“I’m gonna have me a glass of ripple.” – Sanford and Son
This was Alaska, so there were no dolphins – instead The Boy had to play Salmon Says.
I remember when The Boy, The Mrs. and I were living in Fairbanks just after Pugsley was born. There aren’t a whole lot of things you can do with a four-year-old and a four-month-old since their sleeping schedules greatly interrupted our sleeping schedules. As a result, we took drives around the area. Don’t feel bad for us – Alaska was beautiful on every trip we took. And kids often sleep in the car, though everyone seemed to complain when I did it.
On one particular trip, we went up a road due east of Fairbanks: Chena Hot Springs Road. Like many roads around Fairbanks, this one ends in a complete dead end. In the lower 48, dead ends are rare – in most cases one road leads to the next like the seams in a great patchwork quilt. Not in Alaska. Alaska is the end of the road – and there are more dead ends than there are in the Kennedy family’s political careers.
About 20 miles from Fairbanks, we pulled over to stretch our legs. It was early September, and we had already seen our first snow and first freeze, so the weather was cool and pleasant. We Wilders have ice in our blood, and loved the climate of Fairbanks, which probably explains why my air conditioner is set at 64°F (-3K) and my house consumes half the electricity in my state in July.
We finally hiked through birch and pine to the river shown in the picture above, and The Boy ran up to the water and began doing what boys everywhere have been doing since boys and rocks and water were first all in the same place at the same time: he started throwing rocks in the river, starting with small ones, and finally ending up with the biggest ones he could heave in a meaningful manner into the rushing river. By meaningful, if a rock is too big, it doesn’t make that satisfying deep splash and “thunk” sound as the air rushes in to fill the rock-sized hole in the river. I’m convinced that if a task seems destructive, a four-year-old will do more work in an hour than a strong man can do in four.
The Boy loved it.
Above: Democratic budget planning session.
And tonight, when thinking about this post, I thought back to that moment. Even though The Boy was doing a lot of work, he was just putting rocks back into the stream they came out of in the first place. The splashes into the turbulent water would soon be so overwhelmed with the chaotic waves and currents that those splashes would be entirely lost; a signal terminated just like Joe Biden’s memories of every event since 1996. Twenty miles away in Fairbanks, it was certain that no trace of The Boy’s effort would ever be seen.
People like to talk about the “Butterfly Effect” in a way that makes it seem like every action has a consequence, no matter how small. That’s not true: I leave the toilet seat up all the time. The original “Butterfly Effect” was based on introducing a small amount of instability in a stable system and watching that instability grow, like that time I threw a garter snake into the volleyball team’s locker room. But when you introduce a small change into most systems, like those rocks into that turbulent Alaskan stream, nothing’s changed – the signal introduced is overwhelmed by the chaotic noise. Or towels.
But if it’s from Australia, it’s probably poisonous. Or beer.
Our current situation is nothing like a boy throwing stones in a river, however. Instead, it’s like an earthquake. When earthquakes happen in the ocean, they release a tremendous amount of energy. A 7.8 magnitude quake is similar in energy release to a 600 megaton nuclear bomb. Since no bomb this large has ever been built, just imagine calling your girlfriend your ex-girlfriend’s name in the middle of an argument for an approximation. To triple the explosive power, replace “girlfriend” with “wife” in the preceding sentence. Telling her to “Calm down,” will likewise increase the explosive yield. Please don’t ask me how I know.
When this energy is released in an earthquake associated with water, there is always the chance of a tsunami being formed – a wave radiating outward from the original earthquake that can be as high as 500’. This wave can reach shores thousands of miles away from the original quake. An earthquake off the coast of California on January 26, 1700 caused a 10 foot tsunami in Japan. I’ve heard that California passed a regulation that limited tsunami height hitting their coastline to no more than two feet, and those must be on a sunny day in June and the permit must be applied for sixty days in advance, so you can bet they’re safe. Finally an end to dangerous assault tsunamis!
Yeah. That never works.
That’s where we are today – the global impact of what’s going on isn’t the equivalent of a boy throwing rocks in a river, instead, it’s the equivalent of a still-ongoing earthquake, with the tsunami waves yet to hit the rest of the world.
