The Assumption With Gold

The underlying assumption when people say gold is the ultimate store of wealth is that there will always be a market infrastructure in which we can exchange the gold for other things (nutrients, potable water, cell phone chargers, etc.).

Perhaps this assumption is always why I've found discussing the issue with goldbugs so exasperating. A miscommunications about scenario parameters. The term "economic collapse" to them means fiat currency lowering in value so other people eat generic-label cereal while they get to buy Ferraris by trading for a few bracelets. Whereas to me the term "economic collapse" means that there is no food to buy at any price (or medium of exchange), and no gas for Ferraris at any price (or medium of exchange).

In a way, goldbugs are more optimistic about social stability in the future. It just seems to me that in past crises, the planet had a low human population and abundant resources. The peasant farmers may have been poor in terms of cool stuff (silks and toys), but the basics (food and water) were still obtainable. So a stable, tolerable poverty. The planet is at a point now where if the infrastructure fails due to an economic collapse, the basics aren't going to be obtainable. So social instability on a scale never before imagined.

In summary, I now feel a sense of peace with my gold-loving brothers. A miscommunication in perception. They believe in a market after dollar death whereas I am an eternal skeptic. Like with my religious friends who believe in life after death, I disagree but am open to pleasant surprise and will be very happy to be wrong.

Fair play -- a question of self-image? Researchers explain conditions under which people are prepared to behave fairly

Fair play -- a question of self-image? Researchers explain conditions under which people are prepared to behave fairly

Funny Cartoon

I used to could

"I used to could" is one of Jeff Foxworthy's made-up southern words. As in "Dink, do you remember how to embed images into a blog post?". Well, I used to could. I managed to add the link, anyway.

Hazy Recollections....Awkward Synthesis....

Austerity riots. I'm annoyed by them. First the rioters seem like spoiled children demanding the grown-ups figure out a way to make life a permanent Disneyland when any reasonable person realizes that their wish is logistically impossible. Then I feel annoyed about being annoyed by the rioters because I feel like a reactive pawn of some collective banking industry that has brainwashed me with carefully crafted lies. There is no winning. But the riots have acted as a muse of sorts:

Hazy recollections:

In the late Eighties a friend gave me "Atlas Shrugged" to read right after we graduated high school. It was intriguing. Hazy recollections of feeling that personal responsibility and rugged individualism were the only moral way of life. Absolute fairness! Had to watch out for bad people who wanted to manipulate their way into things they didn't earn.

Was it the mid-Nineties that Bono of U2 argued to some G7 summit that all debts accumulated by third world countries should be forgiven? After all, the debts were created by corrupt leaders of those countries who didn't use the money to help the citizens. On top of that, the payments on these corrupt loans were taking cash needed to finance projects that actually would help the citizens. Clean water and such. Its a very hazy recollection, but I recall thinking "Well that makes sense and seems ethicially to be the right thing to do". Sure, some nameless investors would lose money in the default, but they were bastards who shouldn't have been lending to other bastards who were clearly lying about using the funds for civic endeavors.

About a decade later I came across some mind-bending books on evolutionary biology. Soon, the CDS situation was spiralling out of control. I was curious and learned all sorts of horrendous things about the Federal Reserve system and the US financial system in general. I couldn't believe that educated people in suits created such sloppy work. And that the rest of us weren't even paying attention even though the sloppy work permutated nearly ever aspect of our physical existance. Sobering, no? This research led me to the Sudden Debt blogsite where an insider named Hell explained much of multifaceted horror along with a devotion to alternative energy since (well, one reason was saving the environment which seems like a good idea in general) the thermodynamic accounting wasn't balancing out any more with hydrocarbons. The blogsite also carried a mad genius commenter named Thai. He worked at light speed with complex ideas shooting off in all directions. Fairness perception in game theory experiments. Scaling benefits of cooperation. Zero sum, breaking symmetry, and fractals. It was a blur of mind-bending (mind-breaking at times) idea candy.

