Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Guest]

The majority of London is a grotesque, corpulent anus that's becoming more hellish at an exponential rate. The 'East End' is similar to the human rectum in that its the opening at the end of the alimentary canal that is London, through which our waste matter leaves.

Unfortunately I travel around the east end for work and its becoming more dytopian by the month... its like a massive film set for the next Blade Runner film.

The money earners are moving out, with the leaches moving in... Landlords leeching off tenants and tenants leeching off the state, to pay the landlords.

Looks like London is off the bucket list.

[tim]

https://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-2019 ... olumn.html

Members of previous generations now seem like giants

Many of the stories about the gods and heroes of Greek mythology were compiled during Greek Dark Ages. Impoverished tribes passed down oral traditions that originated after the fall of the lost palatial civilizations of the Mycenaean Greeks.

Dark Age Greeks tried to make sense of the massive ruins of their forgotten forbearers' monumental palaces that were still standing around. As illiterates, they were curious about occasional clay tablets they plowed up in their fields with incomprehensible ancient Linear B inscriptions.

We of the 21st century are beginning to look back at our own lost epic times and wonder about these now-nameless giants who left behind monuments that we cannot replicate, but instead merely use or even mock.

Does anyone believe that contemporary Americans could build another transcontinental railroad in six years?

Californians tried to build a high-speed rail line. But after more than a decade of government incompetence, lawsuits, cost overruns and constant bureaucratic squabbling, they have all but given up. The result is a half-built overpass over the skyline of Fresno -- and not yet a foot of track laid.

Who were those giants of the 1960s responsible for building our interstate highway system?

California's roads now are mostly the same as we inherited them, although the state population has tripled. We have added little to our freeway network, either because we forgot how to build good roads or would prefer to spend the money on redistributive entitlements.

When California had to replace a quarter section of the earthquake-damaged San Francisco Bay Bridge, it turned into a near-disaster, with 11 years of acrimony, fighting, cost overruns -- and a commentary on our decline into Dark Ages primitivism. Yet 82 years ago, our ancestors built four times the length of our singe replacement span in less than four years. It took them just two years to design the entire Bay Bridge and award the contracts.

Our generation required five years just to plan to replace a single section. In inflation-adjusted dollars, we spent six times the money on one quarter of the length of the bridge and required 13 agencies to grant approval. In 1936, just one agency oversaw the entire bridge project.

California has not built a major dam in 40 years. Instead, officials squabble over the water stored and distributed by our ancestors, who designed the California State Water Project and Central Valley Project.

Contemporary Californians would have little food or water without these massive transfers, and yet they often ignore or damn the generation that built the very system that saves us.

America went to the moon in 1969 with supposedly primitive computers and backward engineering. Does anyone believe we could launch a similar moonshot today? No American has set foot on the moon in the last 47 years, and it may not happen in the next 50 years.

Hollywood once gave us blockbuster epics, brilliant Westerns, great film noirs, and classic comedies. Now it endlessly turns out comic-book superhero films or pathetic remakes of prior classics.

Our writers, directors and actors have lost the skills of their ancestors. But they are also cowardly, and in regimented fashion they simply parrot boring race, class and gender bromides that are neither interesting nor funny. Does anyone believe that the Oscar ceremonies are more engaging and dignified than in the past?

We have been fighting in Afghanistan without result for 18 years. Our forefathers helped to win World War II and defeat the Axis Powers in four years.

In terms of learning, does anyone believe that a college graduate in 2020 will know half the information of a 1950 graduate?

In the 1940s, young people read William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pearl Buck and John Steinbeck. Are our current novelists turning out anything comparable? Could today's high-school graduate even finish "The Good Earth" or "The Grapes of Wrath"?

True, social media is impressive. The internet gives us instant access to global knowledge. We are a more tolerant society, at least in theory. But Facebook is not the Hoover Dam, and Twitter is not the Panama Canal.

Our ancestors were builders and pioneers and mostly fearless. We are regulators, auditors, bureaucrats, adjudicators, censors, critics, plaintiffs, defendants, social media junkies and thin-skinned scolds. A distant generation created; we mostly delay, idle and gripe.

As we walk amid the refuse, needles and excrement of the sidewalks of our fetid cities; as we sit motionless on our jammed ancient freeways; and as we pout on Twitter and electronically whine in the porticos of our Ivy League campuses, will we ask: "Who were these people who left these strange monuments that we use but can neither emulate nor understand?"

In comparison to us, they now seem like gods.

( Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of "The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won," from Basic Books. You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.)

[JCP]

Who were those giants of the 1960s responsible for building our interstate highway system?

Demographics have changed and now the West is a reflection of the hopeless Southern hemisphere.

[Higgenbotham]

There's something I've observed from time to time that didn't seem important enough to comment on but, after seeing it again yesterday, finally thought about it more. Anecdotally, I'm seeing a few people I know or know of dying in their 50s and 60s who have parents living into their 80s and 90s.

