Ripples in the Fabric of the World: What happens next?

“I’m gonna have me a glass of ripple.” – Sanford and Son

PORP

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.

KITTEN

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.

AUSSIE

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!

RIPPLE

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.

ALEXAN

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.

MADONNA

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?

CARRIER2

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.

2020

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.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

35 thoughts on “Ripples in the Fabric of the World: What happens next?”

  1. John – – Pez dispensers may survive as worship objects or as deities for dieters.

    Your hoarded collection will be worth something. ( Somethings will replace the US dollar as the world currency)

    You’ll be sittin’ pretty, once again….. the Wilder Way !!

    1. Actually, toilet bowls will survive longer than the pyramids. They are large and ceramic, and if humans all went away today, people visiting earth 6000 years from now would find landscapes covered with toilet bowls and not much else from our society.

  2. I propose the egg as the basis for currency. Ten quatloos to the farmer for a dozen large, grade-A fresh eggs.
    Eggs scale to the population quite well. And we could have fun, egg shaped holes in our coinage.

  3. Five years from now? Almost certainly a Democrat will be in the White House, whether Trump pulls out a win this year or not. Five years of old white Trump voters dying, hurried along by the Chinese virus. Five years of non-white voters keen on replicating the economic system their family fled from in the first place turning 18. I have to admit that as vivid as my imagination is, I can’t even begin to imagine what things are going to be like even a couple of months after inauguration day 2025 when Jabba the Hutt’s less attractive sister Stacey Abrams takes the oath of office. Firearms and ammo are selling as fast as distributors can get them in. The just-in-time food delivery system is proving to be not such a great idea. People who have never experienced shortages and real want are waking up to a brave new world and they don’t like it much.

    What happens next is almost too awful to imagine but I can say with near 100% certainty that whatever happens next is going to suck worse than anything Americans too young to have lived through the Depression can even begin to understand. The biggest difference is that in the 1930s America was mostly a racially, culturally and religiously homogeneous people. Add in racial tribal warfare on top of near universal economic despair i the 2020s and you have the makings of major bloodshed.

    When the free money and food stop flowing into Africa, things are going to explode there as well and the developed world will have their hands full keeping people in their own countries in line. My prediction for some time is that we are poised to see a humanitarian disaster in Africa unlike any other. When millions of Africans start charging the gates of Europe, things are going to get spicy there as well. We will have the same problem with our narco-state neighbors to the south. An economically depressed U.S.is bad but in Mexico it will lead to all out civil war, and you can bet that will spill over into America.

    Cheerful thoughts on an April morning with two inches of snow already on the ground and more on the way.

    1. You are correct, in most however in this I will demur, I believe that there may not be a US president after 2024, if things go as bad as I believe they will.

      Trump is re elected I believe he will be able to hold it together for a while in some parts of the country, the 2024 election may be held in some form but it will be for a meaningless job by then, president of a country that is so broke it can not even deliver the mail, we are seeing that about to happen now

      If in 2020 f it is JoeMentia Biden and Stacy the Hut then they will over play their hand and spend into oblivion whilst also imposing Virginia style laws on the whole country Virginia via the pen and the phone, the result would be a break up of the country pre 2024 as states like Texas opt out of the ascendant Nuevo Reich and other states whole heartily opt in, places like Massatwoshits and Corruporfornia

      But by 2024 there will be such chaos that as I said it will be meaningless who is POTUS.
      Imagine a total economic collapse in the US where the dollar bills only value is a replacement for toilet roll that is no longer being replaced, What happens for example when the Free Shit Army us no longer getting the tribute it is paid in the form of welfare, food stamps section 8 housing and yes even SSDI, and tribute is what these social programs are, what happens when the Bread and the Circus that is network television and sporting events, and yes crack and meth for the stoopid whit trash is replace by he need to find food and sustenance,

      It is game on for the less edumacated and poorer to go on search and destroy missions first in the cities then in the burbs and then in the rural areas.

      Sane places, places with pro 2A sheriffs and social cohesion will isolate themselves from the madness, things will become a lot more local as transportation systems break down, so even a place like Maryland’s eastern shore, or Cumberland region which can isolate themselves will do better than say a Houston or Miami, for example Kentucky should do fine, but Louisville, not so much

      As for millions of Nuevo Democrats coming up from Down Mexico way, perhaps, but with no welfare and no employment, or not enough to pay for a taquito Y cervasa a day, with the cities on fire from all the “youths no longer encumbered by the police who will stop going to work when their pay checks are worthless, and in any event will want to protect them and theirs, or will form new gangs and hire the “youths” as cannon fodder and when these erstwhile Americans find nothing in the country but Bubba with his shot gun or cousin Jose tells them vamanous no mas no mas aqui, the word will get back that the fiesta is over in Estadious Americanos

