A Man of Sound Opinion

One of the greatest science fiction grandmasters of his generation shares his very sound opinion of some popular works of genre fiction, including two of his fellow grandmasters.

I was crushed on the Wheel of Time like a hindoo sacrifice being crushed by the great god Juggernaut.

Why could I not finish? This one is also hard to explain. The characters theoretically should have been a lovable as the picked-upon orphan-boy in HARRY POTTER, or the smart-but-shy Hermione. I mean, come on, a farm boy with a dread destiny, his honest blacksmith friend, and their friend who is good with dice. Not to mention Aes Sedai and way-cool ninja swordfighting moves and magical gateways and Dark Lords galore. But it never clicked with me: I was slogging halfway through the fifth or sixth book (yes, I stayed with it that long) when I realized that I wanted the main character to die because he was out of his mind, I wanted the gambler fellow to die because he was turning all dark and crooked, and I did not care of the blacksmith fellow lived or died, because he was spinning his wheels not doing much of anything. Somewhere along the way, I had lost all sympathy for all the heroes and all their goals–if they had goals. I mean, I had clambered up a mountain of thousands of gray pages, and I was still waiting for that “Council of Elrond” moment when Some Wise Mage tells Frodo-lite what the quest is. No one seemed to be doing anything and no one had a plan. And I wanted all of them to die.

Now, in all fairness, this last might not have been a fault of the author. I am a cruel and sadistic man, like many readers, and I only read when I am a foul mood, either right before a gladiatorial game or an afternoon of kitten-stomping. So maybe it is just me.

But Rand-al’Thor really did get on my nerves after a while. He seemed a character simply too small for the role. If Ranma Soatome has been the Dragon of that world, the Dark Lord Bumbershoot (or whatever his name was) would have at least been booted in the head before five books ground wearily by. If Paul Mu’ad-Dib had been the dragon, by then would have at least disrupted the spice production. SOMETHING would have happened.

I, too, hated THE WHEEL OF TIME. Hated, hated, hated it, and finally gave up partway through book seven. To this day, I still harbor a perfectly rational and well-merited hatred for Rand al-Thor, who is arguably the very worst protagonist in all of fantasy fiction, and the question is only arguable because I have not read, and will not read, anything by SuperMegaGamma Patrick Rothfuss, although based on the descriptions and reviews of others, it is possible that, as difficult as it is to imagine, the protagonist of Rothfuss’s work is even worse than Robert Jordan’s loathsome lead character.

I will say that while Wright’s distaste for China Mieville’s PERDIDO STREET STATION is perfectly understandable and justifiable, I do not share it, and I consider Mieville to be one of Wright’s very few peers in the field. Very different, very much darker, and very much not on the side of the angels much less Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but a first-rate fantasy author nevertheless.

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The Comprehensive Failure of Milton Friedman

The author of Princes of the Yen, which presciently predicted the 2008 financial crisis, the current one, and the global currency goal as far back as 2005, was methodically demolishing all of the key narratives supporting Clown World’s economic structures eight years ago:

The first four pillars of the central banking narrative have collapsed: Banks create money out of nothing and thus reshape the economy in their image. Markets are rationed and the key factor is the quantity of bank credit. Bank credit creation for GDP transactions boosts GDP growth, no matter what interest rates do (they will follow GDP growth). Developing countries do not need to borrow from abroad, and in fact should not borrow from abroad, as this puts them unnecessarily at mercy of the foreign creditors.

As these pillars revolve around banks and money and credit, some economists may agree, but argue that economics has long focused on the real economy and purposely chose to ignore all the financial factors. In this real economy, they will argue, the most important principle is to allow market forces to act without being hampered by governments – then we will see economic growth and stability. Should this fifth pillar of the central banking narrative at least be true?

Judging by the publications of the central banks, as well as the IMF or the World Bank, one would expect so: When these Washington-based institutions send their teams of staff and hired consultants to developing countries, their job can usually be completed very quickly. Without much ado, a new country report complete with major policy conclusions is drafted. The secret of such efficient work: even before these foreign experts had travelled (first class) to the respective countries, the conclusions of their study had already been pre-determined, because they are always the same, no matter which country is concerned: The goal of the axiomatic-deductive neoclassical belief system is to find ex post justifications for the argument that government intervention is bad, and markets need to be unfettered by any form of intervention. This predetermined conclusion is then presented, in the form of ‘research reports’ or ‘studies’, to the leadership of many nations across the world, only vaguely connected to local facts and institutions.

