tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post6364390545450467807..comments2024-03-29T02:03:49.151-04:00Comments on History Unfolding: Rotten in DenmarkDavid Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-47411206054321376962020-01-17T14:37:43.869-05:002020-01-17T14:37:43.869-05:00"In my opinion we have too little central au..."In my opinion we have too little central authority over our institutions today, not too much." This comment is new to me.<br /><br />Can you give other examples besides the educational institutions? It seems as though President Trump is trying to achieve "central authority" in his hands.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11629116622092214120noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-23084063100569647092020-01-14T18:53:34.129-05:002020-01-14T18:53:34.129-05:00Professor
Just a short note, I hope.
Our most pow...Professor<br />Just a short note, I hope. <br />Our most powerful institutions are our governmental ones. <br />You mention the weakness of the government (singular), as against the strength of oil companies, and I agree with that,<br /><br />"...And perhaps our most powerful institutions--our energy companies--have decided to do everything they can to avoid any attempt to deal with global warming. Meanwhile, our government remains paralyzed by partisanship, unable to deal with any of the problems I have listed here, or many others as well...." DK<br /><br />The oil companies, ostensibly more powerful, are less national than transnational, but they are neveretheless in large part still, and remain, creatures of our government and other governments.<br />Were it to choose, or to be forced to do so, our government could wind up a good proportion of global oil companies overnight, by law. <br /><br />American policies have sponsored market practices which have systematically promoted global warming and other environmentally detrimental outcomes.<br /><br />When newly liberated small and medium sized spaghetti oil republics, here and there, nationalized their domestic oil interests and assets, they were not globally strong regimes per se. But they were governments.<br />They were nation states, such as they were and are. <br />There is no global state, but there is a globalist ideology or two or three.<br /><br />All the best<br />Bozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-66348697788144303952020-01-13T03:08:16.630-05:002020-01-13T03:08:16.630-05:00Dear Prof. Kaiser,
I picked up a saying once, som...Dear Prof. Kaiser,<br /><br />I picked up a saying once, somewhere on a car forum: "never assume conspiracy when mere incompetence will do". Multiply that with the Kruger-Dunning effect and you arrive about where we are now. It's frankly rather amusing to look at the world from this point of view. Nobody can do anyhing anymore. Plumbers can't plumb, drivers can't drive, government can't govern and police can't police. Trump is the epitome of incompetence, believing honestly and truly that he knows everything about everything, not knowing anything about anything. How beautiful life ls.<br />Everything you write is true of course, especially the part about no one being able to do anything about it. That said, I'll take my bike out for a nice ride in the woods. I guess it won't be too long before they go up in smoke. Cheech and Chong had that figured out.<br />All the best from Europe. PJ Catshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14792450374711478295noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-43774636619707376962020-01-12T05:40:05.739-05:002020-01-12T05:40:05.739-05:00Being an Xer on the far outside of power structure...Being an Xer on the far outside of power structures I was born to cynicism so my generation and all that I have been reading since about 2005 when I got totally interested in internet surfing has been doomerism about climate, resources, economy, civilization. So whatever I communicate, except perhaps on spirituality of course, has a very negative bias in guise of hard realism. So if you are coming to similar conclusions as my generation then the end must really be nigh. Daily scenarios of how and whhat type of collapse will occur are drawn ad nauseam. I suppose we will be terribly disappointed when the bad stuff is all over and life gets back to normal. No more whining and complaining. Our generations will fight to the teeth over being right or getting our piece of the pie from what is left of the rot, leaving millenials to start anew, in a waterworld or postman scenario, thank god for hollywood's metaphors. Peronally I would be relieved to have some semblance of sane stability as my father and uncles had as WW2 vets, suburban houses, stock investments, saving for retirement, renting second homes, modest vacations and low tech growing up. Marijuana was a big deal and first VCR. Cars were mechanical. Insanity was clear cut, obvious and psychotherapy was couch time not pill popping. You know that old song from All in The Family. Double dwn on that with a new text as parody to find me as Archie Bunker confused by endless apps, transgender, permanent wars and 20 trillion dollar federal debt with coming negative interest rates and a permanently climbing stock market bought by buybacks instaed of real world profits. Poor Russia switched systems twice. Human nature never changes. It might be nice to see your speculative future scenario. Russia, Britain ppulled back from