      There are a number of scenarios that we could posit as a result of the economic collapse, one that was coming any way, but would have taken a wee bit longer and not been as dramatic, not at first as it would have taken some little time to get up speed, but it is here and it is now, and the idea that it all can be put back together especially after the trillions created then spent by the government, and the total economic shutdown, well that idea is fanciful at best and ludicrous at worst.Supply chain collapse, food production disruption, oil production disruption, massive inflation as this time the world is shut down also and will not be taking our new “dollars” sopping up our excess

      But I see a unmitigated disaster, and we have allowed our country to be turned from a homogeneous Judaeo Christian nation with common language and culture into a polyglot gimmine state of self important Free Shitters and Social Justice whiners with the only thing we have left in common is our common currency and economy, as both our currency and current economic model are going away, We have so little in common that there will be a break up, with the Biden/TheHut team with in a year or two with Trump we may buy until the Cuomo/ChelseaManning ticket blow it all up in its first month in office, but to paraphrase George W This sucker IS going down

    2. Yup. I remember people in 2008 talking about Mexico – “failed state” was the most common term.

    3. “When millions of Africans start charging the gates of Europe, things are going to get spicy there as well. ”

      Sink. The. Boats.

  4. With all of the serious stuff you’ve written lately, that part about using your ex-wife’s name in addressing your current wife is the part that hit home to me. I did that once, in a moment of stress and frustration (for which she was not responsible). It will never happen again. The wonderful part is that she flatly “corrected” me, with just enough inflection to twist the knife in my embarrassment, and let it go at that. And that’s why we’re still married after 26 years.

    1. Reminds me of a game called Rodeo. While having sex with your wife, call her by some other woman’s name. If you can stay on for eight seconds you win.

  5. A few weeks ago, when we were still having church services in a common space (instead of over Zoom), I remarked to our Pastor that “this will be bad, but the Church has survived plagues and pandemics for centuries.” She replied, “True. In fact, a plague was partially responsible for the Protestant Reformation. The holy and dedicated priests stayed with their people, serving them and dying with them, while the selfish priests retreated into isolation, and after the plague, brought corruption into the surviving church. That made the Reformation necessary.” So, yes. Some events have ripples.

    The news today is that the two most significant factors in COVID-19 fatalities are obesity and age. There’s not much we can do about our age, but Ripples and Ruffles probably contribute to obesity. (Ken Denninger, in his blog market-ticker.org, plausibly claims to know how to reverse obesity, just in case anyone’s interested.)

  6. The only thing getting me through my week is your metric to imperial conversions. Please try to include more.

    Opie Odd

    1. I’ve been sitting here at home feeling sorry for myself, seeing my IRAs turn to crap, while regretting that I’d never done the vacation-ing and travel-ing that my more feckless friends and relatives put on the charge account (the balance of which will likely be wiped out in the aftermath).

      But, I also reflected on the habits of frugality and preparedness that those years put into my thinking, the way our kids also are frugal, have a cash reserve and a full pantry, and are prepared to live with reduced income. And, I’m OK with the choices I made.

      Those who stayed married, kept connected to their family, and learned to live with less than they could technically afford, should be as well prepared to survive as anyone.

      1. Yup. Ant and the grasshopper fable comes to mind. But in the end, does government bail out the grasshopper at the expense of the ant?

    1. Or if you look closely at that chart, you may just be able to discern the end of a month-long bear market rally. Here comes another roller coaster drop in stock prices next week?

    1. Veeeery nice. I tried to comment over at your place, but I see that you weren’t as amused by your comments as I was. Wow! Popcorn city!

      1. As my post said, “this is why we can’t have nice things”.

        I will miss about 95% of my commentariat.
        I’ll get over it.

        I will miss the a-holes who abused my patience, and the privilege, not a whit.
        Probably ever.

  7. Ha, the carrier on fire made me laugh hard. I am old but I have a pugsley also and because of him I heard the song a couple of years ago, the music video is even stranger.

    Aesop put me on to you with his admission long ago that he could not believe he hadn’t found you sooner. My wife and daughters do not believe what is happening is happening. I rarely cut across the grain in that scenario as the result is the same as using the ex’s name. Slowly they are giving me less pushback as reality hits them, but that is to late. I have started asking them what the future is since their thought process is so good at prediction of our future based on their prediction of the last 3 months.

    Simple statement made by the Tulsa mayor the other day, “we are tapping our rainy day fund”. Very profound statement if you realize what it means. If you don’t, ask yourself why “you (the reader)” would tap your rainy day fund. I have known for a long time the status of our city and states as well as the Feds. To much debt.

    Keep doing what your doing and the messaging as we the people are praying for many things these days.

  8. This makes me wish I grew up near a beach.

    The only really interesting watchable sport in existence is women’s beach volleyball, and not just for the uniforms. Ever run on a beach? That is hard work. Playing volleyball on beach sand has got to be very tiring work.

  9. Half the world is composed of idiots,
    the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them.

    — Walter Kerr

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