In order to reach such conclusions, neoclassical and central bank economists worked backwards: What kind of model comes to such conclusions? Answer: A model that operates in a dream-like idealized world. What are the features that define such a world? A long list of assumptions needs to hold, creating a bizarre theoretical Neverland: perfect information, complete markets in equilibrium, perfect competition, zero transaction costs, no time constraints, perfectly flexible prices that adjust all the time, everyone is very selfish and does not care about others, and people are not influenced by others. Why do all these assumptions matter? Because neoclassical economists have proven that they all need to jointly hold true, for market equilibrium and efficient markets to exist, and for government intervention to be ineffective.

The next step in the sequence of using such models is the most important one: present in reverse order, by pretending that no pre-determined conclusions existed. Start by listing the assumptions – for sake of argument. Then present the model. Then pursue it to its conclusions, which happen to be… let’s see… Oh, amazing: this model happens to conclude government intervention is bad and only free and deregulated markets will work! Well, in that case, ladies and gentlemen, we shall need to recommend deregulation, liberalization and privatization!

That such economic charlatanry passes for ‘economics’ in leading journals, textbooks and university lecture rooms is a sad indictment not only of the economics establishment, but of academia and society at large.

But what about economies in our world, on the planet we live – as opposed to the bizarre planet described by the economic charlatans? Since none of these assumptions hold, we know that we can neither expect equilibrium nor will deregulation, liberalization and privatization trigger improved economic growth.

If our theoretical assessment of the theoretical claims is correct, we should also be able to muster empirical support for it. And it exists in abundance. In order to test these neo-classical policy recommendations of deregulation and market supremacy, we can compare the market-oriented and shareholder value-focused US and UK economies with those economies known to have always placed an emphasis on government intervention, non-market forms of resource allocation combined with social welfare systems, namely Germany, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China. Of course we should not be influenced by the business cycle, and thus need to consider a longer time period, such as half a century. Considering therefore the half-century from 1950 to 2000, we would expect the best performance in those economies that are more market-oriented, and the worst performance in economies that have chosen to practice intervention, ‘guidance’ and the use of production cartels. What is the empirical result?

The neoclassical thesis has been rejected by the empirical evidence. In the 1950s, the designers of the Japanese economic system intentionally increased the number of cartels, in order to improve economic performance (Werner, 2003a). As we can see, as the number of cartels almost doubled to over 1000 by the late 1960s, while economic growth accelerated to double-digit figures. When, under US pressure, the number of cartels was reduced in the 1970s, growth dropped. The drop in cartels is accompanied by weaker and weaker economic growth. The deregulation drive culminated in the entire abolition of cartels by the end of the 1990s – and economic growth equally reached zero. A similar picture has been painted by the performance of many developing countries, including Argentina and African nations, which followed the economic advice of the Washington-based institutions. We conclude that the fifth of the central bank claims – that deregulation, liberalization and privatization enhances economic growth – has also been revealed to be fraudulent.

Do we Need Central Banks? RICHARD WERNER 15 January 2017

What’s intriguing about both his book as well as his paper is that it explains why both China and Russia are economically routing the bank-controlled economies of the West as well as why Japan is behaving so erratically and in such an uncharacteristic manner of late.

The great deception of liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and independence-minded Americans in general is the idea that corporate management is good and government management is bad. But the so-called Invisible Hand not only doesn’t exist, it perpetuates a gargantuan lie that directly serves the interests of the globalists, who delight in transnationalist unaccountability.

I haven’t read the book yet. But I will, especially since he is obviously far ahead of the game on the realities of how money is actually created in a modern credit economy. Ian Fletcher and I have proven Ricardo was completely wrong. Steve Keen has proven Smith was generally incorrect. So, it should come as no surprise that someone of our intellectual generation would eventually prove that Friedman was wrong as well.

At this point, it’s hardly arguable that none of us are actually free to choose very much of anything at all.

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The Inevitability of Catastrophic Defeat

Edward Luttwalk doesn’t seem to grasp that NATO will be defeated even faster, and more catastrophically, than its Ukrainian proxies were. Because it won’t be a restrained special military operation limited to the front, but rather full-blown war.

NATO nations can only forestall an inevitable loss to Russian forces in Ukraine by deploying their troops to the former Soviet republic, a former adviser to the US military has claimed.

“The arithmetic of this is inescapable: NATO countries will soon have to send soldiers to Ukraine, or else accept catastrophic defeat,” military strategist Edward Luttwak wrote in an oped published on Thursday by the British online media outlet UnHerd. “The British and French, along with the Nordic countries, are already quietly preparing to send troops – both small elite units and logistics and support personnel – who can remain far from the front.”

The conflict can’t be won without direct troop deployments because regardless of the quantity and quality of weapons sent to Kiev, Ukrainian forces are too outnumbered by the Russians, Luttwak argued.

These older military strategists simply don’t understand the ways in which technology has changed the operational and logistical elements. Any NATO troops entering Ukraine will be very nearly as vulnerable “far from the front” as they are on the front itself, especially since Russia will be free to fully utilize its air superiority, the first consequences of which have only recently begun to make themselves felt.

