Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Higgenbotham]

In preparation for this potential event, I will go back and review what the Peak Oilers were saying when they were early in their anticipation of it. One that comes to mind that I bookmarked was this one:

Nicole Foss Interview on Peak Oil, Financial Crisis, Resilience, and More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdNvmIfyQPY

I think it's important for people to keep their eye on the ball and not get bogged down in the finger-pointing that 99.9% will muddy the waters with as they compete for dwindling resources (health care and otherwise).

Nicole talks a mile a minute and I don't know how anyone can pack that much into a response without a pause.

If this is coming, the stock market should be able to sniff it out beforehand, though maybe not directly.

[Higgenbotham]

Back when, I spent 2 years in the house remodeling and rental business before quitting my job. The real work only began when I quit but I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do versus going in cold turkey. I don't have any idea when the shit is going to hit the fan for real (it hasn't yet) but I want to have a pretty good idea of what I am going to do when several hours per day of preparations (when I'm not dealing with the unavoidable bullshit of pre-collapse civilization) turns into 14 to 16 hours per day of real work day in and day out. I learned in the rental business that there is a huge difference between the two modes. I'm clearly not ready for the second mode yet, but it's moving along.

If the 2025 projection on peak net liquids is accurate and things start coming seriously unglued in 2026, then my timing on getting prepared is a bit late. Ideally, I would want to spend 3 years in the first mode of several hours per day of preparations, not 2.

[Higgenbotham]

0:00
I was just at a conference last week it
0:01
was uh a lot of tech uh uh people and I
0:05
I was invited I was kind of an oddball
0:07
out um and during one of the breaks uh
0:12
man walked up to me and shook my hand
0:14
with a smile thank you for ruining my
0:17
life said it with a smile um and he then
0:22
proceeded to say that he had watched 400
0:24
hours of the content he came to the
0:26
conference just to meet me he's a
0:29
successful venture capitalist and His
0:32
World changed nine months ago when he
0:34
found this podcast he's watched every
0:36
single episode every single frankly
0:39
including the bend not break series uh
0:41
multiple times he's changing things in
0:44
his life he's changing his priorities
0:46
he's changing his Investments he's
0:48
changing his
0:49
goals um and I'd like to talk more
0:52
broadly uh not about this person but
0:55
about the the implications of what
0:58
happens when the magnitude of what is
1:02
the great simplification the system
1:04
synthesis of the human predicament um
1:07
versus the Delta of what people believe
1:10
in our techno consumerist uh isolated
1:14
insular individualist culture when that
1:16
Delta
1:18
collapses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wXwdcXJRzs

It's incredible to me that people like this are still unaware of (or have just recently become aware of) these basic concepts. Not saying they should agree. I'm just doing a cursory review in light of the recent study mentioned. Hagens was quoted a few dozen pages back, I'm pretty sure.

Here:

As you recall – and as we’ll discuss in greater detail as the course goes on – every American has over 250 invisible energy slaves working 24/7 for them. (52 That is, the labor equivalent of 250 human workers, 24/7, every day of the year, mostly derived from burning fossil carbon and hydrocarbons (60 barrel of oil equivalents of oil, coal and natural gas, X 4.5 years of human labor energy output in each). Every American thus has a veritable army of invisible servants, which is why even those below the official poverty line live, for the most part, lives far more comfortable and lavish with respect to energy and stuff than kings and queens of old (but obviously not as high in social status). Being long dead and pulled from the ground – and thus a bit zombie-esque – these energy slaves don’t complain, don’t sleep, and don’t need to be fed. However, as we are increasingly learning, they do inhale, exhale, and leave behind waste. Since they’re invisible, we don’t think about these fossil helpers any more than we think about nitrogen (which happens to be 78% of what we breathe in, but hey, it’s just “there”, so why think about it?) Same with our 250 energy helpers. The extent we think about them is when we fill up at the pump or pay our electric bill – and then only as an outlay of our limited dollars.

We use the “slave” metaphor because it’s really a very good one, despite its pejorative label. Energy slaves do exactly the sort of things that human slaves and domestic animals previously did: things that fulfilled their masters’ needs and whims. And they do them faster. And cheaper. Indeed, it probably wasn’t a big coincidence that the world (and the USA) got around to freeing most of its human slaves only once industrialization started offering cheaper carbon labor replacements.

