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Friday's Top 10: PowerdownKiwi offers his selection, including Kurt Cobb, Annie Leonard, Kevin Carson, Al Bartlett, and George Mobus; Dilbert & more

Friday's Top 10: PowerdownKiwi offers his selection, including Kurt Cobb, Annie Leonard, Kevin Carson, Al Bartlett, and George Mobus; Dilbert & more

Today's Top 10 is a guest post from Murray Grimwood, who comments on this website as Powerdown Kiwi and has his own blog. His is the fourth Top 10 in our new Friday series from a range of different contributors. (If you read nothing else, watch the Al Bartlett videos in #8. Ed.)

As always, we welcome your additions in the comments below or via email to david.chaston@interest.co.nz. And if you're interested in contributing the occasional Top 10 yourself, contact gareth.vaughan@interest.co.nz.

See all previous Top 10s here.

This Top 10 is unashamedly about the unsustainability of the quest for the unattainable: Endless Growth. No point in advocating anything based on something what can’t be had ...

1. Kurt Cobb looks at the implications of Fukushima, and suggests where we ought to be going ...

All this suggests that we ought to have a bias toward energy supplies that cannot decline in the long run, namely renewables - and that cannot create environmental havoc with just one accident.

Strangely, this is a surprisingly tough sell in a world that has already been sold on the idea that we have precise knowledge of our energy future - when, in reality, all we have are risks, many of which cannot be even be remotely quantified.

2. Annie Leonard has a look at the difference between ‘more’ and ‘better’.

To economists, there’s no distinction between money spent on Stuff that makes life better and money spent on Stuff that makes life worse.

GDP treats both the same.

If GDP goes up, we’re told we’re golden - even though it doesn’t actually tell us a thing about how we’re really doing as a society.

In what I call the ‘Game of More’, politicians cheer a steadily growing economy at the same time as our health indicators are worsening, income inequality is growing and polar icecaps are melting.

But what if we changed the point of the game? What if the goal of our economy wasn’t more, but better - better health, better jobs and a better chance to survive on the planet? Shouldn’t that be what winning means?

It’s aimed at kids, but that works: most of us are not being very grow’d up ourselves. 

3. Kevin Carson argues for a different approach to infrastructure and manufacturing.

One reason the framing of “catabolic collapse” is so misleading, in today’s technological environment, is that distributed technologies are reducing the need for the old legacy infrastructures.

Because they’re an extremely high overhead business model that depends on cost-plus markup and guaranteed profit, any reduction in demand entails a vicious circle that will eventually result in their implosion. Even a 5% reduction in consumer demand for output will result in a drastic increase in unit costs from overhead, which in turn will mean an increase in the rates utility payers have to pay to guarantee a profit, which in turn will lead to further rate-payer flight to alternatives, which in turn will result in further idle capacity and overhead, and so on, and so on.

So in this scenario, progress looks an awful lot like catabolic collapse.

And “maintaining/rebuilding our infrastructure,” that shibboleth of much of the greenwashed “Progressive” Left, requires strangling the successor society in its grave.

Metaphorically speaking, we live in the early days of an emerging economy in which peasant villages - with a Star Trek molecular replicator in each cottage - lives in the shadows of the decaying aqueducts.

The dead hand of Rome is trying its best to maintain the old system and its infrastructures, even at the expense of destroying a world without want. But I don’t think it can.

Not sure I agree with all of it, but food for thought. 

4. Nor does John Michael Greer in his rebuttal

It’s at this point that the real downside of dependence on nonrenewable resources cuts in; the abandonment of excess infrastructure decreases one set of costs, and frees up some resources, but the ongoing depletion of the  nonrenewable resource base continues implacably, so resource costs keep rising.

Instead of bottoming out and setting the stage for renewed prosperity, the aftermath of crisis allows only a temporary breathing space, followed by another round of political and economic failure as resource costs continue to climb.

This is what drives the stairstep process of crisis, partial recovery, and renewed crisis, ending eventually in total collapse, that appears so often in the annals of dead civilizations.

5. Kunstler is always a good read. Agree with him or not, all or sometimes, he’s a supreme wordsmith

The merits of the case for or against Obamacare are almost impossible for even well-informed and educated citizens to parse.

