|
|
Musings Report 2018-3 1-20-18 What's Beyond the Status Quo?
You are receiving this email because you are one of the 500+ subscribers/major contributors to www.oftwominds.com.
For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
What's Beyond the Status Quo?
I spend a lot of my time and energy pondering what will replace the wasteful, debt-dependent, corrupt, perverse-incentives Status Quo.
Those within the Status Quo naturally reckon it can be saved by reforms, as large systems tend to regain stability via a process of gradual modifications/ adjustments / adaptations.
But systems that are weakening beneath the surface can appear to regain their footing, generating a false sense of security.
A wide range of books have been written on these dynamics. If we had to condense the many complexities to a few points, I would list four:
1. Brittle, inflexible social, political and economic systems collapse very quickly when their limited range of response fails to meet the crisis/challenge.
2. Systems break down when faced by crises/challenges that are new and extremely severe. The crisis unfolds so quickly that the system does not have enough time or resources to process/learn how best to deal with the new challenge.
3. Systems that were resilient in the face of one severe crisis break down when facing multiple interlocking crises.
4. Systems that exceed their energy/food supplies collapse once buffers/reserves are depleted.
Examples of crises that collapse the Status Quo include pandemics, invasions, financial crises and environmental catastrophes.
It has long been my view (as laid out in my books and the blog) that our Status Quo's primary response has been to "do more of what's failed," i.e. do more of what triggered the previous crisis.
If the crisis is an overload of debt and leverage, the solution has been to increase debt and leverage to new extremes.
The technocrat class that manages the Status Quo believes--as it must, to remain effective--that any and all crises/ challenges can be resolved with modest reforms (policy tweaks) that don't change our social, political and financial power structures in the slightest.
Those outside the technocrat class, which is of course being paid handsomely to manage risk and maintain the Status Quo as is, see an increasingly inefficient, ineffective, incompetent, corrupted system characterized by extremes of inequality and injustice that is increasingly fragile and brittle, a system whose buffers are thinning despite its apparent robustness.
The conventional punditry are supremely confident the current arrangement/ power structure is fully capable of handling any crisis, regardless of its magnitude, due largely to the vast power of centralized government and central banking.
I would say that this vast concentration of power and wealth will collapse under its own weight, as centralized control is being obsoleted by social and technological advances.
To state the obvious: centralized power cannot be decentralized and remain the dominant power.
In pondering the future, I think often of R. Buckminster Fuller's famous quote:
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
Those benefiting from the Status Quo will fight tooth and nail to keep it precisely as it is today, lest their share of the loot be threatened. But if history teaches us anything, it's that the Status Quo breaks down by clinging to obsoleted systems rather than embrace innovations that necessarily upend the existing power structures.
The Status Quo is being hollowed out by its attempts to maintain obsolete systems. What will take the place of the Status Quo? Systems that are more efficient, less wasteful, that can live within available means, that don't rely on financial trickery and that enable more systemic flexibility and adaptability.
The Status Quo is being obsoleted, but it's fighting to keep everything the same by going deeper into debt and dysfunction.
Summary of the Blog This Past
It's Time to Retire "Capitalism" 1/19/18
The Fascinating Psychology of Blowoff Tops 1/15/18
Social Change Will Upend the Status Quo 1/10/18
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
I'm slowly getting more adept at husking coconuts from our five trees.
Market Musings: Gold and the US Dollar
As I've shown in the past, gold and the US dollar (USD) are not always on a seesaw, that is, inversely correlated so when one is going up the other is going down: sometimes they go up and down in parallel.
Recently, gold has been on a tear higher while the USD has been crashing. In other words, the classic inverse correlation appears to be in play: gold is up because the USD is down.
But the charts suggest the current move in both gold and USD may be ready to rest or reverse.
Technicians have been coming outof the woodwork to declare gold is entering a new Bull Market, and the USD has broken down and is heading lower. The charts don't necessarily support these views.
Gold appears to be topping out, with momentum indicators weakening, before it has definitively broken out above recent highs around $1,360. The recent move higher has been strong, but so far it looks like just another rally that runs out of juice before breaking through resistance.
Meanwhile, a host of TA types have prepared obituaries for the USD, given its recent slice through support around 91.
Is this a major breakdown, presaging big declines to multi-year lows around 80, or is it a head-fake, and USD is about to rally back above the 91 support? The chart is definitely ugly, but there a few hints that the decline is overdone. Fundamentally, USD weakness has been a reflection of euro strength, which may be topping out.
Or maybe gold soars to $1,400 and higher, and the USD tanks to 80 or lower. We'll just have to watch the show.
From Left Field
Gifted and Talented and Complicated--child prodigies
WARNING: Markets Reaching Extreme Leverage -- but this time it's different, of course...
January Is the Best Month of the Year! Here’s How and Why (for bitcoin buyers)
The Fall of Travis Kalanick Was a Lot Weirder and Darker Than You Thought
Trump and Berlusconi: harbinger of the coming Seneca Cliff -- short and provocative...
Where China Built Its Bomb, Dark Memories Haunt the Ruins
John Coltrane Draws a Picture Illustrating the Mathematics of Music
The London Time Machine-- The Morgan Map of 1682
This New Blockchain Protocol Wants To Create Accountability For Social Impact
Benjamin Franklin: How A Journal Can Help You Lead A Better Life
Switzerland “Should Become the Crypto-Nation” Says Minister
The time management myth--Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less --worth a read...
"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly." R. Buckminster Fuller
Thanks for reading--
charles |
|
|
|
|
|