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017 ... -largesse/

Thing is, the energy slaves will soon be going away forever. In the last 30 years we’ve burned a third of all fossil energy that has been used since it was discovered thousands of years ago.58 Since your authors have been alive, humans have used more energy than in the entire 300,000 year history of homo sapiens.59 We are just now passing through the all-time peak of liquid hydrocarbon availability, which is the chief driver of our economies we’re heading back into times – either gradually or suddenly, but inexorably – in which human labor makes up an increasing percentage of the total energy we have available. One day human (and perhaps animal) labor will again be the majority of the work done in human societies – just like it is in an anthill.

Sadly, there are about 50 million people today who are actually slaves, 9 million more than in 2016 according to a new report published by the UN’s labor agency, with 27.6 million doing forced labor, and 22 million in forced marriage or sex trade (Saric 2022 Modern slavery has risen significantly in last five years, new report says. Axios).

https://energyskeptic.com/2020/energy-slaves/

This was posted in the context of a discussion about how the number of human slaves of various types is, in reality, increasing and that is a canary in the coal mine in support of a coming dark age.

[Higgenbotham]

Toll of QAnon on families of followers
New book by Nieman Fellow explores pain, frustration in efforts to help loved ones break free of hold of conspiracy theorists

Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
August 30, 2024

Since 2021, QAnon belief among Americans jumped from 14 percent to 23 percent, while the percentage of skeptics declined from 40 percent to 29 percent, according to a national survey published last fall by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

The book focuses on five very different QAnon believers, but you interviewed hundreds of people in your reporting. Did you find any common psychological and sociological factors among believers or their families?

I did. I think there’s this misconception that the people who are susceptible to QAnon-type falsehoods have a low IQ or they’re mentally unstable. But what I found in talking to so many people is that they’re not fulfilled in their lives. They’re not doing well; they’re not happy. There’s some unmet need they have, and conspiracy theories fill that. Whether it’s purpose or meaning, they want something hopeful to latch onto and QAnon makes all these grand promises.

“To be a conspiracy theorist really demands a victim mentality because you’re convinced that there’s some grand entity, some evil, shadowy network working against your interests.”

Also, something that all these characters, maybe with one exception, have in common is a sense of powerlessness. To be a conspiracy theorist really demands a victim mentality because you’re convinced that there’s some grand entity, some evil, shadowy network working against your interests. For a lot of people, they come by this mentality naturally because they have been victims of oppression and abuse, maybe for generations or centuries. A lot of minorities and marginalized groups, in particular, can be vulnerable because they have very legitimate reasons not to trust the people in power and to be very skeptical and suspicious of our public institutions.

On the other end of the spectrum, the more privileged people can be conditioned to feel powerless. With one mother in the book, it was on Fox News where she’s told again and again “Your rights are being trampled all over, the powers that be are going to take away everything you care about.”

When you’re conditioned to feel like a victim of the establishment, it’s much easier to fall for anti-establishment conspiracy theories. So, there are a lot of different pathways into this, but it really comes down to feeling unfulfilled, feeling disenfranchised, feeling powerless — for valid reasons or otherwise.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/ ... followers/

I think it is more concerning now that, 3 years later, a growing number seem to be stuck in the denial phase and haven't moved onto the acceptance phase. The above may offer a partial explanation for this, but I think there are other factors at play too.

One comment on a recent Nate Hagens video discussed the concept of dividing the population up into factions of

Post Doom
Avert Doom
No Doom

However, I would mention that more and more people joining the "Avert Doom" camp entrenches the proliferation of ideas like "If we can just get rid of Trump, we can avert doom." The election of Trump is confirmation that "Post Doom" is where we are already headed.

The screed is rather long, but interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULn8I1b6vfw

