We've sold them the rope with which they will hang us, Doc.
One of my persistently intrusive thought exercises is to review the capital migration from the west into China, beginning with the great offshoring in the eighties and nineties. The object of each exercise is to consider rate of technological advancement and adoption if marginal costs associated with production were balanced within the market.
Put differently; how would military and civilian adoption of emerging technologies have been affected if products sold in the prosperous American and European markets had been produced within the same national boundaries as those within which they were sold?
It's a giant tapestry with many threads upon which to tug. Each thread represents a capital flow. By tracking the flow, we get a picture of the accumulation and concentration rates.
By at least one calculus that removes offshoring from the equations, China would only be a military threat if invaded and the oligarchs currently looting America would be politically and economically less powerful than our elected officials. Innovation would have slowed and, for better or for worse, many of the technological and social plagues of our day could have been mitigated because oversight might have kept pace with deployment.
The point of this isn't to wallow in nostalgic could-have-beens, it's to map the journey to Armageddon in order to find a means of stepping off of the path.
Your "sell them the rope to hang us" quote is from Lenin, talking about capitalists in general.
I get it. The Limits To Growth (c1973) got it. Barry Commoner (The Closing Circle) got it.
Admiral Hyman Rickover got it. It is necessary to look at the whole system. Capitalism doesn't.
It looks like OldSysEng gets it, and you may have set a hook in his mouth...
China has a great industrial output, but a lot of rot in their banking/finance, which their governmental central bank can patch over. they will need to do that with all the mortgages on all the half built houses, that people are quitting payments on.
You probably read the Michael Hudson articles which I excerpt when they come out. Hudson gets the interwoven international flows of capital, production and output better than anybody these days. Gail Tverberg (our Finite World) is complimentary reading to Hudson.
Deng Xiaopeng set China on a rapid growth at all costs path after he read the Limits To Growth. It was a big influence on him. He looked at the graphs of industrial output, pollution, resource availability and human population, and seems to have basically concluded that China could sprint for 40 years and be dominant before everything ran out. It was a "hail Mary" pass for China, and it is sort of working so far,but has not been stress-tested yet. Xi is prudent and seeks to avoid the stress test until other countries/blocs go into failure mode first. However, he needs the Chinese people to remain in lock-step, so he has to fix the bank failures, and he has to keep dangling the spectre of war with Japan and the US, and the goal of taking back Taiwan prominently.
Hot war with the UIS and Japan is something to avoid, but it looks like testing and testing and testing will go on around Taiwan. Any weakness will be noted for exploitation. The US will have to keep answering these provocations, not just provoking China now. China may well take some islands in the taiwan strait.
Historically, production-economies do worse in a trade-war than consumption-economies.
Hudson sees no institutional avenue for the US to change course and do what id did 150-100 years ago. The political parties and deep-state are too thoroughly owned for any real change of course, like "America First", to be implemented.
I am somewhat more hopeful, but far less experienced and brilliant.
The Limits To Growth looks at what is possible in real economy, not economics, and not politics. The use of resources, and industrial production of our species seems to track what is possible, not what economic and political models predict.
The US has a fair amount of resources of all kinds, and could do moderately well, compared to Europe and China, based upon that calculus.
We shall see. Corruptionis killing us, and shows no sign of changing.
Very interesting approach. I was a system architect for many years doing operational, system, and technical architecture design for command and control. However the technique is applicable to any domain. It would be interesting to do it for a city or county to look at the inputs, products, flows, constraints, and mechanisms to see weak points in robustness. You are looking at a bigger picture and if you publish something I would be quite interested.
Love the construction project - looking great. As far as the Witch Nancy show is concerned I fancy myself less concerned about the nuclear war than the circus itself. With Wizard Joe in the other ring who’s got time to care about their charades. How many ways are we being played?
Thanks for the kind words. I am rather proud of "Pandora's Pantry".
"Witch nancy" is , atleast, plausible as POTUS. Were she to be coronated, she would potentially have "united" the warring oligarchs, and she might presumablymake the US "agreement capable". I think her foreign policy might be Clintonesque,but the times have recently changed, and somebody has to become POTUS, as opposed to the charade we have been having since the sabotaged Trump regime, which revealed the deepoligarchic divide.
Wow, the devolution of America is nearly completed in its maturity as a puppet colony of the World Economic Forum oligarchy. Witch Nancy will complete the trials of the witches begun long ago. I had great grandparents who were Salem judges and great grandparents who were condemned witches. I don't underestimate witches or their accusers. lol.
Our beneficent owners and rulers are trying to construct a narrative of what is happening in the world, which we can accept, and which will inspire us to support their judgement and decisions.
It looks impossible, because it involves taking away lives and property of billions of thinking, feeling, living people.
I think we are coming to understand how it feels to live under the tyranny our founding ancestors warned about. Yes, believe tyranny always builds a losing proposition. We the people don't care to be played this way.
Port Arthur awaits. I see all the bellicosity after Covid lockdown and vaccination efforts further evidence that a Red Symphony runs the world and the Antichrist conducts the players with expertise. If the audience walks from the performance and wants their money back law is on their side.
We've sold them the rope with which they will hang us, Doc.
