GFC2, Ephemeralisation, Doing More With Less. Bucky Fullmeister and Circular Economy.

rogerglewis June 7, 2018 11 Comments

#128: GFC II

THE ANATOMY OF THE NEXT CRASH

Surprising though it might seem, barely two weeks have elapsed since those of us who anticipate GFC II – the sequel to the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC I) – were in a very, very small minority.

Consensus opinion, backed to the hilt by conventional economics, said that no such event was going to happen. Rather, we had entered the sunny uplands of “synchronised growth”, and debt had ceased to be anything much to worry about.

Of course, events, in Italy and elsewhere, haven’t yet proved us right, or the consensus wrong. We remain in a minority, though one that seems to be becoming larger. But events should embolden us, and on two fronts, not one.

First, recent developments strengthen the case for GFC II, not because of their seriousness alone, but because – as will be explained here – they conform to a logical pattern that points towards a coming crisis.

Second, we’re being reminded of quite how far conventional economics is out of touch with reality. This, of course, will be proved decisively if – or when – GFC II does happen.

This, when you consider its implications, is really quite remarkable. The government, business and finance all place heavy reliance on a school of thought which decrees that the workings of the economy are entirely financial – so, if events prove this approach to have been wrong, the ramifications will be enormous.

Those of us who understand that, far from being a matter of money, the economy is an energy system, have a lot of work in front of us.

This seems like a good point at which to publish the promised brief summary of why GFC II is likely.

ECoE starts to bite

Hi Tim,

Rather depressing reading in the comments if that sort of thing gets you down.

SEEDS is a part of the solution to the current problem. I personally think, as you know, that Seeds needs to be coupled with an embodied energy index that will then translate to an empirically falsifiable value scale for the pricing of monetary exchanges.

There is a Finance problem at the heart of this problem. The Finance problem is that Finance has become divorced from the real Economy. SEEDS is intimately related to the DNA of the real economy in that All productive activity is Energy and Materials conversion into Goods and Services of primary importance to human life and society.

The size of the Finance Speculation sector is an easily remediated problem, but clearly not, when The same people living high off that imaginary hog are writing the regulations by which they are “Governed”.

A healthy Dose of Bucky Fullmeister is what is needed vis the Production function for modern Industry and Industrial Agriculture also a look back into the concepts of Localism and Subsidiarity.

Let’s be brutal, shall we? The System of Political Economy is broken, not because of a lack of resources and technical ability. The failure is a failure of Imagination due to a slavish following of an already falsified PseudoScience of Neo-Classical Economics.

One can look to the Great Hunger in Ireland, where the failure of the Potatoe Crop was not a failure of The Irish land to produce enough food to feed the People of Ireland. The Crops grown for export were still exported throughout the Famine, Hard Currency cash crops being seen as more important than Human Life. ( http://www.popflock.com/learn?s=The_Great_Hunger ) Effectively the same Malthusian, Social Darwinism that allowed the Irish Famine to become a reality out of ideological choice and not a necessity is the same Malthusian Social Darwinism driving the current failure of Seeing Bucky Fullmeisters simple solution to the production Function, Do more with Less.
The Circular Economy, where re-cycling and building for reclamation do not only preserve Materials but also sees energy re-capture and economy maximising the repeated use of all resources across time and product lines.
https://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.com/search?q=Circular+Economy

The Use and Utility is the benefit of a good, not the rights to use and abuse otherwise called ownership. Ownership has a speculative rentier benefit to a very small class of people (Elites) and it is this excessive freeloading which is causing so much waste in the ample resource base available.

Doing Less with more has been the experience of the past 30 years or so, its now time to try Buckys way. Doing More with Less. Seeds and Embodied energy pricing can incentivise Doing More with Less, which is what the Circular economy is about. The Broken way of doing Less with more for a Higher Financial Profit is logic turned upside down an anti-Economics that has become accepted as some sort of Natural law when in fact it is and always has been the Emperors New Clothes.

Ephemeralization – Doing more with less – Buckminster Fuller (animated clip)

Buckminster Fuller on an Economic System Based on Abundance not Scarcity

My own background is that of an Entrepreneur, regarding the next Collapse, the causes are the same as the Last one 2008 and the one before that 2000 and probably all of them since the first Mississipi Bubble courtesy of John Law. Doing More with less requires a re-thinking of how Profit is accounted for and taxed with respect to reward incentives to a “Free Market” or a “Trading Economy” it requires also a look back to the distinct categories of Localised transactions and Trust-Based exchanges and Long Distance or Trustless exchanges I am advocating a Vernacular Economics supporting localised permaculture as well as promoting efficient trade prioritising acquisition of that which is lacking locally by trading that which is in surplus.

http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.com/2016/02/usury-hells-fuel-and-mans-oppressor.html
The courtiers of the Exchequer address the king;

We economists beholden as we are to the princes of usury and as the false prophets of usury.
We fit the horse foot to the shoe that suits us best. It matters not that the horse becomes lame and less furlongs are ploughed. As we deny the poison in our own usurious medium. We also deny that what ills our patient, could be from any panacea concocted in our own alchemists crucible.

