Now that the entire economy depends on these hyper-normalized speculative bubbles for its “growth” and “wealth,” there is a profound fear of a future based not on artifice but on the real world. Humans are quick to habituate to current conditions, i.e. consider them normal. This rapid normalization has advantages and disadvantages. Normalization is an adaptive […]
Like orbiting space debris, every loan that has been collateralized by an illiquid asset is a high-speed projectile with the potential to disable any other part of the system it impacts. Complex systems can undergo what’s known as phase shifts, where the state of the system changes abruptly. The classic example of this is liquid water turning […]
There may be no winners of the game of Global Domination ™, and that is likely the best outcome. Okay, players: jokers are wild, but with a twist: the entire deck is jokers. Since everyone at the table will have five Aces, nobody wins. Welcome to the Trade War Poker Table: nobody wins, as everyone has the […]
Consuming more of this Ultra-Processed World is not a path to “the good life,” it’s a path to the destruction and derangement of an Ultra-Processed Life. The digital realm, finance, and junk food have something in common: they’re all ultra-processed, synthetic versions of Nature that have been designed to be compellingly addictive, to the detriment of our health and […]
Denial doesn’t end well, and the ‘Economy of Denial’ is destined to deconstruction. Even the most opinionated become circumspect when the discussion turns to The Addiction Economy, for the term The Addiction Economy calls things by their real name, which disrupts our protective shield of denial. Yes, denial, for ours is an Economy of Denial, where the surface […]
The choice is simple: housing is either shelter for citizens, or it’s just another interchangeable speculative asset in the global financialization casino. It can’t be both. We tend to think of housing becoming unaffordable as a matter of land prices, zoning and the cost of 2X4s, but it’s fundamentally a matter of values. Subscriber John summarized […]
Read carefully between the lines, for all this will come to pass. Let me start by offering an apology to all those whose blood pressure will skyrocket upon reading this thought experiment. As we all know, science–the real thing, not “science”–advances via informed skepticism and experimentation. Some useful experiments can begin as gedanken, thought experiments. That said, please […]
Charles Hugh Smith discusses civilization’s crumbling status quo and the hydrocarbon industrial age or current world system which some view as superabundant due to technology while others question whether we’ve used up the easy energy and are facing resource constraints. Charles Hugh Smith comments on cycles, empire, financialization, consumption, true wealth, how the future will […]
A great many people laud traditional values and lifestyles, but they leave out the hard part: it take a heck of a lot of work, effort and sacrifice. I’m calling the next ten years The Do-It-Yourself Decade, as whatever we want to happen will increasingly be up to us to do for ourselves. After decades of fostering passive […]
The artificial hill of pottery shards is puny and localized; the consequences of our self-destructing system will bring down the system in ways the system is completely blind to. Charles Hugh Smith, Substack We’re all familiar with the plot device of the self-destruct sequence counting down while our hero / heroine frantically tries to find […]