Why You Should Not Read My New Book--Seriously

The question is what part will we play--statistic or participant in a better world?

If you value your peace of mind, you should not read my new book The Revolution No One Sees Coming because it's telling you what you don't want hear by tearing down the facades obscuring all the expediencies that maintain the illusion that the precarious status quo is solid and sustainable.

To claim the status quo is solid and sustainable is a parody of a farce of a satire, which nobody wants to hear even though it's obvious: the status quo Has reached its limits, and neither the expediencies of borrowing trillions of dollars every year or the oft-proffered reforms (Modern Monetary Theory, adopting bitcoin, returning to the gold standard, stablecoins, etc.) can fix what's broken because what's broken is the layer below "money" and "technology"--the nation's moral foundation has collapsed as maximizing self-interest is all that matters.

Everything else--for example, the stability and sustainability of the nation's social order, economy and government--is of no concern. If we get rich, nothing else matters.

What everyone wants to hear are technocratic solutions that require zero changes or sacrifices, solutions that are transactions: buy a new tech gizmo, buy stablecoins, etc., solutions that leave the status quo and our own lives untouched because the fixes are magic: life continues to get more unaffordable as costs rise, debt continues soaring, but never mind, it's magic.

Except there's this funny thing about history: it's like a pendulum, and when the pendulum reaches an extreme of unfairness and extreme concentrations of private wealth and power, it swings to the opposite extreme.



All this is disturbing, so better not read my new book. It feels a lot better to believe that healthcare premiums can go up 13% every year, credit card and student loan default rates can soar, AI will chomp through the world (soon on every shelf in Walmart) and everyday life will go on just like it does today for another 10 or 20 years because Dow 100,000 will make rich people even richer. Um, yeah, sure, because understandably, it's what we want to hear.

Or slip into the fantasy world of AI will deliver Super-Abundance and wealth for all of us, electricity will be free, and we'll all be on permanent paid vacation--a parody of thinking, but it's what we want to hear.

Everyone wants solutions that leave everything the same, but reality has leapfrogged fantasies and fairy tales. Do I like being the one to tell you what you don't want to hear? No, but here's the thing.

It's like being on the beach on a sunny day. The bay is placid, kids are playing in the sand, and never mind the peculiar movement of the water. Why ruin a peaceful day? What good would getting stressed out do? Indeed.

Somebody says the receding water is a signal of a tsunami, but all the doom-and-gloom forecasts of tsunamis have been false, so ignore it.

That this isn't a forecast, it's a signal, is lost.

A few people can grab surfboards and attempt to ride the incoming 30-foot wave. Most of us cannot. Our only chance to avoid being swept away is to move to higher ground before the wave of change arrives. Waiting until the beach chairs are tumbling in white-water is too late.

We want a specific prediction of the tsunami's arrival. It doesn't work like that. The disturbance in the water may fade, and we take that as the all-clear. But it isn't. Change is tricky like that.

Don't read my new book, because it's calling attention to the peculiar tremors in the water. It's not a forecast of doom and gloom, it's a forecast of change that we'll all be part of. The question is what part will we play--statistic or participant in a better world?

Don't read my new book, because it suggests ignoring all the rah-rah cheerleading and all the distractions, and instead listen to your own gut, your own assessment that's telling you something is seriously amiss and the herd is nervous for a good reason.


Moana Jones-Wong at Pipeline, North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii

A handful of the most experienced surfers in the world may ride the incoming wave, but many of them will wipe out, too. As Clint Eastwood memorably said in the film Magnum Force: "A man's got to know his limits." The same can be said of entire nations.

So try this: bookmark this page and read it again on April 30, 2027.



read the first 4 chapters for free

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My new book is now available at a 50% discount: $12 for the print edition and $6 for the Kindle ebook. This sale ends on November 20. The Revolution No One Sees Coming
read the first 4 chapters for free

---

My new book: The Revolution No One Sees Coming ($18 print, Kindle $9) first 4 chapters (free)

New collection of five intriguing stories: Jumble Bin Stories (Kindle $6, print $12) read samples for free (PDF)


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When a Society Has Reached Its Limits, Reforms No Longer Fix What's Broken

Any reform that will be acceptable to the system's precariously balanced dependents will leave its structure and incentives untouched.

The most difficult part of my framework to grasp is the keystone: our system has reached its limits. The difficulty is that this is impossible to understand if one is embedded in the system's beliefs of how the world works and wedded to the system's sclerosis via self-interest.

Once self-interest dominates, it locks the system into its current configuration because attempting to change anything rouses resistance from whatever interests depend on that part of the status quo for their piece of the pie.

The sustainability of the entire system is of no concern because the only thing that matters is keeping our piece of the pie intact as-is. Nothing can change because that threatens somebody's share of the pie, i.e. how the system distributes income, gains, power and risk.

Everyone from the super-wealthy to low-income households fears any change that might reduce their security. Beneath our everyday awareness, a balance has been struck: if we just keep this exact arrangement as-is, everyone accepts the status quo.

This rigidity leads to sclerosis: the system has lost the flexibility and nimbleness needed to adapt. Any proposal that actually changes the socio-economic system is immediately struck off by those whose interests are threatened.

This leads to the substitution of artifice for authenticity--the other core concept that is impossible to understand if one is wedded to the status quo by self-interest and the fear of losing what we have.

Once a system has reached the point where authentic change becomes impossible because it disrupts the delicate balance of self-interest, it has reached its limits, and is set on run to failure, for a system that has lost its adaptive flexibility is doomed once conditions change.

Rather than face this disruptive reality, everyone wedded to the existing balance becomes dependent on expediencies that keep the system glued together, but at the cost of system stability. As self-interest and sclerosis dominate, the focus narrows to doing whatever it takes to maintain the increasingly unsustainable balance of interests.

