Category: Uncategorized

China Has Issues Too

Enlightening Charles Hugh Smith piece on China.  Also included is a parallel 40-minute video chat between Smith and commentator Gordon Long.

Xi’s Gambit: China at the Crossroads

Hughes approaches Xi’s China through two lenses:

The foundations of the social order:

  • Real world resources
  • Resource extraction and transportation costs
  • Systemic restraints (supply chains, debt service, etc.)
  • Political and financial conditions as established at the system’s outset

The engines of China’s growth:

  • Mercantilist exports
  • Property development
  • Infrastructure projects
  • Debt

As Smith sees it, China now must upgrade its growth engines in order to maintain the level of social order achieved to date.

AND THAT WILL NOT BE EASY.

Two excerpts from the piece:

  • “President Xi must foster (or force) a transition to new more sustainable engines of growth, or China will slide down the path to stagnation and speculative bubbles that pop. Xi must also address another source of systemic fragility, soaring wealth inequality, which diverts the lion’s share of income and wealth to a thin slice of the super-wealthy while the purchasing power of workers’ wages stagnates.”
  • “The irony of the rivalry between China and the U.S. is both share the same problems: dependence on systems that no longer improve productivity, soaring wealth inequality, massive malinvestment, skyrocketing systemic fragility, rising costs, unprecedented speculative bubbles and a sclerotic, self-serving parasitic elite that resists much-needed reforms.”

Put differently, it’s the same old song but with a different beat in a more damning RACE TO THE BOTTOM.

Reality Check for Environmental Utopians

From Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Oil Investment Must Rise to $525 Billion per Year to Avoid Supply Crunch

One more reminder of the SHEER LUDICROUSNESS mouthed by those who think that HYDROCARBONS CAN BE SENT OFF like RED-CARDED soccer players.

THERE’S SIMPLY TOO LITTLE FUEL HERE AND NOW WITHOUT HYDROCARBONS.

The skinny:

“While investments in oil and gas exploration and production continue to be depressed, global demand is ‘now near pre-pandemic highs and will continue to rise for the next several years, particularly in developing countries,’ according to the report titled “Investment Crisis Threatens Energy Security.

“The next two years will be critical for the sanctioning of new projects to make sure that there is enough supply coming online within five to six years, the report noted.

“Insufficient upstream investment would result in more price volatility and spur adverse economic consequences,” IHS Markit and IEF say.”

IT DOESN’T GET CLEARER THAN THAT.

BLM, CRT and Marxism

Watch, Jason Hill, a DePaul University philosophy professor — who immigrated from Jamaica to the US at the age of 20 with $120 in his pocket — explain the interrelationship among these three lethal toxins.

And this:

Pay particular attention to a) the power grab fueling both BLM and CRT practitioners; b) their Marxist roots; and c) their antipathy towards Western/Enlightenment values, the VERY CORE of our CIVILIZATION.

And here’s the entire Epoch Times piece:

Critical Race Theory Serves to Usher in Communist Agenda in America

Looting Has Ruined San Francisco

From Michael Shellenberger:

Why Looting Turned San Francisco into a Ghost Town

Two exceprts:

  • “Part of the problem is a lack of police. San Francisco and other cities are short of cops, making robberies easier to get away with. San Francisco is short 400 officers, Los Angeles 300, with Minneapolis down by 200.”
  • “Progressive prosecutors are also letting more criminals free, sending the message that theft is an understandable response to poverty. In early 2020, San Francisco’s progressive District Attorney, Chesa Boudin, told the co-founder of Black Lives Matter before an audience at the Commonwealth Club that wealth inequality caused crime, and declared he would reduce prosecution of theft.”

If this is “progressivism” — because IT SURE ISN’T PROGRESS — then count me out.  I’ll stick with RULE OF LAW, self-control and personal ACCOUNTABILITY.

Who wouldn’t like to FLIP and GO NUTS occasionally?  Hey, it’s always an option.  But the test of a mature individual living in a CIVILIZED SOCIETY is to RESISIT THE IMPULSE whether or not its rooted in slavery, poverty or JUST BAD GENES.

Letting people indiscriminately ACT OUT is the worst crime authorities can allow in THESE UNITED STATES . . .

IT’S BAD FOR BUSINESS.

Don’t Encourage ‘Learned Helplessness’

How distressing is it to learn that CRT’s TOXICITY has now infected the practice of psychotherapy?

As this video points out, VICTIMHOOD is now being touted as a kind of psychological condition and, more risibly, one that contains elements of virtue and heroism.

And I see the term “maladaptive” is no longer in use due to it now being perceived as “JUDGMENTAL.”

Fact is, it’s NOT judgmental but rather EXTREMELY ACCURATE as my own THIRTY YEARS IN THERAPY made clear to me.

Check this out and weep: