Survival Economics, 2023

“Kent Brockman here reporting on a crisis so serious it has its own name and theme music.” – The Simpsons Movie

I tried farming rabbits, but I found it a hare-raising experience.  All memes this post, as found.

Perhaps the single biggest concern I have is that we’re spending our time as a species worried about trivial stuff.  What “trivial stuff”?  How about Ukraine?  I think that’s what Kamala and Brandon would want us to focus on, but they’re stuck on vodka and sniffing children.

Ukraine?  I don’t have a side in that conflict, and steadfastly refuse to have one.  Both governments are at about the same level of totalitarianism (this isn’t me talking, this is from those organizations who measure this stuff).  I’m not going to get into it, but I can back my ambivalence up that, yeah, both sides are crap.  If Trump had a second term?  This conflict wouldn’t exist.  We still wouldn’t have a wall, but this conflict wouldn’t exist.

But Ukraine is trivial compared to the subjects everyone is avoiding:

Food, and Energy.  I originally had a third, Immigration to add to this list, but the post got too long on just the first two.  Of course, I’ll get to immigration.  Sometime.  Just like the US Border Patrol.

Let’s start with Food.

The Earth does have a finite food supply – I can prove this because sometimes the shake machine doesn’t work at McDonald’s®.  There is only so much food that can be created.  It’s large – world hunger is a solved problem at the current population level of the Earth.  We have more people than ever, and we have food to feed absolutely everyone on Earth as long as everyone doesn’t want the Stuffed Crust® pizza.  Sure, not everyone is getting filet mignon at every meal, but we have, on an absolute basis, enough calories to make sure that no one on Earth right now needs to starve.

Amy Schumer is proof of that, though I’ve heard she’s happy there’s a ban on harpooning whales.

That’s a big deal.  This is the first era in the history of life on the planet that we can say that no person on Earth needs to be hungry.  The biggest basketcase has generally been Africa, primarily because they tend to kill each other by the bucketload because it’s Tuesday and don’t have mountains and winter.

What?

Yeah, mountains and winter.  I can’t stop Tuesday from showing up.

Mountains catch snow, and snow, melting as the summer hits, keeps the rivers flowing.  The reservoirs across the United States are, in effect, artificial mountains that keep the rivers flowing when the snow isn’t there.  This also keeps a minimum amount of water flowing when the rivers would otherwise run dry so I can skip stones.

While this increases the transport opportunities available due to rivers that makes transportation cheap, it also has the most important benefit of making agriculture predictable.  This makes sure that although there are good years and bad years, those are the exceptions everywhere but Africa.  In Africa, the lack of mountains makes a good year and a bad year a random and unpredictable event.  In a world without Western Civilization this is a famine event.  In a world with the evil Western Colonialists, it means that there’s food available and nobody has to die, unless the UN has a voice.

When you average it out over the globe, however, there’s more than enough food in 2023 and the problem for most farmers in the West is that food is too cheap and too plentiful.  The only thing that stops distribution is kleptocracy – I read that European farmers can make milk, turn it to powder, and ship that powdered milk to Africa cheaper than Africans can produce milk.  This never gives the locals the ability to create a viable farm industry.  Except if Bill Gates gets involved:

In 2023, the problem isn’t too little food, it’s too much.

Yet the impulse from the Left is to:

  • Destroy Western farming because of muh climate change,
  • Implant the idea that we must eat bugs because (rolls dice) communism and muh climate change, and
  • Make all of this subject to the most stringent regulation, because that makes the Left sexually stimulated.

Even rice isn’t immune from the rage of the Left.

Just letting everyone know, she’s over 18, so perhaps someone can throw themselves on this grenade and wife her up, which might shut her up.

What people seem to miss is that this oasis in time where everything is going well.  We have

  • the technology to maximize crop yields,
  • the oil to power the machines to plant the crops,
  • the natural gas to create the fertilizer to nourish the crops, and
  • the land with the topsoil to produce the crops.

