I’ve been warning that there would be serious problems from Trump’s war because of the effect on oil, fertilizer, helium, natural gas and much more.
This was obvious: world use was higher than supply, and stockpiles would eventually dry up. Trump, for whatever reason (I favor blackmail, but hey, insert your reason here), refuses to make peace. Then the Saudis decided to hit Yemen’s capital aiport and Ansar Allah said “you’ve made us angry. You won’t like us when we’re angry.”
There’s some dispute over exactly who hit the pipeline (Sauds say Iraqi militias, Iraqi militia’s say “that’s not our honor” but it doesn’t really matter. Ignore BS about repairs, they remain no more defensible after repairs than they were before repairs are needed.
I expect to see shortages (already here for diesel in America and France), price increases and in some countries, food riots. No real supply management has been done, the geniuses in charge figured “let’s keep prices lower than they otherwise would be, and for sure we shouldn’t make sure farmers have enough at prices they can afford, or any other critical industry.” Add increased fertilizer prices, and BOOM!
So, Trump and co. have blown up the world economy, and 2027 is going to suck extra rancid ass. What to do?
The obvious thing is to stock up, if you can, but that’s not enough unless you’re rich and sure that your income stream is secure.
What you need is to belong to an actual community: people who take care of each other. It could be a very tight friendship group, it could be a large extended helpful family (not a lot of those still around), but the easiest way to get such a community is to join an active church. Active churches and their members give you a support network by default if you get involved. (Don’t just go worship, volunteer for something.)
“But Ian,” you whine, I’m not religious.
Get religion!
Kidding, kidding. There are churches for non-believers too.
So find a church that suits you and start going. Make friends. Be useful and helpful. When you need help the odds of you getting it skyrocket.
If you’re alone, or part of a small family group, you’re always one bad bump away from fiasco. In normal times this is bad. In the the times which are coming, well, it could be catastrophic.
Again: things ARE going to be bad. How bad will depend on where you are, and how stupid and unwilling Trump and MBS, the the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, are to make peace.
But I’m sure everything will work out. Neither of them are evil, stupid and have a track record of failure at everything except enriching themselves and clinging to power, right?
Act on this. It doesn’t have to be my suggestions, but do what you can: Shit Mountain just liquefied and started rolling downhill to where you live.
What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.
spud
top that off, one idiot after another holds power in the west. no one has anything coming close to competence.
as long as the idiots let the musks of the world run things, and putting a idiot in charge of the fed, who is raising rates as the economy tanks, its all downhill from here.
i imagine the rate hikes are just the beginning. along with more war.
the warring will get even more outrageous as the western economies tank.
just wait till the army of worthless parasites feeding off, and governing the masses, find out their ill gotten gains, are no where near the worth they thought they had.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKWfEQlcDoU
What critics get wrong about MMT – or modern monetary theory
Modern monetary theory, or MMT, is frequently attacked for supposedly saying that governments can print unlimited amounts of money, ignore inflation, abandon taxation, accumulate endless debt and destroy the value of their currency.
But is that actually what MMT says?
In this video, I explain what modern monetary theory is and address most of the common criticisms made of it.
MMT starts with a simple observation: a government such as that of the UK, which issues its own currency, creates money when it spends. Taxation and government borrowing perform important economic functions, but they do not provide the pounds that the government needs before it can spend.
That does not mean there are no limits on government spending. The limits are real resources: people, skills, energy, materials, productive capacity and the things actually available to buy. Push demand beyond those limits and inflation can result.
That distinction between financial constraints and real resource constraints is at the heart of MMT.
I also look at taxation, government debt, exchange rates, inflation, Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany, and the claim that MMT is inherently left-wing and dismiss all of the nonsense talked about MMT when it comes to these issues.
MMT is not a political manifesto. It is an explanation of how money works. Understanding that changes the questions we should be asking about what governments can do.
Perhaps most importantly, though, I say this:
“You can no more do MMT than you can do gravity. MMT explains how money works. Gravity explains why we are stuck to this planet. You can either understand MMT, or you can misunderstand it, but you can’t do it because it is what is.”
Adam Eran
A modest suggestion for sprawl dwellers: Make a map of the neighborhood and put everyone’s phone number and email on it. You’ll get to know who your neighbors are.
vmsmith
Read Eric Klinenberg’s study of the July 1995 Chicago heat wave, which killed more than 700 people.