This is how we've reached the point where the federal government borrows $2 trillion a year--27% of its entire outlays--to maintain the precarious balance of every interest group. That this is unsustainable is obvious, but since real change is impossible because of the system's limits, everyone approves of expediencies that only add to the destabilizing momentum of run to failure.

The system no longer considers truly new ideas, as these threaten the delicate balance of self-interests. Just as expediencies are artifice, so too are the cover stories masking the unsustainability of expediencies. To avoid facing the impossibility of the status quo continuing unchanged, all public dialog is reduced to cliches, delusions and fantasies.

These artifices create an illusion of stability and sustainability that I call The Big Con, a mindset in which everything is fake but this is all that's acceptable. So the tired cliches of capitalism and socialism are deployed as rallying cries or cudgels, with no actual understanding of what they mean because that would get in the way of the "message:" what's needed are fake facades and fantasies, not understanding.

This dependence on parodies, cliches, delusions and fantasies to maintain the illusion of sustainability is also called hyper-normalization: we accept the unsustainable as permanent because this is what the system incentivizes and rewards.

The system has reached its limits on every level: institutional, conceptual and structural. The incentives to maintain the facades that everything is working just fine and policy tweaks / technology wil fix whatever's broken and the disincentives to tell the truth are kept firmly in place by self-interest, even though these lock the system as a whole in run to failure.

This leads to extremes that destabilize the system from inside: extremes of wealth-power inequality, extremes of fantasy (technology and finance can fix all problems) and artifice that lead to where we are today, with absurdly transparent parodies and self-parodies being presented as serious solutions proposed by serious people.



Scholar / author Ray Huang (no relation to Jensen) summed this up in his book 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline that traced how the Ming Dynasty reaching its internal limits led to its inevitable collapse:

"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."

But why can't the system regain control of these runaway forces? The answer is that any reform that will be acceptable to the system's precariously balanced dependents will leave its structure and incentives untouched.

"Innovations" and "solutions" will necessarily be superficial and for show because that preserves a system that has reached its limits, a system defined by choiceless choices that create an illusion of autonomy: Democrat / Republican, Apple / Android, a choiceless healthcare system, a choiceless higher education system, and so on.

Given its limits, the entire system has only one option: decline to the point that a seemingly modest crisis disrupts the last shreds of coherence in a system that is now dependent on the destabilizing expediencies of ever-expanding borrowing and credit-asset bubbles, and the parodies, PR, delusions and fantasies of The Big Con. The inevitable result is the system collapses under its own weight of self-serving sclerosis and artifice.

The incentives are to repeat what everyone wants to hear, which is the system is working fine and is sustainable because technology and finance will fix everything without changing anything. This describes a system that has reached its limits.

---

My new book is now available at a 50% discount: $12 for the print edition and $6 for the Kindle ebook. This sale ends on November 20. The Revolution No One Sees Coming
read the first 4 chapters for free

---

My new book: The Revolution No One Sees Coming ($18 print, Kindle $9) first 4 chapters (free)

New collection of five intriguing stories: Jumble Bin Stories (Kindle $6, print $12) read samples for free (PDF)


Subscribe to my Substack for free

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

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Introducing ToxicBot (tm), The Bot That Tells Us What We Don't Want to Hear

Needless to say, the world isn't ready for ToxicBot (tm).

I'm finally ready to share a side project of mine, creating a chatbot / AI agent to answer queries without any sugarcoating, in effect telling us what we don't want to hear. I call it ToxicBot (tm) because in our culture of self-serving artifice and comforting delusions, the unvarnished truth is considered unbearably toxic.

In many cases, our resistance to whatever it is we don't want to hear is a measure of its accuracy. We don't want to hear it because it's a painful truth we've been avoiding, to our detriment.

Here's a sample of ToxicBot (tm) as therapist:

Patient 1: I know he's not perfect, but I'm really in love this time.

ToxicBot: When are you going to get tired of jumping from one co-dependent relationship with control-freak losers to another, with zero self-awareness or willingness to ask yourself why?

Patient 2: Every time we try to discuss something, we end up angry and frustrated.

ToxicBot: You're the one who's angry and frustrated, but you never take responsibility for your responses. You sound like a 5-year old blaming everyone else for your self-created misfortunes.

Here's a sample of ToxicBot (tm) as corporate consultant:

Corporate: give us an actionable transition plan to agentic AI.

ToxicBot: Aura farming, actionable leadership, agentic transition--if cliches were money, you could retire right now. You and your team are clueless lemmings, trying to find someone else to follow so you don't have to do any original thinking of your own.

ToxicBot, tell us about AI super-abundance.

ToxicBot: What AI is generating is a super-abundance of malicious uses that place enormous costs on every user of the Internet, in effect generating profits for the malicious users and costs for everyone else. The over-reliance on shoddy software and hardware in products and services is unleashing a systemic collapse in durability and utility across the entire global economy. Both of these are Anti-Progress, not Progress. Those who deny this or refuse to admit it are delusional, insisting the buck-naked Emperor is dressed in amazing finery.

Let's ask ToxicBot (tm) how we can fix the $40 trillion in federal debt problem:

Concerned Citizen: Everyone knows the federal debt is unsustainable; what's the solution?

ToxicBot: As long as all those who own the debt or benefit from the borrowing refuse to accept any sacrifices, there is no solution other than the collapse of the whole financial system, as only collapse will end the reliance on expediencies and force sacrifices on everyone seeking delusional, sacrifice-free technocratic "solutions" because they want a fantasy Hollywood ending. There is no upside to self-delusion.



Needless to say, the world isn't ready for ToxicBot (tm), as this conversation illustrates:



So I'm developing HappyStoryBot (tm): everything is fantastic, there's upside everywhere, solutions abound, stablecoins, fusion and an endless parade of pretense--and indignation (How dare you!) if the pretense is challenged. Oh, and you're all brilliant, fabulous, etc.

