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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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In like manner, Fascist politics give the feeling of “momentum,” “going there” and “moving towards,” an exciting sense of fatal direction.

I question the foundational assumptions which undergird this argument. Marxist and Communist and even liberal and neoliberal ideologies, which have varying claims of "the future is ours!" and "we will win in the future!" and "the world becomes more liberal over time!" have all made the rounds.

Every ideology and every movement makes claims of inevitability. Sure, Landianism also has a tinge of being darkly enlightened. "Our god, our religion, our ideology is better than YOUR ideology" is a key ingredient of every system of constructing national, social, individual, political identity.

Society will progress. Society will regress. Time moves on, and yet there is an idealized past being attempted to move back to, or an idealized future. There is no ideology that exists which doesn't also make meaningful claims about the future and its own inevitability. Latestage capitalism evokes this idea that capitalism will fall over because it's in the last stages of metastization. And yet. And yet it still hasn't fallen over.

The right tends to look back to a lost golden age that never truly existed, while the left tends to look to a future that never ends up the way they expect it to.

I think every civilization exists at some point in a lifecycle. Ibn Khaldun and Oswald Spengler thought as much. Investors have become interested in the economic shifts that play a role in it. Peter Turchin is trying to synthesize something that he thinks may be able to extract patterns out of the mess of history. Toynbee likely would've disagreed.

History is replete with examples of societies who were on top of the world at some point, representing economic and social and technological preeminence; only for the historical wrecking ball to come by and place them on the scrap heap of history. The same will happen in the US at some point, inevitably. I think we're playing a role in driving ourselves off that cliff. Incidentally, people have speculated (and I agree with them) that climate change will reduce the US to a regional power at best, that will no longer be able to sustain its status as the world's sole superpower.

Incidentally, people have speculated (and I agree with them) that climate change will reduce the US to a regional power at best, that will no longer be able to sustain its status as the world's sole superpower.

How? The northern hemisphere is going to get a boost in crop yields.

Studies that separate out climate change from other factors affecting crop yields have shown that yields of some crops (e.g., maize and wheat) in many lower-latitude regions have been affected negatively by observed climate changes, while in many higher-latitude regions, yields of some crops (e.g., maize, wheat, and sugar beets) have been affected positively over recent decades. https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/chapter-5/

The US will likely continue on its trajectory, losing power relative to the rest of the world, but not because of climate change.

I don't know how long your time horizon is, but I think it's just categorically wrong. In fact, it's one of the reasons why I moved out of California to a better area, primarily as a way to hedge against climate risk. Take it from Charlie Hall who pioneered the concept of EROEI. Also recommend the work of the world's leading heterodox economist, Steve Keen and his work on energy. In particular, listen to the episode "Economics and thermodynamics."

The world trends on energy, resource usage and ecological degradation I think tend to support the conclusion.

I think The EROEI crowd are peak oilers who couldn't accept that they lost and cooked up some new doomer nonsense.

The world trends on energy, resource usage and ecological degradation I think tend to support the conclusion.

You mean trends like this:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/maize-production?country=~OWID_WRL

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/agricultural-output-dollars

https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-production

Are your beliefs falsifiable?

I'll have to examine your links further, I'm not confident to make a comment about them without looking at it in greater detail. Yes, my beliefs are falsifiable; I'm committed to them quite firmly however, because I've never seen them addressed.

When you linked to the IPCC above for instance, that's something Keen explicitly takes to task, as he knows many of the people behind the data (and in his view, notoriously 'bad' data) and shows how wildly off the mark it is. For additional information on that, I'd recommend you listen to "The mineral supply crisis that's rarely talked about," and "Nordaus Climate Model Debunked," in the MEGA link above. Nate Hagens also has some good data that I think runs contrary to your notion.

Until I see some solid replies to the contrary that don't sideline or ignore the above, I think I'm fairly secure and on firm ground where I stand. The only problem is, a lot of the people on the forefront of the data tend to ignore it; so it never directly gets addressed.

Can you give me something shorter than a book?

My links are just the straight line of constantly increasing food production through time. This is concrete, things you hold in your hand and put in your mouth. Not models and speculation. You say there's erosion, ecological degradation, but it has not seriously affected us . Every year people warn of peak oil and limited resources, and every year the line creeps upwards as always.

Am I understanding you right, you think the IPCC is too optimistic? Because I think it's too pessimistic.

I'll listen to one podcast/youtube vid. Which do you pick?

Eh, were you able to open the podcast link I posted earlier? I was edging you more toward that than the book (which I was just sourcing, more than anything else):

https://mega.nz/folder/MYlFwYpC#ZHmrbskzPgKHq9BGuWjvFg

Let me know if you have any issues opening the folder. It's directly to my cloud account. Some people have said they have issues (like if they're at work), most have no problems.

I know what you're essentially pointing to, and the long-term trends as it relates to those points are something Keen addresses. I can't pick out the various points via transcript and haven't written them down myself in concrete detail. Podcast wise, the three episodes I recommend are:

  1. The mineral supply crisis that's rarely talked about

  2. Economics and thermodynamics

  3. Nordaus Climate Model Debunked

Pick whichever one seems more to your liking. But that's what I'd recommend at a first pass/superficial level. You'll forgive me, but I want to look into your links in further detail. Until then, I have nothing else to add on that side of things.

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