Who Wants to Be a Billunaire?
Billy Gates & Co. can thank the following illusory factors for their obscene wealth:
Unprecedented Central Bank monetary expansion
Billy Gates & Co. can thank the following illusory factors for their obscene wealth:
Unprecedented Central Bank monetary expansion
Industrial arbitrage (outsourcing)
Extreme return on capital versus wages (across the Developed and Developing world)
Unsustainable trade deficits
Ponzi-financed fiscal deficits
Unprecedented private borrowing
Massive environmental degradation
Ephemeral counter-party obligations
Untaxed offshore bank accounts
And (in some cases) Bloated shit-software monopolies
Untaxed offshore bank accounts
And (in some cases) Bloated shit-software monopolies
Real (aka. Enduring) Capital
Consists of hard assets (land, machinery, infrastructure) and intellectual capital aka. productive knowledge. Any attempt to "store" value in a secondary medium be it fiat currencies or even gold/silver, while the productive capability of the real economy is being massively degraded, will at some point be tested and/or diminished by the prevailing supply and demand for that medium of currency.
This Isn't Rocket Science
On the other side of the reset, in order to get to a better place, we will need a set of factors roughly the exact opposite of what we face today. At the risk of stating the obvious, all of this is by no means rocket science, however what today's society faces is not a shortage of "ideas", but a shortage of judgement and willpower in order to implement those ideas. Any society that is wholly capable of conceiving of a "better way" but lacks the discipline to achieve that better way, is not really that intelligent or "exceptional" after all, unless we use the alternative meaning of the word:
Avoiding A New Dark Ages
1) An effective poverty alleviation program aka. anti-riot program. This will be step one of course, before anything meaningful can occur.
2) Honest and transparent leadership capable of making long-term decisions to the benefit of future generations. How we create this out of thin air given the current preponderance of boy-men refugees and instant gratification-seeking buffoons, will be interesting to say the least.
3) An informed society capable of demanding long-term decisions to the benefit of future generations. See point #2, getting from today's iGadetized Dumbfuckistan to anything resembling an informed society will be interesting. The Darwinian "reset" will no doubt help this along by thinning the ranks of the Idiocracy substantially, however again I don't underestimate what it will take to create this out of thin air, starting from less than nothing.
4) Elites who have the best interest of their respective nation(s) in mind and are not otherwise solely focused on accumulating wealth in offshore bank accounts. Ok, I realize that this "list is turning somewhat fantastical now, but bear in mind that there was a time, in the not so distant past for many nations, when many of these conditions abided.
5) An enforceable constitution and judicial system that keeps special interest groups and big money out of the political process, enforces accountability and restores trust in the "system", thereby allowing democracy to actually work. The alternative of course is authoritarianism which is gaining momentum across the entire world at this very moment, and which always predominates during historical periods of turmoil.
6) Incentives to work and create income without having it constantly eroded by mega-corporations dumping supply from Third World nations having no labour or environmental standard and mega-corporations that use economies of scale and automation to wipe out local producers and local jobs and then harvest the unsustainable profits to offshore bank accounts. Matching supply with demand at the local level.
In other words, honest progress will require maturity, objectivity, and disciplined decision-making, despite the fact that we are heading into a period of historically extreme turmoil and the fact that current generations are the most infantile, vacuous, and self-absorbed in modern history.
Don't ever say I'm only negative and never give "positive" suggestions. At least I'm not overly cynical. Naive, always.
The Ukraine and the Arab world are only kindly giving us a preview for where all of this is heading. The breakdown in institutions, leadership, political trust, local economies and societal cohesion in those regions is by no means unique.
When the illusion bursts, the walls come down very quickly.
The Ukraine and the Arab world are only kindly giving us a preview for where all of this is heading. The breakdown in institutions, leadership, political trust, local economies and societal cohesion in those regions is by no means unique.
When the illusion bursts, the walls come down very quickly.
