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The Archdruid Report: Not The End Of The World: May 1, 9:47am 1 review evolution, society, change, worldviews
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/04/not-end-of-world.html; Not The End Of The World in The Archdruid Report by John Michael Greer
It's not the end of the world, or even the end of industrial civilization, but if history is anything to go by, we could be in for a couple of very rough decades. A crisis phase in the downward arc of catabolic collapse is not a pleasant thing to live through, and we can expect it to have social, economic, political, and (unless we're extraordinarily lucky) military dimensions that will transform most people\u2019s lives for the worse, temporarily or forever. That need not stop us from facing the emerging crisis with as much grace and humanity as we can muster, while doing our part to lay the foundations for the ecotechnic societies of the future - unless, that is, we allow premature proclamations of triumph or catastrophe to distract us from the work that must be done. Not The End Of The World. A most enlightened vision of societal change. This post is perhaps John Michael Greer's most influential one. He is undoubtedly right that "Human societies are complex homeostatic systems that respond to changes in their environments by trying to maintain their equilibrium." Failing to understand this organic way of societies leads to simplistic interpretations of present events that contracts reality into its dualistic visions of doom and gloom versus technophilia. Those are unhelpful perception crutches at best and devastating at worst. We are not close to the end of the world as the title of Greer's post states but we are at a societal stage of evolution that is going to displace modernity for something new often referred to as postmodernity. But the word has been twisted to say so many things that its meaning has often been lost on its users. Postmodernity is the stage of societal evolution that follows modernity and the transition is, for sure, going to be traumatic for most. Each stage of societal evolution has its own economic, social, cultural and other characteristics but what differentiates each of them is the worldview (understanding of reality) that is shared by the citizens within their societies. We observe 4 stages of evolution: - animism: citizens of tribes share an animistic worldview. - religion: citizens of kingdoms and empires share one or another form of religious belief and or one or another philosophic derivation of animism. - modernity: citizens of nation-states share a common vision of rationality (derived from the logic of capital) and believe that science has technological answers to everything. - postmodernity: citizens of the world will share a common vision of reality wherein humans are seen as interconnected minuscule particles of a whole that is unattainable. The transition between modernity and postmodernity is a process of change that will take many decades to stabilize and, for sure, there will be ups and downs along the road. Before to tackle the causes of climate change we'll suffer its consequences. Before to tackle peak oil and other resources we'll be confronted with shortages in energy and materials that will oblige us to revise our ways of living. Before to tackle poverty we'll be confronted with individual and societal violence that will oblige us to care for the weakest ones among us. Our future is in ecotechnic societies interconnected through solidarity.

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong Ne…: Apr 18, 2:10pm 1 review economics, globalization, change
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JD19Ad01.html; Asia pushes, West resists in AsiaTimes by Sreeram Chaulia a review of The New Asian Hemisphere. The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East by Kishore Mahbubani. PublicAffairs, New York, 2008.
