The Stall begins the Fall

Is anything human, certain?  Can we rely on the fact that all good times will end and that pain will surely follow any pleasure?  I have a small dental business.  It's not complicated. Anyone can imagine what I do every day.  I became a dentist in 1984 like my  dad(1949)and grandpa(1916).  I wanted to be useful. I had spent the last 4 years in DC as a "social justice warrior" because I wanted to tackle the biggest problems and thought with my education I might have some contributions to make.  The world though is not set up for bumbling innocence, it is more responsive to focused Will. You tend to achieve what you aim for.  Enlightening others tends to be a futile pursuit.  It's probably enough to please yourself. I was concerned about environmental degradation and the limits to growth and thought the  contraction of industrial civilization was imminent and people needed to pursue Reality based professions.  Resource issues would begin to bite in the 1990's and by the Year 2000 there would be a hard step down as all growing economies faced the limits to growth.  

In the late 90's I was selling the SP500 index short in the futures market with a Lind-Waldock account and as they say, the market can remain overvalued longer than you can remain solvent. I quit that game in January 2000 and invested in some local businesses that have subsequently folded.  I knew what would happen but not when and so did not profit from the correction.  Later,  9/11 literally jerked a rip in my brain.  The America I thought I knew ceased to exist.  I could not buy the story or the response.  The Middle East had always been an energy story not a foreign policy pet project in support of the plucky little state of Israel.  But all of a sudden, the people who cared about Israeli sovereignty were running the show.  And we still needed the oil from Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.  No policy goal of becoming less oil dependent and more environmentally aware had been or was going to be, forthcoming. It was another "morning in America" moment when Republicans ask the citizens to go shopping to restore normalcy. 

I never understood Greenspan, he was always Delphic but I could understand Bernanke and "helicopter" money.  I thought, like Clinton's Carwille, that the bond vigilantes would never permit it. But, while coaching my son's soccer team in the early 2000's, I watched  their parents: bankers, mortgage originators, appraisers, and the like make crazy money by simply pretending they were adding value--NINJA loans and false appraisals.  A high school friend started a bank--loaned like crazy into a growing economy--and I finally understood our financial system.  It's not about work, it's not about a product:  it's identifying value and financializing it.  Any real good, any revenue stream can be leveraged to multiply by a factor of 10, 20, or even 40 the amount of value it can support.  Identify the value and invert the pyramid with derivative products.  It's not a Ponzi scheme---it's reality.  Reality became virtual on the internet.  We simply moved on from the old Reality to live in a new virtual world.  We live there now.

 But in a pandemic, like many businesses, I am doing less work. Unless your tooth is hurting, I am not "essential".  What I do, could be said to be more dangerous. Virtual workers are not breathing on one another.  So my patients are tentative about their preventive maintenance and cautious about new treatment.   I assume many service businesses have similar problems.  Some businesses have become untenable: hotel/resorts, airlines, casinos, concerts, gyms. I have heard 25% of the restaurants in America could close this year. Facilities that rely on getting people together will have at least a one year pause.  So the bills will be paid with made up money, if  it can be acquired.

These facts are mini-explosions to the supports for our economy.  Can the complicated structure we have created stand with many of its interlocking supports removed? A financial Jenga tower.  It appears that we are transitioning to a command economy that is completely centralized.  The authorities and legislators will determine who survives and who does not.

The reason everyone looks to Congress and the government to solve problems is not because they are wise and beneficent but because they can create money. They are doing so prodigiously.  Our belief in made up money is a faith I call "clapping for Tinkerbell".  When we all quit clapping,  they lose that power and we will be on a stalled and rudderless ship. Is there a lower level of effective organization?  Can States or municipalities organize effectively or are they, like Illinois, just another flavor of bankrupt eventually?  The transnational corporatists have a Plan--to pay the officers on the bridge of the Ship of State, permit a few professionals and technocrats to occupy the  cabins and convert everyone else to steerage.  Only they can manage the supply lines.  And they may be successful--Lowe's and Publix are not supplied locally.  Amazon is an internet cargo cult. What exactly is life in America with nothing to buy? 

How could the little man cope with the corporate grand plan?  The Great Reset has begun by threatening the middle class and poor with disease, un-employment, and insolvency.  Savings cannot withstand a Weimar, Venezuelan, Zimbabwean style re-evaluation of the currency.  When will the currency WE use, blow up, and how long will it take? 