You start with a law roughly 2,000 pages long, cobbled together largely by lobbyists for the insurance and medical industries, both of them hideous rackets, and move to a labyrinth of 50 different state’s systems for administering the darn thing, and then consider the supposed beneficiaries, namely young people so burdened by college loans in an economy that only offers minimum wage scut-jobs that, from one day to the next, they probably don’t know whether to shit or go blind.

They don’t even have the scratch to pay the opt-out tax, let alone purchase an insurance policy.

And:

Some observers think a government shutdown would be salutary, the beginning of a wholesale house-cleaning of federal agencies and pain-in-the-ass public employees who get paid too much, enjoy too many benefits, and work strenuously to impede honest enterprise. There may be something to that.

But the current actions in Congress are more likely to produce a kind of epileptic seizure of all economic activity, public and private.

Like him or loathe him, he entertains.

6. Worth the watch

Carmen Lawrence lays it down clearly; Sustainable Growth is an oxymoron. (Wonder where we’ve heard that before…..)

7. I’ve long respected Professor George Mobus, as indeed I respect anyone who thinks in whole systems (as opposed to specialising, or worse, cherry-picking)

He mentions Steve Keen:

Keen's book is a worthy read. And, as I said above, I can't find fault with his arguments as far as they go.

Unfortunately he missed the real elephant in the room by ignoring the true role of energy in the economy. Most economists treat energy (e.g. fossil fuels) as just another kind of commodity.

And he finishes with:  

I wish I could say that the days of neoclassical economics domination are waning and that a new theory such as biophysical economics will rise and that we will be able to fix everything as a result, but I can't.

Nevertheless I think that neoclassical economics and its proponents should be dismantled.

The theory is corrupt and reinforcing bad thinking in nearly everybody. The people who push it are intellectually dishonest at best and possibly criminally malicious at worst. But it is also the case that the citizens who continue to swallow their BS because it sounds good are partially culpable as well. We are a minimally sapient species. We are too influenced by ideological thinking. Most of us don't comprehend the facts or the principles that operate on reality.

So what hope exists? Evolution in the long run, I think.

8. Speaking of Professors, one of my favourite ones died recently, putting paid to the GBH posit that the fact that you’re alive now, somehow means you will live forever.

The Prof in question is Albert Bartlett, famed for his classic ‘Exponential Function’ lecture. This one, though, is pertinent to us, here, now. Starting with the fact that there are two possible states; sustainable or unsustainable (no third option), this wee gem: http://www.openfuture.co.nz/unsustainability/meaningofsustainability.html points out that our much maligned/soon to be watered-down RMA wasn’t capable of producing sustainability, even in its most restrictive form.

... leads us to the First Law of Sustainability: Population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained.

The First Law is based on arithmetic so it is absolute. Science is not democratic, so the First Law of Sustainability is not debatable; it cannot be modified or repealed by professional societies, by congresses or by parliaments. The First Law implies that the term "Sustainable Growth" is an oxymoron.

This is true when this term is used by an untutored person on the street, by an economics professor, or by the President of the United States.

Or the odd commentator on Interest.co……

The Problem Stated: Stopping population growth and stopping the growth of rates of consumption of resources are both necessary, but are not sufficient, conditions for sustainability. 

Ouch.

9. Mobus would shake his head at this fellow.
Ramez Naam seems to think that we can think our way onwards and upwards. Presumably forever. Nothing a good grounding in physics, chemistry and biology wouldn’t fix.

Depleting natural resources – if we don’t invest in innovation to multiply them – will eventually shrink the pie, until we have no choice to live more humbly, until we see poverty rise and our wealth and freedoms shrink. That’s not the path we want to go down. We find ourselves in a race. On the one side is depletion of resources that we need. On the other side is our rate of innovation. If depletion wins, we all suffer. If innovation wins, we can both solve the problems depletion has brought and grow the size of the global pie, increasing the wealth of everyone on the planet.

Reading that stuff is fine, it keeps your appraisal-scope wide. But – and it’s a fatal ‘but’ as far as I’m concerned – “if we don’t invest in innovation to multiply them” is a cranial-appraisal failure of both ‘growth’ and ‘finite’. He should have listened to Bartlett ... (click photo to view)

10. What to do, then? Not sure if we’ve had it here before, but here’s one list:

What will tip the economy and markets? What will shock the collective conscience of all peoples?

Get across the message that Eternal Growth is a fantasy: Global pandemics? Terrorist nuclear wars? Poverty, starvation? Or some other unpredictable Black Swan that we deny, we refuse to prepare for?

