China

[doodle]

My new favorite Chinese News source: http://chinasmack.com/

The stories provide a much more accurate picture of Chinese life and times than the Chinese Communist Party drivel that comes out of our mainstream media.

On some of the more important stories like Fat Chinese Woman's Anti Tanning Swimsuit http://www.chinasmack.com/2011/pictures ... mwear.html they even translate the readers comments so you can get an appreciation for Chinese cutdowns and humor.

[doodle]

Here is an interesting propaganda one: http://www.chinasmack.com/2011/pictures ... izens.html

I guess the Chinese Communist Party hasn't mastered photoshop yet.

At any rate according to one of the people in the comments section:

= = … The person who made this photo is about to meet misfortune…

[Storm]

That site is great, doodle!  The photoshop article is hilarious, especially if you scroll down until you see the user generated photoshops...  It's like one of those internet memes that got out of control...

[doodle]

Yeah, it makes you wonder how much control the Communist Party actually has when photos of govt officials start surfacing like this: http://img.chinasmack.com/wp-content/up ... ay-sex.gif

This type of news is very revealing about the tremendous political undercurrent in China. In fact, I read somewhere that there were something like 90,000 protests or uprisings in China last year alone.

[smurff]

The point of the series is that aliens visited eons ago for a variety of reasons, "interacted" with humanoids, and gave the resulting human species (who over the ages have regarded them as "gods") many things, including what we would today think of as "technology."    Whenever a human group gets their hands on a new technology from the aliens, they hoard it, guard it with the highest secrecy, and use it to fight other human groups--the Nazis during WWII with nuclear technology are a favorite example the theorists use, but there are others, like stealth technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, you name it.

The story I always heard was that a long time ago the aliens came down and had relations with the monkeys and human beings were the resulting species.

The reason they keep coming back is to check on their creation, and we are also fascinated by these creatures with whom we feel a strange bond.

That's why we don't have that much body hair (aliens are smooth, right?) and we have a persistent longing for a thing we cannot name.

Somebody (something?) must be reading the Permanent Portfolio board.  

It turns out that this Thursday (August 18)  "Ancient Aliens" on the History Channel will have a show about the relationship between aliens and gold.  From the listing on my on-screen TV guide:  "Noting the common factor at global sites, some speculate gold links man and ETs."  10:00 PM Eastern time (right after the 9:00 PM episode that discusses how Centaur, Minotaur, and Medusa may have resulted from ET transplantation procedures).  

Full episodes online at http://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens.

Don't you just love cable?
 

[MediumTex]

Somebody (something?) must be reading the Permanent Portfolio board. 

It turns out that this Thursday (August 18)  "Ancient Aliens" on the History Channel will have a show about the relationship between aliens and gold.  From my the listing on my on-screen TV guide:  "Noting the common factor at global sites, some speculate gold links man and ETs."  10:00 PM Eastern time (right after the 9:00 PM episode that discusses how Centaur, Minotaur, and Medusa may have resulted from ET transplantation procedures). 

Full episodes online at http://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens.

Don't you just love cable?
 

That sounds pretty interesting.

What would be REALLY good, though, would be an episode about the connection between aliens and long term treasuries. 

[doodle]

Chinese Communist Party power continues to waver under popular dissent. Another insightful look into China's political challenges: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/world ... alian.html

[Tortoise]

What would be REALLY good, though, would be an episode about the connection between aliens and long term treasuries.   :D

It appears that aliens are not pleased with the low yields on LTTs right now.

[smurff]

It appears that aliens are not pleased with the low yields on LTTs right now.

They can grouse and complain all they want; serves them right for putting 100% of their export receipts in them.  By now you'd think they would have heard of the Permanent Portfolio.

[doodle]

While we bicker over scheduling a jobs speech, China continues to eat our lunch in 21st century energy tech. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/busin ... china.html

What industry is America planning to excel at in the 21st century? Where is our economic niche.... Ponzi schemes?