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The Black Epstein

Sean Combs was not only a manufactured success, he was a tool instrumental in the process of determining whose success would be manufactured:

Mr. Combs had hidden cameras in every room of his home… has recordings of several ceelbrities, artists, music label executives, and athletes engaging in illegal activity… these individuals were recorded without their knowledge and consent… Mr. Combs possesses compromising footage of every person who has attended his freak-off parties and his house parties.

If you have even a modicum of success, you will be offered various tickets, and various opportunities to compromise yourself and leave yourself at the mercy of the ticket-masters who will then be able to either help you or hinder you as they see fit.

If you don’t take the ticket, they will still hinder you via their various programs to discredit, deplatform, and otherwise minimize your potential influence, but for the most part they will leave you alone because they know the amount of success you can achieve without their assistance is structurally restricted. This is why the ambitious are well-advised to focus on quality over quantity, and why independent efforts of even limited success are far more likely to stand the test of time.

Fame is generally unpleasant for anyone who isn’t extroverted and pathologically needy anyhow. Look at how all the most famous and successful people eventually seek to go to ground and disappear from the constant adulation and attention.

In short, moderate your ambitions and don’t seek the approval of others. Instead, focus on improving the quality and consistency of your output. At least whatever modest success you achieve will be a) real, and b) your own. The reason so many “successful” people have so-called “Imposter Syndrome” is because they are, in fact, imposters, and they know it.

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It’s Grilling Time

And the vegans are already getting a head start on being their customary obnoxious selves:

Just a gentle reminder to pleases close your windows when cooking meat.

As a vegan runner it is always hard for me.

I try to go out running several nights a week around dinner time.

When you are cooking with the windows open the smell of meat can be quite over powering.

Honestly the odor is offensive.

Please have empathy for your #plantbased neighbours by closing windows when cooking meat and only cooking vegetables if possible.

I do not want to be a stereotype so i wont go into detail on why cooking animals is offensive. But I encourage you to do your research and join the movement with others who are fighting back.

If that’s not a sign to go out and do a neighborhood pig roast, I don’t know what is. We are carnivores. Anyone and everyone who is “fighting back” against eating meat is literally anti-human. Give them neither courtesy nor quarter.

Notice how simply running somewhere else, or at a different time, or inside, on a treadmill, with the window closed, never even enters this officious vegan’s protein-deprived mind.

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They Found the Deep Ones

If Charles Stross is to be believed, the consequences of this discovery could go very badly for humanity:

These strange underwater pyramid structures at a depth of two thousand meters were identified with the help of a sonar according to oceanographer Dr. Verlag Meyer. Studies of other structures like Yonaguni in modern day Japan have allowed scientists to determine that the two giant pyramids, apparently made of something like a thick glass, are really impressive – each of them is larger than the pyramid of Cheops in Egypt.

Recently American and French scientists as well as other countries that are conducting surveys in areas of the seabed of the Bermuda Triangle, claim to have found a pyramid standing upright on the seabed that has never been discovered. The length of the base of this pyramid reached 300 meters, 200 meters height, and distance from base to the tip of the pyramid is about 100 meters above the sea floor. Preliminary results show this structure to be made of glass or a glass-like (crystal?) material, as it is entirely smooth and partially translucent.

When talking about size, this newly re-discovered pyramid is larger in scale than the pyramids of ancient Egypt. On top of the pyramid there are two very large holes, sea water at high speed move through the second hole, and therefore the raging waves roll by forming a giant vortex that makes the waters around this cause a massive surge waves and mist on the sea surface. This new discovery makes scientists wonder if this is having an affect on passing boats and planes and could be the reason for all the mystery surrounding the area.

The world has always been a lot weirder than we realized, and the rational materialists are not going to be able to continue explaining away all of the growing number of anomalies that are rapidly coming to light.

We are not alone and we never were.

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Next Up for Retro-Demolition

The X-Files is being revived… in the usual converged manner:

  1. The X-Files is ‘set for reboot with original stars’:
  2. Mulder and Scully are both in.
  3. I just spoke to a young man, Ryan Coogler, who is going to remount The X-Files with a diverse cast,’ Carter said.

It’s not so much that there is going to be diversity in the show. That would merely reflect the reality in the USA circa 2024. But making a point of “a diverse cast” means that the show will prioritize the current-day Narrative over every element of good storytelling, which means the X-Files 2.0: Black Panther edition is likely to go over about as well as Amazon’s Ring’s of Power did.

Of which, I am proud to say, I have still not seen a single second, despite being an absolute and inveterate Tolkien fan.