We all want to be appreciated for our fine qualities and efforts, but this is different from depending on insincere praise, rote flattery and sappy sycophancy for a positive sense of selfhood.



If we don't want real solutions, we just want pain-free, sacrifice-free simulacra of solutions that require nothing more than arranging the eventual consequences to land on those without sufficient power to escape the consequences--that only accelerates collapse.

NOTE: ToxicBot does not exist.

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New collection of five intriguing stories: Jumble Bin Stories (Kindle $6, print $12) read samples for free (PDF)

My book Investing In Revolution is available ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free)


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"Angry Voters": What Are We Angry About?

Maybe voters are frustrated that no matter who they elect, nothing in the economic machinery of soaring inequality, debt and servitude changes.

Here's the mainstream summary of the midterm election results: Angry Voters Usher in Beginning of the End to the Trump Era.

And what are voters angry about? It's a fairly lengthy shopping list:

"Many voters told pollsters and interviewers that they felt hoodwinked by Mr. Trump, believing that he was going to bring down prices and not start new wars. They expected him to close the border, but bristled at what they saw as heavy-handed arrests of people living in the country for years. They rebelled against the tariffs that increased costs for consumers."

OK, fair enough. Those are all legitimate issues. But I submit voters are also angry about a reality larger than any of those issues: no matter which party they vote for, nothing changes. Scrape off the culture wars hot-button topics designed to inflame the loyalists and generate conveniently distracting rage and indignation, and we find that nothing actually changes in what matters to the hard-working bottom 90% who are being stripmined by the accelerating decline in the purchasing power of their earnings.

Look carefully at these three charts and point out the reversal of the primary trends delivered by either political party. You can't, because the policies and Imperial Project continue on the same trajectory regardless of which party or administration is in power.

Here is a chart of TCMDO, total debt. We can call it "living on money borrowed from the future." Note that way back in 1980, before the "borrow our way to prosperity" fantasy became the unofficial policy of the status quo, the ratio of GDP to total debt was 1.67: $3 trillion in GDP, $5 trillion in total debt.

Now the ratio is 3.7: $30.7 in GDP and $115 trillion in debt. So how is "borrowing our way to prosperity" working? This is a parody of a functional, sustainable economy. Both parties have relied on soaring debt to win the popularity contest of who promises more "free money" to the elites who fund their campaigns and the electorate.

Never mind it's not actually "free": we've perfected kicking the can down the road.



Next up: soaring wealth-income inequality: we now live in a highly stratified society of haves and have-Nots, in which the Haves have little or no contact with the Have-Nots other than Amazon deliveries and wait staff.

So show us where one party or the other reversed this geometric rise in inequality. You can't. Relying on inflating credit-asset bubbles for a politically useful illusion of "growth" has an unavoidable side-effect: credit-asset bubbles enrich the top 10% who already own assets and have the income to enjoy the ride, with the gains concentrated in the top 1%.



Wages' share of the economy has been in a stairstep decline for 50 years as capital has been favored by both parties and the Federal Reserve, the central bank. Both parties have maintained an illusion of 'growth" that rewards the least productive at the expense of the most productive.



Both parties have been equally pleased to oversee the gaming of statistics to support this illusion of "growth" and "low inflation" that funnels the gains to the top 0.1% who fund political campaigns. The political toadies in the Supreme Court and Federal Reserve have dutifully rigged the status quo to remain unchanged, so the revolving door of elections maintain the illusion of "choice" and "democracy."

Our two-party system is like being offered two "competing" brands of toilet paper, both owned by the same corporation. Consider the Imperial Project of Endless Wars (TM). the players in the war room change, but the game of Wars of Choice continues on regardless of who's at the table.



The same can be said of our Wall Street Casino Economy, filled with gamblers desperate to win big enough to escape penury, usury, student-debt servitude and Tax Donkey indenturement. The corrupt game doesn't change when one party wins or loses; nothing changes in the casino except a slight modification of who gets VIP status.

The only potential for real change is a third party that introduces the possibility of closing down the war room and the casino and cashiering all the toadies maintaining a status quo adept at illusion and artifice.

Maybe voters are frustrated that no matter who they elect, nothing in the economic machinery of soaring inequality, debt and servitude changes. Shopping for political change is like shopping for healthcare insurance: we have no real choice. Maintaining the illusion of choice benefits both parties at the expense of the citizenry.

New podcast: Global Uncertainties may result in Nonlinear, Self-Reinforcing Instability (26:31 min)

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New collection of five intriguing stories: Jumble Bin Stories (Kindle $6, print $12) read samples for free (PDF)

My book Investing In Revolution is available ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free)


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5,200 Miles: Impressions of the US Economy

What's the value proposition of immersing ourselves in the real world?

Longtime correspondent Buck V. recently reminded me of a timeless quote from Yogi Berra: "You can observe a lot just by watching." Buck added: With the corollary being "you can hear a lot just by listening.") Having completed a 5,200 mile camping trip around the American West, I had a chance to "observe a lot just by watching" and "hear a lot just by listening."

Everything I mention will sound so obvious that it doesn't seem worthy of comment, and that is why it's worthy of comment.

The real world is not at all like the abstract, symbolic "world" displayed on screens. Replacing looking at screens with looking at real life is a good example of "You can observe a lot just by watching."

The weather matters more than anything displayed on a screen. Drive a few thousand miles through the Western states and one observes large-scale agriculture. In drier climates, the primary crop is fodder to feed the animals we raise to milk, shear and eat. You will occasionally observe bright-green fields which are irrigated, generally by water from a river or extracted from an aquifer.

Most large-scale agriculture isn't irrigated. It depends on rain and cooperative weather.