I read The Long Emergency in about 2007 and it comported with my sense that the heyday of American exceptionalism was over and it was time to recognize our limitations at useful regime change and world financial management.  My pessimism grew out of my mid 1970's think tank work in DC.  The Overseas Development Council would be considered a "liberal" outfit because of our international focus on improving the lives of the world's poorest billion people. Today we would be considered "globalists". We recognized that America used 25% of the world's oil and other resources to support 5% of the world's population.  We thought a more equitable world would be less conflicted and fairer.  That awareness implied that the US should make some adjustments. 

One of the formative books at that time was Limits to Growth.  Another  was Small is Beautiful.  Earth Day had been celebrated in 1970 and there was a growing environmental consciousness embodied in the Clean Water Act and the formation of the EPA.  There was an understanding that growth had costs and our policies needed to be more ecologically aware. Carter's solar panels and "malaise speech" tried to articulate the growing awareness that there were at least two major restrictions on the "unlimited potential" of the American Future: the Environment itself and the justice of our exploitation of it.  Which did not address at all our actual strategic opponents: Russia, Iran, and China. 

But those who sacrifice for the future are most often undermined by "The Tragedy of the Commons".  The profligate prosper on the responsibility of the prudent.  Few would actually choose that injustice.  So the scolds squawked and the greedy made plans to improve their position.  The rich had no interest in sacrificing for the poor except on their terms.  Business could envision a nightmare of Lilliputian regulations and organized energetically for their own welfare.  In the recent book Evil Geniuses by Kurt Andersen he traces this history of the rising accumulation of capital in the hands of the few.  The poor, working class, and middle class were left behind by the elite. Government has gradually accommodated by  representing the rich and their interests.  

So there have been a lot of roads not taken.  Politics has been about money and democracy has been undermined.  And the current arrangements of life on Earth have developed a rather large sustainability problem. That is my read of the Long Emergency, the Long Descent, Too Much Magic, etc..  The global international system has a complexity problem that is increasing as our energy resources diminish.  Growth cannot continue forever and fossil fuels are a finite resource.  I would say that the pandemic has markedly decreased demand for real activity and increased the demand for virtual money to cope with it.  Imaginary money gushes into the debts of the unemployed and raises the level of inequality.  Those quarantined are not getting ahead and those buoyed by asset appreciation float ever onward and upward into the incredible lightness of being.  The pandemic strikes me as a live exercise.  It's real, but not existential.  What is occurring is a dialing down of expectations for the middle and working class and a solidification of the current elite in their privilege.  They are going to work the problem and the rest of us will stand by.

But the loss of trust in leadership has been growing.   It is currently fractured into 2 teams: Team Freedom doesn't focus on fairness and Team Justice wants to control you.  Neither satisfactorily addresses the Future of diminishing complexity we are stumbling toward.  Both are distractions.  The first problem we should acknowledge is the power to create money is absolute as long as the users believe in it.  How did the Middle Ages go on for 1,000 years as a feudal system?  The people believed the Church determined the most important Reality-your fitness and access to heaven.  Gods had absolute power and the king and church were the earthly representation of that.  They enforced your insignificance.  Currently, the money you have determines your status.  You cannot normally exist in this world without money.  You won't eat or have a room to call your own.  

Formerly, money was earned.  Your effort acquired it.  Slaves and serfs did not acquire money, they performed their required work or else.  Our new system allows money to be credited to you for approved purposes.  You may earn it but it can be managed for "everyone's" benefit by those who determine whether it is money or not.  If I believe a dollar is money then the power that can credit it to my bank account determines  its usefulness.  If we contrast my pitiful ability to earn money with the governments ability to create money, then we can understand how their Reality controls what happens.  We have moved beyond money being a measure or standard of account to its incarnation as THE power source, like the sun, for the human economy.  Formerly the activity of men was mediated through the money but now the money flow determines the narrative.  (I will give you $600, $400, $300 a week to be unemployed).  You don't need to work, you need to do what you are told to get the subsidy.

