The only question that matters regarding today’s markets
by Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity:
Unsustainable.
Many more people need to understand what that word really means, and how it applies to pretty much everything in the current human living arrangement. Especially the so-called ‘developed’ nations.
Here’s the dictionary definition:
Let’s take these three definitions one at a time.
First: our entire economic model, which dependent on borrowing at a faster rate than income (GDP) grows, is something that simply cannot be maintained at its current rate or level. Check.
Second: depleting species, soils and aquifers are all wildly unsustainable practices that are accelerating. Check.
Last (and most glaring of all): the world’s leadership (and we use that term very loosely) continues to insist on adhering to the indefensible idea that infinite growth on a finite planet is possibleCheckmate.
Said another way, the daily comforting stories we are told about how all of this somehow makes sense are just a load of nonsense. Each is entirely unsupportable by the evidence, facts and data.
What happens when a culture’s dominant narratives are not just unsatisfactory, but entirely unworkable?
Well, for one thing, the younger generations that are being asked (goaded?) to step into an increasingly flawed future begin to resist. Which is completely understandable. They have nothing to gain if the status quo continues.
At the same time, the older generations mostly just settle into a stubborn insistence that everything will be fine if everyone will just do more of precisely what got us into the mess in the first place. Younger people should step up to make sure Medicare/Social Security/pensions remain fully funded, and buy the financial assets and homes of downsizing seniors at top dollar. The boomers have everything to lose if the status quo changes.
Why do I bother to tell you all this? Why have I spent the last ten years of my life trying to alert the public of risks they keep telling me make them uncomfortable? Because I care. Because I hope to help a few people preserve their hard-earned wealth. Possibly even save a few lives with this information. And, ultimately, to help people lead lives filled with greater connection, aliveness and joy.
The key to all of these better outcomes is having a clear-eyed view of “what is”, and then being able to predict “what’s next”. Which means that understanding is the first step. Informed action follows from that.
Mind The Gap
In the US, through selfish over-consumption, the baby boomer generation has screwed the prospects for following generations. It’s now doing everything to deny and defend its extraordinarily self-serving and short-sighted decisions, and delay the repercussions for as long as possible.
For the record, I seriously doubt the current younger generations would have behaved any differently were we to teleport them back in timeThe boomers came of age when net energy from oil was still climbing and that ‘taught’ them about ‘how the world worked.’ When you have abundant resources, especially high net energy oil, you can pretty much do anything you want.
But today?
Not so much. A BIG fallacy of the past is that wars lead to rapid economic expansion afterwards. A more correct version of this is that the destruction of war leads to rapid recovery and rebuilding ONLY IF you also have access to abundant high net energy oil. If you don’t, wars only lead to destroyed economies.
Think of it this way: an 18-year-old who injures his knee has the resources of youth to help them recover completely. But an 80-year-old? Not so much.
This fallacy of thinking that we can just have another nice major war (North Korea?), or a few major hurricanes (Harvey, Irma and counting…), and then not only recover, but return better than ever is a dangerous delusion to hold. It’s no different than our 80-year-old thinking that taking up downhill skateboarding would be a safe and sensible thing to do.
Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception.
(Source)
The inter-generational resentment mentioned above is growing ever more extreme and it’s creating a significant social (and soon political) disturbance that will prove to be utterly disappointing for all. Already we see the signs in failing pensions having to cut benefits, young people opting out of such bulwarks of cultural stability as car ownership, marriage and having children.
If the DNC hadn’t straight up stolen the primary from Bernie Sanders, it’s quite possible that he’d have handily won the US presidential election and we’d already be feeling the effects of the political power of the next generation.
In this view, Trump is nothing more than the first (but not final) reflection of boomer denial backfiring badly. The sclerotic remnants of the past held fast and tried to jam Hillary down the throats of a very unenthusiastic electorate that long ago concluded that business-as-usual is literally a vision without a future. And so Hillary was rejected and Trump, the only alternative left standing, got the victory.
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