I have called this "Avert-Doom + Post-Doom versus No-Doom" in my personal files. Jeremy Grantham is wonderful and I wish all wealthy people (inherited or self-made) had his level of concern about Nature. I am about to look up Sir John Hicks - the fact that he is so eminent and yet not a household name probably equates to him being uncomfortably truthful. I sometimes get annoyed when channels like this host optimistic people who insist that Mankind can fix the current Metacrisis. I forget my own advice that you have to have Thesis and also ANTI-Thesis in order to get Synthesis. I am human - a robot would not forget this, once it was firmly in its head.
Of course Jeremy (clearly not having read the Book of the Bible he is named after, or not believing in its historical accuracy) is going to have a "Can Do" attitude. This is his personality, and thank God for everyone like this. By setting his Avert-Doom logic against the logic of Post-Doom, each mindset emerges more clearly with its flaws and strengths.
In the end, if Avert-Doomers can get Mankind to start preparing properly for Doom because they accept Doom as a fact (whether it can be averted or not), this is way the best "solution" for all Nations. The British Army has the five P's - Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. Humans don't see themselves as performing animals - but ultimately, we all have to perform in some way, if only by going into a convent or monastery or similar non-religious community of Retreat. Some modern Christians call it "The Benedict Option", thanks to Rod Dreher.
I mention convents and abbeys because we forget that Europe has often gone into mini-Overshoot in its history (and so have other continents). Jeremy Grantham mentions the Black Death - this revived the economy of England markedly, simply by halving the population (brutally, but it would have been halved by famine otherwise in those low-tech days with no Bank of England to print fake money). Even so, about a third of the population STILL did not have enough resources to marry and found a family. In the Middle Ages this third tended to go into abbeys, pre- and post- Black Death. Also into the armed forces if male, and non-maternal occupations if female. Later on in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, younger sons had to become Vicars or Soldiers for exactly the same reasons - not enough to go round for everyone to found a family. And there were many "spinsters" and "bachelors", most of them not by choice.
The Industrial Revolution did not on its own engender our relative luxury in the 20th century - it brought population explosion in Britain and appalling poverty, as bad as Calcutta or Mombasa nowadays or worse. Half of Britain was forced to emigrate to the "Colonies". A bit later half of the rest of Europe had to do the same. What brought relative prosperity to Europe was access to the Natural Resources of other continents on a really grand scale - indeed you could argue that both World Wars were fought over access to those Resources, and many scholars have done so (though their name is Mud).
Now the Developing World is suffering the same result of powerful Industry and High Tech - population explosion and massive Overshoot in respect of Natural Resources especially Water.
I have noticed that some younger environmentalists, though not Christian, are like Revd Michael Dowd and are firmly Post-Doom. I put this down to growing up in a world that is clearly already IN Doom because children are more perceptive than adults in many ways, and not easily convinced that bad is good and black is white as per "1984". In this mindset, they sail through the programming of Education and Higher Education with an internal armour that simply (and quietly) disputes the whole torrent of Liberal Progressive Globalist Perpetual Growth nonsense to which their parents and grandparents have (in the main) succumbed AS ADULTS.
Christians are uniquely capable of joining the late Revd Dowd in his firm but cheerful Post-Doom attitude - but they often don't, unless they have read the Bible carefully. The established Churches conform to the material world to a ridiculous degree these days, and have all jumped on the Avert Doom bandwagon though it contradicts every single line of both Old and New Testaments. But most Post Doomers are clearly not Christian, or even religious at all. I have been in the Post Doom camp for a while (though I spent decades in Avert Doom mode). So obviously I have already done my Synthesis, and remain Pro-Life for individuals but not for our entire species in its "algal bloom" numbers.
Humans are too nervous about horrific descent into the world of the Four Horsemen. Although they are supposed to signal the End of the World, their repeated appearance over centuries seems to indicate a series of huge Collapses, after which - AND ONLY AFTER WHICH - some degree of Recovery becomes possible. This is after all how the Natural World operates. Spring Summer Autumn Winter. Birth, Growth, Decline, Death/Decay. Then Birth again.
Fertility collapse for humans and other species is hopefully just Autumn and Winter (though species can and do go extinct). Certainly we should not be aiming to replace the current population in any Nation on Earth - even Japan and South Korea which are undergoing spectacular (and much-needed) declines. They still haven't declined enough to be viable at any standard of living,, even a relatively modest one.
But this is a Post Doom assertion, and only when set against Avert Doom assertions can its strength or weakness emerge blinking into the light. At the moment Post Doomers are like seedlings, struggling to grow in darkness. Arguably it is they who need more limelight than the ubiquitous Avert Doomers. But Avert Doomers are not NO-Doomers. They accept that Doom is on the way (unless humans can control events as they believe) - this is an asset to Post Doomers, ultimately.
Because if the "Go-Getters" accept that Doom is likely, our best brains switch to contemplating a possible Post-Doom strategy (IN CASE Doom happens), instead of wasting time trying to avert Doom. A committed Post-Doomer won't have a strategy, apart from "roll with the punches". But the personality of Avert-Doomers is not going to sit still and "wait and see". It is going to want to exert some control over the future, amid mutterings about "lazy" people "contemplating their navel". Fine - at least if it accepts Doom, then that control and "brio" will be going in the right direction, for once.
And speaking of "brio" - it is no coincidence that Italy was the first European nation to CHOOSE 1 child per woman on average, for the sole purpose of enjoying life to the full, the naughty things .......Italy also created the "Slow Food" movement, which has now morphed into "Slow Everything" (except possibly driving). You can't enjoy your SIMPLE and LOCAL Italian food unless you take at least two hours preparing it and then at least two hours eating it, in a convivial setting.

