The end is near

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Capitalism has been the driving mechanism for human society, progress and prosperity in modern history. It is this driving engine that is now about to fail completely.

Capitalism, as in free trade and voluntary interaction, is not going to fail. Much of the establishment of corporatist inefficiency will be in turmoil and the collateral damage for everyone may be severe, but eventually the natural order will recover better and stronger than before.

Yes, without the state, inefficiency will be eliminated. That means, that nearly nothing will be produced, as it was the case within stateless communities in the whole history of mankind. But that wasn't Capitalism. The austrian anarchocapitalists believe, that we will produce even more without the state. That's the greatest economic joke I ever heard.

You have a strange conception of the state's role in production.

To be more exact, you're conflating property and rights protection (law and police) and dispute resolution (courts) with the state.

But you don't need the state to provide any of those things. Law can be crowd-source or agreement based, ie: polycentric-law. No societal entity needs to have a monopoly on law production, that's just the way things have been largely until now. There's no reason for it to stay that way, and an alternative may (and probably will) be far better.

Similarly, courts and police can be privately provided on the market and due to changed incentives of the market will probably be far better.

Stateless communities often also had no rights protection, law, or courts. But it's possible to create not a state nor a stateless community, but rather the ideal is a self-governed community, and by that I mean one where each individual rules himself and himself alone. Not a community which uses a collective body to govern the whole--no, I mean a community where each individual has sovereign control of himself and no one else. A truly individualist society. This has never existed because we never had the ideas explicit to try it until modern time.

You are a dreamer. This is science fiction, written by austrian aristocrats. I know these theories very well, and in my former life I was an Austrian as well, until I realised that it is ahistoric science fiction. Real stateless communities in the rain forests 'produce' about the same amount as they did 10'000 years ago. Governed, collectivist societies produce about hundred fold the amount which was generated only 100 years ago. That's the difference, which the dreamers suppress. As I explained in another thread already: Any society is by definition collectivist. The opposite of society and collectivism is the self-sufficient community. A self-sufficient community is called self-sufficient, because they do not economically interact with strangers, aliens and foreigners.
But the hominidae can not live 'alone'. An 'individualist' life is possible within a collectivist, materialist society only. To live a non-collectivist life, the homines sapientes need the organisation of the non-patriarchal, anarchal, consanguineal community, which was organised non-monogamous, matrilineal (female choice), wherever it existed in the whole history of mankind, and which have been destroyed, slowly starting about 10'000 years ago, by organised violence of a complicity of priests and militarists, which is terrorising the planet until today.

You must not have been much of an Austrian if you didn't even grasp the basic point that individualism has nothing to do with isolationism. Also, it's a simple correlation-causation fallacy to claim that rainforest tribes are not advancing because they are anarchistic.

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[MoonShadow]

It will end as all civilised societies ended: with a collapse. I call it Tainter's Law. It ends by the diminishing return on additional investment in additional complexity. The difference to earlier collapses is the fact, that today 500 nuclear reactors will blow its nuclear inventory around the northern part of the planet as soon as nobody will cool them anymore.

This is a rediculous idea.  Again, nuclear power industry accidents across all of the history of the world do not exceed the amount of radioactive material that is launched into the atmostphere by the worlds coal plants in a single year, and we have been burning coal for almost 200 years, and seriously powering industry with it for over 100 years.  Modern nuke plants don't really 'blow', and even if 100 of them had leakage accidents similar to what happened in Japan (very, very unlikely) we still wouldn't exceed what humanity has already dosed our environment with over the past 100+ years.  That plant had a quadruple redundant emergency cooling system, which we now know isn't quite good enough for a 1:10K year tsumami wave.  It's certainly more than enough for a global economic breakdown,

Dream on! (your ridiculous dreams).
 Fukushima blew out a significant part of its inventory. In case of a black out of the whole power grid, which is a question of when but not of if (sun storm, economic collapse and  panic/revolution etc.), it would have blown out its inventory totally, and so would have all the other reactors. Power grids become more and more fragile to maintain the 50 Hertz, totally depending on the computerised, hypercollectivised communication system.
 Societies collapse, because societies are problem solving societies (Tainter). Each solved problem increases the complexity in the system, and increased complexity generates diminishing returns until the end (bifurcation point), when additional investion in additional complexity generates negative returns. Forget at least the northern part of this planet if this society will not end the nuclear industry.
Probably it won't, because society means collective stupidity, which until today always ended collapsing. This society will also end abruptly in a worldwide, globalised panic with worldwide bank 'holidays' and nobody will go to work anymore; not to the banks and not to cool the nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactors need each other to cool them, but after a black out you'll have to cool all of them. The collective stupidity will not be able to do this.