Klinenberg compared two adjacent, predominantly Black, relatively poor South Side neighborhoods:
Auburn Gresham: approximately 3 deaths per 100,000 residents, among the lowest rates in Chicago.
Englewood: approximately 33 deaths per 100,000—about eleven times Auburn Gresham’s rate and among the city’s highest.
Aubern Gresham had what Klinenberg called strong social infrastructure:
* functioning shops, restaurants, churches, block clubs, and community organizations;
* active sidewalks and public places where residents regularly encountered one another;
* older residents who were visible and socially connected;
* neighbors who knew which vulnerable people needed to be checked during the emergency.
Residents told Klinenberg that they knew whom they needed to “keep tabs on” during the heat wave.
Englewood, despite appearing demographically similar, had suffered decades of population loss and disinvestment. Boarded buildings, vacant lots, deteriorated sidewalks, crime, and fear discouraged residents—especially elderly people—from going outside. Many isolated themselves behind locked doors and closed windows, where their apartments became dangerously hot.
Social connections made a difference. So yeah, join a church where people care about other people. It’s probably the best thing you can do in very hard times.
Nat Wilson Turner
MBS will be going out neck first, I’m afraid.
david lamy
Whlle our polity worship at the altar of Paramount-Warner Brothers and NCAA antitrust we need relevant spirituality.
Together we can stop fighting Nature. We must give up the concept of control and accept our need to adapt.
Mark Level
I sure hope so, Nat!! That’d be a good start; like Ian’s joke, What do you call 2 dead Nazis? A good start.
One dead MBS and Al-Sisi, & the Capo Mahmoud Abbas would be good as well. Abbas is in his 80s, not only no food in Palestine, no elections since like 2006, how dare they vote for CHamas!!? Abbas has lived way too long . . . for his own people.
I’m far removed from this problem currently. I did belong to Duluth’s Unitarian Universalist Church, proudly for awhile, until they did a whole service electioneering for Kamala and more Smiley Lib genocide, and then I told them I quit, and no more monthly tithe. (My donations added up to $420 annually, the #s significance known.) Sometimes the squishy Liberal complacency just gets way too thick obviously. The UU Church had a significant role in ‘Murican history, as Abolitionist and later Feminist, pro-civil rights, etc. But it is a pathetic shadow of its former self. I gave up on the Santa Fe, NM UU Church after a pathetic Day of the Dead Service. The Libs were always apologizing for being white and well off (purely symbolic) & recommending the practice of Taoism, but in Santa Fe said you could study it, but shouldn’t practice it, because that’s “Cultural appropriation.” What happened to sincerity? To following a path of Justice and Good Sense? I am only 10% Spanish and 1% Mongolian/ “Undefined East Asian”, but my parents were so big on Anglo-Saxon bullshit I completely rejected it by the time I was 15, never went back. (My dad had a claim on the Saxon part, my mom on neither.)
Real revolutionaries don’t fear their own shadow or apologize for being on the Left or fighting back against injustice. Good luck to all in finding a church which practices social justice without timidity or cringe. That wasn’t my recent experience with the UU faith. . . The OTO had its value for me decades ago, until it became what we called a “Center of Pestilence”. Do What Thou Wilt became Drug How you Want, Whine, pretend to be mentally ill to get California Welfare in the Oakland Thelemic community by 2000. Most religions have a core of hypocrisy, and are a mental dodge. Just one example– How many “Christians” really are forgiving of others’ sins? They all have the ethos that Jesus forgives ME, not others. With Thelema few practiced Will (self-discipline) or Agape (Love), few had sincerity.
I’m not a doctrinaire Marxist, but were I still in the USA, I’d look for some genuine Left option like Marxists with land who are planting crops. I’m so lucky to have gotten out . . . I’m considered White now that I’m old, but since I speak Spanish 100% of the time I’m mostly accepted by Mexicans. It’s a big, racially diverse country, there are blonde and Irish Mexicans (not many, where I am the majority are Mayan and proud.) But these people aren’t bigots on a high horse, they accept others. USA just a miserable place, for most of my life after the early 80s.
spud
a barrel of oil is down again today, $89 dollars plus change. you simply can’t make this stuff up.
mago
Yeah, joining a church sounds good on paper, but as Mark Level mentions (Hi Mark) in practice one must conform to the dominant ideology, which can be both toxic and hypocritical. Ok, yeah, welcome to the human realm.