We don’t know what will shock the world, finally bankrupt America and wake us up. But we do know that it’s dead ahead.

11. And finally, a Clarke classic ...

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51 Comments

Has the demographics of the readers / bloggers here plunged to the level where we need to see headline ads for 'FrontLine Cars from ony $45 a week'?

WTF Mr Chaston?

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If interest rates really do rise to 8.5% then that might very well be all some people can afford!

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It's only temporary. Our US based adserver crashed in a major way, so we are filling in with a couple of temp ads. The contractor claims normal service will be resumed 'shortly'.

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Maybe they have a limit to what they can spend, nothing in reserve. Was it a Detroit based enterprise?.

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BTW . I think PDK has done a pretty good job here with his top ten.

Good selection of articles.

Takes some balls to keep on pushing your message. Always take my hat off to those that can stay the course for what they believe in.

Well done Mr PDK..

 

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:)

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3 year Interest free loans Harvey Norman next.

 

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These days I think its 48months.....

regards

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#2.  What if the goal of our economy wasn’t more, but better - better health, better jobs and a better chance to survive on the planet?

Funny how we got to this discussion.  I don't think we decided to have poor health, bad jobs and a limited future.  But the "economy" seems to - although we sure didn't.

I'm not interested in the hippie idyl.  But we need to get ownership of this economy thing, and make it work for us, not for whatever it seems to be working for now. 

 

 

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Too many ppl, to few resources...

regards

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I'd have thought that the collective wisdom here would have understood that as long as our debt-based monetary system reigns nothing will change.

Inflation and the trickle-up transfer of wealth are an inevitable result of allowing banks to create money out of thin air and then to charge usurious rates of interest on it.

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Have we also reached peak humour? :-).

 

Someone from the peak oil contingent has had to steal a cartoon idea to make their particular point.

 

I hope they got the permission of the original cartoonist;

http://inel.wordpress.com/category/earth-science/

 

 

 

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Talking of oil.

I hope they do not discover oil in the Kaipara. They will never be able to afford the extra rates on top of the over blown sewerage, or were the council getting ready, just in case.

Maybe that is why Len has been spending up large in Auckland. Oil in them thar hills.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-10/montana-towns-struggle-with-oil-boom-cost-as-dollars-flee.html

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#9 clueless...

 

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Meanwhile back a the ranch...A Chinese war ship casualy sails into the harbour.....now what was I saying a year back...?

 Key says its all cool as long as they obey our laws....in honesty what would we do about it if they didn't......

This litlle visit is the first of many exercises in teritorrial post pissing....eventually there will be a trickle down effect. 

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Declaring their intentions to secure their investments against all and any interlopers? Inexpicable that they are not part of the TPP arrangement - are we being treated to a not so subtle warning of "he who pays the piper calls the tune"?

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Court case reveals normally unlit details of US Fed, Goldman Sachs, and regulation.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2013/10/goldman-sachs-carmen-se…

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great link / story DH - thanks

Wonder if the Chinese Walls in NZ brokerage firms and investment banks are as thin Goldman's were in the US

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Mr Grimwood, good on you for having a go!

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Liked the Top 10, but sad to hear that Al Bartlett has passed away.  He was one guy who really 'got it' IMO.

Incidentally, anyone have his video/DVD?  I tried to purchase it a number of times from Colorado Uni but the link was always broken.  Cobbling together the ten parts of his lecture that are on YouTube doesn't quite have the same quality I suspect.

 

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I've posted Dr Bartlett's presentation in a single movie here MartinV:
http://www.onewildkiwi.com/the-consequences-of-growth/

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Great Top 10.  Come back, guest.  I've been wondering if a simple app could replace what our Reserve Bank Governor does in his present remit?

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the FED App that prints you some e-money whenever you run short

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A classic Gloomster Friday.  Nevah mind, we have as Christov notes, some Local Protectors of the Realm about to dock.  I'm sure they'll help out, being as how we're a handy source of Food, Steel-making Coal, and Lebensraum.

Me, I go with Kent Brockman:

One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; they will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted common tater, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground dairy caves.

 

Yippee Ki Ay!

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Waymadson - we have been fjorded a list of Quislings. They will be dealt with in due course.

Signed:

 

Solveig.

Hall of the Mountain Kings.

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Great top 10.