You obviously don't have an accurate understanding as to what actually went wrong with that reactor in Japan.  That reactor was designed with a multiplely redundant emergency cooling system.  It was specificly designed to suffer an earthquake of a power of 9.0 on the Riecther scale within 20 miles or so of the epicenter.  It was desgned to suffer through a tsunami.  It was designed to suffer though a complete failure of grid power support, as well as total failure of all of the AC water pumps.  What was never considered was the incredible odds that all of these things would happen in the same day.  It was a harsh lesson learned, and many heroic engineers and techs working for a private company lost some or all of their remaining lifespans in concerted efforts to save public lives.  It sucks to be that tech, when that crap happens at your plant; but just like joining the military, they knew what they signed up for.  If you don't thik that there are equally heroic corporate employees of every other nuclear powerhouse in the world, then you don't really understand why these men and woman get paid the salaries that they do.  But know that the nuclear industry knows that such a one in ten thousand odds event can happen, they are already reconsidering their own emergency cooling plans because reglatory agencies require them to and because they don't ever want to be the next set of guys to have to die to save humanity.  For that matter, the complete breakdown of civil society is one of the most common emergency scenarios that nuke plant disaster planners have long considered, and one of the easiest for them to plan for.  It's way harder to plan for a 35 foot high tsunami wave.   Fukushima power plant had diesel powered pumps that could run underwater, and generators that could survive an earthquake; but not both at the same time.  And furthermore, none of those failues would have mattered at all, had  Fukushima  not been involved in their once in a three year refueling cycle when the bovine fecal matter made contact with the rotating cooling device.  The other reactors were all automaticly in emergency shutdown stage 60 seconds after the earthquake was detected, and never caused any problems; but that one (number 4, IIRC) was not set for automatic shutdown due to being involved in a fuel rod exchange that very week.  Fresh, hot fuel rods were waiting in the storage pool, while engineers and tech were running all over a damaged and dangerous reactor trying to get the emergency neutron sheild down into the remaining core, and everyone managed to forget about the storage pool.  The water in the storage pool evaporated enough that the tops of the fuel rods were exposed to air, and then they caught on fire due to their own internal heat.  It was not really a 'mealtdown' in any practical sense, but radioactive smoke is no small thing.  To the best of my knowledge, Fukushima could still be in operation today, if the populist government had not halted all nuclear power in the nation, as teh damage to the reactor itself was not really significant.  Nothing like Chernobel for example, or even Three Mile Island (which didn't actually release any radiation BTW, but did damage the reactor)

[Anenome5]

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/event/220752

seems like we are at the endpoint of fiat system...

There seems to be strong consensus that the tools are in place to dismantle the largest banks and most of the congress people are urging the regulators to use them.

Without criminal charges for the long string of abuses, obscenely blatant wrong-doing and outright theft and transparently complicit 'regulators', the trust and faith needed for a functional financial system will be absent for a long while.

They'll just nationalize the banks and then run them into the ground.

[Welsh]

Oh it's one of these threads again. I swear people just copy and paste text from the last topic which was talking about this thing. This was send a year ago. We were predicted to fall at 2012, 2011. Oh and predicted to fall in 2013. The fact is, yes we will most likely fall. Doesn't mean it's going to be soon.

[Zarathustra]

You obviously don't have an accurate understanding as to what actually went wrong with that reactor in Japan.  That reactor was designed with a multiplely redundant emergency cooling system.

I'm impressed!

 It was specificly designed to suffer an earthquake of a power of 9.0 on the Riecther scale within 20 miles or so of the epicenter.

