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Musings Report 2024-2 1-13-24 The Status Quo Has Already Failed, We're Just Not Aware of It Yet
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The Status Quo Has Already Failed, We're Just Not Aware of It Yet
I just finished reading 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline, and found that the book transformed my understanding of how the intrinsic weaknesses and limitations of administrative, financial, economic, social, cultural and judicial systems doom a nation or empire to decline and collapse long before the collapse announces itself.
Let's start by noting the similarities of the challenges facing all large national / imperial organizations, and the resulting similarities in the solutions. These solutions are of course embedded in specific times and places, but they tend to aggregate into taxonomies that are discernable across history and cultures.
For this reason I don't see it as much of a stretch to see structural similarities between the Ming Dynasty and not just other Chinese dynasties but between the Ming Empire and other large empires throughout history.
Which brings us to the present, and a status quo that I would argue is not limited to any one nation but is truly global. I call this status quo by the rather inelegant term the Waste Is Growth Landfill Economy, but if you prefer a more polite name, let's call it The Hyper-Financialized, Hyper-Globalized, Hyper-Centralized World System, whose key features are 1) waste is growth; 2) all production is a conveyor belt to the Landfill; 3) Hyper-Financialized; 4) Hyper-Globalized, and 5) Hyper-Centralized.
From the point of view of these five characteristics and the incentives embedded in them that shape the system's dynamics, the differences between nations such as China and the US are mostly cosmetic, as both nations share these same characteristics, incentives and dynamics. This is true of every nation to some degree, with the exception of the few outliers that explicitly opt out of Waste Is Growth, Hyper-Financialization, Hyper-Globalization, etc. (Bhutan may well be alone in this category).
Here is Ray Huang's summary of the Ming Dynasty 57 years before its final collapse in 1644:
"The year 1587 may seem to be insignificant; nevertheless, it is evident by that time the limit for the Ming dynasty had already been reached. It no longer mattered whether the ruler was conscientious or irresponsible, whether his chief counselor was enterprising or conformist, whether the generals were resourceful or incompetent, whether the civil officials were honest or corrupt, or whether the leading thinkers were radicals or conservatives--in the end they all failed to reach fulfillment."
I submit that the global status quo has already reached its limits and reform on any scale beyond the usual incremental "policy tweaks" is impossible: it no longer matters if rulers are competent, officials are honest or corrupt, or thinkers are radicals or conservatives--the system is beset by forces it fostered but no longer controls, and indeed is incapable of controlling due to the intrinsic limits of the system's core structures, limits which were invisible during the Boost Phase of rapid global expansion.
The Ming Dynasty's highly centralized system of governance was unified and guided by a Confucianist moral code rather than a highly developed system of laws and regulations. The current global status quo is unified and guided by a code based on a specific definition of Progress: the eternal expansion of the production of goods and services in a permanent economic expansion in which whatever is new and "innovative" is reckoned better than whatever it replaced. Any evidence to the contrary is dismissed as "negativity," "Luddite," and other derogatory labels: new is the epitome of Progress.
Despite this suppression, it is now clear that "Progress" defined as whatever is "new" and "innovative" is in many cases the opposite of actual Progress, and so this ideological underpinning of the status quo is crumbling. It is now clear that what is "new" and "innovative" is highly profitable, but its global impact may be negative.
Consider the global expansion of fast food, snacks, soft drinks, and other highly processed foods. These edibles, designed to ignite the built-in reward centers of our minds, are in effect designed to be highly addictive. The same can be said of the goods and services which increasingly dominate the time of the global populace: smart phones, games, social media, entertainment and on the seamier side, gambling and pornography. Surveys find that global audiences routinely spend 6-8 hours a day of their non-school / non-work time occupied with screen addictions.
These highly addictive manifestations of Progress have a clear motive: the maximization of private profits via hyper-centralization, a.k.a. monopolies and cartels, protected by regulatory moats defended by highly centralized government agencies. These manifestations of Progress have spread extremely rapidly due to Hyper-Financialization, which vastly expands the credit to buy these goods and services, and Hyper-Globalization which distributes these goods and services to every nook and cranny in the world.
These forces have expanded their power and scale to the point they are no longer controllable by the systems that enabled them. Consider the consequences of the global expansion of highly processed foods. 70% of the adult populations of the US, Mexico and many other nations are now overweight (30%) or obese (40%), an astoundingly rapid change from the 20% range that was once the norm. Overweight & Obesity Statistics.(NIH.gov)
This means approximately 180 million of the 260 million adults in America face much higher risks for metabolic disorders that result in organ decline or failure and a host of chronic and often fatal diseases.
Roughly half the adult population of China is estimated to be prediabetic, diabetic, or undiagnosed diabetics: Prevalence and Treatment of Diabetes in China, 2013-2018.
"In this nationally representative cross-sectional study conducted in mainland China with 173 642 participants in 2018, the estimated overall prevalence of diabetes was 12.4% and of prediabetes was 38.1%."