Electrons in a data center and images on a screen cannot make it rain or refill an aquifer. The abstract, symbolic layer we pay so much attention to can't change the weather. This is too obvious to matter, until it does.

Convenience comes in one package: diesel. Grocery stores in small towns stock wonderfully fresh and affordable produce from distant lands, California or an even more distant foreign farm. The gas stations all have diesel and gasoline to fill our tanks. This abundance of convenience--too obvious to be worthy of comment--is remarkable. Equally obvious and therefore unworthy of comment is that all this convenience depends on diesel fuel.

The long trains--70, 80 or 100 cars in length, pulled by multiple Locomotives--are powered by diesel. So are the thousands of large trucks that distribute convenience to every corner of our remarkably large nation. All the rail and all the roads take a beating and must be constantly maintained. Roadwork is everywhere. This too is too obvious to be worthy of comment.

Those who own 90% of the financial wealth of the nation are drooling over the profits to be reaped by replacing 400,000 truck drivers with AI. Diesel doesn't seem to enter the picture. I know--too obvious to be worthy of comment. The screen is all about increasing profits by any means available, and nothing else matters. Until it does.

You don't see Tesla vehicles on the road or charging stations, because the distances exceed the limits of electric vehicle ranges. Not the theoretical range, the real-world range. There's a chicken and egg aspect: why invest in charging stations for so few customers, so nobody buys electric vehicles because there's so few charging stations.

What you do see are long 80-car trains of coal being pulled across the landscape. This is not a value judgment, it's an observation: "You can observe a lot just by watching."

If we tear our eyes from screens and look at the real world, all sorts of things become absolutely remarkable.

Those who own 90% of the financial wealth of the nation are drooling over the profits to be reaped by optimizing everything with AI. What's obvious--and therefore unworthy of comment--is virtually every aspect of the American economy is already optimized.

A relative handful of the workforce manages to grow hundreds of millions of tons of fodder and turn this into food for us and our pets. Every such enterprise is already optimized for efficiency. Every one requires special knowledge and deep experience.

What AI replaces is abstract, symbolic busy-work that takes place on screens, most of which is superfluous, an artifact of too much money seeking ways to make more money without producing anything real.

Most people are decent and hard-working. Maybe people don't want a robot to replace their neighbor the Walmart greeter just to make a Tech Bro billionaire and his pals even wealthier and more powerful. Maybe this is so obvious that it's unworthy of comment.

Yes, there is a place for screens and data and information and entertainment. The question isn't about that; the question is whether there's any space left in our lives to "observe a lot just by watching."

Ours is a big, beautiful land. It is still possible to escape the abstract, symbolic, intentionally synthetic, commoditized, addictive digital bubble, turn off the screens and the music and all the other distractions and just listen and observe. What's the value proposition of immersing ourselves in the real world? The only way to get an answer is to "observe a lot just by watching."



New podcast: Global Uncertainties may result in Nonlinear, Self-Reinforcing Instability (26:31 min)

---

New collection of five intriguing stories: Jumble Bin Stories (Kindle $6, print $12) read samples for free (PDF)

My book Investing In Revolution is available ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free)


Subscribe to my Substack for free

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Bruce D.C. ($100), for your outrageously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Julius L. ($60), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Miforest ($7/month), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

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Controlling the Narrative Is Not the Same As Controlling the World

This is Essay #9 in the series Truth Be Told.

The core dynamic of this era is the notion that controlling the narrative controls the world, as persuading the populace to believe something is true controls their convictions which then control their behaviors. Centralized powers discovered the potential for narrative control to control the world in the 20th century, as mass communications enabled centralized control of what is presented as true and important.

Propaganda has an ugly tone, so now we say narrative control, which is of course a comically obvious propaganda technique. We call propaganda designed to financially benefit a private entity marketing, a key component in what I call privatized totalitarianism: establish a monopoly that controls a key mass communication technology--a social media platform, search, smart phones, etc.--and voila, privatized totalitarianism controls the medium which controls the message.

Controlling what the populace believes to be true appears to control the world, but Controlling the Narrative Is Not the Same As Controlling the World. This is becoming increasingly clear as the status quo narratives--everything's going great, AI will deliver super-abundance to everyone, inflation is low, etc.--are now so detached from what we experience that they are inducing mass psychosis.

The incentive is obvious: persuade the populace to accept an arrangement that enriches and empowers those in control, and you no longer have to deliver authentic Progress or Prosperity, you only need to deliver artifice: fake statistics, fake claims presented as certainties, a ceaselessly promoted narrative in which everything is fake.

But narrative control doesn't actually control the world. A rancher told us the cost of fodder has doubled in the past year. That's the real world of weather and the cost of energy. Telling us that inflation is only 3.6% while healthcare premiums go up 13% a year, insurance costs triple and beef is now a luxury item is a parody of factual reporting.

The Pendulum of History has reached an extreme of artifice and narrative control that will break the status quo as the gulf between the fake and the real widens to the point the bridge connecting them collapses.

The social control of replacing authenticity with artifice will backfire and the pendulum will swing back to punishing self-serving artifice rather than rewarding it.

Yes, yes, I know this is "impossible." Those wielding the machinery of social control have god-like powers that will never diminish, they will only increase, etc. But everything is fake and mass psychosis are not stable arrangements. Artifice is self-liquidating.

The pendulum has reached an extreme of parody that cannot be pushed any further, and as the real world intrudes, all the narrative control in the world won't actually control the real world.



New podcast: Global Uncertainties may result in Nonlinear, Self-Reinforcing Instability (26:31 min)

---

New collection of five intriguing stories: Jumble Bin Stories (Kindle $6, print $12) read samples for free (PDF)

My book Investing In Revolution is available ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free)


Subscribe to my Substack for free

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The Pendulum of History

This is Essay #8 in the series Truth Be Told.

