[ralfy]

Related:

"The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" (2006)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeM5emtaVC0

Those masses were already poor, plus they had been living under a total dictatorship for so long they simply did what they were told. I don't think these 'cases' have much to offer the Western World with it's entitlement ( I certainly have it ) mindset, and unwillingness to pull together in crises.

PeakOilers' have been forever looking for the "solution" to the collapse of western civilization due to oil depletion, and the masses while they are not stupid, they are ignorant, and they know hard times are ahead. When Elon Musk started saying his cars were zero carbon and could let them tool off into the future regardless of oil prices they took the marketing hook line and sinker. Shallow thinkers, ignorant, they were concerned only with their own pleasures. Who cares if children slaving in mines are dying by the droves in Africa to extract the Cobalt for their batteries, They turn a blind eye and demand their Tesla.

You get a crisis in the west and you have as many looters show up as people who want to help. The recent flood in New Zealand was a classic case. The assorted NZ gangs showed up and started taking anything that wasn't nailed down, the Minister though took a strong stance against them and told them to "Pull their heads in" WoW! How dare he use such confronting words. The regions effected had to form their own militias and since most of the guns there are in criminal hands...

Police are committed to being visible around the community, as long-standing gang tensions spark firearms incidents in flood-ravaged Hawke's Bay, says Police Eastern District commander Jeanette Park

Ahhh, a soft hearted Woman in control, no need to get rough, just drive around in circles and scare the hardened gang members that way.
https://cdn.hbapp.co.nz/news/news/video ... hawkes-bay

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politi ... hawkes-bay

If various online sources are right, I think the purpose of that is to help countries that try to copy the U.S. but are as poor as Cuba, like the Philippines.

The results are startling: in most indicators Cuba is doing better than the Philippines in terms of health care, housing, poverty alleviation, low infant mortality, etc., and the Philippines is the main model of U.S. neoliberalism in Asia.

This is also helpful because if not only peak oilers but climatologists and realists are right, then eventually the industrialized West will become like the Philippines, and then worse.

[AdamB]

PeakOilers' have been forever looking for the "solution" to the collapse of western civilization due to oil depletion, and the masses while they are not stupid, they are ignorant, and they know hard times are ahead.

While peak oilers have been looking forever for...something....it wasn't a solution, and faith based belief and geologic ignorance were never a good basis upon which to base their Rapture scenario. Even LATOC groupies should know this by now.

If various online sources are right, I think the purpose of that is to help countries that try to copy the U.S. but are as poor as Cuba, like the Philippines.

The results are startling: in most indicators Cuba is doing better than the Philippines in terms of health care, housing, poverty alleviation, low infant mortality, etc., and the Philippines is the main model of U.S. neoliberalism in Asia.

"Online sources"...good one. You mean like the geologically ignorant that fed you a line at the alter of peak oil 20+ years ago?

This is also helpful because if not only peak oilers but climatologists and realists are right, then eventually the industrialized West will become like the Philippines, and then worse.

Well, we already know peak oilers didn't "get it right", and the climate seems to be headed the way the non-whack-a-doodle ones have been claiming in this century (versus the global cooling gang of the 70's) and the First World didn't become the FIrst World by laying down and being happy with being Third World poor, regardless of climate, availability of oil, or circumstance.

[Newfie]

Yesterday we met a young lady recently from Cuba. She showed us pictures of a cousin who had an industrial accident, it sounded like he was working a big belt sander, the belt broke, and cut up his arm. Probably not deep but several parallel bloody lacerations in his forearm. This occurred 2 days ago.

He went to the clinic for treatment and they just sent him home with the explanation that they have absolutely ZERO supplies; no cotton, bandages, alcohol, NOTHING. She said they have Doctors and medical staff but zippo supplies.

I noted that in Covid Cuba sent personnel and supplies to Dominica so I though they were well supplied. She said “NO, they send stuff to others and we have nothing.”

She was pretty pissed at the government. It was a relatively short conversation, her English was good, she was well spoken and pleasant and very much against the Cuban government. If I got her right it seemed things were getting worse.