"At the moment Post Doomers are like seedlings, struggling to grow in darkness. Arguably it is they who need more limelight than the ubiquitous Avert Doomers."

I agree. Though I would just reiterate that sentiments like if we can just get rid of Trump, we can avert doom are not helpful at this point. Or sentiments like taking out the UnitedHealth CEO will serve as a wakeup call to fix existing health care. It's way too late for any of that.

[Higgenbotham]

[5] The book The Limits to Growth, published in 1972, modeled when world resources would run short, relative to growing world population. A recent analysis provides updated estimates, using the same model.

The original 1972 analysis, in its base model, suggested that resources would start to run short about now. An article called, “Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the World3 model” by Arjuna Nebel and others was published earlier this year in the Journal of Industrial Ecology. The summary exhibit of their findings is shown here as Figure 8.

Figure 8. Output of recalibrated Limits to Growth model, with Gail Tverberg’s labels showing which lines are “Industrial Output” and “Population.” Source.

On Figure 8, Recalibration23 is the name given to the new model output. The BAU dotted line shows the indications from the base (business as usual) 1972 model. I found the coloring a little confusing, so I added the labels “Industrial Output” and “Population” to better mark what I consider the two most important model outputs. Food Production per capita is the green line, which is also important. The calculations are all made in terms of the weight of physical quantities of materials used, for the world as a whole. The financial system is not modeled.

We do not know how accurate a forecast such as this is. I know that Dennis Meadows, who was the leader of the 1972 Limits to Growth analysis, has said that once peak was reached, we could not expect the model to necessarily hold.

Even with this caveat, I find this forecast disturbing. Industrial output per capita (which would include things like automobiles, farm machinery, and computers) is shown as already steeply declining by 2025 in the updated model. This trend is much clearer than in the 1972 model. By 2050, industrial output per capita is a small fraction of the amount it was at peak.

https://ourfiniteworld.com/2024/12/04/t ... -simplify/

I think it's important for people to keep their eye on the ball and not get bogged down in the finger-pointing that 99.9% will muddy the waters with as they compete for dwindling resources (health care and otherwise).

It's only a model but it seems reasonable that now is the time to be paying attention and watching for signs that the cliff has been reached. If the stock market does in fact sniff it out ahead of time it should result in the biggest crash in history.

[Higgenbotham]

Prices Won’t Stop Falling in China, and Beijing Is Grasping for Solutions
Companies are pumping out goods amid falling prices, creating vicious cycle that is eroding confidence
By Hannah Miao
Updated Dec. 14, 2024 12:00 am ET

China’s economy is teetering on the brink of widespread deflation. The WSJ looks at Japan’s “lost decade” to explain what China’s struggles mean for the global economy.

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-c ... t-aa877aef

[Higgenbotham]

If the 2025 projection on peak net liquids is accurate and things start coming seriously unglued in 2026, then my timing on getting prepared is a bit late. Ideally, I would want to spend 3 years in the first mode of several hours per day of preparations, not 2.

The industrial sector in the recalibrated model remains close to BAU. According to the industrial output graph in Figure 3, the peak has been reached today. This is in line with the observed data, as the IIP also shows declining growth in recent years, although a turning point is not yet visible. Accordingly, the parameters of the capital sector do not change in a wide range. For example, “industrial capital-output ratio 1” and “income expectation averaging time” are not changed. In BAU and the new scenario, decreasing industrial output is associated with a food shortage. With less industrial output, “total agriculture investment” decreases, among other things (Meadows et al., 1972). As a consequence, the whole system collapses and the death rate rises. In contrast to BAU, in the recalibrated model food is available for a few more years, shifting the population graph evenly on the time axis.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13442

Maybe that pushes it out another year or two.

