Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2026 1:37 am From Google AI:

Do Samo Burja and Higgenbotham from Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel share a similar view regarding the end of industrial civilization and the fact that an information age has not happened?

Yes, Samo Burja and the anonymous intellectual behind Dark Age Hovel (often associated with traditionalist, neo-reactionary, or "bronze age" critiques) share striking alignment in their diagnoses. Both argue that the Industrial Revolution essentially stopped before completion and that we have not entered an information age.

Both thinkers share the view that our current society is stagnant rather than progressing.

The End of Industrial Civilization

Samo Burja: The sociologist and founder of Bismarck Analysis argues in his essay, The End of Industrial Society, that industrialization exhausted its social innovations before completing the transformation of society. He contends that we are living in the lingering, entropic aftermath of a halted Industrial Revolution, marked by lost foundational knowledge.

Dark Age Hovel: The author of Dark Age Hovel shares this perspective, viewing our contemporary era as a late-stage industrial society where technological momentum is stalling and civilization is degrading or in "slow collapse" .

The Myth of the Information Age

Samo Burja: Burja directly challenges the idea that we live in a novel "Information Age." He notes that current digital infrastructure and the "Internet of Things" have failed to introduce the fundamentally new "social technologies" required to elevate civilization beyond the Industrial era.

Dark Age Hovel: This author similarly critiques modern tech, viewing digital devices and the internet as surface-level symptoms of a deeply stagnant system rather than a true leap into a new historical epoch.

Both conclude that instead of moving forward, we are living in a "post-industrial" trap, where institutional decay prevents us from capitalizing on the raw technological power we inherited from the past.

AI has its limitations as demonstrated. Though I do believe that Burja comes closer than anyone I've run across to articulating the same reasons this is not an information age, why it's not, and what would generally be required to get to an information age.

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2026 3:39 pm

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2026 1:37 am AI has its limitations as demonstrated.

aedens wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2026 10:44 am The caparison to H is the most sincere laughter I have had in well way over two decades.

I'm planning to summarize the answer to the question based on what's been written in the Dark Age Hovel.

Part of the limitation with AI is that since the world operates at the 97th percentile and that's where AI draws its information from and spits it back out it's difficult for it to advance beyond that level in many instances because it's unable to distinguish. Another part of the limitation seems to be that AI is unable to synthesize complex information and summarize it at any level.

He has done it again! The man who earned the nickname "Mr. Gold" after precisely calling the top of gold's previous bull market back in 1980, has just accomplished a feat that easily secures his legacy as the greatest precious-metals investor of our time.

Back in 2001, just as gold was recording a multidecade low beneath $300 per ounce, and the ancient monetary metal had been thoroughly outcast from the consciousness of financial markets, Jim Sinclair made an incredibly bold prediction. He forecast a powerful bull market for gold that would bring the price to at least $1,650 per ounce, implying about a six-fold increase from its price at the time.

James Sinclair got our minds off the food and back to reality. A highly respected Wall Street analyst, Sinclair warned of the major cycles in the markets—which suggest a major downturn from early 1981 until late 1982. Then he sees the cycles gathering major support for a huge upward trend.

While yesterday’s high flyers are out of fashion, traditional investments like bonds, stocks and even bank accounts are back in favor. Many financial advisers suggest that their clients look at bonds. Says James Sinclair, a onetime gold bug: “The next big play out there is not gold, but Treasury bills and bonds.” By buying an AAA-rated corporate bond issued by a blue-chip company like American Telephone & Telegraph or International Business Machines, an investor can count on making 14% on his money for ten years or more. If inflation stays at about 5%, that represents a good return. Some moneymen recommend buying U.S. Government bonds. Although they pay only 13%, the securities are practically risk free and, unlike corporate bonds, hold no danger that the Government will decide to redeem them early if interest rates decline quickly.

‘The End Is Not Near, It Is Here and Now’ – Gold Legend Sinclair

Veteran and respected gold and silver trader and a former adviser to the Hunt Brothers in the silver market in 1980, Jim Sinclair is now warning on his website,http://www.jsmineset.com/ that ‘The end is not near, it is here and now’ in reference to the global financial system.

He is also reiterating his long held view that there will be “QE to infinity” despite the denials of Bernanke and other central bankers.

Sinclair believes that gold and silver will surge in value very soon and much sooner than most are currently forecasting.

Mr Sinclair disagrees with George Soros , who accumulated gold aggressively in Q1 2012, who recently said that the euro has three months to sort itself out. He thinks the euro, in its current form, will be lucky to survive three weeks.

He believes that after a couple of years of crises in the euro zone, market commentators and investors may have become desensitised to bad news and are in danger of missing the real denouement when it is actually about to happen.

The Greek election on June 17 is only 11 days away and is an obvious flash point ahead. Meeting after meeting of European leaders does not seem to be getting anywhere.

Nobody really seems to have a handle on the situation and a realisation that this is a global debt crisis and not a regional “euro debt crisis”.

Only massive debt write downs and debt forgiveness and a form of global debt jubilee can prevent a collapse of the financial system and a deep global depression.

Mr. Sinclair has a good track record. He predicted back in the early 2000’s with gold below $300 an ounce that gold would reach $1,650 within a decade. Now he is talking about “quantitative easing to the moon” and a similar trajectory for gold and silver prices.

aedens wrote: Tue Sep 08, 2026 10:45 am January 1, 1994, and superseded the 1988 Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Canada.

15:27
The talk came around to American jobs. That question opened the door. What
15:33
Perot said next would define the next 30 years of American politics.

I'd like to direct my question to Mr. Perot.
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Uh, what will you do as president to open foreign markets to fair competition from American business and to stop
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unfair competition here at home from foreign countries so that we can bring
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jobs back to the United States?

This is the question that opened the
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door. Perot's answer becomes the speech that defines the next 30 years of
16:03
American politics.

That's right at the top of my agenda. We've shipped millions of jobs overseas.


16:10
He names the problem in his first breath. But what comes next, the part nobody
16:15
quotes, is the political mechanism, he says, is making it inevitable.
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And uh we have a strange situation because we have a process in Washington
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where after you've served for a while, you cash in, become a foreign lobbyist, make $30,000 a month, then take a leave,
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work on presidential campaigns, make sure you got good contacts, and then go back out.

16:39
He isn't just predicting an economic outcome. He's naming the corruption that's going to make it
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impossible to stop. Then he gets to the mechanism itself.
16:51

To those of you in the audience who are business people, pretty simple. If you're paying 12, $13, $14 an hour for
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factory workers and you can move your factory south the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, have no health care,
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that's the most expensive single element, making a car, have no environmental controls, no pollution controls, and no retirement.

The
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specific numbers, the three structural advantages, the exact economic case for
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why the jobs will leave. Then he lands the line.
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And you don't care about anything but making money. There will be a giant sucking sound going south.


17:30
But he isn't done. He told the audience he had gone and asked the architects
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of NAFTA themselves how long the damage would last.

I decided I was dumb and didn't
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understand it. So I called the who's who of the folks who've been around it and I said why won't everybody go south? They said it'll be disruptive. I said for how
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long? I finally got them up for 12 to 15 years and I said well how does it stop being disruptive and that is when their
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jobs come up from a dollar an hour to $6 an hour and ours go down to $6 an hour then it's leveled again but in the
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meantime you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals.


The deal was the North American Free
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Trade Agreement, NAFTA, knitting the United States, Canada, and Mexico into
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one market with the tariffs stripped away.