Fire, Then Ice: Our Deflationary Future

Lest you weep for those whose phantom wealth will be drained away, recall that few win when a reserve currency dies. Labor can start earning the day after the reset, but the capital lost is gone for good.

Outside the "everything's always fine" echo-chamber, the consensus is that easily created fiat currencies will all evaporate as the temptation to continue printing/borrowing money into existence is irresistible: the only way to keep the system from imploding is to devalue the soaring debt and interest payments with inflation, and the dial controlling inflation is money-printing / central banks buying debt and all the related tricks.

The problem is that once the dial is turned to 11, inflationary expectations start feeding back into real-world inflation and inflation then escapes the control of central bankers and government treasuries: creating more money to devalue the currency and service the debt ends up destroying the currency via hyper-inflation.

History offers many examples of this temptation and dynamic. The pain of debts being written off, governments defaulting on bonds and assets crashing is too great, and so we have to print more money / borrow more money into existence to stave off the painful reckoning of debt dependence and central bank hubris.

To stave off the pain of debt saturation / over-indebtedness, monetary authorities collapse the currency and the economy it supported, unleashing maximum pain on everyone who used the currency or owned assets denominated in the currency.

A new dollar is then introduced at a ratio of 1 new unit to 100, or 1,000, or 100,000 of the old dollars. Everyone's financial wealth is wiped out. Tools, skills, precious metals, buildings, mines, farms, etc., still retain their intrinsic / productive value, but the monetary reset means everyone whose phantom wealth was a form of debt is wiped out.

This dynamic makes perfect sense, and it's a well-worn pathway for nation-states. Empires, however, might choose differently. The difference between a nation-state and an empire is generally under-appreciated. A nation-state can destroy its currency and bankrupt everyone holding its bonds / debt and start over, but an empire cannot be quite so cavalier, for the "reserve currency" of the empire is its foundation of power.

Yes, the hard power of military power projection is a core strength, along with trade, alliances, cultural and diplomatic soft power, but if the currency evaporates, so does the Imperial Project, and those tasked with maintaining the Imperial Project are forced to calibrate pain by a different standard than politicians and central bankers.

Inflation and the evaporation of the currency is not a solution for the Imperial Project, it is the surrender of all that is great and good. The only viable solution for the Imperial Project is deflation, the forced liquidation of unpayable debts and thus the forced liquidation of all the phantom wealth generated by ever-expanding debt.

Just as inflation has many sources, so too does deflation. Technology can be a source of deflation, as a new technology can dramatically increase supply and durability while dramatically lowering costs. Substitution can be deflationary, as enterprises and consumers swap a cheaper, more abundant substitute for whatever was becoming scarce and costly.

If the sum of "money" circulating in the economy contracts as credit tightens, it becomes harder to borrow more money into existence. Every dollar of debt that's written down to zero reduces the quantity of money floating around, i.e. the money supply.

If the money that is being created is immediately hoarded by the wealthy, it doesn't circulate in the economy and therefore it's the equivalent of debt being extinguished: the supply of money doesn't expand because the new money has been hoarded, in effect buried in the backyard.

To preserve the Empire, it becomes necessary to wipe out the debt and the phantom wealth it created, 90% of which is held by the hyper-wealthy, super-wealthy and merely wealthy. This is the class that has concentrated wealth and power to the point of destabilizing the social, financial and political orders, and so those tasked with preserving the Empire (the State within the State) will have to strip this powerful class of its phantom wealth indirectly, as the class is too politically powerful to be taken down head-on.

Recall that deflation--the decline in the price of assets, goods and services--is beneficial to wage-earners, as their earnings go farther as prices fall. Profits become harder to come by, and those lending and speculating on ever-higher asset valuations are wiped out.

From the Imperial point of view, this is all good: given that the only goal is to preserve the currency from evaporation, then the takedown of the hyper-wealthy class that threatens to destabilize the Imperial order is equally essential.

Just as inflation is a hidden tax on labor, deflation is a hidden tax on capital. If commercial real estate, stocks and corporate bonds all lose value for a decade, the bottom 90% will only be affected indirectly. If whatever money is being created is funneled into spending at the bottom of the economy--those buying essentials--then the deflation of private debt and assets won't strip the real economy of money in circulation, it will only strip the wealthy of the capital they were hoarding and speculating with under the guise of "investing."

Fire, then ice: as inflation (fire) threatens the Imperial currency, the Empire must choose deflation (ice) to preserve its foundation. Currency in active circulation is lumped in with the phantom wealth of debt-based assets, but they are two different things, as Aristotle observed (oikonoma and chrematistics). Just as inflation works slowly to erode the value of labor, deflation works best if it too is gradual, slowly extinguishing phantom wealth over time.

I have endeavored over the years to explain that the concentrated wealth and power of the hyper-wealthy pose an existential threat to the Imperial Project, and the showdown between debt-created phantom wealth and the bedrock of the Imperial Project, its currency, will play out in the next 6 to 8 years.