Designed!

It was desgned to suffer through a tsunami.  It was designed to suffer though a complete failure of grid power support, as well as total failure of all of the AC water pumps.  What was never considered was the incredible odds that all of these things would happen in the same day.

Yes, I know: to collectivised Engineers the odds seem incredible. That the pools are still hanging around high above the ground must seem incredible to them as well.

 It was a harsh lesson learned, and many heroic engineers and techs working for a private company lost some or all of their remaining lifespans in concerted efforts to save public lives.

Lesson learned? Hihiiiii! The nuclear industry is nothing private. It was military driven from the beginning. No private insurance company would ever insure this madness.



They learned nothing. In France, 80 % of the electric power comes from nuclear reactors. A black out of the hyper-fragile power grid (sun storm, revolution etc.) will be followed by armageddon. Nobody will cool the reactors and the fuel pools anymore, since the reactors need the power of each other to cool them, and in a revolution (question of when, but not of if) never ever.
Therefore, your heroic collectivist dreams rely on the functionality of the globalized hypercollective. I knew it: your are a collectivist hero by heart and soul.

It sucks to be that tech, when that crap happens at your plant; but just like joining the military, they knew what they signed up for.  If you don't thik that there are equally heroic corporate employees of every other nuclear powerhouse in the world, then you don't really understand why these men and woman get paid the salaries that they do.  But know that the nuclear industry knows that such a one in ten thousand odds event can happen, ...

Oh, a one in ten thousand odds event! 10'000 divided by 500 reactors worldwide =  a one in 20 event. Therefore, we are enjoying such events every 20 years. Yeah, Chernobyl and now some 20 years later Fukushima, and between the 2 events some almost-disasters. I'm impressed by the incredible intelligence of these engineers.

...they are already reconsidering their own emergency cooling plans because reglatory agencies require them to and because they don't ever want to be the next set of guys to have to die to save humanity.

Regulatory agencies...., really funny.

For that matter, the complete breakdown of civil society is one of the most common emergency scenarios that nuke plant disaster planners have long considered, and one of the easiest for them to plan for.

Yes, planning is easy, but surviving is impossible with such planners. In a revolution, it is crystal clear that nobody will be able to maintain these 500 reactors worldwide anymore.

 It's way harder to plan for a 35 foot high tsunami wave.   Fukushima power plant had diesel powered pumps that could run underwater, and generators that could survive an earthquake; but not both at the same time.

And not one of the great sun eruptions at another time, which will destroy the communications systems, the transformers and the grid systems, and nobody will be able to restart it.

And furthermore, none of those failues would have mattered at all, had  Fukushima  not been involved in their once in a three year refueling cycle when the bovine fecal matter made contact with the rotating cooling device.  The other reactors were all automaticly in emergency shutdown stage 60 seconds after the earthquake was detected, and never caused any problems; but that one (number 4, IIRC) was not set for automatic shutdown due to being involved in a fuel rod exchange that very week.  

If and if and if and if ....

Fresh, hot fuel rods were waiting in the storage pool,

Now they are still waiting in hanging pools high above the ground in a building, which won't survive the next earthquake.

...while engineers and tech were running all over a damaged and dangerous reactor trying to get the emergency neutron sheild down into the remaining core, and everyone managed to forget about the storage pool.  The water in the storage pool evaporated enough that the tops of the fuel rods were exposed to air, and then they caught on fire due to their own internal heat.

Incredible, these one in 20 years events.

It was not really a 'mealtdown' in any practical sense, but radioactive smoke is no small thing.  To the best of my knowledge, Fukushima could still be in operation today, if the populist government had not halted all nuclear power in the nation, as teh damage to the reactor itself was not really significant.  Nothing like Chernobel for example, or even Three Mile Island (which didn't actually release any radiation BTW, but did damage the reactor)

And they all lived happily ever after ...

[Zarathustra]

You must not have been much of an Austrian if you didn't even grasp the basic point that individualism has nothing to do with isolationism. Also, it's a simple correlation-causation fallacy to claim that rainforest tribes are not advancing because they are anarchistic.

