Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Author: Ian Welsh Page 2 of 394

How The Resource Squeeze Will Play Out

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On December 17, 2024

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Contrary to what many economists will claim, we’re going to move into a resource constrained era. This is a combination of climate change, environmental collapse and civilization decline.

Simply put, per capita, there’s going to be less stuff. As Gibson’s line runs, the future will be unevenly distributed. This will hit some places harder and sooner. Germany and Europe are in decline already. China is actually increasing production and availability of most products. The US is in decline, but actively cannibalizing its allies, especially Europe, but also Taiwan, so the stuff shortage will be slower and there may be short to medium term increase.

This is exacerbated in most countries by the insistence of elites that they need to grow their wealth and income in both absolute and relative terms. They must have more, and they must increase the percentage of their society’s wealth and income. So even as there is less to go around, they must have more. When they try to deal with problems like climate change they institute policies like older retirement ages, reduced pensions, lower welfare payments, cuts and privatization of healthcare and regressive carbon taxes. They don’t get rid of, say, mega-yachts and private jets, or tax the rich more and distribute to those in need.

This isn’t just a matter of greed. Capitalist elites are in a Red Queen’s race. If they fall behind other elites, those elites will buy them out (often whether they want to be bought out or not), and they will fall out of the true elite, those who control profit-making enterprises. They may still be wealthy, but they will lose their power and cease to be players.

So we’re caught in a situation where per-capita resources will go down even as elites take a higher share.

I’m sure you can understand what this means to you and those you know. Maneuvering around this means either being extremely valuable to elites, and irreplaceable, or finding ways to insulate yourself from their demands, which is difficult, since they have most of what you need and control the legal system and the violent enforcement mechanisms.

There will be a backlash. How successful it will be remains to be seen, but there is a point where people realize that risking their lives or even losing them is a better bet than remaining with the status quo. Food and water riots, “terrorism” and perhaps Mangioning elites will become a trend.

Plan for this, because it’s already started. You see it already in the vast numbers of homeless, the endless healthcare rationing, and the constant push to privatize and thus profitize ever bit of government which might make a profit if its put in hands which can squeeze.

If your having a good lifestyle doesn’t make some member of the elite richer than squeezing you into homelessness or denying you care, then you’re in the line to go on the butcher’s block.

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The UR Rule Of Civilizations Worth Living In

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On December 16, 2024

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I saw this rather revealing tweet recently:

Andreessen, if you don’t know, made his money during the dot-com boom, at Mozilla. He then formed a venture capital firm, Andreessen-Horowitz.

Now what’s interesting about this tweet is the word “guilt.”

Andreessen doesn’t want to feel guilt. He doesn’t like the idea that one should run society to try and do the most good for the most people.

Understandable, venture capital in the 21st century has mostly created firms which profit from using as few workers as possible and San Francisco, the heart of Silicon Valley, has gone to Hell. Andreessen’s filthy rich, and he has to see homeless people every day. If he felt guilt about being having way more money than he’ll ever need while other people go hungry and live without heat, cooling and a dry place to sleep, he’d feel guilty pretty damn often or would have to spend a lot of his two billion to feel good.

But that’s not the point I want to make.

It is fashionable to go on and on about taking care of family and friends, and that’s a good thing up to a point.

But only up to a point. Societies work best when members care about people they’ll never meet. If we all look out only for those close to us, the actions we take to do so often hurt those who aren’t near us. Private equity buys firms, loads them down with debts and they go bankrupt, destroying the lives of workers. Bankers create asset bubbles which burst. They get bailed out and if they don’t are still worth millions from bonuses based on fraud, but ordinary people lose jobs, homes and healthcare. Insurance companies and pharma overprice their services, deny care and get rich. Ordinary people aren’t blameless either, we NIMBY and care about schools in our neighbourhoods but not in slums, and complain about the homeless and tell the cops to move them out but don’t want to pay for their housing. We look after and we vote for truly evil people and a majority, it seems, would never vote for someone actually good. We want low taxes and cheap goods and segregated housing prices that never go down.

This is… stupid. Society is other people. If other people are sick, we’re more likely to get sick. If other people are poor, they can’t pay for whatever products or services we produce. If people are homeless we find that distasteful and unpleasant to be around. Unhappy people, of course, are not as fun to be around as happy people.

And so on.

The better off everyone is in society, the better it is for you and me, unless we’re rich enough to live in a bubble, rarely seeing anyone but servants and our fellow rich. But even a billionaire will sometimes see a poor person, if only from their limo or looking down from a chopter, and they might feel some guilt. (If Andreessen does feel guilt, well, that’s mildly impressive in a pathetic sort of way. I doubt most billionaires do. But he’s repressing hard.)