The "everything's always fine" echo-chamber holds that inflation to preserve all the debt-created phantom wealth is necessary, but they are focused on serving private wealth, not the Imperial Project. What's truly essential is to preserve the Imperial currency, and to accomplish that, both the phantom wealth and the power of the hyper-wealthy who own the vast majority of it must be extinguished. Slowly, slowly, but extinguished nonetheless.

Lest you weep for those whose phantom wealth will be drained away, recall that few win when a reserve currency dies. Labor can start earning the day after the reset, but the capital lost is gone for good.



There is much more to discuss here, but let's take it one step at a time.

New podcast: Tommy Carrigan and I discuss the Fourth Turning

New podcast: Self Reliance & The Importance of Choice (24 min), Part 2 in a three-part exploration of self-reliance.

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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Deep State Good, Total Surveillance State Even Better

So the Deep State is good, but the Total Surveillance State is even better.

The Deep State and The Total Surveillance State are viewed unfavorably for self-evident reasons: the unelected Deep State is anathema to democracy and the Total Surveillance State (and its oh-so-profitable handmaiden, Surveillance Capitalism) are anathema to democracy, freedom and personal liberty.

Let's play devil's advocate and consider the positives of the Deep State and the Total Surveillance State. As devil's advocates we must set aside our negative emotions and assessments, and conjure up a case for favoring the Deep State and the Total Surveillance State.

A recent attempt to cast a favorable light on the Deep State breezily conflates public/civil service with the Deep State, a purposeful misdirection of the definition of the Deep State: the Deep State is not the sum total of public/civil servants or federal employees; it is the unelected governmental structure that makes decisions on behalf of the nation's citizenry without their knowledge, input or approval.

It Turns Out the 'Deep State' Is Actually Kind of Awesome (NYT.com)

The Deep State's job is to keep the Imperial Project humming along regardless of whomever has been elected to the Presidency or Congress. The protocols of the Republic require some appearance of oversight by the elected branches of the state over the unelected branches of the state, but elected officials aren't about to shut down the Imperial Project--the maintenance and expansion of all forms of cultural, economic, financial, diplomatic and military power, a.k.a. soft and hard power. Oversight boils down to "don't do anything which embarrasses us optically."

The positive potential of the Deep State lies in the asymmetry of competence and functionality between the elected and unelected branches of the state. If the elected state devolves into a circus of incompetence, PR charades, self-aggrandizement and dysfunction, then having a competent, well-managed Deep State is a very good thing, as the incompetent, dysfunctional elected state can provide entertainment value without doing irreparable damage to the nation.

The problem, of course, is that since we never really know what the Deep State is up to, it's impossible to tell if it is operationally competent or not. But since we know the political circus is dysfunctional and corrupt, the possibility that the Deep State is still competent and less compromised by corruption is cheering.

A recent video posted by an American visiting China made a splash by summarizing the positive changes that have transformed China in the past five years. The 7 major ways China has changed between 2019 and 2024. The seven positive systemic changes: 1) widespread automation of services and transactions, 2) rise of EVs (electric vehicles); 3) cleaner air; 4) public behavior is "more civilized" (given China's role as a wellspring of civilization, I would rephrase this as "more courteous"); 5) fewer foreigners; 6) manufacturers are selling directly to consumers, and 7) everything is more harmonious and better.

While extolling the advance of public courtesy, comparing it favorably to famously polite and well-ordered Japan, Mr. Hart mentions public campaigns promoting civil behaviors and the role of automation in reducing the opportunities for ripping off consumers.

He did not mention the primary driver of improved public behavior, China's transformation into a Total Surveillance State, the happy marriage of Surveillance Capitalism and the Surveillance State, in which millions of cameras record and identify citizens' behaviors, and those who break the rules find their ability to buy a train or airline ticket has been rescinded, or they get a friendly invitation from the local police to "come by for tea" to receive a suggestion to clean up one's act lest life becomes much less pleasant and much more difficult.

Where rudely cutting in line once generated no real consequence, now it does. So cutting in line now offers a very poor risk-return ratio: the gain is minimal compared to the potential costs / consequences. Given humans' keen alertness to windfalls, gains and losses, cutting in line is no longer a common transgression.

It is thus unsurprising that the public broadly approves of the Surveillance State's social credit system penalizing anti-social behavior. Bad behavior diminishing benefits everyone, and it provides employment to all those public servants staffing local police stations, monitoring video, screening social media, and so on. What's not to like?

The tricky part, of course, is who gets to define anti-social behavior? Those in charge of the Total Surveillance State tend to view criticism of their efforts as undeserved ingratitude, and so criticism of the Surveillance State becomes a form of anti-social behavior that must be stamped out.

Other potential threats to those in charge slide easily into the programming of automation and surveillance, and so dissatisfaction is no longer expressed in action (protests, etc.) but inaction: people drop out of being productively employed, marrying and having children.

