state run entity can be even more efficient than any private one if it is run by good managers. This is just a huge Right Wing Thug ideology that has been brainwashing everyone for decades that “private” is good, “public” is bad, “private run is better”, “public run is bad”: nothing further from the truth, private run just means ever more job cuts and ever more concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich capitalists. And all of this while the system is structurally killing jobs automatically worldwide by the millions, with no end in sight.

[nameta9]

And in fact all of those that want tax cuts, that want to fire the public workers because they “don’t deserve it”, their “performance is not good”, they are “not efficient”, is just a right wing trick to make people think they “deserve” more than others, they are “better” or “superior” to others: this is all false, there is no longer any relationship between capability - merit and jobs, and the necessity of jobs in a Technological Economy that is doing away with all kinds of jobs. Just look at how many engineers and other professionals can be fired and laid off in the blink of an eye. So don’t fall for it, everyone against everyone else, asking for tax cuts: we need more taxes, the government must hire millions of people and cheap rents, 200 dollars a month rents.

[nameta9]

The Right Wing Thug ideology and mentality has completely brainwashed everyone on earth on all of these myths that it is not even funny anymore, “productivity”, “competition”, “meritocracy”, “you have to deserve it”, “cut taxes”, “everyone is a lazy slob”, “there are jobs but you have the wrong skill set”, “we need more research, innovation, education”, “too many debts”, “state run is bad, private run is good”, “resource scarcity” and so on, an infinite list of excuses and thought patterns that have been inserted in everyone’s mind to cut jobs, fire people, pay them less, all in punishment mode, everyone wanting to punish everyone else, etc.

All of the economists, journalists, all of the opinions worldwide converge in the same way and say the same things, no matter what. This is that gigantic ideological construction that the capitalists have so successfully inserted in everyone’s brains, there is no way to deprogram people anymore.

A funny thing especially is when they say workers are lazy, they must be fired, they are not productive, etc. This makes it seem like everyone is lazy, but it is structural, the economic system no longer needs work, so many appear lazy and everyone criticizes everyone else without seeing through the system: the computers, software, communications, optimizations are killing all kinds of necessary activities and not substituting them with anything at all, everyone appears to become lazier and lazier, in all truth it is structural, the Technological Economy needs work like a hole in the head and it will just become worse and worse.

On the debts myth, remember money is a place holder, is a proxy for human relationships, there are no debts and there is no such thing as money, money can’t run out just like human relationships can’t run out, that is why they can “restructure the debts” aka “we can invent and do anything we want”, etc.

[nameta9]

Most of the entire discipline of engineering is based on how to do more with less, how to produce more with fewer manipulations, less material and energy inputs, more economies of scale, use the same parts across more products and most of all less labor inputs. But, somehow we always need “more engineers”, ultimately to decrease the need of labor one way or another because even if you just decrease the use of energy or materials or manipulations either directly or indirectly that will translate in “less cost” and less cost always means somewhere down the line, somewhere in the world a job or more jobs are axed.

The tech guys have been taught to not connect the local to the global, engineering never touches “sociology”, the local optimization there just happens to have a large scale “social effect”, but engineers are not taught to think in terms of global effects, and especially social effects, but in local details and optimizations.

Maybe I live in a global hypocrisy, everyone knows that many jobs are fake or not needed, could be axed and probably will be axed, but everyone just plays along, just pretends, and I think I am telling them something they already knew (but never dare to say it bluntly): shame on me for being so naive.

That begs the question, how many “fake jobs” can the system invent (I am amazed that 100 million people still work in the USA, still have jobs, but maybe I am wrong), after all the military expenditure could be 700 billion a year enough for 70 million cheap salaries of 10,000 a year and the military doesn’t produce anything but is set up to destroy things, the opposite of production, but especially consumes weapons, so indirectly “produces” weapons. Another result of EXCESS CAPACITY, but no one notices it, or pretends to not notice that the system creates so much wealth that it can maintain such a military budget with so many unemployed.