Mahbubani asserts that a turbulent era of de-Westernization has commenced in Asia. With most Asians disavowing former beliefs that the West was the "most civilized part of the world", the latter has lost appeal as an ideal in human advancement. Chinese intellectuals, drawing on a history of insularity, have decolonized their mind the furthest and fastest. Accompanying China's accumulation of wealth and economic vitality is a popular rediscovery of its glorious cultural heritage and pride. De-Westernization is even more drastic in the Middle East. Hardly any Muslim society, perhaps not even Turkey, is trying to demonstrate that it is Western in spirit. Islamic publics view Westerners as immoral, greedy and insensitive to the loss of Muslim lives. Mahbubani considers India to be a bridge between the "West and the Rest". Indian thinkers do not see the West as the custodian of the highest values, but they also appreciate their country's historic place in constantly admitting and absorbing foreign influences. Mahbubani rides on China's geopolitical success to infer that "Asians are capable of delivering a more stable world order". Asia pushes, West resists Change is a process. Geo-political change is a rather long process and let's never forget that it often is fraught with violence. The root cause of the present geo-political change is the entry of China, India and the whole of Asia, Africa and South America into modernity. Modernity is first and foremost the application of the logic of capital to all aspects of life. Instead of continuing to eat the products that they grow on their fields people leave the land to go work in factories that have been financed by capital. From then on they will be forced to buy everything that is necessary to reproduce their daily lives and later everything that they think is necessary... This process of swelling domestic demand is satisfied by always more productions of goods and services. It becomes then evident that population size is going to be what differentiates the economic size of nations. Great-Britain was no match, in the 20th century, in term of population size for the US nor any other European country for that matter. After the 2nd world war Europeans took the path of unification and after half a century they got a unified currency and a European central bank and soon a president, a foreign affairs secretary and so on. But Europe is only marginally larger than the US... The story in Asia is definitely going to be far more world changing. China's population is not far from a billion and a half (official + not counted) and India is on the path to surpass China within a few decades. That gives us a population of 3 billion approximately versus a population of 3 quarters of a billion for the US + the EU. If those 2 countries can sustain for a few more decades their extremely rapid rates of economic growth each is going to surpass the economic size of the US and later the combined size of the US + the EU. This is going to have a decisive impact on how the world will be running in the coming decades not only economically but also politically and culturally. How is whiteman going to take those changes is the subject of Kishore Mahbubani's book.

"The next bubble: Priming the markets for tomorrows big crash"…: Mar 11, 10:39am 5 reviews economics, finance, change
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/0081908; The next bubble: Priming the markets for tomorrow's big crash in Harper's Magazine by Eric Janszen Eric Janszen is the founder and president of iTulip, Inc. He formerly served as managing director of the venture firm Osborn Capital, CEO of AutoCell, Inc. and Bluesocket, Inc., and entrepreneur-in-residence for Trident Capital.
After 1975, the United States would never again post an annual merchandise trade surplus. Such high-value, finished-goods-producing industries as steel and automobiles were no longer dominant. The new economy belonged to finance, insurance, and real estate - FIRE. ... As FIRE rose in power, so did a new generation of politicians, bankers, economists, and journalists willing to invent creative justifications for the system, as well as for the projects - ranging from the housing bubble to the Iraq war - that it financed. ... In a bubble, fictitious value goes away when market participants lose faith in the religion - when their false beliefs are destroyed as quickly as they had been formed. Since the early 1980s, the free-market orthodoxy of the Chicago School has driven policy on the upward slope of an economic boom, but we're all Keynesians on the way down: rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, tax cuts by Congress, deficit spending, and dollar depreciation are deployed in heroic proportions. ... Even after the faith that supported a bubble recedes, false beliefs continue to obscure cause and effect as the crisis unfolds. Consider the chemical industry of forty years ago, back when such pollutants as PCBs were dumped into the air and water with little or no regulation. For years, the mantra of the industry was "the solution to pollution is dilution." ... Many decades later, with our plagues of hermaphrodite frogs, poisoned ground water, and mysterious cancers, the mistake in that logic is plain. Modern bankers, however, have carried this mistake into the world of finance. As more and more loans with a high risk of default were made from the late 1990s to the summer of 2007, the shared level of credit risk increased throughout the global financial system. ... As more and more risk pollution rises to the surface, credit will continue to contract, and the FIRE economy - which depends on the free flow of credit - will experience its first near-death experience since the sector rose to power in the early 1980s. Because all asset hyperinflations revert to the mean, we can expect housing prices to decline roughly 38 percent from their peak as they return to something closer to the historical rate of monetary inflation. If the rate of decline stabilizes at between 6 and 7 percent each year, the correction has about six years to go before things stabilize, leaving the FIRE economy in need of $12 trillion. Where will that money be found? ... Now the Funds Rate is only 4.5 percent, the dollar is at multi-decade lows, the federal budget is in deficit, and tax cuts are still in effect. The chronic trade deficit, the sudden depreciation of our currency, and the lack of foreign buyers willing to purchase its debt will require the United States government to print new money simply to fund its own operations and pay its 22 million employees. ... ... we can expect to see the creation of another $8 trillion in fictitious value, which gives us an estimate of $20 trillion in speculative wealth, money that inevitably will be employed to increase share prices rather than to deliver "energy security." ... Given the current state of our economy, the only thing worse than a new bubble would be its absence. The next bubble: Priming the markets for tomorrow's big crash Excellent article. If you are interested to understand what drives our economies and societies in early 21st century then you should absolutely read this extremely long article.

Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs: Mar 10, 11:50am 1 review economics, globalization, finance, change
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JC11Dj01.html; What is left that is sellable? in Asia Times by Doug Noland
It was a bubble of historic proportions and it's all laid out on the L.107 page in the Fed's Z.1 report. ... For the year (2007), total credit (non-financial and financial) expanded a record $3.998 trillion (8.9%) to $48.808 trillion. This was a moderate increase from 2006's growth of $3.859 trillion (9.4%), and compares to 2005's $3.310 trillion, 2004's $3.178 trillion, 2003's $2.779 trillion, 2002's $2.781 trillion, 2001's $2.020 trillion, and 2000's $1.679 trillion. Total credit market debt averaged $2.500 trillion annual growth over the 10-year period 1997 to 2006. ... ROW holdings (Rest Of World) of US financial assets were up an astounding $7.222 trillion, or 88%, in just four years ... Somehow, everyone wanted to make believe that we would always enjoy the luxury of trading endless new securities for imported energy, commodities, capital equipment, cheap electronics, and all the consumer goods we could ever dream of. The problem was that our credit system was issuing ever larger quantities of increasingly suspect financial claims ... Well, the entire world has become aware of our situation and will be less than keen to accumulate more of our debt. What is left that is sellable? The Face-Slap Theory in the NYT, a difficult recognition, by PAUL KRUGMAN Going Going. . . . in Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler Sorry; again a post about economics and finance. I would rather write about another subject but this is unfortunately what dominates our present. "Total credit market debt averaged $2.500 trillion annual growth over the 10-year period 1997 to 2006. " This means that on average the US economy needed, in each of these last 10 years, to borrow the equivalent of 20-25% of its annual GDP to retain its way of life and its status as n#1 economic power on earth. Today when papers, representing the US total debt of $48.808 trillion, come to market they most often don't find buyers any longer. That means that financial investors have lost trust in paper and the value of paper goes down meaning that the present assets of US citizens and enterprises are fast melting away. That also means that the US will no longer be able to find buyers for new debt paper and in consequence it will not be able to sustain its way of life and its status as n#1 economic and military power on earth. The financial Armageddon that we are witnessing is reassessing the value of currencies and also the size of national economies. From the present financial swing will emerge a very different world where the relative size of the US will have shrunk drastically. Meanwhile the EU, India, and particularly China will grow as the new dominating centers of world power. And there is a huge risk that in this changing economic and political context the side-effects of modernity will lose people's attention forced as they will be to struggle for survival.