In the US, new classes of weight-loss medications are being touted as the solution, even as the results are a relatively modest 15% reduction in weight: an improvement, to be sure, but by no measure a restoration of health to the low-risk level enjoyed by individuals of normal weight who limit their consumption to modest quantities of real food and who maintain a moderate fitness regime.
These medications are not an actual restoration of the health that has been impaired, they only are risk-reduction measures--in effect, simulacra of the actual restoration of health, which is the goal of all medicine and public health measures.
These medications are however extremely profitable, costing $1,000 a month per patient. Should the patient cease taking the med, the effects are lost. Stripped of PR, these meds are addictive, since once they're no longer consumed, the positive effects wear off.
Private insurers and US states, which manage Medicaid programs, are already declaring the mass consumption of these costly meds beyond their budgets due to the costs. If 100 million of the 180 million overweight/obese Americans want to take these meds, the cost will be $100 billion a month or $1.2 trillion a year.
If we extend this math globally, this is an example of a force nurtured by the global ideology of Progress that can no longer be controlled by current systems.
Even spending $1.2 trillion on the meds won't actually restore the health of the 100 million people, who will still suffer from the elevated risks of the extra weight they were unable to lose with the meds and the consequences of continuing poor fitness and a diet of highly processed foods. Reducing weight while leaving the unhealthy diet effectively unchanged other than a reduction of calories incurs higher risks of many diseases such as cancers and heart disease. The medical costs of treating these diseases will still skyrocket.
These forces are far beyond the reach of conventional incremental policy tweaks, which now fall into the category of feel-good PR simulacra of actual reform.
As for the only reforms which could reverse the decline--radical reforms--too many people now depend on the status quo remaining exactly as it is to allow it to change. The fear of every dependent is that any change will end up reducing their slice of the pie, and so they will resist any reform which threatens the status quo, which is every radical reform.
This characterizes not just the current status quo but the status quo in every large-scale system beset by forces beyond the control of existing agencies. Here is Huang's summary in 1587: "The bureaucratic rule of the empire had reached such an advanced stage that all the hidden needs and wants of thousands of individuals, along with their personal aspirations, were irreversibly linked to the gigantic status quo; now even an urgently needed technical reform could not be overtly attempted to disturb the delicate balance."
I will argue in future posts that it's not just the food and pharmaceutical sectors that have become forces that have expanded beyond the limits of existing institutions. The entire Waste Is Growth / Landfill Economy is beyond the limits of existing institutions, and the global populace and power structure are now "irreversibly linked to the gigantic status quo" and will not risk the diminishment of their piece of it.
But why can't the system change enough to regain control of these runaway forces? The answer, which I will elaborate in future posts, is the heart of Huang's study of Ming decline: the systems in place are limited by their structure and their foundational principles. Any reform that will be acceptable to the system's dependents will leave its structure and principles untouched. "Innovation" will only be superficial and for show.
Given the limits of the system's structures, the entire system has only one option: decline to the point that a seemingly modest crisis disrupts the last shreds of coherence in an increasingly nonlinear system and the resulting asymmetric effect collapses the system.
The Ming Dynasty took 57 years to decay and collapse from 1587. Given the nonlinear dynamics and the inherent fragility of the status quo's many dependency chains, this timeline could be reduced by an order of magnitude to 5.7 years. We won't know until a seemingly modest crisis arises that generates asymmetric effects the system can no longer control.
Highlights of the Blog
The Chinese Connection: Here's Why Inflation Won't Fall to 2% and Stay There Indefinitely 1/10/24
What's the Source of the Astounding 50% Boost in Corporate Profits? 1/8/24
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Lau pele harvest, a.k.a. Tongan Tree Spinach.
From Left Field
NOTE TO NEW READERS: This list is not comprised of articles I agree with or that I judge to be correct or of the highest quality. It is representative of the content I find interesting as reflections of the current zeitgeist. The list is intended to be perused with an open, critical, occasionally amused mind.
Many links are behind paywalls. Most paywalled sites allow a few free articles per month if you register. It's the New Normal.
Soaring rent prices aren’t just hurting wallets. They’re shortening life spans: Study links eviction risk to raised mortality rates.
Breakthrough Alzheimer's Discovery Reveals Five Distinct Variants (via Cheryl A.)
Amazing Glove Is Life Changing For Those With Parkinson's
Federal Scientists Recommend Easing Restrictions on Marijuana:
In newly disclosed documents, federal researchers find that cannabis may have medical uses and is less likely to cause harm than drugs like heroin.
Changes in human microbiome precede Alzheimer’s cognitive declines (via Cheryl A.)
Even Insured Americans Can't Afford Medical Bills
How we met: ‘I couldn’t have changed my life without him’
The 20 best bathtub film scenes – ranked
Nothing I’ve bought on Instagram has ever brought me joy
Driving The Beast! 27-litre V12 Spitfire engined car on the street (via John F.)
John Coltrane - My Favorite Things (1961)
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." Heraclitus
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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