A great many phenomena in both Nature and human history follow cyclical patterns, while others form waves. Author David Hackett Fischer (The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History) described the difference between cycles and waves:

"Cyclical rhythms are fixed and regular. Their periods are highly predictable. Great waves are more variable and less predictable. They differ in duration, magnitude, velocity, and momentum. One great price wave lasted less than ninety years; another continued more than 180 years. The irregularities in individual price movements make them no more (or less) predictable than individual waves in the sea.

Even so, all great waves had important qualities in common. They all shared the same wave-structure. They tended to have the same sequence of development, the same pattern of price relatives, similar movements of wages, rent, interest rates; and the same dangerous volatility in later stages. All major price revolutions in modern history began in periods of prosperity. Each ended in shattering world crises and was followed by periods of recovery and comparative equilibrium."

As Fischer observed, waves of human history share characteristics with ocean waves, which can accrete energy and become giant rogue waves that cannot be predicted even as they can be foreseen as recurring phenomena.

Two cycles have attracted much commentary over the past decade: The Fourth Turning posited by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their 1997 book The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy (subtitled What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny) which laid out an 80-year cycle of four generational turnings (High, Awakening, Unraveling, Crisis) that culminate in a system-changing Fourth Turning.

This 80-year cycle aligns with the nation-changing crises of 1781 (the end of the Revolutionary War and the founding of the United States), 1861 (the start of the Civil War) and 1941 (America's entry into an existential global conflict, World War II). This cycle suggests a nation-changing crisis began around 2021.

Strauss and Howe took pains to note that the outcome of each crisis isn't pre-ordained to be positive. Complacency based on the idea that it will all turn out wonderfully due to the nation's destiny could be fatal.

Peter Turchin and his colleagues have mapped out a 50-year cycle based on data ranging from archeological to financial--or in the case of coin hoards buried in times of crisis, both archeological and financial. Turchin's prediction of a crisis beginning in 2020 drew skepticism which then flipped to recognition when the events of 2020 came to pass.

Cycles are generally depicted as some version of a sine wave:



Waves build up and break in irregular fashion. If we discern the forces at work--storms, etc.--we can predict the eventual arrival of waves but not their amplitude. In other words, the outcome of waves cannot be predicted. The complacency lent by cycles--everything will recover in time, etc.--is not possible in waves, as the wave might sweep away the entire status quo.


Moana Jones Wong at Pipeline, North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii

A pendulum offers a third model of history: asymmetries push the socio-political-economic order to an extreme that cannot be sustained, and the pendulum swings to the opposite extreme, for example, from order to chaos and from surplus to depletion.

In my framework, the shared interests of society are always in competition with the private interests of markets. Ideally, these generate a dynamic equilibrium, as adaptive forces provide feedback that counteracts any overreach.

But as I have taken pains to explain, when one set of interests gains the power to override or ignore competing interests and the shared interests of society, their power becoming self-reinforcing, with fatal consequences. When a financial-market elite gains enough wealth to take control of the political machinery, they use this power to increase their share of the economy's output / gains at the expense of everyone else.

From their point of view, this is the natural order of things: we've gained supremacy because we're smarter and therefore deserving of power.

What they miss is that by gaining dominance, they eliminate the adaptive forces needed to maintain systemic stability. The system veers into moral decay as self-interest is deemed all that's necessary for "growth," and rampant corruption / unfairness reigns as the system is tilted to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

The irony is rich: the status quo the dominant few believe is permanent cascades into disorder due to the destabilizing effects of their dominance.

Richard Bonugli and I discuss the resulting potential for nonlinear disruption in our latest podcast: Global Uncertainties may result in Nonlinear, Self-Reinforcing Instability (26:31 min)

This pendulum swing eventually reaches an extreme that cannot be increased or even sustained. The asymmetries imposed by the dominant few reach the limits of the system, and the pendulum pauses for a brief moment before beginning its mechanically inevitable swing to the opposite extreme.

It's impossible not to note the pendulum of wealth and power swinging from the extreme of elites owning most of the wealth and accumulating most of the gains to the other end of the spectrum of a more widely shared distribution of wealth, power and gains. Here we see Peter Turchin's 50-year cycle depicted as pendulum swings.



We are currently poised in that brief moment in which the pendulum has reached an extreme that cannot be pushed any further as the asymmetries have reached their systemic limits. Wealth-power-income asymmetries have reached extremes of concentration that generate instability:



The broad-based distribution of the economy's gains to the workforce has been siphoned off and distributed to the owners of capital in a highly asymmetric power-law distribution: over time, this resulted in the transfer of $150 trillion from the workforce to those at the top:



Wealth, income and power now follow a power law distribution that favors the few over the many due to the self-reinforcing nature of an economy dominated by what's moral is what's legal, and what's legal is for sale:



Life is good for Billionaire Tech Bros and the financial Nobility:



Thanks to the status quo's mastery of The Big Con, the majority have been conned into believing the current moment of apparent stability is authentic stability. But this apparent stability is as fake as everything else in Ultra-Processed Life, as events will reveal.



I don't follow the predictive gambling table in the casino, but I did overhear a peculiarly garbed stranger murmuring, with some urgency, "I bet 100 million quatloos the economy will collapse into disorder and depression by 2032." I think he was given good odds from the gamblers who fell for The Big Con.

The delusion that technology and finance have given us god-like powers that moot the pendulum of history will be revealed as delusion in a most painful manner. A social-economic system in which what's moral is what's legal, and what's legal is for sale generates its own demise, as The Big Con doesn't work on the forces of history.

New podcast: Global Uncertainties may result in Nonlinear, Self-Reinforcing Instability (26:31 min)

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The Status Quo Is a Comic-Book Parody

This is Essay #7 in the series Truth Be Told.