[aeden]

Core inflation non value added swamp spending rot increases will take out even more of the wage slaves going under as they pound the
wealth effect drum spending as strucutual inflation take even more simply out.
You appear correct on the window into 2027 suggested. This doge ruse is also another sign as Biden pushes it faster over the edge.
Recently we trended back to 1511 that survived that literal plague and the foot prints of effects to what is now.
Since the end of the gold standard we knew and the standard we have today watching the slave lemmings react is just
the effect we trend.
Welcome to the structural 70's surge incoming. The red diapers will and are going to do it as baby's with hammers into 2027.
You will not outrun this. Sun Sep 29, 2024 5:06 pm

Sat Sep 21, 2024 11:11 am
Any number can be forwarded.
Revenue cannot.
Terminal federal funds rate we noted ~2.67 percent
Forwarded into 2027 ~2.9 percent
Zombie companys are the dead wood.

PPI inflation is over that as the rope burn phase increases.
You can call it let it rot on the lot.
The premium payment from IDKOY is in Mr. Bond since then.
The fatal deciet Hayek seen is here since some seen it from 1974.
The BIS has white papered allowed ledger as the level of SHA256 code allowed as we terminated taproot
as dated. As we warned the Germans sold to early but I understand the current landscape as well
as it needs to be for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6Ca5GbMYIs rot

[FullMoon]

Maybe that pushes it out another year or two.

If you know it's coming, the sooner you've ready the better.

[Higgenbotham]

Probably not much different than the employee reviews of the rest of the S&P 500 companies: management is poor, good managers are run out, but employees are thrown a few crumbs. As one person told me a long time ago regarding a different company, the shit floats to the top.

For the process of how the shit floats to the top, I can give many examples but this one comes to mind. This has been discussed from a different angle previously. I was a new supervisor on the floor where a lot of underweight packages were being discovered due to an equipment change. Our plant manager had previously worked at Procter and Gamble (a company that Procter and Gamble owned but has since sold) and he was maybe in his mid 30s, so he had risen 3 notches in the corporate heirarchy by then and was over several hundred people. I asked him whether it would be reasonable to consider using checkweigh machines to ensure there would be no underweights. He told me that in his first job as a new product manager with that company they had checkweigh machines and he had turned them all off, with the result being that his production numbers soared. I guess that is what they call "mentoring".

James Woods
@RealJamesWoods
When the world is upside down, shit floats to the top…

https://x.com/RealJamesWoods/status/180 ... 55?lang=en

The larger issue is not to rail against the unfairness of it all, but to understand where things are at. Where things are at in my view is at the cusp or slightly into a new dark age.

Former 3M scientist gives inside look into ‘unsettling’ PFAS discovery
FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul

When former 3M lab scientist Kris Hansen found the company’s chemicals were in human blood in 1997, she said "it was like finding the big red 3M logo in the blood of the general population."

0:08
PEOPLE THAT I THAT I TRUSTED
0:11
THAT I ASSUMED WERE TEAMMATES TO
0:14
ME. AND I REALIZED NOW THAT THAT
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TRUST WAS MISPLACED. A FORMER
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3M SCIENTIST IS GIVING A RARE
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INSIDER'S PERSPECTIVE INTO
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MINNESOTA MANUFACTURER 3M AND
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ITS HANDLING OF TOXIC PFAS
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CHEMICALS. THIS AFTER THE FOX
0:30
NINE INVESTIGATORS RECENTLY
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OBTAINED HUNDREDS OF HOURS OF
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RECORDED DEPOSITIONS THAT SHOW
0:35
3M EXECUTIVES TALKING ABOUT WHAT
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THE COMPANY KNEW AND WHEN THEY
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KNEW IT. TONIGHT, FOX NINE
0:41
INVESTIGATOR NATHAN O'NEAL SITS
0:42
DOWN WITH A FORMER 3M SCIENTIST
0:43
WHO SAYS SHE WAS DECEIVED BY HER
0:47
BOSSES.

2:09
REMEMBER AT THE TIME I WAS LIKE
2:11
A 28 YEAR OLD WOMAN SCIENTIST IN
2:12
A MULTIBILLION DOLLAR COMPANY. I
2:15
HAD ESCALATED MY CONCERNS TO MY
2:19
BOSS AND MY BOSS'S BOSS, AND I
2:21
WAS BEING TOLD BY SOME OF THE
2:23
HIGHEST RANKING PEOPLE IN THE
2:25
COMPANY THAT THERE WAS NOTHING
2:26
TO WORRY ABOUT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imdv4gNa3fM

Large corporations in the US have a lot of problems and need to keep a lot of secrets. Part of their vetting process for hiring involves how well a prospective employee can make problems go away and keep secrets. Demonstrated skill in actually solving problems is not what's required.