Awkward synthesis

So take all these puzzle pieces of knowledge and/or beliefs and fit them into a coherent, flowing picture. Well, not today obviously ;)

A Pleasant Dream

Sorry if this sounds a bit like transcendental ridiculosity, but I had a dream last night that seemed to indicate that the saloon needed a visit. It was quite a warm, pleasant dream that was apparently strange enough to raise me to a conscious state that I actually remembered it the next morning. These omens should be heeded ;)

And behold, JP and Dr. John had actually responded to my New Year's lament posting!

Dr. John was concerned about the future. As any sane person would be. Humanity has gotten itself into a cluster@#$& economically and politically. I just about start screeching in public (requisite bathrobe donned and donut crumbs in my hair) when people talk about "Recovery". It can't be recovered! The base has been ravaged (i.e. abundant and resiliant natural resources, shadowy NGOs buying untold squidillions of debt, etc.). Bidden or unbidden, change is coming.

Hell, instead of being terrified, let's make it entertaining! Together we can come up with the most outlandish, fantastic, and ingenious method for surviving The Change.

For transport of materials, I suggest the crazy-ass Australian Skylifter .

To which you might ask, "Dink, where the hell are we going?". And this would be a fair question. We'd have to do some reconnaisance at the time and see how stable the local populations were. Assuming, not at all stable (my default assumption), we'll need to stick to isolated areas. Northern Canada in the Summer and Amazon in the Winter? Sure, why not ;)

Then you might ask "What the hell will we be skylifting?". Perhaps you saw this on CNN.com a few weeks ago as well. Behold, The Ark . Apparently, we can "lyophilizize" (sp?) all sorts of food. Get some medium-scale desalinization equipment and we're good to go.

Please do feel free to add on any madness that you like; I'd love to hear about it. Its fun to idea-play. That's what the saloon was always meant for. I'm glad the dream reminded me of that. I better stop writing now before I get all sappy.

Pleasant dreams, y'all ;)

The Dread 2010 Is Now Over

And it is over in all time zones on the planet. I try not to be superstitious, but I could not help but to feel that 2010 cursed in some hugely, actively malevolent way. Though I experienced new levels of anxiety through a few truly nasty individuals, 2010 main method of attack seemed to be stomping on my friends. And being just a standard human creature, I was unable to defend them.

Perceptional bias, you might argue. 2010 wasn't dread for every living entity during every second of the year. I would be too tired to argue the point. I would nod politely to feign agreement so that I continued to appear fair and rational, but I would secretly continue to believe that 2010 was a bastard the likes of which I hope to never come across again. I feel greatly relieved that its 2011.

Clearly It Is Going To Suck....

I just caught up on a few of my favorite econ blogs. And of course we had the recent midterm elections. I am disturbed by the number of people who think that there is a way to avoid a drastic change of our current quality of life.

We are thermodynamic thieves living wholly unsustainable lifestyles. With the magic of easy oil (and the remarkable generosity of outside entities lending us money to fuel astounding social programs) we have built a wonderland of greater and greater complexity. It has been stable for so long that it appears that many have mistaken it for nature; the natural order of things.

I fear that one of the two major political parties believes that we can stop some of this debt (more likely just redirect it) by ending social problems and "nature" will hold. Heck, they believe our lifestyles will actually improve. A wealthy theocracy will ensue!

I fear that the other major political party believes that we can continue things exactly like they are. Heck, maybe we could even have more social programs and "nature" will hold. None will suffer the consequences of their actions!

There seems to be a growing third party that believes that the system will collapse, but their personal lifestyles can continue because they were bright enough to buy metals with strange properties. I got mine, Jack!

But all seem to be denying the interrelated matrix of factors that have provided our fantastic lifestyles. I recently at the grocery store looking for my favorite organic cheese flavored (but no MSG) corn chip indulgence. An entire aisle devoted to brightly colored bags of chips and I was getting surly because I couldn't locate the ones with my very specific qualifications. How lucky! When the poor are rioting and farmer's don't have oil for tractors I suspect my choices in caloric intake will have to be modified.

Perhaps I should start the "Soft Landing" political party. We will seek the smoothest transition into national sustainability. Our motto will be "Clearly It Is Going To Suck, But Let's Try To Be Rational About It".

Advice?

Feeling stressed here in Seattle. Y'all got any philosophy/mantras/tattoos that you get through when you're in a funk?