Not what I expected.

[AdamB]

Yesterday we met a young lady recently from Cuba. She showed us pictures of a cousin who had an industrial accident, it sounded like he was working a big belt sander, the belt broke, and cut up his arm. Probably not deep but several parallel bloody lacerations in his forearm. This occurred 2 days ago.

He went to the clinic for treatment and they just sent him home with the explanation that they have absolutely ZERO supplies; no cotton, bandages, alcohol, NOTHING. She said they have Doctors and medical staff but zippo supplies.

Yep...First Worlders really want to be Cuban. They've got it so great, living it up post peak oil style.

She was pretty pissed at the government. It was a relatively short conversation, her English was good, she was well spoken and pleasant and very much against the Cuban government. If I got her right it seemed things were getting worse.

Not what I expected.

The video ralphy provided was the 2006 version of how great Cuba was, having made it through a faux peak oil. Mike Ruppert thought the same thing about Venezuela when he fled there after his "maybe I trashed my own office maybe I didn't but I'm going to flee anyway", because apparently the strong man of the day wanted to talk to him about his oil ignorance. Then he got a tummy ache, and the care was free! And ineffective. So he fled back to the country he had forsaken to get care for his tummy ache. Yeah...those Third World countries are sure the model for First Worlders, no doubt about it.

[ralfy]

Yesterday we met a young lady recently from Cuba. She showed us pictures of a cousin who had an industrial accident, it sounded like he was working a big belt sander, the belt broke, and cut up his arm. Probably not deep but several parallel bloody lacerations in his forearm. This occurred 2 days ago.

He went to the clinic for treatment and they just sent him home with the explanation that they have absolutely ZERO supplies; no cotton, bandages, alcohol, NOTHING. She said they have Doctors and medical staff but zippo supplies.

I noted that in Covid Cuba sent personnel and supplies to Dominica so I though they were well supplied. She said “NO, they send stuff to others and we have nothing.”

She was pretty pissed at the government. It was a relatively short conversation, her English was good, she was well spoken and pleasant and very much against the Cuban government. If I got her right it seemed things were getting worse.

Not what I expected.

My preference is info that can be verified rather than with anecdotes. For example,

https://www.cnnphilippines.com/news/201 ... ystem.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaIz0W-Z19I

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... r_Everyone

https://academic.oup.com/heapol/article ... 60/5035053

https://openamericas.org/2017/08/01/the ... re-system/

[AdamB]

My preference is info that can be verified rather than with anecdotes. For example,

You mean you would rather reference stories you like online than face real life data from the people involved? Yup....sounds just like how peak oilers played it....make it up as you go along and whatever you do, don't pay attention to the folks with real live experience on the topic.

[Plantagenet]

Yesterday we met a young lady recently from Cuba. .....She was pretty pissed at the government. It was a relatively short conversation, her English was good, she was well spoken and pleasant and very much against the Cuban government. If I got her right it seemed things were getting worse.

Not what I expected.

I travelled to Cuba eight years ago at the beginning of the brief period when Obama loosened travel restrictions on Americans going to Cuba. I started in Havana and travelled south through the country. I had the opportunity to meet and speak at length with about a dozen young Cubans. Without exception they all hated their government and only wanted to leave Cuba and live somewhere else. Even the Communists I met in Cuba hated the communists.

The communist party controls everything in Cuba, and the level of poverty out in countryside is horrifying. In the cities there were two economies....the socialist one that paid people nothing and a private economy built on US dollars from tourists and the cuban diaspora in Miami.

The Cuban government is just about worthless. It does no maintenance on most roads and buildings it owns and most districts of Havana are full of crumbling and collapsing buildings. Some streets are covered in debris from houses that collapsed, and then the debris can sit there on the street for years.