There are many reasons for the collapse of marriage and birth rates in East Asia and elsewhere, but courteous public behavior, automation, EVs, cleaner skies, factory-to-consumer supply chains and a well-ordered society don't seem to have the power to reverse this mass opting out.

So the Deep State is good, but the Total Surveillance State is even better. Everyone obeys the rules, society becomes harmonious, and for reasons that escape those in charge, people give up on work, marriage and having children. Other than that, it's all blue skies for Deep States and Total Surveillance States.



Deep States and Total Surveillance States share one consequential structural characteristic:



New podcast: Tommy Carrigan and I discuss the Fourth Turning

New podcast: Self Reliance & The Importance of Choice (24 min), Part 2 in a three-part exploration of self-reliance.

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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Our Economy and Politics Are Broken

Awakening from the dream of painless financial / political solutions, we find the status quo is not the solution, it is the source of our decay.

Our situation as a society is akin to awakening from a dream of loved ones to the realization that they passed away long ago. Our economy and politics are broken, yet we continue dreaming that they are functional.

Let's start with politics. American politics now bears an eerie resemblance to pre-collapse Soviet politics: a geriatric, sclerotic, stuck-in-the-past leadership, five-year plans (four year plans in the U.S. with one goal--get re-elected) that do nothing to change the trajectory of social decay, and a populace increasingly opting out of political engagement as people realize the pointlessness of the entire charade: the commoners are powerless and the elites are incompetent and disconnected from reality.

Recall Smith's Neofeudalism Principle #1: If the citizenry cannot replace a kleptocratic authoritarian government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only.

Take a look at the charts below and tell me how transferring power from one party to the other changed the trajectory of social decay, kleptocracy, authoritarianism or the predations of the financial Aristocracy. You can't, as "business as usual" politics is incapable of changing the trajectory of inequality, debt and social decay.

The two-party "Business as usual" politics offers us a false choice, as neither party has the means to identify or address the fundamental sources of our decline as a society. What we're offered is histrionic claims that one policy or another will fix the symptoms of decay rather than the sources of decay.

Historian Christopher Lasch (who died in 1994) saw that the either-or mindset of left-right, Progressive-Conservative was already a dead-end in 1990 when he wrote The True and Only Heaven: "We need to ask whether the left and right have not come to share so many of the underlying convictions, including a belief in the desirability and inevitability of technical and economic development, that the conflict between them, shrill and acrimonious as it is, no longer speaks to the central issues of American politics." (page 23)

Look at the charts below and identify the great sea changes in trajectory caused by changing the party in power. There are none. The Imperial Project continues apace regardless of what party claims power. This is the result of a broken political system that offers up a false choice while society careens toward a precipice.

Federal debt: where's the big reversal of trajectory caused by switching parties?



Total public and private debt: where's the big reversal of trajectory caused by switching parties?



Wealth of the top .01%: where's the big reversal of trajectory caused by switching parties? The spot of bother in 2008-2009 that briefly interrupted the trend of rising concentration of wealth in the top few was the result of a catastrophically unstable, corrupt, exploitive financial system almost collapsing, not of political change.



As for the economy, where do we begin? With the dependence on skyrocketing debt to duct-tape the appearance of normalcy and the the all-important veneer of "optimism"?

How about the rise to dominance of extreme speculation, as the only means left to get ahead in an economy ruled by monopolies, cartels and their regulatory partners?

What about the decay of ethics to the lowest level: the normalizing of "pay-to-play" and "everyone has a price"?

How about the reality that we're all held hostage to monopolistic technological / corporate platforms that relentlessly increase profits by crapifying goods and immiserating services?

How about the reliance on the monetization and commodification of addiction as a reliable profit center? As Lasch so presciently observed: "The model of ownership, in a society built round mass consumption, is addiction."

As for social decay, perhaps we can start with the reduction of all the bonds of an authentic social order to a series of "market transactions"--the sale of attention and engagement, the purchase of distractions, the endless scrolling and clicking, the attendance at a protest that goes nowhere because it can't possibly lead to any real change--the scope and diversity of transactions generates the illusion of being connected as we drift into disconnected spheres of loneliness and anxiety as we sense, despite all the phony optimism and distraction, that our society is coming apart at the seams, and we're powerless to so anything but opt out of the madness.

Awakening from the dream of painless financial / political solutions, we find the status quo is not the solution, it is the source of our decay. The status quo generates crises by its very nature and structure, and then claims that papering over the symptoms will magically resolve the sources of crisis and decay. But symptoms are not causes, and so this illusion has a very limited shelf-life.



New podcast: Self Reliance & The Importance of Choice (24 min), Part 2 in a three-part exploration of self-reliance.

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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What Happens When There's Nobody Left to Save Us?

Passively waiting for centralized powers to "save us" from their own excesses is not a solution.

It's no exaggeration to say that our way of life depends on somebody somewhere saving us from the excesses that are the bedrock of our way of life. What excesses, you ask? There are none. This is true in one sense: all the excesses have been normalized by previous "saves": whenever the bedrock excesses threaten to collapse under their own weight, the Federal Reserve or the Federal government rush in to save us from the excesses they've created.

Stripped of artifice, the bedrock excess that has been completely normalized is to goose consumption by borrowing from future earnings and resources. As long as growth is eternal, this works great: we can always pay more interest on ever-expanding debt with future earnings because those will be inevitably be even larger than the interest due.

Creating money out of thin air is another mechanism that achieves the same goal: goosing consumption via boosting the value of assets to generate a "wealth effect" that lifts all boats. This is also predicated on the eternal expansion of earnings, so wage earners can afford to consume as new money ceaselessly devalues the purchasing power of existing money (what we call inflation).

The problem is these "saves" only work if the interest rate is eternally near-zero and the costs of production are eternally declining: as long as it costs almost nothing to borrow more money into existence and production costs continue to drop, enabling consumers to afford more goodies even as the purchasing power of their wages declines, then all is well.

But capital eventually demands yields above zero as risk rises and risk rises along with debt and production costs, both of which depreciate the value of future earnings: as debt service costs rise, more earnings must be devoted to paying interest, reducing the sums available to spend on consumption. As production costs rise, the earnings left to spend buy less.

In other words, the "saves" increase risk, and eventually yields rise in response. The debt dragon begins eating its own tail. Risk cannot be dissipated into the ether, it can only be hedged or offloaded onto some other entity. There are no hedges against systemic debt saturation, and the risks are being offloaded onto the entire system. When risk can no longer be suppressed with more "free money," the entire system collapses under its own weight.

The consequence of these dynamics is there won't be anyone left to "save us" with free money next time around. As capital demands a return above zero and the devaluation of existing money pushes production costs higher, the system can no longer sustain its excesses.

So what happens when there's nobody left to save us? The mind rejects this possibility. Surely the Fed or the federal government will find some way to flood the economy with whatever sums of "free money" are needed to keep borrowing from the future. But the excesses of money creation and debt are self-defeating: they become the Monster Id dissolving the system rather than the "save us" solution.

All ideologies have a fatal flaw: they limit potential solutions to a single limited tool box. All ideologies are simple formulas at heart, and they all define the "problem" in a way that their proposed solution can remedy.

But the problems we've generated are interconnected in ways that can't be remedied with only one fix. The global socio-economic system we've created is an open system that isn't entirely predictable--it is an ecosystem, not a clock. It generates feedback loops that funnel risk back into the system itself with every "save."

We need to be able to select solutions from a wide assortment of tools, yet the mechanisms that have "saved us" in the past--central banks and governments--are wired to see the expansion of their own power as the only effective solution to any problem. This innate drive to expand their reach and power is the ontological imperative of centralized hierarchies, dynamics I untangle in my book Resistance, Revolution, Liberation.

This expansion of centralized power inevitably limits our choices of solutions and freedom to choose for ourselves. Call this whatever you wish, but this limiting of choice is a limiting of solutions, and the limiting of solutions is fatal to all open systems, regardless of size or apparent power.

The "saves" have loaded the entire system with excesses that cannot be resolved with even greater excesses. Risk is rising, and the "saves" have only increased systemic risk. Those doing the "saving"--central banks and governments--are squeezing out whatever choices and solutions are not within their control, increasing our dependence on their "saves" of ever greater waves of "free money."

So what happens when there's nobody left to save us? We have to save ourselves, that's what. It's called Self-Reliance, which means preserving our freedom to choose options and solutions that work for us and our communities. Gordon Long and I discuss this in our recent video podcast Self Reliance & The Importance of Choice (24 min), the second segment in a three-part exploration of self-reliance.

Passively waiting for centralized powers to "save us" from their own excesses is not a solution--it is magical thinking at its most dangerously delusional. Better to grab a tool box and start filling it with tools that you own and control.

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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The Growing Rebellion Against Costly, Low-Quality, Overly-Complex Technology

Many consumers have yet to grasp how vulnerable they are to increasingly routine digital-component failures.

One of the greatest myths about "free markets" is that enterprises create products and services to meet the needs of consumers. That sounds nice but that's not what happens in monopoly-cartel dominated economies like ours. In monopoly-cartel dominated economies like ours, what actually happens is the monopoly / cartel (i.e. a handful of quasi-monopolies that completely dominate their sector) limit their offerings to the most profitable products and services and force customers to buy them by making it impossible to find better-value options.

Monopoly-cartel dominated economies like ours are rife with intentionally shoddy quality products and services because durability is anathema to ever-higher profits. By designing products and services to fail--planned obsolescence--or become obsolescent by other means--your product is no longer supported--monopolies / cartels force consumers to constantly replace failed or timed-out products.