Beyond hope and doom: Time for a peak oil pep talk | EnergyBulletin.net | Peak O…: Mar 3, 1:11pm 2 reviews economics, complexity, change, collapse
http://www.energybulletin.net/41149.html; Beyond hope and doom: Time for a peak oil pep talk in Energy Bulletin by Richard Heinberg
Awareness of Peak Oil, Climate Change, impending global economic implosion, topsoil depletion, biodiversity collapse, and the thousand other dire threats crashing down upon us at the dawn of the new millennium constitutes an enormous psychological burden... Planetary worries can be even more debilitating. What if there simply is no hope? Beyond hope and doom: Time for a peak oil pep talk The search for knowledge, in our times of word abundance, unmistakeably drives us straight to a wall of doubt that sends to us flash-back questions such as "where are the answers to the knowledge we gain about the sheer misery that we and our modern societies are inflicting upon the principle of life on earth?". in "Beyond hope and doom" Richard Heinberg is asking that kind of question but he is not giving us any plausible answer. Writing that "We're all in this together. Let's rely on one another's reserves of psychological strength when we need to, and provide strength for others when we can." only envisions a psychological remedy to forget about the enormity of the misery that we are inflicting upon the principle of life on earth. Sharon Astyk writes that "we must find a way to hallow, or at least apply meaning, to our descent". Hallowing the descent The only meaning I can see in humanity diving into its own collapse is that humanity is only a necessity for itself. The principle of life does not need humanity to sustain its own existence but humanity, at least at its operating level, needs the consciousness about itself as it relates with the whole to assure its own reproduction. This kind of finality in the conclusion generates another set of question: "If humanity is of no particular necessity for anything else than itself than perhaps we its conscious particles, functioning as its operating principle, have a vested interest to protect it from itself". This it seems to me constitutes the ultimate intellectual rejection of modernity and the principle of equality that it generated as an invisible strategy to maximize the expansion of economic demand so that the logic of capital could generate ever more surplus of capital. But then how do we stop this societal cancer? For Dmitry Orlov "Rather than attempting to undertake the Herculean task of mitigating the unmitigatable-attempting to stop the world and point it in a different direction-it seems far better to turn inward and work to transform yourself into someone who might stand a chance, given the world's assumed trajectory". This is the start of the answer on how to stop the societal cancer. But it is not the end of the answer! Communities and neighborhoods will inevitably address the end of the answers. Or at least they will try to do just that, for, without communities the individuals simply die. Review of Dmitry Orlov's Re-inventing Collapse I personally like the optimism of James Lovelock""There have been seven disasters since humans came on the earth, very similar to the one that's just about to happen. I think these events keep separating the wheat from the chaff. And eventually we'll have a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly. That's the source of my optimism."" 'Enjoy life while you can' James LOVELOCK's website We're drunk and we're at the edge of the roof.

RGE - The Staggering Fiscal Costs of Bailing Out a Financial System in Crisis: Feb 28, 6:59pm 1 review economics, finance, change
http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/246724; The Staggering Fiscal Costs of Bailing Out a Financial System in Crisis in RGE Monitor by Nouriel Roubini
The wise Wolf is himself - at the end - very aware of the political economy of a financial system where in good times the profits are privatized and in bad times the losses are socialized. This is not a politically sustainable regime. As he correctly puts it: "This is not a crisis of 'crony capitalism' in emerging economies, but of sophisticated, rules-governed capitalisms in the world's most advanced economy. The instinct of those responsible will be to mount a rescue and pretend nothing happened... Worse, the institutions that prospered on the upside expect rescue on the downside. They are right to expect this. But this can hardly be a tolerable bargain between financial insiders and wider society. Is such mayhem the best we can expect? Is so, how does one sustain broad support for what appears so one-sided game?" This is indeed a one-sided game where financial insiders privatize profits while the massive losses of their reckless behavior - searching dangerously for yield, gambling for redemption, being subject to distorted incentive not to monitor their lending and risky investments - are systematically socialized during a crisis. This is actually 'crony capitalism' of the worst kind, as bad as the one that plagued emerging market economies and led to their severe financial crises in the last decade. The Staggering Fiscal Costs of Bailing Out a Financial System in Crisis requires registration (FREE) Why Washingtonu2019s rescue cannot end crisis story The globalization of modernity, that has been imposed since the seventies on the population of the world by Western big capital, is now concluding in front of our eyes with a worldwide rebalancing of economic power: - the US economy is choking under debt and will take years to digest its financial losses. After re-emerging it will look vastly different and weaker... - China will suffer high losses of its own as collateral damage from the American financial implosion but its economy will continue to grow at a fast pace driven by its internal market. China saves approx. 40% of its national earnings and those savings... - Europe will undeniably also suffer from the US financial implosion but the savings of its citizens are still high and its internal market is the largest of the world.... From the present US financial implosion will emerge a new "economy world" and a new worldview...

