Overpopulation: The Real Crisis
Unless we reduce our population, resource scarcity will accomplish the decrease in human numbers and painfully so, via plagues and famines.
We have made a real mess on this planet. People are finally awakening to some of the many consequences of overpopulation, such as global warming and peak oil. Everybody expects technology to come to our rescue, but technology is what got us into this precarious position in the first place. Technology only leads us out onto thin ice. Humans are not exempt from the laws of nature. Everyone wants unlimited cheap clean energy, but they fail to recognize that global warming is occurring precisely because the earth can no longer dissipate excess waste heat. More energy consumption will exacerbate and accelerate warming, which will destroy our spaceship’s life support systems. All our problems stem from three underlying causes: economic systems based on perpetual growth, runaway greed, and – most importantly – too many people on our planet. Earth simply cannot support all 7.5+ billion of us.
The Age of Disintegration: Neoliberalism and a Fragmenting World
Across the vast swath of territory between Pakistan and Nigeria, there are at least seven ongoing wars — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and South Sudan. These conflicts are extraordinarily destructive. They are tearing apart countries in ways that make it doubtful they will ever recover. Under military intervention, a vast region of the planet seems to be cracking open, with little understanding in Washington. A Mass Extinction of Independent States.
Fragile states index 2016
Brexit SPREADS as Italy, France, Holland and Denmark call for referendums
Politicians across Europe have called for their own referendums in the wake of Britain's historic decision.
Leave Well AloneFarm subsidies are arguably the most regressive distribution of public money in modern times. Taxpayers of all stations stock the wine cellars of dukes and hedge fund managers. Eighty percent of the funds are harvested by the richest 25% of recipients. The poorest farmers are excluded: you cannot claim subsidies unless you own or lease at least five hectares.
Brexit and the Crisis of Capitalism
If you collapse these extractive, debt-dependent crony-capitalist cartels, you collapse the entire status quo.
Thousands of commentaries have been issued about Brexit in the past week. I've written four myself. Most discuss Brexit as the result of immigration issues, class war, political theater, a reaction against the European Union's bureaucratic power, sovereignty, etc. Other essays focus on the potential upsides or downsides of Brexit.
What few if any commentators present is the idea that Brexit is a symptom of the Crisis of Capitalism.
The current global version of Capitalism is characterized by these overlapping dynamics:
1. Replacing stagnant real growth and income (and thus taxes) with debt.
2. Replacing investment in real-world productivity with speculation (i.e. financialization)
3. Replacing “everyone must have skin in the game” free-market capitalism withprotected, privileged Elites crony capitalism in which the few benefit at the expense of the many.
4. Replacing local, decentralized democracy and ownership with central planning.
5. Using “extend and pretend” financial trickery to mask insolvency, impaired assets/ collateral and non-performing loans rather than address the debt overhang directly via write-downs and liquidations of impaired assets.
