"Let's face it: people need oracles when they don't know what the fuck is going on. What's going on is as follows: America's central bank is trying to
compensate for a floundering economy that will never return to its prior
state. The economy is floundering because its scale and mode of
operation are no longer consistent with what reality offers in the way
of available resources at the right price, especially oil. So, rather
than change the scale and mode of operations in this economy -- that is,
do things differently -- we try to keep doing things the same by
flushing more "money" into the system, as though it were a captive beast
receiving nutriment.One problem with that is that the "money" is no longer money ... Does it stand for promises of future repayment? Hmmmm. Those promises
are looking sketchy lately, especially since this is an economy that
does not generate enough new real wealth to make the interest payments,
let alone manage to pay back the principal. Is it a claim on future
work? Some are afraid that the future work deliverable will be less than
they expect ... These nervous ones are looking ever more closely these days at the
distant nation of Japan, where an interesting scenario is playing out:
the last days of a giant industrial-technocratic economy. The story
there is actually pretty simple if you peel away the quasi-metaphysical
bullshit it comes wrapped in these days from astrologasters like John
Mauldin and Paul Krugman, viz. Japan has no fossil fuel resources. Zip.
You can't run their kind of economy without the stuff. And they can't.
Japan is crapping out, as they say in Las Vegas. Tilt! Game over ... Japan's only good choice is to go medieval ... One of Japan's other choices is to "go mad-dog," something they actually
tried back in the mid-20th century. It didn't work out too well then ... Just give it up and do things differently -- after all, that's what all the human beings on the planet have to do now ... My own opinion is that we're all going medieval sooner rather than later
and the big remaining question is how much of a mess we'll make on the
journey to it."
Zum Artikel von James Howard Kunstler, erschienen auf Clusterfuck Nation (27. Mai 2013) »
Zum Artikel von James Howard Kunstler, erschienen auf Clusterfuck Nation (27. Mai 2013) »