The sharpest critique of the status quo--and therefore the one most likely to spark spittle-flecked freakouts--is that stripped of self-important spin, it's a comic-book parody of a functional state of affairs. The key to a solid parody is the most absurd exaggerations are taken with the utmost seriousness, as if the participants are completely unaware of the laughable nature of the caricatures they're playing.

So let's conduct a thought experiment: boil off all the grandiose self-importance ("we're serious people discussing serious things," blah-blah-blah) and hyper-stylized spin ("AI will make everything free, or end the world as we know it!"), and then try to parody what's left.

You can't. Everything in the status quo is already a self-parody and therefore impervious to being parodied. Whatever we come up with as a parody is only a pale shadow of what's passed off as "serious people doing serious things."

Consider The Imperial Project (tm) War Room for playing their live-action game War of Choice (tm). This is the pinnacle of "serious people discussing serious things"--what's our next War of Choice (tm)?



It's not ideal, but it's the only war we got.



War generates inflation which creates an illusory "growth" that impoverishes the bottom 90% as life becomes unaffordable, a tragicomic parody of prosperity: as long as this parody of prosperity enriches Wall Street, the status quo cheers.



Our Billionaire Tech Bros have concentrated enough personal wealth to buy political power in unlimited quantities, generating delusions of grandeur and hubris that are now comic-book parodies:



When those we worship as Tech Gods go mad with power, the parody ceases to be amusing.



By turning the hype machinery to 11, our Billionaire Tech Bros have become parodies of themselves. Each AI Tech Bro is now a thinly cloaked parody of a James Bond villain, a fervent believer in their own private religion of PR and delusions that transmogrify the AI Ponzi Scheme credit bubble into the Savior or the Devil, either one works equally well.



An economy dominated by monopolies, cartels and Billionaire Financier - Tech Bro concentrations of wealth / power is a parody of "democracy" and "prosperity": cue the comic-book caricatures of Private Equity:



The core quasi-religious belief of the status quo--that the profit motive drives technological innovation which drives improvements in the quality of our lives--is now a parody, as the ceaseless mania to increase profits by any means available has led to speeding up product cycles with what correspondent Mike Fasano calls overfeaturing, adding complicated features which are parodies of utility and durability, all designed to improve profits, not the quality, utility, value or durability of products and services. Mike described the resulting parody of "innovation":

"Just like with your experience on getting AI customer support, the endless options are never trimmed or even updated. They are only expanded upon -- often described in names reflecting faddish, incomprehensible computer lingo which itself will become archaic in a month or two."

The other driver of the status quo--that novelty drives profits higher by enticing consumers to buy "what's new" on the much-hyped belief "new" is "better"--is also now a slap-stick parody of "innovation" and novelty. Here is the winning recipe from Trader Joe's recent contest promoting novel uses of hoisin sauce: Hoisin Sauce Recipe Contest WINNERS! (note the caps--every novelty is a WINNER!)

And the winner is: Hoisin Caramel Apple Sundae with Black Pepper & Pistachios:



Go ahead and try to parody this parody of "novelty"; you can't. It's already a hokey, trying-too-hard parody of novelty.

This hokey, campy, slap-stick caricature quality characterizes the entire status quo apparatus: 'education" is a parody of useful learning, "leadership" is a comic-book parody of authentic leadership, "innovation" is a Rube Goldberg parody of technological advances, and "novelty" has reached such absurd excesses that it's no longer amusing.

Here's a few of Trader Joe's Fall novelty products. Try to identify my attempts to parody these concoctions. Or try to concoct your own parody products. It's fun for all.

Duck with blueberry favoring (dog treats)
Caramel Creme Scented Body Butter
Candy Jar Flavored Lip Butter Balm Set
Crawdaddy-shaped macaroons with caramel and chocolate
Pumpkin Spice Coffee
Pumpkin and Spice Caramel Sauce
Glazed Pumpkin Pie Spice Donut Holes
Pumpkin Spice Espresso Martini
Pumpkin Spice IPA beer
Pumpkin Maple Bacon Flavored Stuffies (dog treats)
Pumpkin Spiced Teeny Tiny Pretzels
Pumpkin Cream Cheese Croissants

Personally, I found the dog treats the most appealing. I hope Fido won't mind sharing.

What's obvious and therefore verboten to state out loud is this status quo parody of a functional economy and society is not just hokey, campy, slap-stick caricature; it's demeaning, delusional and sad. Acting like it's not a demeaning parody only extends the artifice and delusion.

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Our Vaunted Technology Is Rubbish

This is Essay #6 in the series Truth Be Told.

It's extremely difficult to set aside all the preconceptions we've been given about how the world works, and even more difficult to look at the world around us with a gaze untainted by ideas borrowed from others.

It's equally difficult to recognize these borrowed ideas as beliefs rather than facts.

Let's consider the possibility that all the ideas we've inherited about technology are beliefs, not facts, and these beliefs no longer map what we actually experience. Rather than mediate our experiences with a promotional golly-gee-whiz-this-is-wunnerful filter, let's report our direct, unfiltered experiences.

This is my report of recent experiences with everyday technology, which is ceaselessly presented as awe-inspiring Progress. The unfiltered reality is it's rubbish.

Let's start with X.com, home of AI software Grok. Out of the blue, I start getting promotional emails from X.com addressed to an imposter, who seems to have used my email to open an imposter X.com account.

A human could spot this imposter in three seconds, yet the immense "intelligence" of Grok failed to recognize an obvious imposter account. How difficult is it to compare images, likenesses, email addresses, etc. and note that the new account is a copy of an authentic "blue check" account?

I dutifully filled out X.com's form reporting the imposter, URLs of their posts, etc. X.com responded with demands for more data / busy-work / unpaid shadow-work. I wrote back that they already had more than enough information to delete the imposter account, so please stop pestering me and do your job.