Even in seemingly open and progressive places like say, Boulder, Colorado the Unitarian Church has taken a turn for the worse. It’s the times in which we live. However, if one is a go along kind of person, joining a church community could be a viable option. So many people are isolated without any community or options.
I have the privilege of belonging to a community in my native country, but even when I lived in rural Costa Rica I was assured that I’d never go hungry or homeless, and I came perilously close a couple of times.
It happened as well in rural Spain when my funding dried up, the shop keepers in the nearby farm village extended me credit knowing that they’d be repaid, which they were with much gratitude.
I’ve been an edge dweller for a long time, but in contemporary times even with my experience and skill set and community support the precarity feels more acute than ever in some ways. So I feel great empathy for all those who are more marginal than me, the enfeebled, the sick and the insane. And there’s a shit load of those unfortunate ones who are about to be swept away, and I’m not talking about the Lena Wertmuller movie. Never mind. Good luck and tough luck to all of us and god bless Tiny Tim.
GlassHammer
Ian,
Going into hard times, I would suggest some inexpensive security devices for you home or apartment to give you some early warning or an added barrier for a would be intruder. Small cameras don’t cost much, window break alarms are cheap, a door brace isn’t much of an expense, motion lights are cheap, etc…
When out and about be a bit more alert, pepper spray is cheap works well enough, keep what you carry to a minimum, and go in a group as much as you can.
anon
I would recommend being friendly with your neighbors, especially those who have offered to help in the past. I’ve had some awful neighbors, and most people these days keep to themselves and do not offer to help. However, there are still some decent people around who aren’t afraid to lend a helping hand. My next door neighbor has shoveled snow and cleared weeds for me.
I am not religious, but it has crossed my mind to expand my community by going to a liberal Unitarian Universalist church in my area that focuses on social justice. If you live in a liberal city, there are probably churches like this one where you can go to do good and meet good people without having to deal with conservative religious zealots.
Another group of people who have come through for me has been former and current co-workers. I know there are many co-workers you should not trust or let into your personal life, but I’ve been lucky to form a handful of strong friendships. Depending on your work environment, it is possible to weed out the good from the bad and build friendships.
It is easy, especially in the USA, to feel alone because we lack those bonds that people once had with their neighbors and community. It takes work, but I think it is worth it to put in the effort to make friends and build a network of people whom you can rely on. Also, be a good person and take some time to volunteer and help those around you. Some day they may return the favor.
different clue
Non-commercial local citizenship and/or membership communities right in your area are probably the best to be in and co-help with, for all the reasons given above.
Beyond that, there are strictly commercial communities-of-convenience in one’s area and beyond which one might keep working for and/or buying from to the best of one’s time or money-short ability to keep those parts of impersonal civilization alive. The more orderly the society stays, the more survivable the bad times may be.
In that vein, here is a reddit question: “what items at Costco make the membership worth it?”
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1wnvywh/what_items_at_costco_make_the_membership_worth_it/
I remember reading that Costco used to pay workers more and treat them better than the other Big Box Markets in its “sector”. If that is still true, targetting one’s money-mediated-interaction towards Costco might help reduce the coming layoff-waves there, and help keep a more-deserving-business-than-others remaining alive in business in at least some places.
Lefto and Righto Accelerationists won’t like that sort of approach, of course.
different clue
Here is another aspect of the gathering bad times. MAGA-voting farmers made the coming bad times worse by voting to have their immigrant labor force deported in the happy racial belief that their “old times gone are not forgotten” fantasy of millions of jobless Black people somehow being forced back into farm labor in the fields. They have long since discovered that Trump has no force or leverage to be able to make that happen.
So here is a MAGA farmer complaining about ” having to deal with High School” labor.
“Trump supporter who voted for mass deportation is melting down because now the only help she can find for her farm is high school workers: “Someone asked for $20/hour. I told him to get bent” ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/WorkReform/comments/1wod20s/trump_supporter_who_voted_for_mass_deportation_is/
Part of making the coming bad times a little less bad will involve “blue dot” citizens seeking out “blue dot” and “black dot” ( not an official name yet) farmers and food businesses to buy preferrentially from, so as to keep those tenuous threads of advanced orderly civilization alive and unbroken. The “blue dot” farmer you keep alive today is the “blue dot” food you may have tomorrow.