Some ruminations about collapse
Yves Smith posted this piece on Naked Capitalism about collapse. It's by Thomas Neuburger. Smith is highly critical of this piece.
I am generally not keen about disagreeing fundamentally with the author of an article, but here I feel compelled to. Thomas Neuburger attempts to find a silver lining in modern society’s pretty much baked in collapse. Perhaps some, even many, readers will take comfort in what Neuburger says below. I find this line of thinking unfathomable.
Smith's reasoning, however, is most interesting here:
Second, this discussion completely omits what the circumstances of this collapse are likely to be. We will see mass migration due to climate change and more wars over diminishing resources, particularly water and likely agricultural production. The interests that can wield the most force will generally fare less badly as this brutal scramble progresses. The idea that a less hierarchical, less power-driven system will emerge seems remote, at least in the intermediate phases.
Here we need to figure out what counts as "circumstances." Is there a Food Not Bombs in your area? (Do not have faith in the list of branches -- a lot of them are moribund. I know this because my email address is the contact info for one of the dead ones. Part of the reason we might collapse is that nobody gives two hoots.) Are the people doing mutual aid?
No doubt the hope possessing the super-rich is that they will outlast us all, while we are genocided in one way or another. In this regard there are doubtless significant parts of America which are far less authoritarian than the oligarchy which rules us now, as well as other parts in which genocide will certainly occur. (Here one thinks of Omar El Akkad's (2017) speculative-fiction novel American War, a grim fantasy in which Florida is depicted as mostly being under water.)
At any rate, since Smith is keyboarding here about the US, let's quote Yves Smith again:
Trump is bizarrely accelerating the breakage of production systems which would have become on its own a driver of collapse, if disease and climate change damage didn’t get there first. Just about everything we regard as fundamental to how we live, from the Internet to transportation systems to telecommunications to our power and water systems to medicine depends on highly complex organizations and governments.
Here in southern Oregon, the immediate effect of Trump collapse will be drastic cutbacks in bus service, beginning September 2nd. Maybe some businesses will go under as a result of large numbers of people not being able to get to work. But, see, here in southern Oregon, there's very little actual resistance outside of the charities, the Little Free Libraries, the yard sales and freeboxes, the general sense of neighborliness -- most people say they believe the standard (D) or (R) lines. They don't like it when I tell them the (D) gave us the (R).
I would like to conclude with a discussion of the Neuburger optimistic assessment. I do not wish to say a lot about it, even though it is the main reason Yves Smith discussed this topic at all. Here's the key Neuberger statement:
Collapse as re-fragmentation. Not death, but rebirth, reconfiguration. The United States un-united, regionally governed. China the same. De-growth and de-globalization. Local control. More choices.
That's the goal. Do we always meet it? No.
Meanwhile, poor fragile Rome struggles onward:
Comments
It's striking...
how political observers, (D) or (R), lose sight of the influence of the previous administrations addition to the national debt. If there's one policy that's leading the US to collapse it's the out of control spending by both parties.
It's one thing to accuse climate change or mass migration due to war over diminishing resources as a catalyst for collapse, but it's actually the indifference to the out of control spending that will hasten that collapse, in my humble opinion anyway.
Yes, the political parties play leap frog from administration to administration kicking the economic can down the road, with ambivalence to the inevitable outcome. American's shortsightedness blames the current administration for the cumulative effect of a process that can be traced back through many administrations. The party holding the bag when it all implodes will get the blame, when the whole debacle goes back to at least the Nixon era when we were taken off of the gold standard.
Russia is a good example of a nation rebuilding after the Soviet Union collapsed.
Good essay, Cass.
As far as I can tell --
Dollar hegemony, the force holding up the $37 trillion national debt, will only collapse through planned demolition. 80% of the national debt is held domestically. The logic behind the national debt will remain rock-solid -- the Fed can encode as much money as Congress demands, and the banks must squirrel away all the excess money, and keep it out of circulation, if the whole house of cards is to stay afloat. This logic remains secure regardless of whether the national debt is at $2 trillion or $50 trillion.