When you are in a lifeboat with others and a fixed amount of food and water, what is the dynamic at play-cooperation, force, or guile?  The reality of a hot day with no rescue can be visualized, what will occur on our little lifeboat?  If you are going to succeed in life, what strategy will you employ as a Syrian refugee in Turkey, as a farm worker in Honduras, as a teenager in the projects of America?  What are your middle class options?  A good job gets you as close to the money creation machine as possible.  The people control nothing if they don't control the money power.  Do they want to control the money power?  No, they accept it and wish only it would favor them.  Play the lottery.  Day trade.  Get a good job. 

How could people take charge of the money power?  They could only oppose the current system by organizing to do so.  It would have to become a part of the political narrative and the interested parties have no intention of allowing that to happen.  Any new system will be negotiated in secret and delivered to us.  I can say the government cannot create 1.9 Trillion dollars for a stimulus rescue package because they don't "have" it and it undermines what I have worked to save.  But no one agrees with me because they want the money, not the aggravation of opposing it.

At what point,  how does one say, Enough?  You can exit the system and be poor.  If you are invested in the system--a SS check, a pension, 401-K savings, then you are dependent.  How could you ensure your SS check has a comparable value in 10 years?  You have to have a majority of Congressman care and propose legislation that would determine it.  Politics.  Someone needs to lead a significant group that sits in the Congressman's office and says--money will not buy you this election.  My group represents 25% of the people in your district and we want the following: X,Y,Z.

I could hope that better participation would improve democracy but I don't believe it can occur.  Too many promises from a system that cannot keep them.  The social fabric looks certain to rend.  What strategy looks successful to navigate the ragged stagger to sustainability?  When the plane is stalling you put the nose down and hope to catch enough lift to avoid the ground....

No one wants to change until they have to.  We will stall then fall and we will then know how high we were flying....

Encouraging a New Localism

 The rich definitely do not want to move from the privileges they currently enjoy to the hard work of refashioning a more sustainable and ecologically balanced society.   Perhaps they see the problems in society being minor, requiring only a few tweaks to improve conditions OR they are planning for a collapse to take out 90% of the useless eaters and they will manage on what remains of their nest egg. I am not sure we middle class mules with a little money and a few privileges want to move to sustainability either. The thoughtless don't think about it. Who wants to trade good times and a pleasant dream for a down and dirty reality?  The realists among us would like to get started on a practical politics that addressed our current complexity failures. Planning for less energy, more austerity and less complexity seems prudent. The  problem appears to be the transition.  Elites like global solutions because it pays well and  puts them in charge.

So I'm thinking about a politics that would actually make a difference.

We had an economic system that was not sustainable and now it is slowly grinding to a halt.  Something will have to pick back up soon because a lot of us are going to get hungry sitting in our rooms for 2 months with no paycheck.  But we have an opportunity to do something different. A fleeting thought is that I would like to get back to "normal" and make my Viking cruise reservations but frankly normal was getting closer to falling apart anyway.  A return to the former normal will not be possible. 

The $2.2 T  emergency legislation "fix" is more of the 2008 same.  Save the System, not the workers.  It has become obvious that there is as much made up money as necessary for the largest banks and corporations but not enough for basic health care for all.  After 9/11 the instructions were to "go shopping".  After 2008 the instructions were to "pay up" or lose the house.  In the current crisis it is "stay home" with no job or money until told you can come out and go back to work, risking sickness and then coping with long lines at the ER. And then ruinous bills if you are actually treated.   America needs some big changes.

The conclusion is "Organize or Die".  If you wait patiently like a Katrina survivor you may hear the choppers overhead but you will miss the press conference about how much is being done.  The only way up and out is to construct a new order that engages your participation and not just your acquiescence. This is not easy work.  Managing the decline of industrial civilization is going to require clawing back some wherewithal from the rich. The virus is a direct attack on the local and a huge increase in power for the centralizing forces in society.  Central government claims more responsibility and your job is to do what you are told.  Governments are becoming more like military structures (of which our military is a subset) that command, irrespective of careful discussion and citizen input.  We are in wartime mode and sacrifices will be required.  Fine.  I would ask whether our non-essential government employees that are sent home are getting paid?  Are the DMV people furloughed?  Is TSA doing a 50% RIF since airline traffic is down 90%?  Is your Congressman getting a check?  Government can pay everybody it needs to from the most essential to the least necessary.  That maintains a lot of loyalty.  And the levers of control extend from the federal to state to local police forces and county sheriffs.  The National Guard may be organized by state and used to be a state militia but it is now a branch of the military and is paid under national regulations.