I wrote nothing about isolationism. I wrote: An 'individualist' life is possible within a collectivist, materialist society only. Beyond the collectivist society, within the stateless community, there is no individualism.

Self-sufficient rainforest tribes are not advancing and producing surpluses within 1 million years, because they are not forced to produce surpluses (for the church and state mafia). To be forced is the only evident causal reason to produce surpluses. No state = no economy, no business.

[bitbeast]

An 'individualist' life is possible within a collectivist, materialist society only. Beyond the collectivist society, within the stateless community, there is no individualism

- Yeah baby - there is no light without a darkness.

[Adrian-x]

You must not have been much of an Austrian if you didn't even grasp the basic point that individualism has nothing to do with isolationism. Also, it's a simple correlation-causation fallacy to claim that rainforest tribes are not advancing because they are anarchistic.

I wrote nothing about isolationism. I wrote: An 'individualist' life is possible within a collectivist, materialist society only. Beyond the collectivist society, within the stateless community, there is no individualism.

Self-sufficient rainforest tribes are not advancing and producing surpluses within 1 million years, because they are not forced to produce surpluses (for the church and state mafia). To be forced is the only evident causal reason to produce surpluses. No state = no economy, no business.

Before you jump to conclusions consider the prosperity we enjoy today is a result of the free market functioning despite collective political control (it is failing because of it)  

Human and all animals seek pleasure and to avoid pain. Innovation in technology and forms of government are a natural expression of evolutionary history. When there is lack of supply of whatever humans need suffering ensues, the low road is to use brute force to ensure you get, at the expense of others (collectivism is an extension of this principal). The high road is to find a replacement or or to innovate and create a better solution) market forces, price expression as a result of supply and demand is one such meme. Failing to abide by the meme doesn't need collectivism to enforce it, abuse is self extinguished (the goose that laid the golden egg)

Rain forest tribes - for a better metaphor, still live in Eden. They have a well developed system to manage need, they enjoy the full complete of human emotion suffer less depression and expense happens despite our judgments. The problem is they haven't evolved the tools necessary to interact with the barbarous western values.

Those tribes that evolved in close proximity like our ancestors evolved to be a new meme species, and we are on the precipice of revolving again.

[xxjs]

Oh it's one of these threads again. I swear people just copy and paste text from the last topic which was talking about this thing. This was send a year ago. We were predicted to fall at 2012, 2011. Oh and predicted to fall in 2013. The fact is, yes we will most likely fall. Doesn't mean it's going to be soon.

Something is uneccesarily uttered twice on the Internet. Run for the hills!

[Zarathustra]

Those tribes that evolved in close proximity like our ancestors evolved to be a new meme species, and we are on the precipice of revolving again.

The captain said excuse me ma'am
This species has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
We watched the tragedy unfold
We did as we were told
We bought and sold
It was the greatest show on earth
But then it was over
We ohhed and aahed
We drove our racing cars
We ate our last few jars of caviar
And somewhere out there in the stars
A keen-eyed look-out
Spied a flickering light
Our last hurrah
And when they found our shadows
Grouped 'round the TV sets
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data on their lists
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to death
No tears to cry
No feelings left
This species has
Amused itself to death

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsspXqCe4kI

[zedicus]

The end is coming in slow motion. It will be death by a million cuts.. not a big bang!

Hence the reason people have been talking about it for decades..


Its a game of musical chairs except only a few can hear the music!


 

[xavier]

Wow.. I kind've wish this thread would disappear.

Although I still feel very bad about the economy

Memo to avoid creating any similar threads

I would just post this for any similar Austrian economists, who haven't already heard it before. Or anybody who's just reading this from top to bottom. It gives you something to think about.

The owner of a ship noticed that his ship was filling with water. Being an educated man (if not nautically trained) he knew there were many possible causes for water in a ship: leaks in the hull, the bilge pump being broken, waves washing over, condensation, and even the crew urinating in the hold. He heard the bilge pump running, he saw water from waves pouring in the open hatches, but worst of all he smelled urine in the hold! Being sensible, he ordered the crew to shut the hatches and then gave them a lengthy, stern harangue on hygienic use of the head. While he was lecturing the crew, his ship sank due to a combination of causes: large, unobserved leaks in the hull, a bilge pump that was running but not pumping correctly, and condensation that had shorted out warning circuitry.

http://critiquesoflibertarianism.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/parable-of-ship-why-austrian-economics.html

Personally I reject this in the current economic situation..... but, things may just be more complicated than we all realize.