The JAPANESE may have 5 million fake jobs of people working in their skyscrapers and offices, where the job consists of mostly waiting for the boss to go home at 10 at night, since the status relationship is the job, the “ritual” is the job (wondering how many jobs are just “rituals”). They already produce way more than enough, flooding the world with their products, they need more real production like a hole in the head. After all their unemployment figures are always around 5 % while most 1st world countries hover around 8 to 10 % (and surely much higher, since these numbers are fudged up a lot), so how do they do it ? what makes them special ? They just keep a lot of people in fake jobs where they wait for time to pass (but they are not the only ones, I phantom worldwide that these kinds of jobs number in the tens of millions, and parts of many other jobs just consist in waiting or making time pass, or idle, or “no operation” (like the computer instruction)).

Notice how important “time at work, the more time, the more productive you are, but especially the higher chance of a raise you may have” is even in the USA: the more important this is in a work environment, you can be sure the less real production and less real work is being performed, unless they loaded all the work on just a few workaholics who see the world as so full of work.

[nameta9]

From:

kunstler.com/blog/2011/05/the-so … pring.html

Suspension of Belief

This blog, the resource scarcity gurus, and many others have a kind of suspension of belief as far as wealth, resources and free wealth generated by technology is concerned: they just can’t believe it, they can’t believe that it is possible that technology creates free wealth, free food, free energy, free production all needing very little real labor, all automatic, all by itself. Well it is true: our entire civilization is based on something for nothing, our entire culture and environment has been shaped in the last 150 years by progress, by advances giving us more with fewer and fewer inputs, especially labor inputs, most of what we do is optional, fluff, cultural stuff, human relationships stuff, interactions between people, but not for real production needs as in agriculture or manufacturing.

“Automatic for the People” is exactly what all of our civilization is about. But kunstler and the peak oil gurus and many others seem to have a desire for it to end, to find the limit, to find the trick, the sin that must be repented for and find energy limits and pollution and nature “killing” as the sin, as that which will be punishing, we shall be punished because of our progress, because we dared to live with so little real necessities as labor and enjoying so many fruits.

But they are wrong, this free lunch will continue and will increase ever more, there are no limits only way too much money going into way too few hands: with all that the US spends 700 billion dollars on defense, the economic system gives trillions of dollars in profits to the rich, and with all of those other welfare, pension, medicare, etc. expenses we still have a hugely high standard of living with so few people doing any real work, high unemployment and all kinds of waste. This just shows the huge excess capacity the Technological Economy is capable of, and will be even more capable of.

Consider that today Germany is growing, is in high growth mode, but that will be short lived, they will have the same old slowdown that is planned as usual by the capitalists in order to fire all the new hires, the same cycle over and over again, but then again only Germany has so many car manufacturers selling luxury cars all over the world and other high tech gear, they are always an exception, and if they work many other countries and areas don’t work since then there would be way too much production, so they work and grow and win the economic war, many other areas of Europe, the US and JAPAN lose those jobs, so you see, high production always with little real labor anyways.

[nameta9]

Tired writing about social issues, only one simple thing popped in my mind: why on earth doesn’t everyone prefer lower home prices and rent prices ? Why on earth is this “bad” ? If home rents were only 200 dollars a month, or home prices only 50,000 dollars to buy (what their real value should be) wouldn’t everyone gain by this ? Wouldn’t it benefit everyone ?

Shouldn’t all the economists worldwide chant “Lower home prices and rents”, as this is the easiest solution to increase the value of salaries, the possibility to consume and buy more increasing production, as this really increases “competitiveness” and freedom and flexibility in a society as people are freer to move, and change jobs and their pay goes much further and can do more things.

Oh, I forgot the banks and capitalists have to force people into huge debts paying so much monthly for a mortgage or rent, as they keep on hogging trillions upon trillions: go on obama, declare that from now on, rents will be no more than 200 dollars a month and homes shall not cost more than 50,000 dollars, go on man, you can do it, don’t be a scaredy cat in front of your real bosses.