Wave Men

So Deb wanted to know where the hell everyone was. I suspect we have become Ronin or "wave men". Samurai who have lost their fractal master so now wander the internet aimlessly.

I've read some great books, vacationed, and found some sites to lurk on. But I haven't really found any place to regularly interact. I've considered some posts to create; its satisfying to write even if it goes unread.

I do hope you all are well; especially Dr. John with his gastric scourge.

Redefining Tolerable

I took a long weekend to a very isolated part of Washington state. The room at the inn didn't have a TV, phone, or even alarm clock. There wasn't any cell phone coverage.

What it did have was a group af about 35 guests and a very prepared staff. We ate dinner on a porch with long tables filled with great food and flowers. Small conversational groups formed and disbursed frequently as people wandered about taking walks or playing cards.

This simplicity would have made me insane when I was younger. It would have been prison. But now that I'm 40 it seemed like such a relief. No chasing pride or running from shame with ego-pursuits such as fashion. Just friendliness while standing next to rivers.

And with internet access and Fedex I could still indulge in the benefits of civilization if I lived there long term. It certainly gets the mind wandering with possibilities.

The Problem With High Fructose Corn Syrup, Part 2

Cancer cells slurp up fructose, US study finds

Aug 2 (Reuters) - Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.

Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.

They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.

"These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation," Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.

...

U.S. consumption of high fructose corn syrup went up 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, researchers reported in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Damn Dynamics

A morning last week I walked into an office that is normally pretty sedate and immediately felt the pressure of a tensioned atmosphere. I asked someone what was up and she responded with a forced smile "Oh,....dynamics".

I wanted to flee the building. That word. It conveys so much so succinctly. Individual personality systems creating friction as they interacted in a group system. Too exhausting to tolerate on an otherwise very tolerable summer day.

Of course, everything is a system and all systems are dynamic. But we use to word to mean bad dynamics. The system not operating as we want it to. Nuts and bolts flying, electronics sparking, jaguars raining from the sky, asteroids careening into space stations. Chaos.

It reminds me of a vague memory of someone explaining that entropy isn't so much increasing disorder, just a different order than the one we preferred.

So when "dynamics" are proceeding in the intended order we ignore it/them. It falls into the background of our conscious; then its just "nature" or "order". Essentially, its classified as The Expected. And then when things don't go as expected we screech about those damn dynamics. Symmetry being broken?

I hope I understand. It really is fascinating to realize that your thinking is a Swiss watch ;)

More Summer

see more

I have nothing even remotely smart to say at this time.

Summer

Just wanted to let y'all know that I'll be AFK (away from keyboard) until the 12th. I wish Dr. John resolution from his infernal stomach issue so he may enjoy his backyard pizza oven. I'll leave you with something very funny to amuse yourselves with until the 12th:

A Fondness for Earth

(I'm grabbing this from Econolicious' comment to Hell's most recent post. Upon reading it I had one of those "I'm glad somebody finally said it" moments a la The Emperor's New Clothes.)

We must stop viewing the issues of sustainability and climate change as good or evil and we must stop viewing this planet Earth as a servile entity, a slave that we can dominate and beat into submission. If we don't criminalize the battering of the planet and coerce the ignorance that allows this battering into submission, we risk the loss of our species on this planet. The survival of our species on this planet can not be achieved through democratic means. This planet Earth, is simply not going to allow us the timeframe to build consensus and vote for solutions to this problem.

We can either step up to the plate "right now" and conserve, preserve and reclaim the damage we have done to this planet by whatever means are necessary and recruit the receptive, persuade the skeptic, coerce the ignorant and eliminate the recalcitrant, or we can leave it to the wisdom of our natural environment to eliminate our entire species, both the so called good and the so called evil, in the same fashion that we eliminate viruses that endanger our species.

I think that vegetarianism is a given on our planet with 7B humans. I've given up all meat except fish for the last 7+ years and its honestly not that bad. I still have to kick fish and dairy, admittedly.

Other things humans may have to give up: Alcohol (encourages us to make bad decisions and is wasteful), creating offspring before age thirty, using more that 5 gallons of gasoline a week, the entire fashion industry, and non-recyclable plastics. Please feel free to fight with me in the comment section.