[MediumTex]

While we bicker over scheduling a jobs speech, China continues to eat our lunch in 21st century energy tech. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/busin ... china.html

What industry is America planning to excel at in the 21st century? Where is our economic niche.... Ponzi schemes?

Maybe they will use some of that high tech energy to wean themselves off of coal-fired electricity.

I might be too busy coughing to notice all the high tech energy (it would also have to be pretty close due to low visibility).

[doodle]

MT,

I am not trying to portray China as a country without issues. They have huge challenges ahead...pollution being one of the central ones. Nevertheless, the government seems to create an atmosphere that is amenable to and supportive of industry and business. I lament the fact that the United States government is so dysfunctional at the moment that they have the gall to bicker over when to schedule a jobs speech while millions of Americans are out of work and have been so for years.

Clean tech has the potential (with government support) to provide an economic boom similar to that which the internet provided 20 years ago. Why aren't we promoting these homegrown industries? Recently a German/Austrian solar conglomerate came into my area of Florida looking to build a solar plant that would have provided good jobs. From what I read they were having trouble finding qualified workers to build the thing because our schools haven't created sufficient training programs in this area. I place the blame for this squarely on our spineless political leaders who cannot fix our antiquated tax, regulatory, immigration, and educational structure to move this country out of the morass it finds itself in. I feel like America is being sabotaged from within.

[MediumTex]

MT,

I am not trying to portray China as a country without issues. They have huge challenges ahead...pollution being one of the central ones. Nevertheless, the government seems to create an atmosphere that is amenable to and supportive of industry and business.

I assume you mean "atmosphere" figuratively.  The actual atmosphere looks pretty nasty.

I lament the fact that the United States government is so dysfunctional at the moment that they have the gall to bicker over when to schedule a jobs speech while millions of Americans are out of work and have been so for years.

I, too, long for a system in which you can just summarily execute the dissenters or send them to work camps.  Having to listen to complaints and compromise on issues must get to be so tiring for elected leaders.

Clean tech has the potential (with government support) to provide an economic boom similar to that which the internet provided 20 years ago. Why aren't we promoting these homegrown industries?

 

Perhaps because they are ridiculously expensive compared to fossil fuel energy and we have huge deposits of fossil fuels in the U.S. that they don't have in Europe.

[doodle]

MT,

Computers were ridiculously expensive in their initial stages as well. I'm sure clean tech's price will drop significantly once scaled up and tweaked.

Besides, do you really think that domestic fossil fuels are enough to satisfy our countries energy needs? In addition there are some serious environment issues that I don't feel comfortable with. BP's oil is still washing up on our shores in Florida. I also wonder how many people who support fracking for nat gas would feel comfortable with it happening under their water table that they drink from?? Would you?

[MediumTex]

MT,

Computers were ridiculously expensive in their initial stages as well. I'm sure clean tech's price will drop significantly once scaled up and tweaked.

Besides, do you really think that domestic fossil fuels are enough to satisfy our countries energy needs? In addition there are some serious environment issues that I don't feel comfortable with. BP's oil is still washing up on our shores in Florida. I also wonder how many people who support fracking for nat gas would feel comfortable with it happening under their water table that they drink from?? Would you?

Do you not realize that alternative energy is in virtually all cases a more expensive derivative of fossil fuels? 

As fossil fuel costs rise, so too does the cost of alternative energy.  Fossil fuels are the feedstock of alternative energy, just like fossil fuels are the feedstock of modern agriculture.

For more information on this interesting topic take a look at the well-researched paper linked to below:

LINK

The coincidence of population growth and growth in fossil fuel production in the last two centuries is, IMHO, no accident.  As Charlton Heston might have put it: "Soylent Green is made of fossil fuels!"



If coal production was rolled into those oil production figures I'll bet you would find the two lines tracking together even more precisely.

Industrial civilization is, in many ways, a fossil fuel product.  Human beings being constituted as they are, however, we attribute our achievements solely to the nobility of our purpose and strength of our convictions.  It's what you might call a hubristic narrative fallacy of the homo colussus variety.

