I noted that the collapse of the MACH 2.2 Supersonic Transport or SST was a major turning-point in history. One of the absolute inevitables of aviation since the Wright brothers was that every decade or so planes got faster.
Real futurism is noting steady changes that do NOT make news.
The main factor that killed the SST was that if someone wanted to contact anyone in Europe in an emergency hurry, he would use the telephone. I remember when telephone calls to Europe were twelve bucks for three minutes (1959 dollars!) and it took seven YEARS to get a phone installed in Austria, a fairly typical situation back then in Europe right through the 1960s.
A quiet but geometrically increasing proportion of our population works from home. I know a number of people in computers who work in South Carolina for firms in California, Washington State and so forth. The price system is now telling us that face-to-face should be done on computer rather than by killing DAYS flying or driving across the country.
PLEASE don’t say I am saying this is a substitute for EVERYTHING. This is just a reminder of the quiet adjustments that take place to adjust to reality while headlines are screaming about the Next Crisis.
The Oil Crisis was major news in the 1972, 1976 and 1980 elections. It was FORGOTTEN in 1980. Reagan just got rid of the crazy-ass price controls the Northeast had been using to get cheap oil from Texas and Louisiana, and the Crisis disappeared for the time being.
A huge percentage of our oil use is the result of Planned Inconvenience, pushed by the same people who make their livings on the Oil Crisis. Planned Inconvenience is the zoning that requires every suburban resident to get dressed and drive to the chopping center miles away if she runs out of milk.
These are just a couple of points about the real future as opposed to the NEWS.
#1 by Dave on 06/01/2008 - 3:25 pm
Yes, and this just points out the absurdity of Orientals who are perennially hell-bent in imitating white people’s worst errors so skyscrapers spring up like mushrooms in a rain forest all over the Orient.
And we have clowns in Seattle running around buying up parcels of real estate trying to anticipate which parcels are going be on Seattle’s future commuter train lines never recognizing that it is stupid beyond belief to try to replicate NY City, one of the few American cities that has a train-based transportation system that works (it only took 100 years to build).
Well, at least these clowns in Seattle aren’t dumb enough to invest in China.
And as for the zoning, let it rest, like it has on Long Island. That’s because the enforceability of permits is inversely related to how many darkies you have on the soil.
At a certain point, it all gives way and you get a Delhi or a São Paulo.
That is where things are really at in America.
#2 by AFKANNow on 06/02/2008 - 12:50 am
The foundations of the discontinuities are laid softly, and those with the intelligence and depth of analysis see that, suddenly, the marginal quantitative change leads to a qualitative change, as phase-shift events take place.
Nobody from the old Bell System could have imagined the current state of affairs regarding the Internet. The possibilities of the Internet in dramatic terms – one, as a series of protocols, they are not bound to any single manufactures, and two – this ties in with telephones – communication takes place at the speed of light, with much greater information density as people see each other.
So, suddenly, the land line business, a useful monopoly, is being waved aside by wireless tv stations – your I-PHONE, for example.
Zoning tends to be way behind the demographic reality; what use is zoning in Detroit, where you can buy houses for less than the price of a car?
And, the demographic reality dominates – is there any doubt that Southern California in twenty years – assuming the water situation holds – will be anything more than Mexico North?
Yet, they won’t be able to sustain Mexico North, anymore than they can sustain Mexico.
Another discontinuity – the events yesterday at the DNC, where the Blessing was given to Obama, and Clinton supporters – having a good, close look at their fruits of their liberal labors – had to be pulled off the ceiling, as they – skilled students of politics, full-time political junkies – see what the Obama Candidacy has already done in terms of forcing a phase shift moment for the White people in electoral politics.
#3 by Dave on 06/03/2008 - 12:01 pm
The terms “phase shift”, “discontinuities”, and “planned inconvenience” are very useful terms.
I also especially like AFKAN’s phrase, “The foundations of the discontinuities are laid softly.”
BW alludes to the fact the various “oil crises” in the 1970’s were manufactured out of policy.
I have become increasingly convinced that today’s “oil crises” is manufactured out of policy.
BW’s notion of “planned inconvenience” is very descriptive of motives.