It’s clear that, despite The Mrs. being able to make a few strawberries a week from a flower pot, we can’t feed the world from one.  There is a finite limit to the production of food, and it’s very tight.

And, like every other thing on the list, we’re not serious about it.  California had a plan in the 1970s to create a series of reservoirs to give them water in amounts required to avoid droughts.  They ignored it, and now California is like a teenager, “It’s too wet.  It’s too dry.  I want to live in a mall.”  They weren’t serious about it.

And food?  One side, the Left, wants to reconfigure man and have them live in pods and eat bugs.  The other side, the Right, wants people to be free and many of them eat steak.  I’m not having trouble picking a side here, though the Leftist mind control has convinced the Zoomers that they can live via osmosis, or something:

The point is, no adults are looking at this problem, and the deluded Leftists that are looking at it fall to the same sad solution they have for every problem:  Live in the Pods, Eat the Bugs.  People are bad, so we need more communism and control.

Energy is not much better.

Just like reservoirs are artificial mountains, huge piles of lithium and batteries and infrastructure and expensive cars that sometimes let all of their electrical energy turn kinetic after a fender bender isn’t the answer.  It’s because the Leftists aren’t serious.

Let’s take a big picture look:

Oil is awesome.  It powers everything from jet fighter planes to rockets to that mysterious fire that burned down . . . oh, I’ve said too much.  It has been the primary fuel of the Western world since 1930 or so.

And it’s cool, mainly because oil is just concentrated solar power, and all of the work in making it is based on solar power.  I mean, solar in the sense that the Sun shined millions of years ago, and we’re using concentrated Sunlight from when the dinosaurs were making frozen gelato and rubbing sunscreen on their nipples in their spare time.

(Yes, I know that dinosaurs didn’t have nipples, but I rarely use nipples, and want to be known as the man who popularized dinosaur nipples.  Sue me.)

Oil is a gift.  But, like the ability of Aerosmith® to make good songs, it’s limited.  Oh, sure, it can produce billions of gallons of gasoline, but eventually it’s going to give you a Janie’s Got a Gun and then everyone will be disappointed and then everyone will notice that Stephen Tyler looks like their lesbian aunt.

I love oil.  But it is finite, and by the time this century ends, it will be the fuel of the past.  Sadly, we don’t have a replacement in sight at this point other than nuclear power or Leftism’s failures.

One way to produce nuclear power.

Windmills won’t work because the wind is fickle and electricity hard to store.  The Sun is perfect, if we have millions of years to store its wonderful energy in sweet, sweet hydrocarbons, but solar panels installed in 2000 are already starting to fill up California’s landfills.  We could count on Kamala’s stupidity, but eventually the vodka will run out and potatoes run on solar power.

All of my research shows that the “science” of “climate change” means the same solution is the same as food:  People are bad, so we need more communism and control.

No.  We need the free market.  But we also need a plan.  Sure, I hate government plans, but the signals of the market are silly – if the price of oil rises, there will be more.

No.  We cannot conjure oil out of a free market if it isn’t there.  We do have to plan for a future after oil, not for the sake of climate, but for the sake of humanity.  And, though I am certain of few things, I am certain that Kamala and Brandon are not up for this task.

The solution to this problem is different than most, since it must take place before the problems that will doom billions.  Or it won’t.  And billions will be doomed, and mankind’s dream of going to the stars will be turned into mankind’s dream of dinner at Taco Bell®.

Pretty sure this is a parody.  But in 2023, who can tell?

 

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.