Cuba away fro Havana was great to travel in.....The communists do put money into the tourist sector in order to get foreign hard currency. For years they've had special isolated tourist resorts for Canadians and Europeans. But with the Obama opening it was suddenly possible to travel independently in Havanan and through Cuba. But the communists had special stores that only tourists were allowed to go into, and the wonderful old American cars you see in tourist brochures are actually almost owned by the communist party who use them as taxi services just for tourists. Some of the landmarks are well maintained as tourist attrations.....I visited Hemingway's favorite bar and favorite hotel in Havana, but they were full of tourists instead Cubans. .I was also lucky enough to stay in the wonderful old Hotel Nacional in Havana......the grand old hotel on the Malecon that the Cuban govemrnet now keeps up to house foreign dignitaries and tourists, but in pre-communist times was the hangout for actors and actresses and writers while in Havana.

There were quite a number of small, private restaurants that were very good.

The bottom line, based on my personal travel in Cuba, is that the Cuban people are wonderful, but the socialist government is a disaster and is hated by the majority of the Cuban people.


Extensive anti-communist demonstrations broke out across Cuba in 2021

Cheers!

[Newfie]

The World Economic Forum puts out a Global Risk Analysis early each year. I download it an give it a perusal. For many years it kept a very consistent format. I was never greatly impressed with their predictive powers but at least they were making some attempt at understanding the risk environment.

This year is different. They have abandoned the old format and the tone of the report has shifted from wondering about potential problems to cataloging and ranking current crisis’. They have taken a short (2 year) and long (10 year) approach which is an improvement, but still very near future focused.

What cones across to me, as a ling term follower, is that they have moved into a much more active stance describing which factors will hurt most in the relative near term. It is not “if a crisis will hit” but “how will each of the current crisis’ play out.” And they have introduced a new term, POLYCRISIS, when separate problems coalesce into a mega crisis.

IOW…. TSHasHTF, it is coming and ready to settle in.

It is not comforting reading. I do suggest giving the summary a gloss.

https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Globa ... t_2023.pdf

The whole report is 98 pages, the summary is around 23 pages.

[Newfie]

RUSSIA appears to be entering a period of profound degrowth.

Satellites monitoring the atmosphere find reduced levels of pollutants indicating decreased industrial activity.

The Paris-based research firm QuantCube works with the ESA to analyze the data, and it tracks specifically the amount of nitrogen dioxide in the air, which is a signifier of the amount of gas, diesel, and coal being burnt.

Over the last six months, the readings show that urban pollution in Moscow and St. Petersburg has ticked higher. But pollution in industrial regions has fallen 1.2% in the six months to April, and is 6.2% lower year over year.

By contrast, Russia's government data showed industrial production climbed 1.2% for the year up to March.

Additional satellite data shows that the automotive sector, construction, oil and gas, and even the defense industry are emitting less pollution. Meanwhile, the thermal power and metals industries are polluting more.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/new ... reddit.com

Along those same lines is this from the UK MOD. Via Twitter, which I can not link)

• Russia is almost certainly facing its worst labour shortage in decades. The Russian Central Bank surveyed 14,000 employers and found that the number of available employees was at its lowest level since 1998.
•Over the last three years, Russia's population has reportedly decreased by two million more people than expected due to the impacts of COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine. Russia saw up to 1.3 million people leave the country in 2022, including many younger and well-educated people in high-value industries. The Russian Ministry of Communications said that about 10% (100,000) of the IT workforce left the country in 2022 and did not return.
• Mobilisation, historically high emigration, and an ageing and shrinking population is limiting the labour supply.
• This will likely lead to a reduction in the potential growth of the Russian economy and risks stoking inflation.

URL=https://imgbox.com/VsINYpsl][/URL]

[theluckycountry]

If various online sources are right, I think the purpose of that is to help countries that try to copy the U.S. but are as poor as Cuba, like the Philippines.

The results are startling: in most indicators Cuba is doing better than the Philippines in terms of health care, housing, poverty alleviation, low infant mortality, etc., and the Philippines is the main model of U.S. neoliberalism in Asia.

This is also helpful because if not only peak oilers but climatologists and realists are right, then eventually the industrialized West will become like the Philippines, and then worse.