Our state now has a shelter in place order that I anticipate being pretty forgiving but the claim that I cannot leave my house without permission is a substantial reduction of my rights as an independent citizen and as a human being.  If I wish to drive across town to see a friend, talking with them and maintaining a 6 foot distance, am I allowed?  If I am stopped at a road block and quizzed by the authorities about my purpose for being out, I would claim that I am not required to justify personal travel decisions. (Practically, of course I might have to lie because I don't have the immediate courage to protest). I believe they can tell me to go home or be arrested for breaking the order.  If I call a neighborhood meeting at the local church and 15 people show up and are careful with their proximity--what constitutional law would then deny us our first amendment rights to assemble?  I am being ornery because I do want to do my social part but I think people should be aware that theoretically the government can't just make up convenient laws to make people do what they want. 

Centralization is also an undermining of the private.  Public employees, large corporation employees are being paid. Public retirees are in a protected class with a direct pipeline from the government money creation operation. Private workers are out of work.  Private retirees are watching their 401-Ks shrivel and may be on the hook for big losses when the Fund companies have counterparty risks that blow up and they cannot pay their obligations.  Annuity and insurance companies have the money and will pay if they can, but if they can't?  You will be out of luck.  I won't get into your bank's liabilities having made what are now non-performing loans.

Where is the money?  It is hidden in all the chits that represent it.  I have mentioned that my 1000 household neighborhood has an average house valuation of $400,000.  $400 million will buy them all. A Federal Reserve policy to "do what it takes" and advance $2.2 T to the Treasury would allow them to purchase 5,000 neighborhoods like mine.  There are 384 SMSAs (Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas) in the USA. The money created to fund the most recent emergency legislation is enough to buy more than 10 complete neighborhoods in every city in the USA. And as for who gets it--330 million Americans( at most) are getting $1,200 which is about $500 billion and somebody else is getting 3x as much.  Small businesses, large corporations(Boeing, American Airlines, etc) and systemically important banks.  The destruction of money through bad loans is counterbalanced by created money.  The government is going to get to decide who lives and dies just like the overworked ER doctors. Why on earth are we working for something that can be created when needed at whatever level is desired?

So who is sacrificing?  Front line health care workers.  The millions of dollars we pay intelligence analysts, the CDC, and the leaders who are supposed to listen to them failed at anticipating or controlling the outbreak.  And so the sacrifices are now being made by overwhelmed private health care workers.  I am out of work and sacrificing some income but am not on the front lines of health care delivery and do not consider it a sacrifice.  Dentistry as a profession has been obliterated just like restaurants, hairdressers, or nail salons.  The young dentists with loans are facing bankruptcy.  Mid-career dentists with staff responsibilities and other fixed costs are facing the same.  I am advised to ask the government to pay my staff, my rent, and my utilities.  I am counseled to apply for unemployment.  Alabama's unemployment is $125/week for 14 weeks (recently reduced from 26) but the federal government is being generous and will give me up to $600/week.  Here, go on this website that's crashing with 20 million other people.

 No one should owe anything for any aspect of COVID-19 treatment.  Not the tests, not the beds in the hospital and not the ventilator.  The ambulance bill that takes you from your house when you can't breathe should be presented to the $2.2 Trillion magic money tree who can then decide whether the ride is worth $2,000 or $200.  This could be the first step in Medicare for all.  My 28 year old daughter has an ObamaCare abomination of an insurance policy with $5,000 deductible and coverages that are incomprehensible until she gets the bill on her $24,000/yr income.  Sure, she is young and healthy and may not have a bad case if she gets it but millions of young people are in her situation and many could be financially destroyed by this virus.

We are entering a new normal and there is a tendency for those in charge to say sit tight and we will return everything to the way it was.  We want to believe it but it is bullshit.  The virtual is not a substitute for the real.  An economy cannot work from home with fake money.  We seem to be constructing a sophisticated prison where we can Zoom and Skype and play on the computer but not actually go make anything.  If we return manufacturing to the USA from China we are going to need hands on people not computer geeks.  Unless we are planning robots and AI.  Regular people get to sit home and play video games with their UBI.