And then one day someone flips out and kills a CEO, and others start talking about how wonderful CEO killing is. Perhaps making other people poor and miserable and killing their relatives might be a bad idea even for the masters of the universe. Might just be a good idea to care about people Andreessen doesn’t know, because one of them might get past his security one day.

Or, I guess, we could have assassinations, bombings, riots and civilization collapse.

It really is one or the other. If oil company execs had cared about people they don’t know they wouldn’t have buried climate change and financed denialism. If insurance and pharma and hospital execs cared about people they don’t know, there’d have been no assassination because they’d be trying to make sure as many people as possible got the care they need instead of optimizing to make more money.

It might just be that only looking out after people you know and care about and not giving a damn about anyone else is not just morally right, but pragmatically right.

Or you can bet on your bodyguards and the security of your gated communities, I guess. That’s a good bet, till it isn’t.

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Open Thread

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On December 13, 2024

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts. (No Mangione/Syria.)

Hell Is What Humans Deserve

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On December 12, 2024

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I don’t know how to explain this to readers, but I’m going to try.

If you want to live in a good world or good society, certain types of behaviour have to be off the table and the response to them has to be harsh and overwhelming.

Understand the next statement: Anyone who will take what they want from someone else just because they are stronger is a threat to you.

The moment you say “none of my business” when someone abuses their power, you have created the conditions for Hell.

This is why certain behaviours have to be opposed. Genocide. Rape. Torture. Elites making the price of medicine a thousand times the cost.

Now, in the Middle East, Israel wants Greater Israel. They haven’t been shy about it. All of their neighbours and even some of their non-neighbours are in danger if Israel expands and grows more powerful. All of them are in danger if Israel eliminates the near enemies: Syria, Hezbollah and the Palestinians because they will then be able to turn their full power and attention (and that of America) on new enemies with lebensraum.

This is so obvious I shouldn’t have to state it.

And Israel is a threat to America, too. They control your politics (no, don’t even) and make your rulers do things that are evil and against American interests, and certainly against the interests of the vast majority of actual Americans. Yeah, they aren’t genociding you, but as millions are homeless you’re spending billions on helping Israel commit genocide.

Israeli cops teach American cops how to brutalize Americans the way they brutalize Palestinians. Everything American elites are willing to do Palestinians they are willing to do to you if they ever decide it’s in their best interest. If you think they have the least fellow feeling for you you are so stupid I’m surprised you can keep breathing.

Hell is hell because evil is tolerated or even admired and suckers who do good are despised. Heaven is heaven because evil is not tolerated and people who do good are admired and emulated.

Update: Israel is now 20 miles from the northern border to Lebanon in Syria. But Syria falling is no big deal, honest.

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Taking the Hit For Stopping Genocide

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On December 11, 2024

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I’ve noticed something interesting. Every time I write about what might be done to stop the Israeli genocide, actions which would require serious fighting, people say “well I understand whey they don’t want to do that because Israel will bomb the hell out of them.”

And that’s true (though not as true when it comes to Iran, which has plenty of effective AD.)

The issue here is that there’s a genocide going on. My estimate for casualties is over half a million, and other people are starting to make the same estimates. For the past two months Israel has basically let no food into Northern Gaza. The number at the end will probably be over a million dead.

So you’re either willing to do what it takes to stop it, or you aren’t. Both Hezbollah and Iran pulled their punches and let Israel set the tempo of engagement, choosing when and where to fight, instead of engaging it when Hamas still had a viable fighting force. Iran had the missile capacity to wreck Israel’s air defense and air bases. Instead they let their proxies fight alone, and that went very badly for them.

With the fall of Syria, well, it’s no longer possible to stop the genocide. Senior Iranian leadership told their juniors they were going to intervene, then didn’t.

At least half a million people are going to die because no one was willing to do what it took to stop it.

It’s unfair this was on Iran and Hezbollah. It’s an amazing indictment of every great power in the world, and the local Arab states that none of them did anything meaningful to stop a genocide and that many helped the genocide along.

As for Iran, they themselves have pointed out that one has to resist America and Israel wherever they attack, because the plan is to end up taking out Iran. Khameini, if he hasn’t already, needs to get his head out of his ass and build nukes. And if Russia and China want to keep Iran as part of their great alliance, they need to take action.

As for Hezbollah, well, they’re cut off from land resupply from Iran. Israel and America will get to them. Playing everything cautiously did not work.

America is falling, there is no question about that. But Empire’s rarely go quiet into the night. The Age of War and Revolution continues.