I think that historical figures like Galileo would chuckle at our self-satisfaction.  He might say something like: "If you had given me near unlimited supplies of energy I could have done some REALLY interesting things."

I have mentioned this before, but I think that each iteration of human civilization has a cultural "blow off top" in the form of a peak material expression of its values, beliefs and aspirations.  The ancient Egyptians' blow off top was the pyramids, while for the Romans it was architecture and infrastructure.  For us, I believe that in the distant future people will look back at the six manned Moon missions as both a peak cultural expression and a manifestation of the shared mythology of the times (that mythology being a cargoist-like belief in the ability of technology to solve any problem that may present itself to humanity). 

It wouldn't surprise me at all if in the future some kind of cultish religious movement grew up around the Apollo astronauts and their travels.  To date, 12 men have walked on the Moon (the most recent of which was 39 years ago).  Doesn't that sound like the makings of some kind of cult following given enough time?  "In olden times of yore, the Apollo 12 walked the heavens and stood on the Moon where they communed with the Eternal."  The astronauts on board Apollo 13 would probably be fallen angels in the new mythology.

For an interesting take on the idea of traveling to a moon as a means of spiritual enlightenment (and the way pesky humans can mess it up), check out "The Fantastic Planet."

(Sorry for the thread-jacking)

[doodle]

MT,

That chart you posted is precisely why it is so important that humans solve our long term energy problems today while fossil fuels are still abundant. We need to put huge scientific effort on a worldwide scale into creating new energy sources such as fusion and hydrogen fuels as well as improving on solar, geothermal, wind, and hyrdoelectric. The plans for a post fossil fuel world need to be made right now...it is going to take a couple of generations of work to get this done. If our governments cannot lead society towards this goal and we stay with the philosophy of "drill,drill, drill", we are eventually doomed and we will see the other side of the parabola.

I often wonder whether it would be better to live in the city or the country in a post peak oil society. They both seem to have their plusses and minuses. Obviously in a total collapse, the country would be better, for the reason that you have a chance at self sufficiency. In a less apocalyptic scenario however, I think that the city (which allows efficiencies through a concentration of resources) would be better. The area whose survival I view as tenuous are suburbs because this lifestyle seems inextricably linked to cheap fossil fuel. My guess is that suburban sprawl will eventually be returned to agricultural land that surrounds a centralized city. Farmers thousands of years from now will probably be plowing into people basements and house foundations making for exciting archeological discoveries.

Maybe the PP long term real estate plan is to own some land in the country and a small apartment in the city.

[Storm]

Nevertheless, the government seems to create an atmosphere that is amenable to and supportive of industry and business.

Doodle, the Chinese government creates an atmosphere that is friendly to business only because if you bribe them you can get away with breaking the law.  This is not a recipe for a long-term industry success.  This is a recipe for crony capitalism in which whoever pays the biggest bribes wins all the contracts and those that don't pay protection money get their business shut down for breaking regulations that were invented by their competition.  At least in the US the rule of law mostly applies.

Here's an exercise:  Try suing the Chinese government for blocking your business from doing something that should be legal.

[Lone Wolf]

I have mentioned this before, but I think that each iteration of human civilization has a cultural "blow off top" in the form of a peak material expression of its values, beliefs and aspirations.  The ancient Egyptians' blow off top was the pyramids, while for the Romans it was architecture and infrastructure.  For us, I believe that in the distant future people will look back at the six manned Moon missions as both a peak cultural expression and a manifestation of the shared mythology of the times (that mythology being a cargoist-like belief in the ability of technology to solve any problem that may present itself to humanity). 

I've never more enjoyed reading an essay that eviscerates my belief system.  Great observations.  (I'm not swayed, but nonetheless impressed.)

Ultimately, I see us simply adopting a dense energy source like nuclear power.  The amount of energy that nuclear can generate is incredible.

[doodle]

that mythology being a cargoist-like belief in the ability of technology to solve any problem that may present itself to humanity

What other options do we have...collective prayer?

