Category: Age of War and Revolution Page 18 of 24

China’s Economic Plans Amount to Preparation for Cold War

On January 17, 2022

From the Wall Street Journal:

China's economic plan these days reads like a massive security plan. Food security. Energy security. Raw materials security. Supply chain security. Data and tech security. Behind the security obsession is a fundamentally changed relationship w/US https://t.co/1gvtF2DwLG via @WSJ

— Lingling Wei 魏玲灵 (@Lingling_Wei) January 13, 2022

The article itself is a bit foolish. China can’t, and knows it can’t, be entirely self-sufficient. But it can reduce its dependency, in particular on US and Western sources, and that’s what it has to do. Unlike with Venezuela and Iran, seizing Chinese freighters routinely is a no-go (and, if necessary, China can send military escorts). But US sanctions can bite, and hard, as they did with semiconductors, and the US showed its teeth under Trump and continues to growl under Biden.

What Americans don’t seem to understand is that China could easily retaliate: It is the sole source for a huge number of manufactured goods and is the world’s largest manufacturing power. So far it has chosen not to; it wants the status quo to limp on for as long as possible, but if the US decides to start a real trade war, it’s likely the US will be hurt badly. This isn’t the USSR vs. the US, where the US was the clear, superior industrial power. The US has the lead in a few areas, its allies in others (it’s Taiwan that makes semiconductors), but China is the lynchpin industrial economy.

Still, the Chinese have decided that the US is determined to have a cold war, and they are right, and they are preparing for it.

US propaganda has become particularly unhinged of late. My favorite being this from the NYTimes:

NYT used a quote from one Weibo user w/ 87 followers to justify comparing China's Zero-COVID policies to the Holocaust & public health workers to Nazis.
This is beyond repugnant. @nytimes & @LiYuan6 need to issue a public apology.@ADL @AuschwitzMuseum https://t.co/J9pZ7NB6kS

— Joseph Scalice (@josephscalice) January 15, 2022

It seems more apt to describe the “herd immunity” policies followed in the West, especially since Omicron, as Holocaust-like, as official US death figures are 800K, and likely real figures are twice that and Covid isn’t close to over yet.

But “they are very strict at lockdowns and the work is exhausting but they’ve saved millions of lives” seems like an odd thing to criticize China for, but US elite lack of self-awareness continues to be the marvel of the world.

Western elites can’t admit basic facts. Covid could be controlled. They chose not to control it because letting it rip made them rich. Millions died as a result. They are responsible for more deaths than the Holocaust due to their refusal to handle the pandemic (and it will be many more by the end). The “evil, totalitarian Chinese Communist Party” are the ones who went all out to save lives, not the “good, wonderful, free democratic governments of the West.” (With, yes, a few minor exceptions.)

Western elites, through their actions and lack of actions, in effect, murdered millions of people. Covid could be controlled, China proves it, and so they hate China even more.

Hopefully they won’t let their hate reach such a peak they toss nukes around when the Cold War they are so determined to have goes hot.

Mass Democratic Legitimacy Loss from Mass Disabling

On January 11, 2022

The figures I have seen for Long Covid start at about 10 percent. You can have Long Covid without knowing it; there can be organ damage, including brain damage, without you having symptoms, but that damage will effect your future health and lifespan. Ironically, it may create a co-morbidity if you get Covid again and you’ll be considered part of a vulnerable population.

For some, it is very severe. One acquaintance had enough brain damage to cause aphasia, and needs speech therapy. Others go from fit to out-of-breath walking down the street.

As the policy in most Western nations is “Everyone will get it, let’s just make sure it doesn’t swamp the hospitals,” let’s run some numbers. Assume everyone is 80 percent. The US population is 329 million, so 263 million people will get Covid. Of those, assume 10 percent (and I’ve seen double that number, but we’re going with conservative estimates), about 33 million people, will get Long Covid.