[farfiman]

Oh it's one of these threads again. I swear people just copy and paste text from the last topic which was talking about this thing. This was send a year ago. We were predicted to fall at 2012, 2011. Oh and predicted to fall in 2013. The fact is, yes we will most likely fall. Doesn't mean it's going to be soon.

We are a bunch of frustrated people that are upset that it didn't happen yet.
We need to let out steam somewhere.

[Dasneko]

Wow.. I kind've wish this thread would disappear.

Although I still feel very bad about the economy

Memo to avoid creating any similar threads

I would just post this for any similar Austrian economists, who haven't already heard it before. Or anybody who's just reading this from top to bottom. It gives you something to think about.

The owner of a ship noticed that his ship was filling with water. Being an educated man (if not nautically trained) he knew there were many possible causes for water in a ship: leaks in the hull, the bilge pump being broken, waves washing over, condensation, and even the crew urinating in the hold. He heard the bilge pump running, he saw water from waves pouring in the open hatches, but worst of all he smelled urine in the hold! Being sensible, he ordered the crew to shut the hatches and then gave them a lengthy, stern harangue on hygienic use of the head. While he was lecturing the crew, his ship sank due to a combination of causes: large, unobserved leaks in the hull, a bilge pump that was running but not pumping correctly, and condensation that had shorted out warning circuitry.

http://critiquesoflibertarianism.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/parable-of-ship-why-austrian-economics.html

Personally I reject this in the current economic situation..... but, things may just be more complicated than we all realize.

You need to be aware of the people around you. Assassins can be kind, stupid can appear smart, honest can appear to be lying and friends could be foes. It is always an mistake to assume you know the people around you without ever having questioned them. But honestly when you open up with "perhaps I am preaching to the choir" you set yourself up for a rude awakening.

[zedicus]

^^ i thought we were all kind, stupid, lying friends here?

Son of a *****! You mean to tell me.. there is a chance that there is a priest amongst us?


That changes everything! we must find him immediately! He knows secrets about the end!


Decepticons roll out!

[Dasneko]

^^ i thought we were all kind, stupid, lying friends here?

Son of a *****! You mean to tell me.. there is a chance that there is a priest amongst us?


That changes everything! we must find him immediately! He knows secrets about the end!


Decepticons roll out!

EXACTLY!

[Spendulus]

Oh it's one of these threads again. I swear people just copy and paste text from the last topic which was talking about this thing. This was send a year ago. We were predicted to fall at 2012, 2011. Oh and predicted to fall in 2013. The fact is, yes we will most likely fall. Doesn't mean it's going to be soon.

We are a bunch of frustrated people that are upset that it didn't happen yet.
We need to let out steam somewhere.

What DIDN'T HAPPEN YET?

Take a bunch of economic crises and look at how they played out.

Zimbabwe, Weimer Republic, Spain mid 1950s, Argentina (numerous), Brazil, Cyrpus, Iceland.

So we're going to have some more?  Some bigger ones?  So WHAT?

[marcus_of_augustus]

Deaths of dissident journalists in mysterious car cashes, money printing without end ... Mugabe? .... no Obama.

I'd say the end is not too far away given the parallel historical precedents.

[zedicus]

Its going down in Egypt right now.. supposedly one of the biggest protests in human history! The crowds are swelling.. I bet some of those people think the end is near!   

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/06/30/amazing-photos-of-egypts-massive-demonstrations/


http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/30/us-egypt-protests-idUSBRE95Q0NO20130630



Reuters reporting millions in the streets!

[AceCoin]

Capitalism has been the driving mechanism for human society, progress and prosperity in modern history.

for human society? ROTFL
only for some human, the minority that lives in "g8"
the rest of us, live in conditions like war, starvation, pollution, no instruction...