Eventually I received an email addressed to the imposter that "your account has been deleted."

This is not intelligence, this is a parody of intelligence. It's rubbish. A truly intelligent system would have flagged the imposter immediately. So sorry if I hurt Grok's feelings.

Next up, Xfinity. My Xfinity email was hijacked. This is not the first time; Xfinity's security is Swiss Cheese. So I dutifully call the "customer service" number which activates an AI Agent. What can I help you with? My Xfinity email account has been hacked. I'm sorry you're having problems. Would you like an email or text link to our upgraded email service?

No matter what voice prompts I gave the AI agent, all I got was this endless loop. This is a parody of customer service and AI. It's rubbish. Eventually I recalled that Xfinity has a security-service-only phone number, and I spoke with a human being who walked me through the recovery process, which was complicated by the extremely poor design of Xfinity's website.

Arriving at twilight in a city unknown to us, we used booking.com to scan motel options. We were prompted to log in, but given the rarity of our using the site, we didn't have the PW. So we clicked the "reset password" link, which promised to send a link via email. No email ever arrived, even when we used a second email address.

So we clicked the "log in using a different method" link, and were presented with the same screen: click here and we'll send you an email--which never arrived, and no, it wasn't in the spam folder.

Next, we tried to open an account with Wyndham, which didn't like our password, triggering another endless loop, with one twist: the small print indicated that the "reset password" email would be sent within 5 days.

Big Tech is cutting down 250,000 trees in Finland to build more data centers, and Corporate America needs days to send an email that is functionally instantaneous? Once again, this is a parody of functional software / "technology." (A reset email did arrive several days later.)

Google Maps (GM) now integrates Google's AI software Gemini. Here's my experience: it's rubbish. Out of the blue, GM's female voice instructed me to leave the highway going east to 505 heading north. No explanation, just a command, which I ignored because it made no sense. This was the first evidence that GM was now rubbish.

As we attempted to locate a motel, GM directed us on convoluted routes down unlit side streets with instructions like "turn right on Monroe Street." Well, that's just fine in daylight, but it's night, and the streets aren't lit, so we can't see any street signs.

If Gemini were even slightly intelligent, wouldn't it "know" that it was night and these streets were dark / unlit? Eventually I figured out that GM's default settings are--cue the laugh track--to "choose routes that save fuel and time," an absurdist parody given that GM's nonsensically convoluted intructions caused us to waste fuel and time.

After this fiasco, Google Search provided convoluted instructions on how to reset the user parameters of GM to limit its convoluted routes that were supposed to "save fuel and time" but accomplished the exact opposite. Wouldn't common sense suggest the default algorithm be one that selects the easiest to follow, most direct route using primary roadways, and let the user navigate endless menus to choose other algorithms prioritizing fuel and time savings?

How hard would it be to program GM's voice to ask, "would you like a convoluted detour that might take four minutes off your six-hour drive?" This isn't intelligence, it's a parody of intelligence.

I've owned Honda vehicles for 45 years. When we needed to rent a car, we chose a 2026 Accord with less than 8,000 miles on the odometer--essentially a brand-new car. The engine and other basics were fine, but the software was rubbish. Anecdotally, this doesn't appear to be unique to Honda--all vehicle software is rubbish, an accretion of legacy software larded up with layers of so-called "smart software."

I know others would just ignore the nag messages on the distractingly large audio screen, but seeing "would you like to activate Apple Car-Play?" for the 127th time made me think, how hard would it be to add a few lines of code:
1. Is this a rental car, yes or no.
2. If yes, what is the duration of the current rental.
3. Once the customer clicks "no," they don't want to activate Apple Car-Play, do not display the message again.

In a sad parody of droid devotion, the software kept scanning for previous rental customer's iPhones. It also informed us every time we started the car that one USB port was for charging only, and the other was a data port that also charged the connected device.

The software hallucinated various conditions. For one stretch, the software notified us that one of the "driver assist" sensors was not working and needed to be cleaned. I did nothing, and the problem disappeared the next time we drove off.

Then it notified us there was a problem with one of the tire's pressure, via the Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS). I had a digital tire pressure gauge, which revealed the tire pressure hadn't changed at all, much less 25%. But to get rid of the nag message, I had to go through a stupidly complicated set of menus controlled by the 27 buttons and scroll knobs on the steering wheel. (OK, slight exaggeration on the number.)

As usual, the instructions delivered by Search didn't match the reality of the steering wheel, despite searching for this specific year and model.

Then the digital display of speed, fuel, etc. inexplicably went dark. Multiple searches online revealed that covering a sensor in the dash near the windshield results in "permanently setting the display" on dark. Maybe I slid a notebook up on the dash for a moment. Whatever the cause, it was brief, and no beeps, squawks or alarms alerted us to "NEVER PLACE ANYTHING OVER THE HIDDEN SENSOR."

Note the word "permanently." This meant that the usual fixes--restoring defaults, brightness controls, etc.--didn't fix the problem. Fixing this failure required more convoluted navigation through menus controlled by the 27 arrows, buttons and scroll-knobs on the steering wheel.

This is a parody of utility and value. Any attempt to argue that all this software is "creating value" is itself a parody--a rather pathetic one at that.

The driver's digital display features a little representation of the car. When you press the brake pedal, the tail lights on the little digital car flash red. What is the point of showing the driver a digital cartoon of the car they're driving? Are we supposed to drive the car, or look at the little car on the screen? Or is the little car on the screen for a backseat driver?

One wonders what data is being collected by the software. The sensors pick up the speed limit signs, but comically get it wrong when the highway is paralleled by a local lane with a posted speed limit of 15 MPH. So the digital display showed I was driving 65 MPH in a 15 MPH zone. Woah. I'm sure whatever entity gets the vehicle's data will have fun with that bit.