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Doubling Down Again

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that Ukraine will eventually join NATO as support for the country remains “rock solid” among member states. “Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership,” Blinken told reporters in Brussels.

If Ukraine will become a member of NATO, Russia has no reason to stop the war until Ukraine no longer exists as a sovereign state. Perhaps that’s the goal. Or perhaps this is simply what hubris looks like before nemesis appears.

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A Brief History of Clown World

An Italian economic historian appears to have inadvertently exposed the way in which Clown World migrates The Empire That Never Ended from a declining power to its successor empire:

It pays to revisit the work of the Italian political economist and historian of global capitalism Giovanni Arrighi (1937-2009). Arrighi, who is often simplistically pigeonholed as a Marxist historian, a label far too constricting given the breadth of his work, explored the origins and evolution of capitalist systems dating back to the Renaissance and showed how recurrent phases of financial expansion and collapse underpin broader geopolitical reconfigurations. Occupying a central place in his theory is the notion that the cycle of rise and fall of each successive hegemon terminates in a crisis of financialization. It is this phase of financialization that facilitates the shift to the next hegemon.

Arrighi dates the origin of this cyclical process to the Italian city-states of the 14th century, an era that he calls the birth of the modern world. From the marriage of Genoese capital and Spanish power that produced the great discoveries, he traces this path through Amsterdam, London and, finally, the United States.

In each case, the cycle is shorter and each new hegemon is larger, more complex and more powerful than the previous one. And, as we mentioned above, each terminates in a crisis of financialization that marks the final stage of hegemony. But this phase also fertilizes the soil in which the next hegemon will sprout, thus marking financialization as the harbinger of an impending hegemonic shift. Essentially, the ascending power emerges in part by availing itself of the financial resources of the financialized and declining power.

Arrighi detected a first wave of financialization starting around 1560, when the Genoese businessmen withdrew from commerce and specialized in finance, thereby establishing symbiotic relations with the Kingdom of Spain. The subsequent wave began around 1740 when the Dutch began to withdraw from commerce to become “the bankers of Europe.” The financialization in Great Britain, which we will examine below, emerged around the end of the 19th century; for the United States, it began in the 1970s.

Hegemony he defines as “the power of a state to exercise functions of leadership and governance over a system of sovereign states.” Central to this concept is the idea that historically such governance has been linked to the transformation of how the system of relations among states functions in itself and also that it consists of both what we would call geopolitical dominance but also a sort of intellectual and moral leadership. The hegemonic power not only rises to the top in the jockeying among states but actually forges the system itself in its own interest. Key to this capacity for the expansion of the hegemon’s own power is the ability to turn its national interests into international interests.

Observers of the current American hegemony will recognize the transformation of the global system to suit American interests. The maintenance of an ideologically charged ‘rules-based’ order – ostensibly for the benefit of everyone – fits neatly into the category of conflation of national and international interests. Meanwhile, the previous hegemon, the British, had their own version that incorporated both free-trade policies and a matching ideology that emphasized the wealth of nations over national sovereignty.

Returning to the question of financialization, the original insight into its epochal aspect first came from the French historian Fernand Braudel, of whom Arrighi was a disciple. Braudel observed that the rise of finance as the predominant capitalist activity of a given society was a sign of its impending decline.

Arrighi adopted this approach and, in his major work called ‘The Long Twentieth Century,’ elaborated his theory of the cyclical pattern of ascendency and collapse within the capitalist system, which he called the ‘systemic cycle of accumulation.’ According to this theory, the period of ascendency is based on an expansion of trade and production. But this phase eventually reaches maturity, at which point it becomes more difficult to profitably reinvest capital in further expansion. In other words, the economic endeavors that propelled the rising power to its perch become increasingly less profitable as competition intensifies and, in many cases, much of the real economy is lost to the periphery, where wages are lower. Rising administrative expenses and the cost of maintaining an ever-expanding military also contribute to this.

This leads to the onset of what Arrighi calls a ‘signal crisis,’ meaning an economic crisis that signals the shift from accumulation by material expansion to accumulation by financial expansion. What ensues is a phase characterized by financial intermediation and speculation. Another way to think about this is that, having lost the actual basis for its economic prosperity, a nation turns to finance as the final economic field in which hegemony can be sustained. The phase of financialization is thus characterized by an exaggerated emphasis on financial markets and the finance sector.

Financialization is the first stage of decline and fall, but because it looks like an economic boom, it confuses everyone as to the fact that the mantle of hegemonic power is already being passed on. And part of the chaos of today’s world likely stems from the apparent fact that China belatedly rejected both financialization as well as its role as the next seat of the travelling empire, while both China and Russia are systematically destroying every attempt to expand the hegemon to global proportions.

It’s a long piece, but read the whole thing. The Long Twentieth Century is definitely going on the reading list.

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