foreign entanglements, downsized so to speak and focused on local needs. I hope America does that. Usually an addict or most anyone really, only changes behaviour when shocked, e.g. smoker with cancer diagnosis. However the gradual decay of an aging person sometimes does not allow clear cut perspective on ddcline and remedial action. We might just discover someday that gradually ghd dollar is not needed for international trade, commodity markets, that American troops are everywhere seen as potential occupiers by an unpredictable enemy power, that government remains unfunded, streets unpaved, pensions revoked, regular jobs truly scarce, a degree a curiosity to smirk about. Trump's current distraction in Iran was simple shock therapy to end Pelosi's impeachment poker. Trump as executive in chief has the better hand. Now we see how internal strife destroys foreign policy. Sunni-shia detente is the result. Middle East irrelevance accelerates as Cina, Russia, Iran evolve a greater Middle East strategy and how slowly Ukraine falls back to Russia and Europeans distance themselves from America and each other. Remember the vision thing Bush Sr. joked about. Somewhere in the bible it says 'Without a vision the people perish'. The worse things get the deeper your roots in reality must be. Like lottery millionaires, imperialy powers go crazy over riches, America absorbed its wild west, then global conquests, technological bounty and tried holy wars(human rights, oil). Only Africa is left and outer space. Mass shootings, opioid epidemic, corrupt companies ignored. Always a new frontier a la Star Trek. Napoleon and AH tried near East and Russia. We are ding same and with no better results. Why did the chinese never form a global empire? Not stupid?Energyflowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14476915209268786507noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-77408651679836256302020-01-12T01:13:53.319-05:002020-01-12T01:13:53.319-05:00Dear Professor Kaiser,
I have shared your blog-...Dear Professor Kaiser,<br /> I have shared your blog-post, as you requested, and I agree that it is the most important you have yet written. I would like to share with you my own comment, with which I prefaced yours.<br /><br /><br />While I don't share Professor Kaiser's belief in the cyclical hypothesis of Strauss and Howe, I do certainly share the analysis which he sets out in this post. It is a very frightening analysis, especially in what it says about both the avoidability of the looming disaster, and the adamantine refusal of those who really do have the power to bring the speeding train to a halt before it crashes to act to do so. The ideology which drives these historic disasters is encapsulated in, but in no way limited to, the ideas of the Chicago School of Economics, the writings of the late Milton Friedman especially. The idea that the purpose of organisations is to make money, nothing else, just to make money, and that whatever the organisation does is done with that sole aim in mind is the absolute epitome of corruption, even if nothing technically corrupt is actually done. But, with that fundamental principle as the shaping concept for the behavior of individuals and organisations, from the smallest Mom and Pop store to countries the size of the United States, corrupt things WILL be done, corrupt things which are corrosive and destructive, and which WILL bring down the organisations concerned. That this is so is not some new idea. Indeed, no one has put it better than was done some 2,000 years ago, when it was said that, 'The love of money is the root of all evil' (1 Timothy 6:10). 'Money', of course, is an abstract concept, not a concrete 'thing'. It isn't the cash in your pocket, the coins and notes, or even the credit cards which are meant by the term, but the power which large amounts of this 'store of value' and 'power to purchase', to acquire, which are meant. It is the power to command other people, rather than the power of self-control, which comes from within, and cannot be acquired by any means apart from self-discipline, which is meant by 'money'. This cuts across, and is not specific to, all other, ostensibly different, ideologies, whether religious or political. It is the Ring of Power, beautiful in and of itself, but which corrupts and corrupts utterly all who are possessed by it. The tragedy of our time is that there are millions of people out there who can see this, but they are, like the characters discussed by Professor Kaiser, and, indeed, like Professor Kaiser himself, powerless to hurl the Ring into the cleansing fire.Rupert Chapmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07007234333289329849noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-9548000033443770512020-01-11T20:12:42.704-05:002020-01-11T20:12:42.704-05:00Professor
Moving account. Much of it hard to quibb...Professor<br />Moving account. Much of it hard to quibble with at all.<br />I continue to believe that the Russian Revolution, resulting in Leninist Bolshevism was not in the nature of an inevitable outcome that some Russians could not have averted, in spite of the disasters of 1914 you reprise. What iu, for example, the Germans had never even sent Lenin to Russia in the first place? That counterfactual certainly was not precluded, back in 1914.<br /><br />Thanks for writing this. Great somber account and analogies.<br /><br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.com