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Did Mangione Break The Law of Nature When He Killed the Health Insurance CEO?

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On December 10, 2024

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So, Mangione assassinated Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, the US health insurance company with the highest denial rate in the industry.

It’s pretty clear he did it, he was found with a manifesto which amounts to a confession.

“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

The problem for the prosecution is simple: most people think the assassination was justified. All it takes is one juror to hang on and refuse to convict.

Jury nullification is legal, but it’s not legal to tell jurors they have the right.

But jury nullification is part of the “deal”, the social contract. It’s one reason why people accused of a crime have the right to a jury trial. We all know that the law and justice aren’t the same thing. We gave up the right for private vengeance because it lead to feuds and violence, but in exchange for giving it up we expect the “justice” system to operate in a way which leads to a better society, not a worse one. We expect the law to protect us.

Mangione killed one person. Thompson is a mass murderer. Mangione is a criminal because it’s against the law to kill people who kill by spreadsheet, but it’s legal to kill by spreadsheet.

When the law doesn’t work; when it allows mass murder, there will be some people who take the law into their own hands. As nasty as it is, this is one the real “checks and balances”. If elites won’t work for the common good, if they loot and impoverish and kill too much the masses always have the ability, if not the legal right to fight back. America’s founders were pretty clear about this.

Hamilton:

“when the first principles of civil society are violated, and the rights of the whole people are invaded, the common forms of municipal law are not to be regarded. Men may betake themselves to the law of nature.”

Elites are supposed to work for the benefit of all. There must be a case that what they do benefits the majority in society. When it doesn’t there must be some force of recourse.

Mangione broke the law. He almost certainly killed Thompson.

But did he break the law of nature?

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The Generational Divide Inside Iran’s IRGC

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On December 9, 2024

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The IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp) is the most important part of the military. It’s supposed to guard the revolution: put down any internal revolts or coups. But it’s also the primary arm involved in places like Syria and Lebanon.

Among the information coming out after the fall of Assad one of the most interesting bits was on internal tensions inside the IRGC. It seems that the younger members are far more radical than the older guys currently in charge of the Republic. Khameini changed recruiting to invite only and upped indoctrination to 50% of training time, and, well, it worked. The younger members are true believers. They wanted to go into Syria and save it. They want more military action against Israel and find the missile strikes inadequate and pathetic.

Iranian leadership is renowned as cautious and conservative. They move slowly and think everything thru and risk little.

But the people who keep them in power aren’t like that: they’re happy to smash heads because they are true believers.

To make things worse, Khameini is 85. He has to arrange for a transition. And if he picks someone the youngsters won’t follow, Iran’s regime will be in great danger.

I’d say that the great problem with Iran during this last year and a half has been that it has been too cautious. Caution has served Iran well, but there are times for caution and there are times when for swift and decisive action. Iran has fumbled the war. They proved their missiles forces can break through Israel’s defenses, but have barely used them. They could have taken out Israeli air defenses and airfields directly if they were willing to be involved and not just operate thru proxies. Once they did so, Hezbollah’s strikes would have been much more effective.

The youngs were chomping to go fight and so were many of the Iran supported Iraqi militias, but they didn’t allow that. Khameini has repeatedly refused to get a nuclear deterrent, and Iran needs one. All along they have let Israel, the US and Turkey hold in the initiative and choose when and where the fighting would occur, only reacting, not forcing their tempo on the enemy. The result has been the massive weakening of Hamas and Hezbollah and the loss of Syria.

The youngs are right, and the olds are wrong. Iran needs to fight because just sitting their letting its proxies be taken out makes it look weak and untrustworthy and has degraded its actual strategic situation.

The best thing for Iran would be for the generational change to happen sooner, not later. Iran has enemies and it needs to fight, because those enemies are re-shaping the Middle East to massively reduce its power.

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Israel Is Systematically Disarming Syria

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On December 9, 2024

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Israel’s air force is destroying every air defense system, missile stockpile and air asset they know about, while the Jihadis whine that they aren’t Israel’s enemy.

By doing so Israel makes sure that it doesn’t matter who’s in charge of Syria: they can hit anything they want at any time and not only can’t Syria defend itself, they can’t even strike back. (Hezbollah can’t defend against air strikes, it can strike back so has some deterrence, but not enough.)

Turkey should just cut bait and directly conquer and annex Syria. Operating thru proxy forces has too many disadvantages and the days when borders were nearly sacrosanct are over. The US won’t like it, but so what? They can’t cut Turkey loose, it’s too important, and they’ve already pissed Russia and Iran off.

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