But it is in sight. There is a lot of ruin in a nation, but we have had a lot of ruin. The US government lacks cohesion, and is insolvent. Lack of cohesion means that in a crisis it is apt to disappear, dissolve into its parts, with each part seeking its own interest. Insolvency means a crisis is looming. I would expect the Euro to collapse before the US dollar, and the Euro is not going to collapse all …
Who rules the world?
Tracing rulers academic connections yields an interesting picture. Thus Mugabe, like so many third world rulers, comes from the London School of Economics, but Harry Lee Kuan Yew was educated in Singapore. And lo and behold, Mugabe was installed in power by the “international community†aka the tranzis, while Harry Lee Kuan Yew was installed in power by Singaporeans. A similar trace is visible in the Ivory Coast, where shortly before I wrote this, the “international community†held a blatantly …
Hide the decline, part umpteen
Stephan and Rachit cored lots of trees, to estimate weather in past years. In a cold climate, near the tree line, a tree will generally grow more if the weather is warm than if it is cold, though lots of other things affect it too. Still, if you check lots of trees over a wide area of very cold land, other factors will probably average out, and the rate of growth,the width of the tree rings, will largely indicate temperature. …
Conservative bloggers declare victory
According to Strata and others, the outcome of the budget negotiations (to reduce by one percent spending that was recently increased by by thirty percent) was a mighty victory. By a vote of approximately ten to one, the US House of Representatives voted to continue at slightly lower speed on a course that leads to bankruptcy, hyperinflation, social collapse, and, if we are lucky, civil war in the next decade or two.
The shape of things to come
We are seeing a political singularity – the leftwards slide that has been under way since 1710 or so is going faster and faster. Many people have already commented on the ludicrous absurdity of calling 1% cuts in a budget that rose 27% in three years, “drasticâ€. Supposedly this makes the Tea Party not merely conservative, but “ultra conservativeâ€. If the tea party is ultra conservative, what then would we call someone who attempted to restore the status quo of …
Theocracy
All Most theocratic religions are officially anti theocratic, in the sense that supposedly people believe in the official religion because it is simply the truth, not because of state sponsorship, and if anyone doubts the truth, they are supposedly seeking the power that rightly belongs to those who preach what is simply the truth, so it is those horrid heretics that are the theocrats. Thus the well paid wise progressive from Harvard sees a church in a wooden shack in …
Laffer curve
If the government taxes 0% of GDP, it will not get any money. If it attempts to tax 100% of GDP it will not get any money either, since there will be no above ground wealth. So somewhere between 0% and 100% is the tax that maximizes revenue. Genghis Kahn and Raffles believed that the tax that maximizes revenue is quite low, close to 0%. Today’s politician’s believe it is quite high, somewhere close to 100%. I suppose that in …
“Deep Cutsâ€
Harry Reid, leader of the RepublicanDemocratic party in the Senate, attacks the Republican party because some far right extremists want to make “deep cuts†in government spending Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) accused Tea Party lawmakers of destroying budget negotiations “We’ve tried to wait patiently for them … but our patience and the American people’s patience is wearing very thin,” “Tea Party Republicans are scrapping all the progress we have made and threatening to shut down the government if …
The coming collapse
Under the old US constitution, around 2000 or so, in order for the bureaucrats to spend money on something the house of representatives, the senate, and the president, had to agreed to spend money. Thus in order to do stuff, politicians had to pass a budget, and bureaucrats had to spend within that budget. Passing the budget was power, and politicians were eager to work on the budget, each one wanted a budget, so he could get his own fingerprints …
Losing the war with Islam
FilmLadd gives a pre mortem on our defeat: On September 20th, 2001, President Bush gave a speech to a Joint Session of Congress after the attacks on 9/11 to rally the nation and steel its citizens for the days of strife to come. A few hours after the speech I received a call from a friend in military intelligence. The first words out of his mouth? “We lost.”