As parents, we never expect to outlive our children. The natural order of things is that we will die before our kids and they will be around to help care for us in our old age. However, with the growing healthy senior population it is becoming more common for the elderly to become caregivers a second time to their adult children battling cancer, heart disease or other health problems.

A 2012 study by the American Medical Association found that the current generation may be the first to encounter parents outliving their children due to childhood obesity which in turn can cause adults in middle age to suffer from hypertension, osteoarthritis, diabetes, stroke, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.

The number of young and middle-aged adults becoming obese at increasingly younger ages is resulting a greater incidence of chronic disease and shortened life expectancy. Research from the University of Michigan’s Joyce Lee, a pediatric endocrinologist, found that people born between 1966 and 1985 became obese at a much faster rate than previous generations.

https://www.theoldish.com/seniors-who-o ... -children/

I had previously commented on the decline in life expectancy...

My number 1 indicator that the world has entered into a new dark age is the decline in life expectancy. Whether you need to look at every country is debatable. My belief is that looking at the hegemon is enough and probably the best indicator.

Sep 1, 2022

New government data has found that Americans’ life spans are getting shorter. Where life expectancy at birth was calculated at 79 in 2019, this dropped to 76.1 in 2021. According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Covid was the main cause for about 50 percent of the decline between 2020 and 2021, and as much as 74 percent of the decline between 2019 and 2020.

The new figure marks the lowest life expectancy estimates since 1996 and is the biggest two-year fall in nearly a century. As our chart shows, the estimate today is significantly lower than the overall peak in 2014, when life expectancy at birth was 78.9 years.

While Covid is the main cause for the decline, it is not the sole reason. Unintentional injuries, which encapsulates those dying from overdoses and accidents, are also on the rise in the U.S., reaching peaks in 2021 and making up 15.9 percent of the total decline. Heart disease, chronic liver disease and suicide also contributed to the decline.

https://www.statista.com/chart/20673/us ... cy-higher/

...and would add that an indicator is different than a general characteristic.

The way at least part of this decline in life expectancy appears to be happening is that on the leading edge of the figures we are seeing there were some kids growing up in the 60s and 70s who were fed junk food diets and became obese.

For example, growing up, there was kid across the street who was fed a lot of junk by his parents and was obese as a child, but not terribly so by today's standards. He died suddenly at age 57 in 2019 before covid. His father preceded him a bit in death at age 81 and his mother followed him a bit in death at age 91. I took notice of this circumstance for the first time then, but have seen it 3 or 4 times since.

[aeden]

The busses from Central America are increasing also from that mobile disease vector carrier from front line reports.
Dozens and dozens literally nonstop from just that depot also increasing.

Darien Gap to show us what's really happening south of the border and why the United States is funding this invasion.
It is increasing from over 40 buses a day now from just that blow out point.
They are just straight out lying to you. It is past a weaponized action now.

[Higgenbotham]

Before discussing that, what comes to mind is what Donald Rumsfeld said about information. Rumsfeld said there are 3 kinds of information. There are things that you know that you know. There are things that you know that you don't know. Finally, there are things that you don't know that you don't know.

As this dark age wears on and functional failure of government crops up in new areas, I think it will be important to continually examine the first kind of information - things that you know that you know. Or rather "things that you think you know that you know" or "things that you have always assumed you know that you know but no longer can". It used to be that government statistics arising from simply counting numbers could be taken at face value. I used to regularly post the birth numbers but stopped doing that some time ago because I read that some large states are no longer reporting them to the CDC. Also, there was a video where Jordan Peterson interviewed a reputable Minnesota doctor who said causes of death have been inaccurately reported since covid and one would also wonder whether the numbers are accurate at this point. In the future, it might be more accurate to use information from local sources, even something as basic as a few local obgyns saying they are delivering fewer babies than they ever have.

In other words, I think the day is drawing near where quoting life expectancy numbers as I did in the previous post will be meaningless.

[aeden]

The only function of the Office is now disinformation as a geopolitical strategy was offered.
They need to brush up on Reagans War on Amazon prime. Taxpayers are vulnerable what was and what is going
unhinged to anything they considered appropriate. My Grandfather call this out as Americans think.
He was correct the sheep pens are filling up faster than they will admit. Deceived.

[Higgenbotham]

Also, I've been intending to comment on the 6 excerpts I posted from his book but haven't gotten around to it yet. I posted those to provide another view on the coming dark age and also because many of the topics he covers in those excerpts have been discussed and debated here.