Our unit of account, that is to say this store of value.
Not to leave unsaid, this medium of exchange.
Our scarlet pimpernel which no one quite pins down.
We say; ”we give you something , always the same
fungible with each the other. The one whole. Held in safe keeping, returned. What we call these claims or, definitions of claims. These bundles of demands, is money.

Insinuated into civil intercourse,
ubiquitous in the machinery of community,
deployed as a lever and pulley in affairs of state.
A measure of nothing, conjured to divine what’s important.

Counsel for the people charge usury of its crimes.

This baron abstract that claims fruit.
This heavy invisible burden,
a yoke. Fashioned in language,
felt but never seen.

inflicting scars as deep as any lash,
claiming lives as real as any canon.
This nightmare device of imagination.
Who are the slayers of this mythical dragon?

Coleridge saw beauty in nature where sweet amaranths bloom. And Shakespeare compared his summers day.
What of this hamlets ghost of a spectre?
something is rotten in the danegeld,
many more promises are written than can be kept.

So much nectar strained from thin broth,
which bargains can be made?
When the music stops and the dancers
sit down. Chairs are our metaphor for the real.
Always too few.

Rascals become clothed in robes
and honesty is reduced to rags.
Elisabeth lease had a purchase on truth.
”When people starve how can overproduction stand charged. It is money promises, kept short in supply that causes starvation. The consumption in the lungs of the community, is the usurers confection.

A counterfeit Nobel laureate, theres an irony.
Denies that in money there can be a place that gertrude stein called there, home once but no longer there , there in Oakland. A precursor to some sub prime heritage.
A speaker of truth to power could follow Pauli ´Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es is nicht einmal falsh!

Not even wrong, not even there.
All counterfeit, yet to counterfeit the counterfeit? a crime.
What of the shepherd of this unruly nothing,
where will they pen and fence this pack of wolves.
Will they dress this pack of cards in sheep’s clothing.
Limit the herd a need for Golden standards.

Prudence of sound Money and even sounder usury.
Fix the price and patronise those who will honour the thievery. A mechanism to harmonise silent ballot boxes.
A gentlemen from belgium would complement his single currency. Unruled and unruly sets a course for austerity on a continent many times at war. A fight of 11 rounds.

Spread like a cancer through the development of continents, enabling the killing called wars. That increase the debt and centralise the money power.
Quiggly shewed the tragedy, little hope it seemed,
blind faith in capitalisms harlot. That babylonian whore.

At first a mere money trick for ragged trousered philanthropy. With usury, take away whats not even yet been paid. Ruskin would see wealth as that which is valuable in the hands of the valiant. Real goods sustain and wealth succours. Usurious money is but an unmade claim and worse. No banker has earned that newly minted note that hangs discordant in the air, as apt to rob as to pay.

How obscure this obscurant cult of mammon.
What smoke screened hall of mirrors.
How obese and gluttonous the leviathan of usury.
Austerity for the likes of you and I.
More banqueting and evacuated vomit spews from the sceptred top table. Corrupt in patronage and jealousy of power. Overstuffed with greed and thirsty for more.

How mean the jealousy of greed grows.
As more wants more and demands all.
The truly poor are those who desire much,
oppressive wealth no longer is, it only has.
Usury consumes the usurer, no self just an exponential nothing. Growing ever more grotesque in a shadow of what never was and never could be.

There is the problem it lies with the Administration and not the Executive, where the executive is the population and its Industry.

“I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people. Experience may perhaps justify me in going further. When popular discontents have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed and supported that there has been generally something found amiss in the constitution or in the conduct of Government. The people have no interest in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error, and not their crime. But with the governing part of the State it is far otherwise. They certainly may act ill by design, as well as by mistake. “Les révolutions qui arrivent dans les grands états ne sont point un effect du hasard, ni du caprice des peuples. Rien ne révolte les grands d’un royaume comme un Gouvernoment foible et dérangé. Pour la populace, ce n’est jamais par envie d’attaquer qu’elle se soulève, mais par impatience de souffrir.” These are the words of a great man, of a Minister of State, and a zealous assertor of Monarchy. They are applied to the system of favouritism which was adopted by Henry the Third of France, and to the dreadful consequences it produced. What he says of revolutions is equally true of all great disturbances. If this presumption in favour of the subjects against the trustees of power be not the more probable, I am sure it is the more comfortable speculation, because it is more easy to change an Administration than to reform a people”.
Edmund Burke.
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.com/2017/03/on-present-discontents-burke-opined.html