There are more local farmer's markets and more locally sourced food programs  but real production and manufacturing is done elsewhere.  Almost any good you would be inclined to buy is produced more than 1000 miles away.  Everything necessary to live locally is purchased from the global market.  If I want lumber, or hardware, or fertilizer to build or grow something, it is produced far away. The global idea that we would all be linked in trade and mutual dependency has in fact worked but it has not bred as much trust as envisioned.  People are concerned about their dependency on people that don't necessarily care about them.  And this is world wide. Privileged national leaders are trying to make centralization "work" but it is working for the elite not the common man.  So the industrialization project that has taken us from feudalism, to local towns, to nation states, and now a transnational globalism has arrived at maximum complexity and will be re-localizing in the future.  Given our resource utilization, worldwide growth is over.  Efficiencies would improve our transition but zero sum policies will necessarily breed conflict.  Many prefer conflict to cooperation--they feel force will give them a better outcome.  That has always seemed a dangerous assumption to me.

Now that we know infinite growth on a finite planet is not possible, our efforts at democratizing the world to achieve a more congenial world system for our privilege is exposed as a lie.  Will we encourage a politics of deconstruction and greater localism or keep pushing for advantage?  If we lean less on others, they will increase their demands on us in the name of equality and fairness. We would have to embrace austerity to improve the gains to other countries.  I don't detect a great willingness to sacrifice for others when 64% of American live paycheck to paycheck.  Our earliest goal as a nation was to avoid entangling alliances and the philosophy that supported that was isolationism.   But we became an empire and now have to figure out how to simplify without crashing our economy.  It might not be possible--collapse talk has been around for about 20 years.  When the world trade center fell--we saw physical proof that the high and mighty were being challenged until taken down.  We fought back inappropriately then and the consequences are staring at us now.  Can we change? No one wants to change-- it's too hard.  Everyone really wants to be forced to change so they can evaluate whether they are better off fighting or adjusting.

We are now experiencing the  financial event, similar to 2008, that should activate an awareness of the need to change the status quo. It is time to get political unless you'd rather just live in a dictatorship.  It might buy you a higher standard of living to go along to get along but I for one would prefer less empire and more empathy.

A Novel Problem

The main idea of Taleb's The Black Swan is the outsize impact of the highly improbable.  Well, here we are.  A lot of what we thought about in December 2019 is now irrelevant with a world pandemic tearing through the world's population.  Normal is now something else.  We just don't know what it is yet.

Two months ago I mentioned that TEOTWAWKI was "Inconceivable".  A caldera explosion or an asteroid impact would be sudden game changers.  However I thought war, disease, and financial collapse were standard known unknowns--i.e. somewhat predictable as in always possible with the right conditions. As a self declared prophet, I would have to say I was worried early about China (say Jan 20th?) but missed the gathering storms impact on the rest of the world.  Now in fairness to myself I can report that reading Laurie Garret's book The Coming Plague in the mid 90's I became a firm believer in the benefits of investing seriously in Public Health.  It is, I hope, axiomatic that if you don't have your health, you got nuttin'. A big bank account is useful but small consolation.  Her later book called Betrayal of Trust(2004?) was another eye opener.  I have sung the praises of public health for a long time and my daughter in her 20's is in a PhD program for public health and my youngest son in medical school is also getting his MPH along with his MD.  I have argued for years that military budgets, anti-terrorism task forces, and cyber security are over rated for protecting safety.  Knowledgeable public health action protects us from our real enemies.  And it is a knowledge that can be shared. As they say, my good idea and your good idea gives us both TWO good ideas.  Bombs and bullets eliminate ideas and the people who hold them.

I have been a collapsenik since Sept 1, 2007.  My Dad and I used to discuss Guns, Germs, and Steel at our weekly lunches and when Diamond's Collapse book came out, we agreed that industrial civilization was headed into decline.  He tended to optimism and my pessimism about the coming financial collapse he thought was too extreme.  He died in 2006 and told me ruefully that he was sorry he had had it so good and the future for his grandkids was going to be tougher.  I told him that a childhood in the Great Depression and 2 years in the Navy for World War II were not "easy" times and I told him that due to his sacrifices I, and all his 6 children, had had only good times.  I told him sorry Dad, we boomers had it better.  My kids have had it pretty good too--until now.  I do think we are going to take a step down from globalism when the smoke clears from this outbreak.