The 6 excerpts from Marc Widdowson's book The Phoenix Principle and the Coming Dark Age, in the order posted, discuss these topics:

Characteristics of Economic Descent
World Economic Order and Whether the Dark Age will be Global
Neo-Barbarian Invaders will Destroy the West
Fragmented Spirituality of the Descent will Leave People Wanting
Giant Firms will Fail and there will be an Informal Economy
When the Descent Culminates in Collapse, Every Remaining Nuclear Warhead may be Exploded

Before discussing these excerpts individually, the crux of the matter in my opinion is how severe the financial crisis will be and whether the financial crisis by itself will either cause governments to fail or a large number of deaths. Historically speaking, that's not the case. Let's summarize what is different this time, looking at what may be most important immediately after the worldwide financial system seizes up:

1. Critical components are only manufactured in a small number of often vulnerable locations in the world.
2. Manufacturing of components requires as many as thousands of inputs sourced from all over the world.
3. Farms are typically thousands of acres and use hard to repair equipment that requires high tech electronic components.
4. Populations are dependent on high tech water and wastewater treatment.
5. Big box and large virtual stores dominate retail.
6. Populations are higher and more concentrated in urban areas.
7. Populations are dependent on transfer payments.

We've had 2 minor test runs - the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 covid panic. Both were partial financial seizures.

"1. Critical components are only manufactured in a small number of often vulnerable locations in the world."

Samsung Electronics initially expected to spend $17 billion on the construction of the Taylor, Texas plant, but industry sources expect costs to snowball by $8 billion to $10 billion.

New plants of other chipmakers are facing the same cost-related issues.

The JoongAng Ilbo requested an evaluation of 20 plants by 20 experts, and half the facilities were encountering problems.

Ten out of 20 plants — built by Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, TSMC, Intel, Rapidus (Japanese chip consortium) and Chinese chipmakers — were rated “worrisome” in more than three categories. The Texas chip plant of Samsung Electronics had more than three hurdles to overcome, including high production costs and a lack of labor.

The nine categories evaluated were: production cost; geopolitical and environmental risk; semiconductor equipment and facility delivery; future demand; subsidies and tax credits; water and electricity supply; governmental risks, such as excess profit sharing; and labor supply.

The current semiconductor industry is “changing from a structure of an efficient division of labor to an inefficient, bloc structure,” said Kim Yong-suk, a professor of electronic engineering at Sungkyunkwan University.

The labor division system has "shattered," according to Cho Joong-hwee, a professor of embedded system engineering at Incheon National University.

TSMC and Intel share the cost and labor concerns of Samsung Electronics. For Samsung and TSMC plants, risks were assessed as high in the “governmental risks” category relayed to the excess profit-sharing provision of the CHIPS and Science Act. Such “guardrails” pose bigger threats to foreign companies than to local companies, according to some analysts.

Semiconductor production plants are expected to break apart from the cluster in Korea and Taiwan and be dispersed throughout the world — in the United States, Europe and China — within a couple of years.

“Companies build factories on foreign soil despite the high construction cost because the market is there,” said Park Jea-gun, president of the Korean Society of Semiconductors and Display Technology (KSDT) and a professor of electronics engineering at Hanyang University.

“They need to maximize their tax credits to avoid losses,” Park added.

The U.S. semiconductor act requires companies to disclose corporate secrets and return excess profits, and this is on top of high construction costs that are higher than government subsidies being received, said a semiconductor industry source who requested anonymity.

“The pressure on companies will decrease if the government pulls off a deal to ease these conditions,” the source said.

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/20 ... 21960.html

Side point - If you want to know whether the Fed cares about inflation, the first sentence quoted from the article is the kind of thing to look for:
"Samsung Electronics initially expected to spend $17 billion on the construction of the Taylor, Texas plant, but industry sources expect costs to snowball by $8 billion to $10 billion." If big corporations are having trouble with manufacturing or labor costs, out will come the cavalry riding to the rescue.

The cost structure in the US is too high for it to be competitive in most industries. Instead of taking measures to reduce the cost structure, the US used debt to fill the gap. That only increased costs because now there is a debt load to carry.

Now they will try to pound square pegs into round holes.

[Higgenbotham]

“In the general economy, the feedback we get is that, I would say, perhaps the majority of our businesses will actually report lower earnings this year than last year,” he said.

Still, Buffett thinks Berkshire is positioned well in terms of its investment income as higher interest rates are earning the conglomerate a substantial return. Berkshire owned about $130 billion in cash and Treasury bills at the end of the first quarter.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/08/the-mos ... onomy.html

[Guest]

“In the general economy, the feedback we get is that, I would say, perhaps the majority of our businesses will actually report lower earnings this year than last year,” he said.

Still, Buffett thinks Berkshire is positioned well in terms of its investment income as higher interest rates are earning the conglomerate a substantial return. Berkshire owned about $130 billion in cash and Treasury bills at the end of the first quarter.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/08/the-mos ... onomy.html

Do you ever get the feeling that the country is GOING BACKWARDS?