In the EU, numbers run to about 36 million. Worldwide, excluding China and Japan (who seem to be handling Omicron), there are about 5.9 billion people (with some generous rounding against Long Covid). 80 percent of that is 3.9, so you’re talking 390 million people with Long Covid.

These are VERY conservative numbers. Long Covid estimates go as high as 20 percent that I’ve seen, and there is the issue of re-infection. If you get Covid multiple times, do you have multiple chances to get Long Covid? Bear in mind that there will be new variants as well, so immunity will not carry forward that well.

So it wouldn’t be hard for those headline numbers to double: 780 million worldwide, 72 million in the EU, and 66 million in the US.

These are—staggering numbers, and their affect on our societies cannot be underestimated. The deaths are terrible, but the bad health and disabling of many (and remember, that organ damage will lead to disabling later in people who seem fine now) will require us to restructure large chunks of our society to support those who are injured. Many people will not be able to work, or their working lives will be reduced in length and intensity.

What’s worse about this is that, while people die only once, they can remain sick and disabled for decades. So unlike the Spanish Flu, say, Covid will be with us in ways we can’t ignore — every time someone looks at a friend or loved one who is sick because of it. No matter what people “feel” now, years to decades of watching the consequences will sour them.

Letting Covid run wild through the world was a choice. We made it. A few societies didn’t.

Ironically (or not?), the Chinese Communist Party decided to not let their population die in droves and acquire long-term health problems (the number for China would be 112 million at the conservative end). Most Western “democracies” chose to have mass deaths and Long Covid.

This isn’t just about the horrid consequences of our choice to let Covid rage and mutate, this is also a mass legitimacy loss event for the West and for democracy, though a very few democracies have proved non-psychopathic.

If “freedumb” means governments that let you die or get Long Covid, is it “freedumb” worth having? If being ruled by “commies” means that you live and stay healthy and so do your parents, grandparents, and kids, is “Communism with Chinese characteristics” so bad?

That’s a question a lot of people are going to be asking themselves.

Covid and China’s Victory

On January 6, 2022

One of the most clarifying things about the Covid epidemic has been which countries have been able to handle it and which haven’t.

To oversimplify, China and a few other nations have handled it well. None of the major Western powers have; certainly not the US.

In biology, there’s a distinction between natural selection and sexual selection. In sexual selection, you compete against other members of your species. In natural selection, you compete against your environment.

In nations, societies, and civilizations there is something similar: internal vs. external competition. You compete against fellow members of your society for status, wealth, and power within your society, but your society as a whole competes against other societies. There are always top dogs, hegemonic powers, and so on, and losing an inter-society culture can, at worst, lead to you being genocided and, at best, lead to long periods of poverty and subjugation. (The Irish to the English, say, for hundreds of years. Native Americans to the Europeans. Indeed, almost everyone to the Europeans, but before that there have been various hegemonic powers — including China.)

In the West, with some minor exceptions, Covid was treated as a profit event. It was a way for the richest and most powerful to become even more rich and powerful. That millions would die and millions more would be crippled (Long Covid rates seem somewhere between 10 to 20 percent depending on definitions) was secondary to the possibility of funneling more power and wealth to those who already had the most. Billionaires, just one group among elites, have seen their wealth double during the pandemic.

China, or more accurately, the Chinese Communist Party did not treat the pandemic primarily as being about internal competition. To them it was important that large numbers of citizens did not die and were not disabled.

This means that China will come out of this stronger than the West, because the economy, fundamentally and always, is people, and there’s aren’t mass-disabled and/or dead. Plus the legitimacy of the ruling class, rather than being reduced by their pandemic response, has been increased.

To the CCP, the health of their citizens is integral to maintaining their power. To the West’s elites, it is an asset to be burned down to make more money and improve their internal position.

The irony of this is that by taking care of their citizens, the CCP has both improved their external and internal positions, while the West’s elites, who can be best characterized as incompetent psychopaths capable of nothing but accumulating more internal power and wealth, have been weakened despite their gains in wealth. This is because, as a group, their power is dependent on the health of their population and on their legitimacy.