Arguing over interest rates and LVRs is all very well but there are bigger issues out there.

Re # 3 and #4 - John Michael Greer also notes that regardless what happens in terms of decline or collapse, there will be someone to declare that it is still progress! Yay.

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Great 6 minutes of Robert Reich:

http://youtu.be/S8uf-ZXLABE

Very applicable to what's going on here.

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Murray, good effort : ) . I have been saving a unique 'peak' for awhile and this seems like a good time to release it. 

 

The exponential growth of information. When will it peak?

 

161 exabytes of data were created in 2006, "3 million times the amount of information contained in all the books ever written".

 

And this information growth predates the growth of fossil fuels from the industrial revolution. Check out the graph on page 173 of The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker. The number of books published per decade increased from 2000 in 1700 to 7000 in 1800.

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Be careful about what you quantify as 'information'.  Eg. the 1990s web page that was 10kB in size, the 2000s web page that was 1MB, and the current YouTube video tutorial that's 100MB, each containing perhaps the same amount of useful 'information'.

 

Now that we have high definition content it gets even worse; people taking ten minutes to get to the point in their viedoes which could be summed up in a few words and still images.  Never before have we had the ability to waste bandwidth so effectively!

 

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Murray - I am so  proud of you ,signed your best friend-  Malthus

PS  keep the the peak oil thing - cant go wrong ramming that down their throats - WM

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Well you never know, maybe some ppl will listen and act, though I suspect most such as yourself will happily drive over the cliff, taking the rest of us with you.

Congrats....

regards

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Dear Gonzo - please don't misquote me, and I don't know you from a bar of soap. What I actually said, was this:

 

"No man can say that he has seen the largest ear of wheat, or the largest oak that could ever grow; but he might easily, and with perfect certainty, name a point of magnitude, at which they would not arrive. In all these cases therefore, a careful distinction should be made, between an unlimited progress, and a progress where the limit is merely undefined."

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signed: Malthus  

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Enjoyed your top ten PDK....ta much, like Cassandra's new threads, bit more style less of the jackboots.

 A big on ya mate..!

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Kudos. Ditto Christov. Excellent. Encore please.

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Good article in the Atlantic on Carbon market fraud.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/the-forest-maf…

 

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Everybody and his dog knows there is massive fraud in the carbon trading.  And that with few exceptions new Zealander companies sending money offshore are buying something that is not going to sequester carbon.  But it's cheaper than doing it here where it would be done properly.

Corruption all around.

Turn a blind eye, tick the box and save some money.

And our officials know about it too.  But ignore it for their own reasons.

How is it we let this happen ?  

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KH - not for the first time, I wonder whether you have some kind of blank-out point - when reality is too much to contemplate.

 

We aren't capable of 'sequestering properly' here. The current target is only to get back to 1990 levels. Nobody has a plan - local or global - to sequester all and properly. It can't be done, not without the use of so much of the energy we currently use, that Business as Usual is curtailed to perhaps 50% of current activity. Nobody will 'put up with that', so it won't happen.

 

Secondly, our plan is forest, which happens once, from planting to mature. I argue that it should be counted for the 100 years it spends as framing in a house, but even so, you only get the gain of one growing-time in sequestration terms. Minus soil degradation in the equation, and obviously you can't use the land for anything else.

 

Then what? 

 

We let it happen because we're selfish enough - en masse - to ignore the plight of our kids, and to give them no chance. At all. A species deficiency, and perhaps a fatal one.

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PDK.. You missed my point.

How about a response that mentions trading fraud,

David Chaston. What were you thinking?

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The guy in #9 misses the point of exponential (ie compounding) population growth.  That is what causes teh danger.

Even thinking onward and upward, which is what we should be doing as a matter of course, if we are facing population based rising challenges, then more and more of the results of our productivity will need to be re-invested into solving the problems.   Now what that means is eventually, even with mythical 100% efficiency, with an impossible 100% success rate, Eventually you will need more than 100% productive to invest for the next generation of "onward and upward" research and manufacture.   This is because the population growth is compounding (exponentially) with all it's overheads, yet it takes time and energy (both finite and scarce) to impliment each step and the productivity increases aren't in the same order of magnitude.   Thus the squeeze comes on, it gets harder to "onwards and upwards", and terrifyingly easier to grow population.

You can fool yourself with "money" because that's just a number, usually in a computer.
But the cost of production, especially risk and limits of energy are the critical indicators.
 