[stone]

China has many awful faults but where they succeed and we fail is that they don't seem to be under the delusion that it is possible to store up time and transfer it to the future. Basically that is what much of economics in the western world boils down to. We seem to believe that if we save man hours by having people unemployed rather than "expensively" building renewable energy systems, educating children, providing medical care or whatever; then somehow those unused man hours are not simply lost forever. Of course in reality those man hours are lost forever.

[MediumTex]

that mythology being a cargoist-like belief in the ability of technology to solve any problem that may present itself to humanity

What other options do we have...collective prayer?

We could adopt a realistic view of the limits of technology in an energy constrained world.

When the weatherman forecasts stormy weather he isn't doing it because he is a pessimist.

The only possible replacement for fossil fuels that could even theoretically allow something like a business as usual approach for humanity going forward is nuclear power, but making nuclear power truly viable is kind of like making manned space flight routine--it never really got as easy as people thought it would.

In my view, if nuclear power plants around the world experience a disaster every decade or two (which is the current track record of nuclear power), in a relatively short period of time (perhaps one or two human lifetimes) large parts of the world would become uninhabitable.  Nuclear power is, to me, sort of the ecological equivalent of a doctor prescribing heroin as a way of dealing with a patient's nervous disposition--you are simply trading one problem (i.e., a voracious appetite for cheap energy) for another (i.e., a cure that is potentially FAR worse than the disease).

[stone]

Medium Tex "voracious appetite for cheap energy"

-again, "expense" is a mute point if it is only expensive in terms of labor that otherwise would be unwillingly unemployed.

[moda0306]

stone,

I really like that... that's the one thing about Keynesianism that really grabs me... that these man-hours 1) aren't being demanded by the private sector, currently, 2) are making these people suffer, whether deservedly or not (and their children), and 3) could be harnessed by government to do something now that would be much more expensive in the future given the demand for labor (assuming, eventually, we come back to full employment)... this act will actually have the effect of creating the demand that the private sector is so-looking-for at this point.

That said, the resources these people then choose to burn up (the gas to get to work, the children they have because they feel "safe," the nonrenewable resources that are misallocated) DO sometimes go to waste... that's the "achilles heel" if there is one, to me... along with using labor of our citizens we use raw materials from the ground.

I do think we have "deficit flexibility," though, and austerity will never work... so along with some kind of liquidation of bad debts program and maybe some cash stimulus, I wonder what we can do at this point... I don't know if our roads are truly crumbling, but beyond fixing our infrastructure, I think a massive push to get those who need it educated in new skills is extremely important.

Setting up a new education infrastructure would be inappropriate, but you don't want the price of education going through the roof because it's oversubsidized.  I think the real answer is on the income-replacement end.  Maybe instead of paying people unemployment insurance to look for jobs in construction that aren't there, we can pay them the same thing plus 1/4 of their education bill to go to a community college or engineering program.

I just think something can and has to be done here.  Not centrally planned so much as a recognition of where our private sector is and where it will need to be to compete, and having government fill the slot that it needs to in terms of stimulus, education, and infrastructure.  Leaving uneducated people with lower and lower real income every year, I fear, is not going to breed entreprenurialism, but desperate behavior.  I can't see good coming out of it.  Whether the government's fault or the private sector's, our current situation is one that I don't think the private sector alone can pull us out of efficiently or effectively on its own.

[stone]

moda, I'm still more in favour of using a citizens dividend approach more than an increase in government. If everyone (ie all 7B people on earth) could equally aford oil, then that would make oil more expensive and so renewable energy profitable. I think the "parallel processing" power of everyone gaining purchasing power has much more hope of making a rational economy than a top down central planning approach. Basically don't increase the amount of money but do increase demand.

[moda0306]

stone,

I really do like that idea.  It keeps crony capitalism out of it and encourages free choice. 

I just wonder if a specific education initiative isn't set up if we're properly addressing the problems.

Curious... what do you see the "dividend" being?  Do you see social programs seeing a cutback (like food stamps, welfare, unemployment, healthcare assistance, etc?)