Sure, they could engineer the US economy's planned demolition. US elites do not hold to any rational standards. But it probably won't happen at this time, unless Trump goads the world into a global embargo upon the US. That seems to me to be a likely possibility. But for it to happen, the other countries' elites would have to have a great rush of brains to their collective heads. The problem is that they're capitalists, and capitalism is stupid.
If China is trying to divest itself from the US -- which it is doing, slowly -- this is because in the much-promised war with the US the Chinese do not want to be hanging onto something which will only have value if the US says it holds value. This is a wise policy, pursued much too slowly.
So -- as far as I can figure it out -- it's collapse now or collapse later. Collapse now is the safer option.
"You're just gonna have to start building alternative sources of power both inside and outside the state” -- Greg Stoker
I don't disagree...
in times of political turmoil, capital will flee to the safest outlet, and right now that's the US, and a big reason the stock markets are on the rise, contradictory to the out of control debt. European money is fleeing to the US because if war breaks out, they (the EU) will invoke capital controls and it will be too late to move their money out of harm's way.
The Brics nations, at this time, doesn't seem to have the wherewithal to buck the system to any extent, they are capitalist after all. China plays the long game and as you stated are slowly divesting from its US lending obligations.
This I agree with wholeheartedly:
The longer we wait and the higher the debt, the more the pain. It's best to get it over with now.
Ain't no stopping us now
the collective wisdom of the ages
survises
Zionism is a social disease
I'm not convinced we're safe
You can't really fly safely in the US anymore... probably thanks to DOGE...
"You're just gonna have to start building alternative sources of power both inside and outside the state” -- Greg Stoker
interesting and depressing mention
"Is there a Food Not Bombs in your area? (Do not have faith in the list of branches -- a lot of them are moribund. I know this because my email address is the contact info for one of the dead ones. Part of the reason we might collapse is that nobody gives two hoots.)"
I will try to keep this under 2000 words.
yes, there is. it meets right down the street.
29 and half years of unbroken Saturday servings at the oldest park in the poorer side of town.
There used to be an other group that worked on Sundays downtown at the Courthouse Park.
I have been involved since 2003.
The contact information made available on the internet was defunct a very long time ago.
When I would hear from people, they were often already upset about the failure to communicate.
The lesson I learned, eventually, was that talking to people on the phone was a tremendous waste of time. 99% perhaps never turned up despite their stated intentions.
Fair enough, definitely not a chore I would commend to people who had better things to do.
It took me long enough to realize I didnt.
When I first started, there were maybe a dozen participants in the kitchen, always at least 6.
Numerous trucks involved. Large quantities of clothes, donated vegetables from the farmers market,
bags of bread from bakeries and similar goods from Whole Foods.
Now there are essentially three people involved in the church prep and a few more regular volunteer servers, but that has dwindled unexpectedly.
a slender thread keeps it going.
The paucity of volunteers discourages.
The crowds are growing, and the situation is becoming a bit of a safety concern.
Because it is mostly a matter of time before something bad happens, and I live in absolute fear of that moment.
I will stop here.
The sense I get is that volunteerism is dead and we will be desperately in need of these resources just as they dwindle to nothing.
perhaps if you look at it from a different lens
in a sense, people may not line up at the church or
whatever organization is offering assistance to the poor
it has become localized - insofar as one on one support
goes? just that is what I am seeing locally and
it may be more widespread. I don't know.
Zionism is a social disease
@QMS nothing I would rather
nothing I would rather do. n/t
sometimes it feels
.
there is nothing I can do that
makes a damn bit of difference
in this sorry-assed world
Zionism is a social disease
Bless you
Keep the flame lit.
On the bright side, a new FNB started up in Cave Junction, Oregon, out in the sticks.
"You're just gonna have to start building alternative sources of power both inside and outside the state” -- Greg Stoker