Frankly, I feel pretty good about this virus.  I'm 67 and more likely to die if I get it but I appreciate the opportunity to deal with Reality.  As a country we have spent so long ignoring what is fundamental--that our way of life is not sustainable--that the opportunity to actually engage with a problem that everyone else acknowledges is important is actually calming.  People can actually see that the financial system was over-hyped, over leveraged, and due for more than a "correction". We are no longer on a bull market path forever.   Most people will attribute the financial collapse to the virus but those of us focusing on the unimaginable size of the world bubble in financial assets realize it was a system looking for a pin all along.

Is the financial system going to crash this year?  I would say it is crashing now but unlikely to just stop.  A "stop" or financial "freeze" would eliminate what you thought was your money.  Your money is going to need to be  eventually re-valued to "something else".  Rich people(read elites) need to maintain some relative value in the currency to remain leaders.  When I hear that government is proposing a $2 Trillion injection of "liquidity", I think, how nice for them, that already overwhelmed with debt, they  could spend another unimaginable sum for their own purposes.  My savings? They don't need to bid for them with better interest rates--no--they can just make up all they need.  My savings weren't really savings, they were a reassuring lie. We are about to discover the inconvenient truth that our money is an Idea based on trust not a Reality.

It was always hard to imagine the plagues of the 14th century, killing up to 1/2 the population in Europe in waves for 20-30 years. With our "little" virus we are talking about 10% (at worst) and 1/2 that is only barely conceivable. I am willing to let the chuckleheads in power do what they can for as long as they can since I am mature and partial to social order over anarchy.  When told to sit in my room for 3 weeks (or maybe 4 months?) I can't help but think of my fierce Mother commanding the same and I had no thoughts of rebelling.  I was very aware of my dependency.  But now?  I will be watching our overlords carefully--prepared to help but ready to protest when they go shock and awe stupid.

Those of us irrelevant Deplorables, far from the levers of influence, have to decide whether the normal we had is recoverable or is not and will require a slight adjustment, a more serious sacrifice, or Apocalypse Now.  Let's keep an eye on that - OK?

My first point is that it can't hurt to be more locally focused.  Help your neighbors.  I would suggest some rudimentary political organizing when the shelter in place order comes down.  I think you can set up a group meeting in camp chairs 6-8 feet apart in the garage and actually talk about the future.  Personally I think we are out of practice and I know I am but I don't want to wait until the grocery stores are empty to start the process.  Why was Katrina such a clusterfuck?  It was because while Bush the younger was saying "Great Job, Brownie", there were people on rooftops and cowering in attics, raiding nearby Walgreen's for diapers and TVs, and holding shotguns across their laps on the porch.  Clueless thy name is leadership.

We will get better treatments for the virus.  Don't despair of that.  But a vaccine would have to be considered the long run.  If they get one out for COVID-19 in 5 months before Fall flu season I might have some concerns about its efficacy.  I am quarantining because I want a lot of other people to get the disease first and see how it goes.  The same argument applies for being the first to get a vaccine.  We have a vocal number of anti-vaxxers.  I am not entirely sure what their problem is but my children  had no problems and I do not know any children personally that had a bad reaction. Joe Kennedy Jr. is adamant that vaccines are dangerous.  My wife and I trusted the one in a million talk about reactions.  I am of the polio generation and can vaguely recall the pool closures and fears that were magically lifted when the vaccine on the sugar cube was made available.  Yeah, I ate it.  I wanted to go swimming that summer and I've never had to worry about swimming at a chlorinated pool since 1960.  I listened to my younger brother who was 4 years old with whooping cough and I did not want that either.  I had  chickenpox and German measles -cakewalks-but my neighbor got "Red" measles (the real thing) and when it was over had to wear glasses.  I was glad they had a vaccine for that too. I got the Smallpox vaccine 3x because it wouldn't "take".  They had some pictures of smallpox survivors in our encyclopedia and I very much wanted it to "take" so I wouldn't get THAT.

Trust is a tentative thing.  The anti-vaxxers really feel the government wants to kill them or chip them.  I cannot get quite that conspiratorial.  I have had anti- Fluoride patients tell me they don't want any, it's poisonous.  I suggest that Science says 1 part per million is helpful for dental decay.  I am not interested in killing them and logically I could fill more cavities if they didn't use fluoride or give it to their children.  If I have inadvertently lowered peoples IQ by 10 points or given them bone cancer at 68, I am sorry.  But the essential problem of whether the government is trustworthy is always a good question.  The bureaucracy looks after itself.  We citizens are tasked with making sure it is properly responsive.  If it is not being helpful, it needs to be changed.  New people and new missions.  We could, for example, get rid of the mission to "improve" the Afghan peoples' democracy and try improving ours.

I have some legitimate fears for all of us associated with dentistry: me, my staff, patients.  My profession is at risk in this "new" normal. We spend 45minutes 16 inches (not six feet) from patients with a mask that admittedly does NOT block viruses completely.  It is not worth getting your teeth cleaned if it has a 5% chance of killing you.

America was clearly unprepared for this pandemic.  Why did I order extra gloves, masks, and gowns in late January?  Because it was obvious that to work I would need them.  Why don't all hospitals have a 3 months supply?  I am currently not working and am giving my supplies away but you will pardon me if I keep some, expecting to return to work and needing some protection. Alternatively,   we could declare dentists "inessential" and ban the job.  As demoted "professionals" we could then give all our stuff to overworked ER doctors and the hospital nurses.  I am up for some sacrifices but I would be very careful of the people who are asking us to make them. Perhaps all elected officials should draw NO pay until this is cleared up and all other government employees are on 1/2 rations or $50,000 whichever is more.  

The Future--It is Murder

There are evangelical churches growing like kudzu and climate warriors almost resigned to extinction and fantasy draft league players handicapping for next year and retirement advisors suggesting more 401-k contributions while the financial system continues to stagger with a load of debt that will never be repaid.  There's not much agreement on what's important to do right now. And not too many thinking about where we might be going as a society. Growth forever is not an option but I suppose the secret universal opinion is maybe it will last until about 2025 and then we can get serious about a sustainable economic system?  I am convinced we should have started working the problem 40 years ago.

  What's the deal with "peak oil"?  It hasn't peaked yet despite some claims back in 2005 that it had. We spent a lot of "money" to frack for it and developed an expensive method of recovering the last vestiges of remaining oil that kept the production of it high.  There may be- no gas- one fine day but it seems more likely that it would just get more expensive for a few years before it disappeared. And a sudden TEOTWAWKI is like, "Inconceivable?" Can we limp along for 25 years or are we looking at  shortages within 5 years?  Are our leaders helping or clueless?   Do we have a society or is everyone on their own?

The Earth is heating up.  The CO2 levels are definitely increasing.  Is Miami going to be underwater in 10 years or will there still be 1,500 flights a day from Heathrow?  Will food still be "cheap" (for me) in 5 years with basic foodstuffs and specialty provisions like year round raspberries, Burgundy wines, and Wagu beef if I was so inclined?  If I was going to retire in 2 years, is it reasonable to plan a top ten world golf courses vacation or should I buy a farm and a mule?  What should I do politically?  I have a representative who is very supportive of the MIC because  it generates a lot of jobs. He hates government spending except for defense: the government should buy evermore drones and missiles, build more rockets for space exploration,  fight terrorists everywhere, and maybe even send the army to the border to stop illegal immigration.

I think we should stop illegal immigration.  I am not convinced that the government really cares.
I believe our leaders are over-matched by circumstances, short term thinkers, completely corrupted by their paymasters, and unable to conceptualize and solve even one simple problem facing us.

We are facing a banquet of consequences to a lot of bad decisions.  What "leader" will please say this?  Renewable energy will not power the future at the level we have come to expect.  The Arctic IS melting.  The Amazon rain forest is big but not infinite and it is BURNING.  If we thought fewer people on the planet was a good idea--what do we do about those already here who have not had their children, like my 3 children?

Insects are having a hard time.  I don't see as many on my windshield.  I just heard birds were down 30% in the last 50 years.  Is growth good or does it have some "costs"?