One of my persistently intrusive thought exercises is to review the capital migration from the west into China, beginning with the great offshoring in the eighties and nineties. The object of each exercise is to consider rate of technological advancement and adoption if marginal costs associated with production were balanced within the market.
Put differently; how would military and civilian adoption of emerging technologies have been affected if products sold in the prosperous American and European markets had been produced within the same national boundaries as those within which they were sold?
It's a giant tapestry with many threads upon which to tug. Each thread represents a capital flow. By tracking the flow, we get a picture of the accumulation and concentration rates.
By at least one calculus that removes offshoring from the equations, China would only be a military threat if invaded and the oligarchs currently looting America would be politically and economically less powerful than our elected officials. Innovation would have slowed and, for better or for worse, many of the technological and social plagues of our day could have been mitigated because oversight might have kept pace with deployment.
The point of this isn't to wallow in nostalgic could-have-beens, it's to map the journey to Armageddon in order to find a means of stepping off of the path.
Thanks for another thought-provoking essay.
Thanks Ted,
Your "sell them the rope to hang us" quote is from Lenin, talking about capitalists in general.
I get it. The Limits To Growth (c1973) got it. Barry Commoner (The Closing Circle) got it.
Admiral Hyman Rickover got it. It is necessary to look at the whole system. Capitalism doesn't.
It looks like OldSysEng gets it, and you may have set a hook in his mouth...
China has a great industrial output, but a lot of rot in their banking/finance, which their governmental central bank can patch over. they will need to do that with all the mortgages on all the half built houses, that people are quitting payments on.
You probably read the Michael Hudson articles which I excerpt when they come out. Hudson gets the interwoven international flows of capital, production and output better than anybody these days. Gail Tverberg (our Finite World) is complimentary reading to Hudson.
Deng Xiaopeng set China on a rapid growth at all costs path after he read the Limits To Growth. It was a big influence on him. He looked at the graphs of industrial output, pollution, resource availability and human population, and seems to have basically concluded that China could sprint for 40 years and be dominant before everything ran out. It was a "hail Mary" pass for China, and it is sort of working so far,but has not been stress-tested yet. Xi is prudent and seeks to avoid the stress test until other countries/blocs go into failure mode first. However, he needs the Chinese people to remain in lock-step, so he has to fix the bank failures, and he has to keep dangling the spectre of war with Japan and the US, and the goal of taking back Taiwan prominently.
Hot war with the UIS and Japan is something to avoid, but it looks like testing and testing and testing will go on around Taiwan. Any weakness will be noted for exploitation. The US will have to keep answering these provocations, not just provoking China now. China may well take some islands in the taiwan strait.
Historically, production-economies do worse in a trade-war than consumption-economies.
Hudson sees no institutional avenue for the US to change course and do what id did 150-100 years ago. The political parties and deep-state are too thoroughly owned for any real change of course, like "America First", to be implemented.
I am somewhat more hopeful, but far less experienced and brilliant.
The Limits To Growth looks at what is possible in real economy, not economics, and not politics. The use of resources, and industrial production of our species seems to track what is possible, not what economic and political models predict.
The US has a fair amount of resources of all kinds, and could do moderately well, compared to Europe and China, based upon that calculus.
We shall see. Corruptionis killing us, and shows no sign of changing.
Very interesting approach. I was a system architect for many years doing operational, system, and technical architecture design for command and control. However the technique is applicable to any domain. It would be interesting to do it for a city or county to look at the inputs, products, flows, constraints, and mechanisms to see weak points in robustness. You are looking at a bigger picture and if you publish something I would be quite interested.
Love the construction project - looking great. As far as the Witch Nancy show is concerned I fancy myself less concerned about the nuclear war than the circus itself. With Wizard Joe in the other ring who’s got time to care about their charades. How many ways are we being played?
Thanks for the kind words. I am rather proud of "Pandora's Pantry".
"Witch nancy" is , atleast, plausible as POTUS. Were she to be coronated, she would potentially have "united" the warring oligarchs, and she might presumablymake the US "agreement capable". I think her foreign policy might be Clintonesque,but the times have recently changed, and somebody has to become POTUS, as opposed to the charade we have been having since the sabotaged Trump regime, which revealed the deepoligarchic divide.
Wow, the devolution of America is nearly completed in its maturity as a puppet colony of the World Economic Forum oligarchy. Witch Nancy will complete the trials of the witches begun long ago. I had great grandparents who were Salem judges and great grandparents who were condemned witches. I don't underestimate witches or their accusers. lol.
Our beneficent owners and rulers are trying to construct a narrative of what is happening in the world, which we can accept, and which will inspire us to support their judgement and decisions.
It looks impossible, because it involves taking away lives and property of billions of thinking, feeling, living people.
I think we are coming to understand how it feels to live under the tyranny our founding ancestors warned about. Yes, believe tyranny always builds a losing proposition. We the people don't care to be played this way.
Port Arthur awaits. I see all the bellicosity after Covid lockdown and vaccination efforts further evidence that a Red Symphony runs the world and the Antichrist conducts the players with expertise. If the audience walks from the performance and wants their money back law is on their side.