Yesterday, Ahmad Abdallah, GaveKal’s oil analyst made a critical observation I have heard nowhere else, “The commercials in the futures markets are no longer arbitrageurs, they have become swing traders.” Accordingly, the historical functions of the futures markets have been overthrown because today 50% of the commercials are not producers, a profound “discontinuity”
This is a “phase shift” and a change in monetary regime, manifested by the capital management giants aligning with government policy. It could not be happening otherwise. Yesterday I heard the CEO of DOW Chemical state that the government could solve “the energy crises” in three years simply by furnishing the development permits Congress promised in its 2005 energy legislation.
The naked truth is very simple. The US Government needs the huge reflow of dollars from the Oil Sheikdoms into Treasuries to keep real interest rates underwater for the sustainability of its debt financing.
Accordingly, an enormous “planned inconvenience” has been visited upon the American people in the form a back door tax effectuated by drip-feeding the physical market through the refineries’ “crack spread” choke-off spigot, enabling the distributors to fix prices in restraint of trade.
Along the whole production chain, governmentally imposed restraints are in place, from exploration, to development, to funding, to shipping, to warehousing, to refining, to distributing, and right to and including the retail franchises.
Huge supplies of surplus crude simply accumulate in tank farms, aboard ships, and most importantly in the ground (where it cannot be accessed for lack of development permits), while the holders of these “inventories” enjoy a secular increase in their capitalized value. In effect, crude oil has been swept into the monetary base.
This is dictatorship pure and simple. And now Congress wants to add more taxation to energy production through its carbon emissions rationing scheme.
Mommy Professor has done her work well.
#4 by Pain on 06/03/2008 - 5:18 pm
I remember talking to a Melasian who insisted that his people were no longer primitive cannibals since they now had the world’s tallest building. He did not understand the irony that he was measuring his own self-worth and his people’s by how well they ape white men.
I have heard Japanese say stupid things like that, such as since they now eat beef like Americans that their genes for height have mutated into making them a foot taller. But at least they are smarter than Melasians in that they are aware that they are aping white folk; the Melasians seem to think it is some sort of magic that came from the spirit world and that whites simply stumbled on it first by mumbling the right charms.
The fact that white tourists would pay money to visit rural parts of Melasia really confused him; he actually looked a little scared. The only thing he could say was to repeat what he heard somebody else say, that the tourists were trying to keep Melasians from developing like white countries. It never occurred to him that most whites move out of cities with cluster of high-rises and prefer living in communities with big yards. If you told him that the Melasian jungle was really beautiful and that the native architecture was interesting, he though you were patronizing him.
#5 by AFKANNow on 06/04/2008 - 1:41 am
The central economic trend of going to a war economy – especially without war economy taxes – is a tremendous transfer of wealth from the poor and middle classes to the Elite.
I always looked at a preference for commodities over cash as a warning sign that cash was losing value in real terms.
That’s what I see this artificial manipulation of the price of oil as masking – as well as a tremendous tranfer of dollars out of the countries.
Simmons says he thinks the Saudi fields are past peak. Think of this in light of the pretty much overnight run-up of oil from 40 a barrel, to 140 a barrel.
It seems Real Money is lining up their ducks for a major economic transition in the not-too-distant future.
Our Race can Do Something about this; conversion to wind, as T. Boone Pickens discussed on Bloomberg, is a tremendous choice.
That’s what I like about Pickens:
He will NOT be a victim.
Neither should we.
#6 by mderpelding on 06/04/2008 - 7:16 pm
People need water to survive.
Not gas and oil.
Not skyscrapers and discos.
Arabia has lots of oil. But no water.
Freshwater, that is.
The U.S. happens to have the worlds largest freshwater supply.
Known as the “great lakes”.
How long can a human being live without water? A few days?
You can wish for the future, or believe in the past. You can prognosticate all you want.
But without fresh water, you will die.
History favors those who understand the value of their resources.
Oh my, the world is coming to an end. The Saudi’s won’t sell us any more oil!
Oh well, we can chop wood and hunt.
And tap into the worlds largest supply of fresh water.
Meanwhile, the Saudi’s can drink light crude.
Peak oil is more intellectual bullshit.
Think about peak water instead.
#7 by AFKANNow on 06/04/2008 - 9:33 pm
For consideration:
http://www.millsian.com/about.shtml
This is the kind of phase-shift event our Race comes up with.
I don’t know if it is true, or not; I haven’t downloaded their software.
But, that Board of Directors is pretty impressive.
No.
Make that VERY impressive.
Genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, energy…
The Age of Discontinuity is HERE!