The other mechanism favored by monopolies / cartels is immiseration: make the product or service so miserable to use that the disgusted consumer is forced to upgrade to minimize their suffering. This is how monopolies / cartels manipulate the innocent-sounding "consumer choice:" you have a choice between suffering with low-quality products and services, or somewhat less suffering by paying more.

If you want products and services that actually work and are durable, prepare to pay 10X more. If you want kitchen appliances that function longer than a few years, no problem, just pony up $35,000. (A real-world number, believe me.)

In other words, durability and quality service are now reserved for the top 5%. Everyone else has the simulated choice between "unbearably low quality" or "bearably poor quality."

Of course monopolies / cartels have excuses and justifications for their highly profitable designed-to-fail products and services. One excuse is "garsh, everything is so complex now that some component somewhere fails, and we're helpless to stop it." In other words, complexity is the problem, not the absence of quality control.

The Lifespan of Large Appliances Is Shrinking Appliance technicians blame a push toward computerization and an increase in the quantity of components inside a machine. (wsj.com)

The apologists are half-right: complexity is a reliable source of failure. That brings up the monopolies / cartels' second excuse: "we're just meeting customer demands for more conveniences."

But the monopolies / cartels left out the other half of consumer demands: for durability, affordability and quality. They also left out the fact that many consumers are actually demanding less complexity and less technology, demands that are ignored because reducing technological complexity and thereby increasing durability would be a disaster for the bottom line: simple, durable goods would crash profits.

Beneath the highly profitable churn of "conveniences," consumers are fed up and demanding simple, durable products, not the overly complex designed-to-fail rubbish being sold by monopolies / cartels. Consider the consumer statements in 'My Toaster Oven Does Not Need To Be 'Smart', for example:

"Tell me, why would anyone really want a smart fridge or toaster? I don't want the new, shiny thing. I want something that works and lasts a long time."

Or:

"Paying good money for a product that doesn't do the thing it says on the box until you install their BS app on your phone. This makes me want to start a fight."

Many consumers have yet to grasp how vulnerable they are to increasingly routine digital-component failures. Today's vehicles are all one component failure away from being inaccessible (so sorry, you can't get into your car) and / or unstartable (please have your vehicle towed to an authorized dealership for an incredibly costly diagnostic of why your vehicle won't start.)

I've recounted in previous posts my own experience in replacing a clothes dryer digital controller ("motherboard") that cost roughly half as much as a new dryer, and required extraordinary efforts to install, such that the labor charge would have doubled the controller cost, effectively equaling the cost of a new dryer.

Making repairs impossible or stupidly costly is all part of the immiseration by design, of course. The $200 controller board--available only from the authorized supplier, of course--contained a few dollars of commodity chips and circuit boards encased in a convoluted plastic extrusion worth a few more dollars. If a 10X markup annoys you, too bad, there are no other sources for the controller, which is of course not a commodity: it only functions in a specific brand and model.

The rebellion against needlessly costly, complex, designed-to-fail products and services is brewing. In a truly open "free market" stripped of monopolies and cartels, products and services that were simple, durable and largely (or completely) analog would enter the market to serve the growing number of consumers who've had enough of overly complex, overly costly, designed-to-fail products. But that isn't going to happen in economies dominated by monopolies / cartels such as ours.

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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Why Social Trust Is Cratering: The Difference Between Elites and Commoners

We trust what we own / control, and the difference between elites and commoners is the elites own / control the wealth and power that dominate our daily lives.

It sounds too obvious to be profound: we trust what we own / control. Of course we do. But it becomes profoundly consequential when we add the shadow half of the statement: we don't trust what we don't own / control without constant feedback providing verifiable evidence that it is worthy of our trust.

Absent this positive verifiable (i.e. factual evidence based on both data and personal-anecdotal experience) feedback, we have good reason to assume whatever we don't own / control is primarily serving the interests of those who do own / control it. And since this means the product/service's trustworthiness is suspect despite claims that it serves our interests, we must seek a steady flow of feedback substantiating that the product/service is still providing the value the owners / managers are claiming, either explicitly or implicitly.

In other words, hands-on knowledge about the inner workings of the product/service generates trust. Absent this experiential knowledge, we're flying blind as to the true value of the product/service. If the actual value is less than the owners / managers claim, both the owners / managers and the product/service they're providing are unworthy of our trust.

Consider a simple example: the food we put in our mouths to sustain ourselves.

When I collect fruits and vegetables I've grown here in our yard, I have direct knowledge of what went into the care and nurturing of the plants/trees/soil, so I know that there are no pesticides or herbicides and there are an abundance of micronutrients in our food due to the careful management of compost and fertilizers.

The food we eat from our homestead is therefore trustworthy.

We get lettuce and beets from a longtime family friend who has been farming for decades. He takes great pride in his produce and works extremely hard to raise te highest quality produce. Though I don't have direct knowledge of his day-to-day practices, I know and trust him and I can see the vibrancy of his produce and taste its quality.