Hmmm. For decades we have been fed the line that these poorer nations were on the rise and one day would be like an average western nation. I never believed it myself, the same as I never believed the massive private pensions funds would be worth what they had claimes they would be. Those pensions were instigated globally in the 1980's. Here in Australia it was/is called Superannuation, just a Buzz word to make you feel you're getting rich. Interestingly they came into being at the all time high of interest rates and you were "guaranteed" a 16~18% return on your Enforced savings. The charts published then said the average worker just starting out would retire at 55 a millionaire and if they work to 60 they would mega rich.

All Lies, all designed to siphon money from the bottom to the top. I know lots of people who have been putting in for 40 years and they still can't comfortably retire at age 65. The wheels started to fall off in 2000 with the Tech Bust, then the GFC, and now Tech bust-2 isn't helping many in the high growth allocations either. What hope do average working people in places like Cuba have?

Degrowth? I read that stooge Buffet's comments today, Buffett Turns Gloomy: The "Incredible Period" For The US Economy Is Coming To An End. “Get used to making less” chimed in sidekick Charlie Munger
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/buffe ... coming-end

So a lot of IT people fled Russia eh? When the US loses IT jobs they go to India, not the people, just the jobs. The people stay behind to be a drain on the social security system.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/09/tech-layoffs-2022.html

[Newfie]

Scientific American on global population loss.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... he-better/

[mousepad]

Scientific American on global population loss.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... he-better/

If only the West would be smart enough to embrace population decline.
So far the West is hell bent on importing 3rd world wholesale and turning them into high performance consumers.

[AdamB]

If only the West would be smart enough to embrace population decline.
So far the West is hell bent on importing 3rd world wholesale and turning them into high performance consumers.

Do you believe this is an "on purpose" or more just the natural consequence of the West becoming rich, and all the children they raise heading towards investment banking and social influencing rather than more menial work that we import the 3rd worlders to do?

In my neck of suburbia, the Hispanic contingent of home renovators/tradesmen/lawn care/fast food workers looks to be beyond substantial. You can find white teenagers at the movie theaters (almost exclusively interestingly), the college populations certainly seem to be thoroughly integrated amongst races (been to a couple college educations in the recent past), neighborhoods don't seem to be integrated particularly well, and you can generally figure out pretty quickly if you are in white bread country or not. The mountains tend to be exclusively white folk, and the rifle ranges up there populated by bearded old guys ( I fit right in) with the expected smattering of youngsters learning the ways of the adults and guns.

[Newfie]

And the cities are full of uneducated and unemployed and entied and addicted and pissed off of all colors.

[AdamB]

And the cities are full of uneducated and unemployed and entied and addicted and pissed off of all colors.

Well, having a young daughter who began her professional career and just HAD to live in the city, I wouldn't quite go that far. The homeless endemic is certainly apparent, but the folks you mentioned probably don't have the $2000US/month entrance fee for the run of the mill 700 sq ft apartment, let alone the nice bigger ones. And there are plenty of these working folks around living downtown, so someone is making some bank somewhere in the cities.

However, I would agree that there are enough of these...less well kept....folks in the downtown areas to make them less than a desireable location. The daughter yearned for the big city since she was about 12, achieved it after her first college degree, and fled by the time she finished her post graduate work to the suburbs. Me, I can't stand the suburbs much either but they've grown on me over the decades, plus there are suburbs and then there are suburbs, the kind where you can reach any major professional teams arena on one side, and go elk hunting an equal distance in the opposite direction.

[theluckycountry]

Scientific American on global population loss.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... he-better/

If only the West would be smart enough to embrace population decline.
So far the West is hell bent on importing 3rd world wholesale and turning them into high performance consumers.

The picture in that article shows a group of office johnnys' crossing a street. These people are largely a phenomena of the oil age. Nicely dressed they shuffle around their offices, sitting in their gas-lift chairs pushing their mice and having conferences. In all their guises they probably constitute half the workforce now but in the decades to come they won't be needed.