But it is another college football season and I see a plethora of games with 100,000 spectators in the stands.  People care about something. I could argue they are escapists.  Traffic is horrendous so a lot of people are going somewhere. I fly infrequently but when I do, it's packed.  Shopping malls used to be  crowded but they seem a lot emptier than I recall but of course Amazon HAS to be sucking some oxygen out of the room. There's a reason Bezos is the richest man in the world. Most have become ruined infrastructure.  The remaining clean and flashy department stores have less merchandise.

But drinking is definitely in.  Perhaps it was never out but it's now a destination activity. Epicureanism rules. Wine bars. Craft beer.  Single malt. There are so many restaurants that people only eat at home half the time. Food places that are "in" bloom and shrivel.  There's a lot of creativity given over to eating and drinking.

Politics is like howling at the moon. Conversation a lost art.  People go on a website/twitter/FB to vent, preach, or proselytize.   But you would never ask your neighbor if more or less military spending was a good idea or if 9/11 was a false flag.  Local politics is for the affected. Our city council chambers holds maybe 100 people.  Maybe we should voice vote at football games when 100,00 are in attendance?

Voting is like spitting for managing fluid levels in your body.  What do conservatives wish to conserve?  Certainly not the environment.  Perhaps our history of rapacious change?   Why  do they side with American Empire?  More money for the defense establishment.  They think big government is the problem, not big business.  Those innocent masters of the universe are just trying to make an honest buck. And besides The underclass is lazy, give the work to Filipino and Vietnamese workers--screw the working class-who needs 'em?
Progessives think deplorables need an education to thrive. Borrow from a friendly banker and plead for a job interview when finished.  Everyone can be a rocket scientist and architect.  Those backpacks full of loans slow all the young people down enough to manage them effectively. The welfare class and working class have no idea about their own best interests and need a little SJW assistance.    And Democrats are the warmongers now--why?  When did the CIA become the good guys?

More than ten years ago I identified 4 issues:  Energy, Economy, Environment, and Immigration as being central to having a Future.  We have tripled debt and addressed none of them effectively.  It is arguable that Energy from fracking HAS increased production but not really addressed the problem of fossil fuel dependence.   So what now?

Let's talk about Reality.  Let's take a stab at Truth.  The USA with 5% of the world's population uses 25% of the world's resources.  This has been true for 40 years.  Do we have any interest in including the rest of the world in the modernity project or are we content to pay the army and keep the status quo reach for Empire?  So if we elect to pursue justice we are committing to some austerity.  Oh, you mean you think more growth for everyone is possible?  Or is growth for US possible at the expense of everyone else and we shouldn't really worry about THEM.  We will call that Fortress America.  So we take our African safaris with armed guards and forego wandering around Cuzco before heading up to Machu Pichu.  And if our days of growth are behind us--how exactly are we to arrange the deck chairs of our civilization?

Since inequality is increasing I am assuming Inequality is the plan.  The rich get positioned to stay rich while a lot of people go hungry.  I make no argument that 7 billion people is not sustainable but it could be a meager existence.  There will be a line drawn under a certain quintile and the under won't have the wherewithal to continue.  Whether they wise up at that point and pitchfork the overlords is unknown.  The rich may turn out to be smarter than us and have made arrangements with the army and police....

Who are the rich?  How many people in the USA have more than $50 million dollars(.1%)?  About 50,000.  There are about 15 million net worth millionaires which isn't surprising if a normal house in Santa Barbara is $1 million...

A currency reset is expected. It will be at least an order of magnitude re-evaluation.  Simple millionaires will be left with  $100,000 (or less) and lack a retirement option.  The 50,000 will still be effectively rich.  The poor will still be poor--10% of a thousand bucks is $100 bucks and you still have to go to work tomorrow.  So now is it clear why the rich are bringing in the sheeves and stacking them in their own barn?

Can we blame anyone for this state of affairs except for ourselves,  our own stupidity about skipping the political organizing  and the boring meetings and hitting the tailgate parties? Many blame media propaganda.  But my own take is that when times are good and may potentially become better with a another credit card, a better job, a winning lottery ticket, or a successful child,  you don't go looking very hard for the reasons for your well being.  We are perfectly fattened and ready for the slaughter of our rights and future.  As is always the case, we must band together or drown separately. We best be getting ready for showtime.