As far as I can see, Covid pretty much proves that, barring outside shocks, China has already won the hegemonic competition between itself and the US. Oh, it’ll have to play out, but the CCP governs its country basically competently, and US elites are fools who let their society’s power run down.

US military superiority, in the face of nukes and the Russia/China alliance, is insufficient to alter this fact. China has the industry, it has more competent government, and its government’s legitimacy is riding high while the legitimacy of the West is in tatters.

Given these facts, and that China has a much larger population, it’s hard to see how the US can remain in its position. Just as the end of Britain as world ruler took generations after the US actually surpassed it economically, so this will take time to be seen. However, just as, by 1900, it was essentially inevitable that the US would take over from Britain, so it now seems that the hand-off to China is inevitable, or would be in a world without climate change and ecological collapse, those being the likely external shocks that even a functioning society may not be able to overcome.

I take little pleasure in this. I dedicated a decent chunk of my life to trying to help fix the US, as a Canadian-American collapse is likely to be ugly. But it is what it is, and it must be faced squarely.

Periods of Popular Political Change Happen When…

On October 25, 2021

…people recognize that their problems aren’t personal, but social.

Oh this isn’t the only requirement for change, but it is one of the requirements.

In “normal” times most people see their problems as personal: if they’re poor it’s because of something they did or didn’t do, or is related to people around them. “That damned boss.” It isn’t seen as political or structural. The line for much of the 80s-2000s was that Americans saw themselves as “temporarily embarrassed rich people.” If they weren’t making it, the problem wasn’t the politics but theirs. The perception was that anyone could make it. Maybe the system was unfair, but not prohibitively so.

Of course, not all people thought this way (there’s never universal groupthink) but enough did that there was no widespread push for serious changes.

What has changed recently is that people no longer think “its me, not you.” They think, “it’s you, not me” where “you” = society and politics. They may have taken the student loans, but they know boomers paid nothing or a nominal amount for university. They know they can’t afford a home or apartment, not because they don’t earn enough, but because wages have effectively gone down and real home prices have gone up vastly compared to what they were when their parents or grandparents bought up. They know medical care is too expensive and that drugs didn’t used to cost nearly this much.

People, especially young people, are getting that the problem is the system, not them. It’s a game of musical chairs and the people in the good chairs never stand up.

This isn’t, again, sufficient by itself for political change, but it is one of the necessary first steps: people must understand that without political change their lives aren’t going to get better and will probably get worse.

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Texas Lessons For Preparing For The Ongoing Collapse

On February 18, 2021

The Texas disaster is a very dramatic example of what I’ve been urging people to prepare for.

When I was a kid I lived in a number of third world nations: Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh, and visited a bunch more.

In a failing state, stuff just doesn’t work well, and when there is a shove, it collapses. You can count on infrastructure or the state when things go bad.

Most of the time it’s less dramatic than the Texas disaster, BUT when you have a fragile state and infrastructure, every disaster turns into a catastrophe. Texas is the worst first world infrastructure collapse we’ve seen, but California in recent years has embarassed itself.

In fragile ecosystems, as well, events burn out of control quickly, as with the Australian, Brazilian, Californian, and various other wildfires.

Further, “once in a hundred year” weather events are becoming common. This was predicted by Stirling Newberry back in the 90s to me (he couldn’t get it published) and it’s now understood by scientists to be the case.

So if you have a neoliberal austerity state which has spent 40 years de-regulating and privatizing public infrastructure and downsizing the public service into incapability, you wind up with a situation where you can’t count on the State for water, food, or power during emergencies.

That means you have to prepare for yourself. Some off-grid energy, some food and medicine and water stores or ability to get those even in a collapse.

Collapses are sometimes brief: Texas will be back to normal soon enough, though the water damage caused by bursting pipes will lead to a lot of folks winding up homeless.

