Friday, March 29, 2024

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.



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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Thursday, March 28, 2024

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.



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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Monday, March 25, 2024

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.



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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Thursday, March 21, 2024

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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Tuesday, March 19, 2024

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.




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Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
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