43 thoughts on “Survival Economics, 2023”

  1. Trump made the depopulationists push it to the floor.
    So afraid of nationalist populism, even a carney barker variety, they went berserk in their the world is ours you delusions.
    At least they are out in the open now, which makes enemy identification easy peasy lemon squeezy.
    There is plenty of food as long as these third rate Bond villain maggots aren’t involved in anything.
    How they have taken advantage of gullible herds, tolerance and the oh no WAR is scary mindset keep me safe, and the Kraine is the Great Reset template, if anything is left after the usual suspects buy up what they can get at pennies on the dollar.
    Amazing, their hatred of ol’ Whitey and Western Civ keeps them together like glue with no infighting or faction rivalries that break out into open hostilities.

  2. billions will be doomed

    Stop right there. The problem isn’t oil, nor is it farming. It’s not even John Kerry or Greta Thunderc**t or Bill Gates. It’s those billions.

    Billions and billions of…useless eaters. It is quite a testament to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of that thin sliver of collective humanity who made farming in the 21st century capable of feeding so many essentially useless people and sustaining their pointless little lives.

    We all know who created and maintains the miraculous technology that has enabled uncounted billions to live lives of relative comfort and splendor that our ancestors couldn’t even have dreamed of…and who didn’t. Just how much do we who produce owe to those who can’t or won’t?

    There will be many tough choices ahead.

    1. Regarding the question:
      “Just how much do we who produce owe to those who can’t or won’t?”

      It depends – is the magnitude and severity of ‘owing’ determined by those who can’t or won’t produce (i.e. – Work, slave! or more lashes of the whip until your productivity improves!) or is it determined by the charity and generosity of those who can and do produce?

      Sounds like we may well be moving towards an ‘Atlas Shrugged'(tm) moment.

    2. Indeed, all of that tech, ALL OF IT, came from Western Civilizations. If we bow out, well, Mr. Barnett has a great quote in these comments.

  4. For most of human history, actual food insecurity was a major issue for almost everyone. Now “food insecurity” means not having a nearby grocery store because the locals keep looting it and/or defecate in the aisles. The fresh water issue is going to become a real thing very soon and you know that California is greedily looking at the Great Lakes and trying to figure out how to pump them dry to keep their lawns green enough to employ mestizo gardeners.

    1. I’ve previously proposed building more water desalination plants and making Meh-hee-ko foot the bill, but alas, our Leftist leaders will have none of it.

    2. If only . . . they built all the dams that they had planned back in the 1970s, so they’d have plenty of water. Hmmm.

      1. That’s what happened when millions of Right Coast liberals swarm the state, and as a direct result, Gov. Moonbeam happens to your state, four times since 1974.

      2. That’s what happens when hordes of East Coast liberals flock to your state, and they inflict Gov. Moonbeam on it four times since 1974.
        All y’all can have your hippie locust transplants back anytime.

    1. Australian study shows the inner Earth is producing oil and replaces reserves in four years. We have been had. There is no energy crisis, just a communist crisis.

      http://www.answersingenesis.com How long does it take to create oil?

      Did anyone ever believe there were enough dinosaurs to produce 46 million barrels a day foreva LOL

      1. Oil comes from prehistoric plankton. There’s a LOT of that, but a finite amount of it is obtainable.
        Coal comes from prehistoric trees, by the way.

      2. There’s a chunk of suppressed evidence of hydrocarbons on Europa and Titan.

        Needs more study; we don’t know what we don’t know.

    2. I’ve heard about the abiotic oil theory and it’s had some significant proponents. However, even if correct, the refill rate on the reservoirs is too slow to be of any practical use.

    1. Good movie but typical 70s propaganda. Paraphrasing PJ O’Rourke, population control is rich Whites and Jews saying, “Just enough of us; way too many of YOU.”

  8. John – – You correctly said: “ I love oil. But it is finite, and by the time this century ends, it will be the fuel of the past. Sadly, we don’t have a replacement in sight at this point other than nuclear power or Leftism’s failures.”

    Nuke power freaks freak out because they do not understand it and think every nuke power plant is a Chernobyl or Fukushima.