But they will become more frequent and even when there isn’t a crisis America and various other nations will move to a situation where rolling brown-outs and black-outs are common; where you can’t trust the water (already true in large parts of America) and where healthcare is more and more rationed. (One scandal in the UK is how people with learning disabilities are not being ressusitated from Covid: that sort of “triage” will continue and become wider.)

There are a lot of different decline scenarios. For many people “chronic with irregular but frequent mini-crises” is a good one to expect. The state won’t go away entirely; the cities will not collapse 98% and empty into the country a.la. the Dark Ages, but life will get shittier and more uncertain the social supports that were common and routine; the competence expected from the Great Society and which lived on because the Great Engineers of the 30s-70s did good work, will go away.

In such a situation you need to be able to handle bumps. If power goes out for a few hours or days or even two or three weeks, you need to handle it. If food is disrupted, you need to handle it. (Hardest is water.)

That’s just how it’s going to be.

These solutions don’t have to be individual or family based, they can be communal outside the State, but if you don’t have them, it takes little to destroy your life. If you’ve got the money, something like this off the grid house in the inner city is a good idea, if you don’t you should still make preparations.

Remember, these sort of events will become chronic, and in time lesser versions will just become part of everyday life. I expect, assuming I live a normal lifespan (and I’m not young any more) to see in the first world the sort of brown-outs and blackouts that were common in the third world when I was young: but exacerbated by climate and social collapse.

Get ready now, while you still can. Leave it too late, and it will be, well, too late.

Worst case scenario, if by some miracle our society pulls itself together, you’ve spent money on some preparedness you don’t use and have a home with higher resale value.

And remember, don’t build your wonderful home on a Florida flood plain; a place where the aquifers will all dry up in 20 years or the equivalent.

Be well.

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Rush Limbaugh Escapes The Hell-World He Created

On February 17, 2021

Stirling Newberry explained the concept of a death bet: you bet that the negative consequences of your actions will occur after you are dead. Classically this explains climate change: decision makers who could have stopped it will almost all be dead before it becomes significant.

Rush Limbaugh was one of the most important people in creating the modern right; driving deregulation and spreading hate and racism. It’s impossible to overstate how influential he was in the 90s, not just thru his own radio show, but because other radio hosts copied him. Radio was a BIG deal back then still, and had massive reach.

There aren’t ten people more responsible for America being what it is today than Limbaugh; there may not be five. (Robert Ailes, who ran Fox, is on the list too.)

All of these people died before they suffered from making the US a non-fuctional undeveloping nation. They were protected by their wealth and their power. Limbaugh died rich. Ailes died rich.

Meanwhile, in Texas, utilities deregulation and privatization has lead to vast suffering and death, which, yes, anyone with sense who wasn’t blinded by greed or the world’s stupidest ideology (if we give a lot of money to rich people that’ll be good for us!) knew would happen eventually.

America is divided into two tribes who hate each other. Eliminationist rhetoric is common. The media fans the flames, regularly lying and dividing people against each other.

Limbaugh. His legacy. What he worked hard for all his life. What made him rich. Hate, stupidity and the destruction of his country.

Limbaugh won. He’s dead, he never suffered the consequences of his belief.

But many of you, dear readers, will.

Men like Limbaugh at the enemies of all good people; all decent people. So are those who funded him and pushed him. So is every Texas utility executive; every member of the board, and every single politician who pushed deregulation, privatization and policies which increased climate change.

They sold your future; your lives; your children’s lives, so they could live well and be rich. This includes Pelosi and Biden, both of whom were very important in creating this world.

They’re going to die, never having faced the consequences of the evil they have done. You, on the other hand, if you’re not old and cushioned by wealth, will.

A functioning society would throw all these people in jail and take all their money and power. America? Canada? Britain?

We re-elect them and make sure they get richer and richer.

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AOC Is Right About Hawley and Cruz & America Is A Coup-able State

On February 3, 2021