These are the people in our trusted personal network.

You see the gradient of trust: first level is first-hand experience/knowledge, second level is trusted personal network.

Compare this to produce labeled "organic" in a supermarket. We are making a great many assumptions about the produce this label is attached to. We assume the agency monitoring the actual farm practices is thorough and accurate, but this is quite stretch in the real world. Are inspectors onsite every day? What exactly do they test? Where are the results posted?

Produce, organic or not, is a commodity, and nobody is testing the nutritive content of the produce. Maybe one field hasn't been depleted of micronutrients, while the rest have been over-farmed and depleted of the micronutrients we need to be healthy.

Since all produce is a commodity in global markets, they're all interchangeable: one kilo of organic tomatoes or wheat is interchangeable with any other kilo of organic tomatoes or wheat, so there's no way to tell if the "organic" produce or meat has high or low nutritive value. All that's being claimed is that no pesticides or herbicides were applied and whatever compost and fertilizer were applied were organic. That's entirely different than claiming the produce/meat is high in nutritive value.

Plants have immune systems, too, and a healthy plant provided with sufficient nutrients and water will resist insect infestations, fungi, bacteria, etc. far better than plants raised in depleted soils. Anyone with experience in actually growing fruits and vegetables is keenly alive to signs of nutrient deficiency or infestation.

The point is "organic" doesn't mean the produce or meat is packed with nutrients. It just means the minimal guidelines qualifying the product as organic (or "bio") were met. Those guidelines don't guarantee a product packed with micronutrients. That takes extra care and tracking that isn't done in a commoditized economy.

Consider efficacy claims and side-effect labeling on pharmaceuticals. If you actually study the Phase III trial data (I have), you find that the medications were not actually tested in conjunction with other commonly consumed medications. The potential interactions are completely unknown. You also discover the statistical legerdemain that goes into claiming efficacy that may be just barely above random results.

Since we have very little knowledge or control of all the medications deemed "safe" by untrustworthy agencies, all these medications are intrinsically untrustworthy until proven otherwise by multiple independent sources over a decade.

How Two Pharmacists Figured Out That Decongestants Don't Work: A loophole in FDA processes means older drugs such as those in oral decongestants weren't properly tested. Here's how we learned the most popular one doesn't work.

Now consider social media sites such as Facebook or X/Twitter. You may have noticed that what appears in your feed/scroll changes. These changes are not within our control or transparent; we presume the algos are being tweaked to maximize the income being generated by our content and our attention.

When Big Tech notifies you that your content "violated our community standards," the violation is not specified, and if you ask, you won't get a reply or explanation. We have no idea who is seeing what we post, or what's being done with our attention-data. We have no knowledge or control of these algos and processes, and so they are intrinsically untrustworthy.

If we examine all the agencies, institutions, monopolies and cartels that control the vast majority of our lives, we find that we have near-zero knowledge or control of any of their inputs, processes or outputs, and so all of these agencies, institutions, monopolies and cartels are intrinsically untrustworthy until they consistently prove themselves trustworthy in some verifiable fashion.

Few of these agencies, institutions, monopolies and cartels provide this feedback.

Consider the labels on processed foods for humans. Anyone caring for animals knows the labeling on food for animals is far stricter and more detailed than food for humans, for a good reason: those profiting from selling processed "food" to humans might have a harder time selling their low-quality products if we knew more about the low quality ingredients, high sugar and salt content, etc.

This is why commoners have lost trust in the nation's agencies, institutions, monopolies and cartels, while the top 1% elites that own and control these entities still trust them: they trust them because they serve their interests.

The commoners intuitively sense these entities do not serve their interests, they only claim to do so to maximize profits / "shareholder value" or to divert attention from the poor quality service/products. We know the claims being made are false because we experience the absence of transparency and accountability first-hand, and the abysmally low quality of the products and services first-hand.

The only viable solution is to own/control as much as you can, and nurture our own trusted personal networks. The only way to escape being stripmined and shorn by the entities owned and controlled by the top 1% elites is to abandon those agencies, institutions, monopolies and cartels as much as possible. That is the essence of what I call self-reliance.

We are blind to the decay of the hierarchy of trust because we've been trained to trust sprawling, unaccountable agencies and corporations without actually having any evidence that they are trustworthy.

At the top is owning / controlling the products/services ourselves. We trust our produce because we grew it. We trust our home repair because we did the work. Very few of us own or control anything other than our house or financial abstractions controlled by others.

The second level is personal trusted networks. Very few of us have personal trusted networks that provide the essentials of life. Virtually everything essential to modern life is commoditized and globalized; it comes from far away and we know nothing about its origin, quality or value.

The third level is local enterprises and agencies that are local enough to generate feedback we can access simply by listening to our neighbors and peers. On a very practical level, most communities once had local dairies and bakeries and broader networks of local businesses that provided services that are no longer available: shoe repair, etc.

