Comments on: The Financial Fire Trucks Are Gathering

By: m111ark

m111ark — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:30:29 +0000

I always enjoy reading Mauldin’s work, he’s got such a positive attitude. That’s not a bad thing even when the world is falling apart, keeps up one’s spirit. It is madness of course but perhaps a form of madness we could all use as the world transitions to what’s coming. These kinds of people provide for the rest of us a touch point, a symbol and reminder of where we’ve been. We can use them as examples in the coming decades as a warning to all who follow us; “look what happens when you ignore the world around you.”

He writes as if he’s never heard of peak oil. Which, while only a symptom, is blunt and stark evidence of our human failings. Perhaps the recent drop from near $150 to less than $50 today has convinced him that “what oil crisis” is both the old and “new” reality. And, since it’s impossible to convince anyone of anything, I’ll just have to rely on events as his and mankind’s teacher. It’s going to be quite a show, best observed from one’s well fortified bunker of ultimate safety (BOUS).

Who is John Galt?

By: KJ Foehr

KJ Foehr — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 19:16:53 +0000

Me too; sounds like good stuff. Thanks jojo.

By: Archiphage

Archiphage — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 15:07:40 +0000

Wow… something I will definitely be looking into myself. Thanks Jojo99!

By: Jojo99

Jojo99 — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 02:05:58 +0000

@KJ Foehr says “So how does a capitalist system survive without profit? Or what will replace it.”

Funny you asked this. I came across a series of SF books that seem to deal with this question yesterday. Am meaning to read them.

========================
The Culture
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Books of the Culture cycle.

The Culture is a fictional anarchist, socialistic, and utopian[1][2] society created by the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks and described by him in several of his novels and shorter fictions.

The Culture is characterised by being a post-scarcity society (meaning that its advanced technologies provide practically limitless material wealth and comforts for everyone for free, having all but abolished the concept of possessions), by having overcome almost all physical constraints on life (including disease and death) and by being an almost totally egalitarian, stable society without the use of any form of force or compulsion, except where necessary to protect others.

The effect and control that ‘Minds’ – the extremely powerful AIs that administer this affluence for the benefit of all – have over the Culture is very central both to the setting and as a narrative constraint. As one commentator has expressed it:

“In vesting all power in his individualistic, sometime eccentric, but always benign, AI Minds, Banks knew what he was doing; this is the only way a liberal anarchy could be achieved, by taking what is best in humans and placing it beyond corruption, which means out of human control. The danger involved in this imaginative step, though, is clear; one of the problems with the Culture novels as novels is that the central characters, the Minds, are too powerful and, to put it bluntly, too good.”[3]

The novels of the Culture cycle, therefore, mostly deal with people at the fringes of the Culture – diplomats, spies or mercenaries – those who interact with other civilisations, and who do the Culture’s dirty work in moving those societies closer to the Culture ideal, sometimes by force.

Full article

By: KJ Foehr

KJ Foehr — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 23:02:35 +0000

So how does a capitalist system survive without profit? Or what will replace it.

By: Archiphage

Archiphage — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:47:05 +0000

KJ:
A big idea concerning the future is that people will soon become as adept at manipulating atoms and molecules of matter as they are now at manipulating bits and bytes of information. A concern about ‘making money’ doesn’t fit in a paradigm where physical stuff is as plentiful and cheap as say– blog comments are today.

By: KJ Foehr

KJ Foehr — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:35:33 +0000

“But in 20 years, no one is going to look back and say I wish I could go back to the good old days of 2007. We will then be living in the most exciting age in the history of man.”

Mauldin’s attitude reminds me of John Templeton, who always was very optimistitc. I’ll never forget his statement on Wall Street Week many years ago, probably in the ’70s when things were looking quite bad, Louis Ruykeyser asked him how felt about the long-term outlook and with a broad smile John said some words like, “The future is going to be more wonderful than we can imagine”.

He was mostly right of course, at least until now. But I still have serious questions about how wonderful it will be for us here in the USA, and I often wonder how we all will be able to make money in the digital age.