If we believe substituting self-serving cover stories for a truly realistic appraisal is going to generate real solutions, that is the ultimate delusion.
it is not a human right to be able to afford pets.
modern healthcare is not a human right, it is a luxury, not an essential.
obesity is a temporary problem of places that have abundant daily flows of surplus energy and so good productivity and prosperity.
obesity will be very rare after about the year 2050, and the "cure" will be the severe affordability issues that almost all people will have within a few decades.
most modern healthcare is going away by then, including most hospitals and most modern meds.
the quality of life for almost all people MUST decay gradually and slowly for these many decades ahead.
because the formerly rising S shaped curve of surplus energy has peaked and must now decline.
"Surplus Energy Economics" doesn't explain everything, but it goes a long way to enable a good understanding of IC and its inevitable and irreversible and relentless degrowth.
IC is a blip in time that we live in, that almost all Americans can afford at least some non-essentials above and beyond their affordability of essentials.
We are missing a main point of the article is that the modern economy is a rentier or extractive, parasitic economy, which causes the cost of living to constantly rise faster than income.
There are real problems with energy production in the middle term, but it is this finance capitalism that is killing us right now.
Exactly. the current system isn't broken. Its doing exactly what it was designed to do. Maximize extraction/looting for the rent seeking/donor classes, and prevent anyone or anything from disrupting that extraction/looting. the purpose of a system is what it does. The purpose of ANY coercive government no matter how structured is to expand and retain its power, extract/loot vast resources to be used to reward its allies/cronies and to suppress dissent. Cloaking the process in civic myth doesn't change its reality.
No. its entirely secondary. It is and will always be a factor in these matters. We do not lack alternatives. What is lacking is the will to develop and advance those alternatives, in the current endless dash to appease the hysterical lemmings on wall street. Perverse incentives produce perverse out comes.
No. Thats not how the system works. Alternatives are mainly valued when it becomes obvious that either an alternative may become a threat to the established order (in which case its likely bought out and shelved or suppressed) or when it becomes obvious that the established order is threatened by some other factor(such as its fuel source becoming more expensive). The cartels that control these things main focus is on continued extraction for as long as possible. Only at the margins are innovation and creativity allowed to function, and then only if they don't pose threats to the established order. We have various mature technologies that could be used. If not crippled by insane levels of regulation and carefully crafted hysterical fear.
and the Chinese gov has no profit motive, but they are burning record high amounts of coal, if alternatives were better then they wouldn't be burning "record high amounts of coal".
it is not a human right to be able to afford pets.
modern healthcare is not a human right, it is a luxury, not an essential.
obesity is a temporary problem of places that have abundant daily flows of surplus energy and so good productivity and prosperity.
obesity will be very rare after about the year 2050, and the "cure" will be the severe affordability issues that almost all people will have within a few decades.
most modern healthcare is going away by then, including most hospitals and most modern meds.
the quality of life for almost all people MUST decay gradually and slowly for these many decades ahead.
because the formerly rising S shaped curve of surplus energy has peaked and must now decline.
"Surplus Energy Economics" doesn't explain everything, but it goes a long way to enable a good understanding of IC and its inevitable and irreversible and relentless degrowth.
IC is a blip in time that we live in, that almost all Americans can afford at least some non-essentials above and beyond their affordability of essentials.
the 2020s are the good olde days.
We are missing a main point of the article is that the modern economy is a rentier or extractive, parasitic economy, which causes the cost of living to constantly rise faster than income.
There are real problems with energy production in the middle term, but it is this finance capitalism that is killing us right now.
Exactly. the current system isn't broken. Its doing exactly what it was designed to do. Maximize extraction/looting for the rent seeking/donor classes, and prevent anyone or anything from disrupting that extraction/looting. the purpose of a system is what it does. The purpose of ANY coercive government no matter how structured is to expand and retain its power, extract/loot vast resources to be used to reward its allies/cronies and to suppress dissent. Cloaking the process in civic myth doesn't change its reality.
I disagree.
that financial component is significant, but secondary.
declining surplus energy is primary.
No. its entirely secondary. It is and will always be a factor in these matters. We do not lack alternatives. What is lacking is the will to develop and advance those alternatives, in the current endless dash to appease the hysterical lemmings on wall street. Perverse incentives produce perverse out comes.
if there are cheaper "alternatives" to produce abundant energy, "wall street" would be investing huge amounts for easy profits.
ergo there are no big wall street investments.
No. Thats not how the system works. Alternatives are mainly valued when it becomes obvious that either an alternative may become a threat to the established order (in which case its likely bought out and shelved or suppressed) or when it becomes obvious that the established order is threatened by some other factor(such as its fuel source becoming more expensive). The cartels that control these things main focus is on continued extraction for as long as possible. Only at the margins are innovation and creativity allowed to function, and then only if they don't pose threats to the established order. We have various mature technologies that could be used. If not crippled by insane levels of regulation and carefully crafted hysterical fear.
and the Chinese gov has no profit motive, but they are burning record high amounts of coal, if alternatives were better then they wouldn't be burning "record high amounts of coal".
Excellent.