The fourth and lowest level is commoditized feedback from a variety of sources that can be compared for completeness and accuracy, feedback that enables us to assess the relative trustworthiness of commoditized products and services sold by private monopolies and cartels theoretically monitored by unaccountable sprawling state agencies.

Our essential public services are also provided by other unaccountable sprawling state agencies that can fail in every way but are not influenced by their failure because we have no alternative to the DMV, tax office, etc.

These public-private monopolies and cartels provide very little feedback, and what little is available is itself suspect due to self-interest.

We control and own so little of what we need to live and what impacts our lives, and very few of these essentials are produced locally. We receive very little if any trustworthy feedback about the mega-entities (universities, hospital chains, Big Ag, Big Pharma, government agencies, Big Tech, Big Finance, Big Retail, etc.) that dominate our economy and our lives or the quality / value of the products and services they provide.

Professional elites still trust these mega-entities because they serve the interests of the elites who own / control them. The commoners no longer trust these entities because there is no reason or evidence to generate trust while there is a wealth of evidence supporting distrust.



We trust what we own / control, and the difference between elites and commoners is the elites own / control the wealth and power that dominate our daily lives.

As I noted in A Low-Trust Society Is an Impoverished Society, our only positive option is to regain as much ownership and control of our lives as we can manage, and nurture trusted personal networks and local enterprises and organizations. As I put it a few years ago: Tune in (to self-reliance), drop out (of hyper-consumerism and debt-serfdom) and turn on (to relocalizing capital and agency).

---

This essay was drawn from my Weekly Musings Reports sent exclusively to subscribers, patrons and Substack subscribers. Thank you very much for supporting my work.

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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America the Snackable

There is only one pathway to health and sanity: stop consuming snackables of any kind.

Everything in America has become snackable: devoid of value, easily consumed, intentionally addictive, and ultimately destructive to all that is healthy for individuals, communities and society at large.

The core features of edible snackables are self-evident yet worthy of a closer look due to the severity of the consequences:

1. The snack is made of highly processed ingredients.

2. The snack has high concentrations of sugar, salt and unhealthy oils/fats.

3. The snack has low nutritional value (empty calories) and is not beneficial to health.

4. The snack is packaged in small quantities so the price appears cheap but is revealed as expensive when converted to price per pound.

5. The snack's "serving size" may be deceptively presented: a 4-ounce package may have a calorie count based on a "serving size" of 2 ounces, as if the package contains two servings when everyone knows a single individual will consume the entire snack.

6. The snack is a legal addictive product as the snack has been designed to hijack humans' innate receptors for sugar, salt and fat and satisfying mouthfeel. (Bet ya can't have just one.)

Highly processed, highly addictive, low nutritional value foods are a key driver of America's declining health. All these foods share the same characteristics of the manufactured snackables: they are heavily marketed, highly profitable and contribute to obesity and metabolic disorders.

When only one-quarter of the adult populace is normal weight, this leads to a host of chronic health disorders including higher risks of heart disease and many cancers, as well as the spectrum of metabolic disorders such as diabetes and prediabetes. Here are the facts: over 73% of adult Americans are overweight or obese.



Given that almost 3/4 of adult Americans are overweight or obese, it shouldn't surprise us that 52% of adult Americans are diabetic or prediabetic. This is a sobering trend, one that won't be reversed by $1,000 a month weight-loss medications which cease to be effective once they're no longer consumed. These medications don't change the patients' diets from highly processed foods to only unprocessed real food, and so the benefits are inherently narrower than advertised.



The snack and beverage aisles take up an astounding amount of space in America's specialty-groceries and supermarkets. These are the profit-generators, and so the processed-food manufacturers and grocery retailers are constantly seeking to entice more addicts with new novelties. For example: Trader Joe's Has Been Releasing A Ton Of New Products Lately.

Consuming this kind of high-fat, empty-calorie snack isn't going to generate a healthy lifestyle.



The marketing of novelty is as refined and devoid of value as the snacks being manufactured and sold:



As those with any knowledge and experience of fitness know, the notion that it's possible to burn off the empty calories of snacks with a bit more exercise is a fantasy--hence America's bulging waistlines and declining health.



The enormous profitability of edible snacks is mirrored in all the other manifestations of America the Snackable: our daily lives are now composed of one bite-sized addictive snack of social media, novelty memes, political opinion, financial data-snacks and pundits' opinions and snackable videos after another.

Attention spans and the ability to grasp complex issues have withered to snack-size, and whatever is being marketed as "ideas" are as devoid of value as an empty-calorie snack.



All share the same characteristics: they are addictive, bite-sized, packaged deceptively, marketed as novelty, devoid of value, destructive to human health and most importantly, astoundingly profitable. So the edible snacks generate chronic illnesses which then provide fodder for highly profitable medications, while the inherently deranging snackables of social media, videos, entertainment, political opinions and memes-du-jour fuel mental disorders which provide fodder for a vast spectrum of highly profitable medications.