Robert Reichs Blog: Obama vs. McCain, and The Four Stories of American Life: Feb 13, 2:13pm 2 reviews politics, us, change
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/02/obama-vs-mccain-and-four-stories-of.html; The Four Stories of American Life by Robert Reich in his Blog Robert Reich is the nation's 22nd Secretary of Labor and a professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
1. the art of the political narrative. The Triumphant Individual. The Benevolent Community. The Mob at the Gates. The Rot at the Top. 2. A little history 3. Comes George Bush 4. The challenge for progressives The Four Stories of American Life Consider that nations could very well behave, kind of, like individuals and observe how: - the US is like the adolescent among nations - the EU is like the adult among nations - and China is like the grand-mother among nations Fact is that the narrative of adolescents is different from the narrative of adults that is different from the narrative of grand-parents. Robert Reich gives us a masterly description of the adolescent narrative about nations. It is a non-dualist approach that fits the canon of modern theories of change in dynamic environments as well as the logic of the Tao. - "The Triumphant Individual" is the young active polarity (young yang) that ages into "the Benevolent Community" which is the old active polarity (old yang). - The old active polarity then degenerates into "The Mob at the Gates" which is the young passive polarity (young yin) that in turn transforms into the old passive polarity "The Rot at the Top". - The old passive polarity then degenerates into a new young active polarity, thus, engaging a new cycle of change. The mass movement for change behind Obama illustrates the emergence of a new young active polarity possibly signaling the start of a new cycle in American societal life. At the light of this narrative of change in the American adolescent nation the present electoral cycle takes an interesting intellectual twist.

On the cusp of economic history - International Herald Tribune: Jan 22, 9:13am 2 reviews economics, globalization, change
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/22/business/dprotect.php?page=1; On the cusp of economic history in The Int'l Herald Tribune by Katrin Bennhold
Is economic history about to change course? Among the chieftains of politics and industry gathering in Davos for the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, a consensus appears to be building that the capitalist system is in for one of those rare and tempestuous mutations that give rise to a new set of economic policies. - Power is steadily leaking from West to East. - Income inequalities are rising in rich countries. And signs of a protectionist backlash are multiplying as worries about climate change, the rise of state-run investment funds and the bursting of the recent credit bubble give novel ammunition to those in the West who question free markets and clamor for more shelter from globalization. What exactly will emerge when the dust settles is hard to predict, economists and executives say. But this much seems clear: With the frontier between state and market once again up for grabs, the era of easy globalization is over - and big government in one form or another is back. "The pendulum between market and state is swinging back," Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organization, said... When students of economics open their history books in 2030, they might read about 2008 as the year when the groundwork was laid for a re-regulation of certain markets, a more redistributive tax system and new forms of international policy coordination, economists say. On the cusp of economic history So here we are. The application in real life of economic theories is shifting from the "market laissez-faire" of the last 25 years to something more akin to "the state has to redress the market's inefficiencies". 25 years application of "Market laissez-faire" has resulted in: - devastating effects on people's daily lives in the West - stunning improvements in people's daily lives in the East A backlash coming from the West is in now in the making: - protectionism as defense of Western national interests - recourse to the idea of "the level playing field" in term of workers' free association and environmental protection. The West is trying to justify its newly found nationalism and protectionism by positioning itself as a moral leader of workers rights and the protection of the environment. It's simply amazing. Isn't the present level of environmental degradation the result of over 2 centuries of application by the West of the kind of "laissez-faire market capitalism" that it now prepares to reject to the dustbin of history? In light of this the West's positioning as the moral leader of the world economy is simply hypocritical. The fact is that this economic realignment reminds us of the years preceding the 1st world war. Danger lurks over the geo-political field...

Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs: Jan 8, 11:03am 1 review cars, globalization, change, modernity
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JA09Dj02.html; Eroding Western living standards in Asia Times by Martin Hutchinson
it is pretty clear that income levels in the West are converging with those in the more competently run emerging markets. The bad news is that in the years ahead this is likely to happen through an absolute decline in Western living standards. ... Thus the economic histories of a high proportion of the Western population under 30, except the very highly skilled, will involve repeated bouts of unemployment, with job changes involving not a move to higher living standards but an angry acceptance of lower ones. By 2030, it is possible that the median real income in the United States and Western Europe may be no more than 50-60% of its level today. ... Expansive governments will employ ever higher proportions of Western populations in unproductive ways, thus increasing exponentially the burden on their unfortunate taxpayers and quickening the exit of jobs. ... Once the world competes once again on a level playing field, with high-quality education and infrastructure as available in Bangladesh as in Baltimore, and no gigantic surplus mob of the unskilled, living standards will begin to increase in tandem worldwide, with both the ex-rich countries and ex-poor countries benefiting. Eroding Western living standards This article describes how the spreading of the logic of capital is equalizing incomes around the globe. In the West incomes come down while they go up in the South. This will go on until the whole earth becomes an economic level playing field for capital holders. This presentation is the vision of big capital that, in the seventies, gave the impulse to the movement toward globalization undertaken in large part through the Trilateral Commission. The bet behind this vision is that the logic of capital will finally impose itself as the ultimate value of a universal order emerging eventually out of the chaos wrought upon us by globalization. But what about: - The side-effects of modernity: these are now being addressed by the propagandists of this globalization of modernity as being unsolvable (climate change is real but we can do nothing to stop it). Their implicit meaning being that globalization should continue unabated. Later on they'll justify the starving of four-fifth of the world population as a collateral damage of progress. - Peak resources: they have no doubt that the peaking of oil and other resources will be solved by science and technology. Their belief in rationality is akin to religious. It is an unquestioning belief.

The hidden holocaust -- our civilizational crisis, part 3: The end of the world …: Jan 7, 12:28pm 2 reviews society, change, modernity
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2803.shtml; The hidden holocaust -- our civilizational crisis via The Oil Drum, in Online Journal by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development
This global system is hugely destructive of human life. Devoid of the capability to recognize and enact ethical values, it is driven purely by the imperatives of profit, efficiency, growth, and monopoly. Consequently, it is not only destructive of human life; it is destructive of all life, nature, and even itself. It is now generating multiple crises across the world that over the next 20 years threaten to converge in an unprecedented and unimaginable way, unless we take drastic action now. part 1: The holocaust in history part 2: Exporting democracy part 3: The end of the world as we know it? part 4: A whole new vision of life itself An excellent presentation about modernity and its side-effects. For Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed the " origins of modern civilization can be found partly in the pivotal voyages for European colonial expansion and trade from the 15th century to the 19th centuries." Two comments impose themselves at this level: - first modernity is not a civilization it is one particular stage of societal and economic development along the evolutionary road of humanity. Modernity did not supplant the Indian and the Chinese civilizations; those civilizations are internalizing modernity. - secondly the origins of modernity do not lay in the "voyages for European colonial expansion and trade from the 15th century to the 19th centuries". Those voyages came as a consequence of the groundwork laid earlier at the origins of modernity. The groundwork laid at the origins of modernity was made possible with the convergence of two factors: 1. a population increase, in Western Europe at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries, led to higher consumer demand than what the feudal manors could produce and to secure their survival many were left with the only alternative to flee their manor and try to survive at their margins. This rapidly evolved into communities that grew in the early European cities. Those communities survived through agriculture and trade. 2. the crusades undertaken at the initiative of Pope Urban II, who enrolled the Squires and Lords under the guise of sin forgiving certificates (indulgences), were the occasion for the European aristocracy to discover the ingeniousness of Arab crafts, the richness generated by their commercial endeavors, and the high level of knowledge bestowed on their people in their universities. This encounter, of primitive Europeans with far more advanced Arabs, resulted in the plunder by the Europeans of the accumulated Arab richness (their gold, silver and crafts as well as their imported silks and other from the far East). Over the next decades those plundered goods find their way to the European regional market fairs that resulted from what is described in point 1. Long distance trade could not possibly have been made possible without the borrowing of financial and exchange techniques from the Arabs, most important among them the bill of exchange and the tools to enact a double entry accountancy system. The discipline and strictness imposed by the use of those instruments of commercial exchanges upon merchants, bankers and the others involved in long distance trade gradually fostered a more rational vision of the world that was dictated to them by the logic of their invested capital. The logic of capital is the blood of modernity. It is what dictated its whole history.