 

And you can't have safe energy systems, but it's very definition.  It's a large bomb, or a larger bomb, or a mini-sun... the more energy you put in the one place the more dangerous it gets when it finally breaks free.

 

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I thought this website was about "helping you make financial decisions"  not a platform for Mathusian nonsense.

I mean "Abortion Stops A Beating Heart  "  would be just as relevant as pdks top ten,along with harassment of Christians in many  Muslim countries. Now theres some real issues !

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KH, goNZ, any plan to help improve our environment should be applauded.

                                                      

The problem with the ultra far left radicals on this site is that they have lost the ability to compromise or have a normal conversation.  They seem to insist that you have to accept the world is going to end (very shortly) and if you don't they level as many condescending insults as they can at you.  Combine that with the combative, overly convoluted, cult leader, style of posting and you find yourself switching off the pre-frontal cortex and not opening yourself to any new ideas. 

 

Fixing the worlds problems is a noble cause that we can/should get behind and there are other options/solutions other than what is proposed here that involves human kind continuing to prosper. 

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... if you do voice a contrary point of view , or dare to ask where the scientific evidence , you're accused of being " a denier " ...

 

And somehow that validates their point of view , and shuts down your argument ...

 

Keep up the good work guys , keep the smug buggers on their toes ...

 

.. oh , and by-the-by , 2030 ... mankind is extinct then , according to that great greenie &  humanitarian , Surly Bob Geldorf ... carve it in stone .... 2030 !!!

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Ah, the wee trio. Wondered when.

 

Gonzo - I seem to recogise spin. Don't get dizzy now.   :)

Happy123 - you first need to define 'prosper'. Otherwise you said exactly nothing. For the record, you can't 'prosper' if you're in 'overshoot'. The states are incompatible.  If you are serious - want to learn - I suggest you get hold of a copy of Catton's "Overshoot'. You can borrow mine if you want. I'm guessing you won't?

And I anticipated the GBH comment, with my intro to '8'.      too predictable.

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... oh come on now , don't get all het up and emotional on us ... I know it's a bitter pill for you to swallow that for the last 200 years you Malthusian Luddites have been completely wrong ...

 

But us free market capitalists are not gonna rub your nose in it that we've been right all along , whilst you've been wrong .... 100 % utterly stoney broke wrong ...

 

... nup , we're gonna be good sports and never mention it again ... that you're wrong ... and we are right ... hee hee heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee !!!!!

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Nope, maths wins GBH, all we've seen is up the curve. All the so called capilatists have been able to do is quickly turn raw resources into garbage in that time frame, leaving little for future generations, congrats we are at the peak of civilisation and probably extinct insude 200 years.

Still no one around to say you were wrong eh?

regards

 

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You're essentially lying, GBH. We can discuss whether it's to yourself (denial, cognitive dissonance, fear), or purposely - in which case, on behalf of who(m)?

 

Unless you can demonstrate the 100% disengagement of growth finance from the physical planet, your belief is a false one.

 

To see that kind of comment, at the stage when we're down to fracking rock, looking at underwater phosphate, and totally failing to address our habitat-alteration, makes one reconsider the Darwin hypothesis.

 

 

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All his "money" is tied up in shares etc....all these are massively over-valued....like many of the so called PIs he knows no other game...

So that leaves carrot pulling........

He'll make a great farm labourer I reckon.

regards

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Chuckle.

Yes, when the collective angst reflects in an outlawing of parasitic activity - if a general collapse doesn't pre-date that change - there are going to be a few who realise that they are skill-less.

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Is that a "few who realise they are skill-less" and many who never will?  or only a few will be skill less? 

Former I'd say, even today we have graduates in media studies and other crap who make checkout till operators, but even thats being converted to self-checkout.  Which in itself is interesting....taking min wage ppl / jobs out of employment sure helps GDP....not......all that effort...better spent elsewhere...

Yep, Triage, of course pollies love emergencies...makes them look good...and "forces their hand" code for, screw the smaller vote base(s) over. Prepare to get dumped on I reckon PDK...you have a real asset....holding on to it will be interesting.....

regards

 

 

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Oh and of course you have probably made some enemies in pointing out the bleeding obvious....so pollies, councilors etc may well find you an ir-resistable target....not that I think they are vindictive...oh no....

:(

regards

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