There is only one pathway to health and sanity: stop consuming snackables of any kind. Yes, the only solution is cold turkey, baby, and like all addictions, it's painful at first, and then it becomes a great relief to be freed of the addictions.

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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A Low-Trust Society Is an Impoverished Society

The sole remaining reservoirs of trust in American life are personal networks, local enterprises and local institutions.

It's not exactly news that social trust has declined significantly in the United States. Surveys find that public trust in institutions and the professional classes that dominate those institutions has cratered. (see chart below) Social trust--our confidence that other people are trustworthy--has also fallen to multi-decade lows.

This was not the case in decades past. Americans maintained high levels of trust in their institutions, government and fellow citizens. The decline in social trust is across the entire spectrum: our trust in institutions, professional elites and our fellow Americans has declined precipitously.

The causes of this decay of social trust can be debated endlessly, but several factors are obvious:

1. Institutions forfeited the trust of the citizenry by withholding / editing realities to serve the interests of hidden agendas and insiders' careers. The Vietnam War was pursued on fabrications, as was the second Gulf War to topple Saddam. Watergate eroded trust on multiple levels, as did the Church Committee's investigation of America's security agencies' domestic spying / over-reach.

2. The managerial / professional elites at the top of the nation's institutions no longer put the citizenry's interests above their own. The public's trust has eroded as institutions are primarily viewed as vehicles for self-enrichment and career advancement: healthcare CEOs pay themselves millions, higher education is bloated with layers of non-teaching administration, defense contractors and the Pentagon have greased the revolving door to the benefit of incumbents and insiders, and so on, in an endless parade of self-serving cloaked with smirking PR claims of "serving the public."

The shift from a high-trust society to a low-trust society is consequential economically, politically and socially. Low-trust societies have stagnant economies, as nobody trusts anyone they don't know personally or through personally trusted networks, and nobody trust institutions to function effectively or fulfill their stated mission to serve the public good.

Faced with incompetent, unaccountable, corrupt bureaucracies and a culture overflowing with scams, frauds, imposters and get-rich-quick schemes, people give up and drop out. Rather than start a business and accept all the risks just to get dumped on or ripped off, they don't even try to start a business. Given the financial insecurity that is now the norm, they decide not to get married or have children.

The vast trading networks of the Roman Empire were based on personal trusted networks and trust in Rome's functionaries / institutions. The owners of trading ships dealt with trusted captains and merchants, who then paid duties to Roman functionaries in Alexandria and other major trading ports.

In other words, tightly bound personal trusted networks work well as long as the state institutions that bind the entire economy are trusted as fair and reliable--not perfect, of course, but efficient and "good enough."

But when public institutions are viewed as unfair, unreliable, corrupt or incompetent, the entire economy decays. Even personal trusted networks cannot survive in an economy of unfair, unreliable, corrupt or incompetent state bureaucracies and private institutions.

The American economy is now dominated by enormous privately owned and managed monopolies and cartels that are the private-sector equivalent of self-serving state bureaucracies. Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Healthcare, Big Ag, Big Finance, etc., are even worse than state bureaucracies because there are no legal requirements for transparency or recourse. Try getting a response from a Big Tech corporation when you've been shadow-banned or sent to Digital Siberia.

The sole remaining reservoirs of trust in American life are personal networks, local enterprises and local institutions. These are not guaranteed, of course; in many locales, even these reservoirs have been drained. But in other locales, enterprises and institutions such as the county water utility, the local newspaper, the local community college, etc. continue to earn the trust of the public by performing the services they exist to provide effectively and at a reasonable cost.

The larger the institution and the greater its wealth and power, the lower the social trust--for good reasons. The greater the influence of the managerial elites, the greater the disconnect from the everyday experiences of the citizenry and customers, and the more extreme the self-serving PR.

Sure, I trust Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Healthcare, Big Finance--to rip me off, profiteer, send me obfuscating bills, jack up junk fees, make it impossible to contact them, and send me to Digital Siberia if I complain.

The divide between the elites and the commoners should prompt us to examine the low-trust path we're sliding down:



In a society in which everything is phony, low quality or fraudulent, you're taking a chance trusting anyone you don't know personally--and even that can be risky now that self-aggrandizing flim-flam is the last remaining path to financial security for non-elites.



A low-trust society is an impoverished society, economically stagnant and socially threadbare. That's where we are now, and the more fragmented, greedy, self-serving, desperate and deranged we become, the lower the odds that we'll find the means to rebuild trust.

Sadly, we already know that anyone claiming to "rebuild trust" is spouting PR designed to mask self-enrichment. We also know that the vast army of well-paid flacks, factotums, enforcers, happy-story apologists, lackeys, toadies and sell-out minions are declaring "everything's great!"

Just mumble, "Uh, sure" and continue to Tune in (to degrowth), drop out (of hyper-consumerism and debt-serfdom) and turn on (to self-reliance and relocalizing capital and agency).

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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