    The only reasonable long term solution is to establish Thorium nuke generating plants. Right now they are still more expensive than the accepted uranium based nuke generating plants. They are very efficient in use of fuel and are the solution to prevent having to continuing to mine huge amounts of land so as to harvest some uranium which then, after much concentrating spinning gets used up, resulting in lots of hazardous waste decaying for centuries..

    Your readers might want to look into this promising future power generation method.
    .

        1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_Reactor_Experiment

          Born and raised less than 4 miles away, downwind, you can perhaps understand why I think rather less highly of them than you do.

          You want them to build one in your town, go on ahead, and tell us how that works out for ya.
          I’m sure they’re much more circumspect nowadays.
          And neither big business nor the government would ever short-cut safety procedures.

          1. With thorium, it should be a much safer operation – the molten salt was part of that. Regardless, the future is either wood-fired or nuclear.

    3. Unless all reactors are designed, built, and run by the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Command, that’s crazy talk.
      Rickover’s minions are the only ones to have mastered not having things go pear-shaped for years on end.
      (If you want to mandate all plant operators and staff have to live adjacent to and within the nuke plant for life, we can talk.)

      Until 1979, the nuke power industry assured the world that a serious nuclear plant accident was a one in 10,000 year likelihood.
      Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima seem to have shown that estimate was rather over-optimistic.
      Because people are habitual f**k-ups, and it gets worse when money is involved.
      Which makes every plant exactly like Chernobyl or Fukushima.

      San Onofre, hereabouts, has been shut down for a decade, when – after one of those reactor leaks that only happen once every 10,000 years – they discovered 15,000 leaks in vessels that were supposed to last decades.
      (Just how bad to do you have to screw up to have not one, not two, but 15,000 leaks?)

      Ten years later, shut down every minute since then, TPTB still have no f**king idea what to do with metric tons of nuclear waste sitting there in storage. Strangely, no one else wants to take it off their hands. Funny, huh?
      So there it sits. On a major fault line.
      Next to the Pacific Ocean.
      Like Fukushima.
      SoCal Edison still mails the nearest 50,000 residents an annual dose of potassium iodide for all family members, “just in case” the sirens go off.
      “Sleep tight, people. nothing to worry about.”

      But hey, it’s been nearly 37 years since Chernobyl.
      So only 19,963 years until it becomes habitable for humans again.

      In perspective, 20,000 years before Chernobyl, our ancestors were just starting to live in villages instead of caves, using stone tools, and carved pottery was high culture.

      So nuclear power is a non-starter.
      But if you want to burn green activists in the furnaces of coal-fired power plants, we can talk.

      1. Thorium pebble bed has no pressurization and cannot melt down. It is just a bed of coals that never cools off. You extract heat by circulating a gas through it. If the gas flow stops, it just gets hotter and stabilizes at a new higher temperature but not hot enough to melt the pebbles. From an engineering and thermal standpoint it is very inefficient. For 100% safety, who cares?

  12. “I love oil. But it is finite, and by the time this century ends, it will be the fuel of the past.”

    Natzsofast.
    Every Peak Oil quack has been repeating that line for half a century. And been wrong every single time.
    (Pretty much like the end of all life on earth due to all ice melting and the world flooding. In 2014.)
    Which is followed, predictably, by bigger and bigger discoveries in new places, throwing the old guesstimate right back in the crapper.
    This “news” is over twenty years old:
    https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/why-well-never-run-out-of-oil

    Oil isn’t going anywhere, even beyond your lifetime, as the fuel of choice.
    But where it’s being drilled will move around some.
    Which is about as troublesome as the Superbowl’s Lombardi Trophy moving to a new city every year or two.
    I.e. not at all.

    Markets, including energy markets, will be manipulated for profit.
    But that’s only been happening on earth for about 6000 years.

    1. I like Yergin, but this was 1999, and the big sprint we’ve had in production is based on frakking. All of the oil production takes the best and easiest oil first – same with frakking.

      There will be oil, always. But in the end it will be too expensive (in money and energy) to get out . . .

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