In 2008-2009, the Fed did everything they could to mash money into the system to deal with the mess of the Great Recession in the United States. In addition to the collapse of oil prices, the result of the Great Recession and the Fed’s intervention was eventually, as it always is, inflation. Since the dollar was the world currency and no one can buy American wheat using currency made from papyrus and hope, the result was much different in Alexandria, Egypt than in Alexandria, Virginia. If you live in Alexandria, Virginia, if the price of bread doubles that means you still buy a loaf if you even notice that the price doubled. Where’s the Nutella®?
If you live in Alexandria, Egypt, if the price of bread doubles, you might not eat.
AOC called me. She told me I couldn’t have a post with the word “hunger” and the word “Alexandria” and not mention her.
Besides hunger, this situation led to yet even more unemployment in countries that barely had jobs in the first place. The normal poverty and corruption of Egypt didn’t stop – the inflation imported from a continent away so people could flip houses just made it that much worse. The result? Revolution across North Africa and the Middle East, and waves of refugees attempting to make it to Europe.
That was just one ripple from 2008-2009, when the crisis was far smaller than today’s. I fully expect conditions here in the United States to be far better off than Egypt during the whole of the crisis because our civilization didn’t peak in 4000 B.C. To be fair to the Egyptians, it was one hell of a peak. The pyramids will still be standing in 6,000 years when the only remnants of Western Civilization remaining will be the parts of Madonna® that nature can’t digest.
Cockroaches and Madonna© will survive the apocalypse.
However, it occurred to me today that any hardship we see in the United States will be small in comparison to the hardships that will be seen in the Third World. Those countries will feel the true wrath of COVID-19.
Which countries? Certainly oil producing countries. If Venezuela can’t feed Venezuelans at $60 oil, it won’t be able to feed them at $20 oil. I know it’s difficult to be harder on a country than communism, but Coronavirus will be the cherry on the cake of the workers’ paradise. Along with that, I don’t expect Africa or the Middle East to do any better than they did in 2010 although in some places it won’t even be noticed because they peaked even earlier than the Egyptians. Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, I’m looking at you.
China will likely be hard hit as well. With no one to purchase their stuff, and being a very significant net importer of both petroleum (now cheaper) and food (soon to be inflated). I’d expect to see this drive more social repression, which China is really, really good at, having been ruled by authoritarian leaders for roughly 27,000 years. The next five years will answer if they are the world juggernaut that they intend to be, or one that’s so dependent on the outside world that their power will evaporate away with this particular set of circumstances. I find the idea that they will turn inward like they have done since 221 B.C. compelling. Hey, it has worked for 2241 years, so why break a streak?
The carrier, the carrier, the carrier is on fire. We don’t need no water . . .
I tend to think the European Union won’t make it. The United States at least used to have a common language and, mainly, a common heritage. The European Union is like a pizza with pepperoni, pineapple, polonium and zinc washers on it. No, I apologize. The pizza makes more sense than the EU.
I especially think that, nation by nation, the EU is getting pretty tired of the refugee flow. Many refugees come to Europe and other Western states not to be European, but only to be economic “citizens” that have no affinity for Western Culture. Adam Piggot talked about this in a blog post where he described newly-minted Australians banding together in their ethnic group to raid stores to horde for the plague (LINK). That behavior (or behaviour, if you live in a country where everything that’s not poisonous and wanting to kill you is non-poisonous and wanting to kill you) won’t exactly be a selling point for the pro-immigration promoters.
The problem with making these predictions is like the rushing current The Boy threw stones into. The events in the entire world will be so turbulent that picking winners and losers reminds me of what Yogi Berra said: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” But as this economic tsunami hits nation after nation, expect changes to come at us so constantly in the next five years that we will all be numb as Kamala Harris’ dead heart from the information flow.
I have to promise everyone – our current crisis will be no worse than a power outage that lasts 17 years.
I also think that in five years we will be a much harder people, everywhere on Earth. What would you think if you were, say, a newly minted engineering student preparing to enter a job market where even STEM graduates who normally can find real jobs with titles that don’t end in –ista have to look for the –ista jobs? What happens when even –ista jobs cease to exist?
Yes. There will be hardships. But there will also be rocks. And rivers. And boys. The ripples that the world is making are beyond our control. But the ripples you and I make?
Those might even last longer than Madonna’s™ indigestible bits.