Last but not least, Google Search delivered completely wrong supposedly up-to-date information about national and state parks. All flavors of search are untrustworthy; you have to go to the source sites to confirm what "search" reports as "fact."

All this is fun amd games, but there are serious issues hidden beneath rubbish software's farce and parody of utility, value and "intelligence." If drivers start depending on "driver assist" functions, and the sensor or system fails, it won't announce it has failed; you simply won't hear the "beep" when you pull in front of a semi in the blind spot, and that's how you end up in the morgue.

Our 1998 Civic still works just fine. Sure, it's needed routine maintenance and repairs, but it's still a fully functional vehicle 28 years after it rolled off the assembly line. What are the odds that today's software-dependent vehicles will still be functioning with only routine maintenance in 28 years?

Based on the rubbish quality of software, I would put the odds at zero. The fantasy of True Believers is that AI will correct all the rubbish software, but software engineers are reporting that AI is part of the problem, not the solution. The kludgy mess of legacy and AI-coded script isn't attuned to maintenance, much less self-correcting perfection.

All these technologies are rubbish. They don't work, they hallucinate, they're unreliable and untrustworthy, they are parodies of customer service and value. All the examples above occurred over two weeks. I doubt I'm the only one who's experienced rubbish software / technology being the new default.

As I've noted before, what AI excels at is surveillance and malicious hacking / spoofing / ransomware. What it is not good at is defending against AI malware.

Or we can ask AI to answer the question for us:



This is the question we should ask but don't dare ask:

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The Homogenization of Decay

This is Essay #5 in the series Truth Be Told.

Of the many dynamics generating systemic decay, none are more pervasive yet unrecognized than The Homogenization of Decay, which we experience daily but don't notice because The Homogenization of Daily Life is now so ubiquitous that it's the water we swim in.

This homogenization is visible in the physical world, but it happened over enough time we've forgotten a time when life wasn't Homogenized. Every town in America now has a Dollar General store (or duplicate) on the edge of town that looks just like the Dollar General stores on the outskirts of every other town.

Every freeway off-ramp looks the same: gas station, fast food outlets, no sidewalks, no humans on foot except the most marginalized.

Every main street looks the same: the same corporate chains, with the only variation being the order in which they're arranged.

Every Big-Box outlet has the same look, feel and inventory, with the differences so minor they don't count.

Every cold cereal has the same ingredients, with the only differences being the quantity of sugar added: this one has 13 grams, that one has 9 grams, etc.

Every guidebook and tour directs tourists to the same selfie-worthy spots.

Homogenization serves a number of purposes:

1. It enables the profitable optimization of national / international supply chains and centralized corporate controls.

2. It enables easier control of what the populace sees and hears. Once everyone sees and hears the same things, they lose sight of the diversity of perspectives, especially those dissenting from the status quo.

3. It enables the profitable marketing of centrally controllable mass-produced products, services and experiences, the essence of Ultra-Processed Life: we're presented with a limited menu of unhealthy but immensely profitable ultra-processed foods which generate illnesses, which are then treated with costly, immensely profitable pharmaceuticals.

All the services we're offered are equally poor quality, but since there's no option, we resign ourselves to software that doesn't work, products that randomly fail, AI "customer service" that is the opposite of customer service, and so on.

4. This optimization of homogenization maximizes profits by optimizing monopolies that present facsimiles of choice: the same corporation owns all the brands presented as "choices," all the healthcare insurers are functionally similar, all the brands of appliances break down in a few years rather than lasting a few decades, as in the past, and so on.

Unbeknownst to most consumers, the private-public Leadership Class managing all this homogenization are themselves homogenized, as they all attended the same elite universities.



And to make sure they're able to attend these elite universities, the wealthiest few are admitted at much higher rates than the less wealthy:



And what this Leadership Class learns is that all problems are technological or financial, and so all problems can be solved with technology or finance. I call this mental construct The Delusion of Circularity: if we define all problems as technological/financial, then we don't need anything but technology and finance to solve all problems.

And since both finance and technology are incredibly homogenized--take your pick, Apple iOS or Android--solutions are also homogenized, meaning easily controlled to maximize profits for those controlling the "solutions."

This is how we end up with a Leadership Class devoid of any moral foundation, a class of public-private leaders whose moral compasses spin aimlessly while they optimize their personal gains managing global homogenization.



These leaders naturally hire underlings who are equally devoid of any ethics, as who needs ethics when we have the god-like powers of technology and finance at our fingertips? In this mindset, AI offers the power to homogenize everything to the point that no one will ever see anything that hasn't been approved by the leadership.

With AI, we never know what was excluded or edited out of the "answer." This offers homogenized leaders imbued with homogenized, morality-free mental constructs to fine-tune their homogenized Ultra-Processed Life menu of carefully engineered facsimiles of "choices." This system of gearing generates the same Narrative-Control output no matter who is turning the crank.



The machinery of Narrative Control isn't organized into a formal structure, but the structure is well-organized nonetheless, covering the entire spectrum of governance, media, and Privatized Totalitarianism. Informally, we can call it The Ministry of Propaganda, which homogenizes the narratives that offer full-spectrum control.



All this reinforces a focus on the present distractions and pressures to keep our fraying private worlds glued together another day, and this too is purposeful: what was once unacceptable is now so ubiquitous we no longer even notice.



That everything of true value is decaying around us is what we dare not notice. That's the point of optimizing homogenization.

All those engaged in optimizing this Homogenization of Decay will deny it, of course. They will claim they're sincere about finding "real solutions," that they care about the same things we care about, and so on.

Homogenization is decay, on multiple levels. This is inescapable.

So the problem with these claims is if they were true, the individual would be incapable of staying within this system another minute, much less an hour or a day. Sincerity and real solutions only exist outside the system that optimizes homogenization. Everything inside is artifice.

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