It's hard for them accept this statement but they are being thrown on the scrapheap in ever greater numbers every year. Plumbers though? You can't find one half the time. Good mechanics? Farmhands? Just imagine a CME that knocks out the worlds power grids and fries most computers connected to it. These people of the mouse would be out of work instantly! And there would be no coming back.

There are many reasons attributed to mass immigration but I think foremost is the desire to keep the wheels turning, keep the taxes coming in, keep social order for as long as they can. Who will fund the baby boomer retirement cohort? I think the politicians had these questions in mind when they began their push for mass immigration.

[AdamB]

Plumbers though? You can't find one half the time. Good mechanics? Farmhands? Just imagine a CME that knocks out the worlds power grids and fries most computers connected to it. These people of the mouse would be out of work instantly! And there would be no coming back.

People of the mouse! I love it! How about people who think big thoughts for a living, and just use a mouse to move the cursor around a computer screen to send emails? Certainly scientists didn't need a mouse to build the foundation of the sciences while the less fortunate are shipped off to prison islands and whatnot. They teach their descendants really....curious....stuff....not like how to be exceptional or throw off the yoke of the overlords, but bury their gold in the backyard because that's how grandpappy did it when he got out of the pokey!

[ralfy]

Hmmm. For decades we have been fed the line that these poorer nations were on the rise and one day would be like an average western nation. I never believed it myself, the same as I never believed the massive private pensions funds would be worth what they had claimes they would be. Those pensions were instigated globally in the 1980's. Here in Australia it was/is called Superannuation, just a Buzz word to make you feel you're getting rich. Interestingly they came into being at the all time high of interest rates and you were "guaranteed" a 16~18% return on your Enforced savings. The charts published then said the average worker just starting out would retire at 55 a millionaire and if they work to 60 they would mega rich.

All Lies, all designed to siphon money from the bottom to the top. I know lots of people who have been putting in for 40 years and they still can't comfortably retire at age 65. The wheels started to fall off in 2000 with the Tech Bust, then the GFC, and now Tech bust-2 isn't helping many in the high growth allocations either. What hope do average working people in places like Cuba have?

Degrowth? I read that stooge Buffet's comments today, Buffett Turns Gloomy: The "Incredible Period" For The US Economy Is Coming To An End. “Get used to making less” chimed in sidekick Charlie Munger
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/buffe ... coming-end

So a lot of IT people fled Russia eh? When the US loses IT jobs they go to India, not the people, just the jobs. The people stay behind to be a drain on the social security system.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/09/tech-layoffs-2022.html

It's seen in increasing sales of goods and services, from food to fuel to clothing to appliances. That's why industrialized countries have also been outsourcing to them for the last few decades: they're not simply availing of cheap labor and even resources but also of growing consumer markets.

For example, during the early 1990s, countries like Philippines and Thailand had similar per capita GDPs. Now, the latter's twice that of the former. Even countries like Malaysia, which didn't exist when the Philippines did, is eight times richer.

Similar is now taking place in the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, and others, and one reason involves young and eager populations. Meanwhile, investors in industrialized countries are relying on them to work and spend more, as their returns are dependent on those. The same applies to consumers who want cheap, imported goods.

[ralfy]

Even science journals and population and sustainability directors can only get paid or funded through surplus from for-profit, capitalist, competitive businesses, and those in turn require the opposite of population decline.

[yellowcanoe]

There are many reasons attributed to mass immigration but I think foremost is the desire to keep the wheels turning, keep the taxes coming in, keep social order for as long as they can. Who will fund the baby boomer retirement cohort? I think the politicians had these questions in mind when they began their push for mass immigration.

My perspective is Canada where we managed to grow our population by almost 3% last year -- a tremendous rate of increase for a post-industrial society. One justification is that we have an aging population but the government appears to have relaxed limits on family reunification and of course a lot of immigrants want to sponsor their elderly parents to come to Canada. That pretty much negates any benefit in dealing with our demographic problems. Filling a labour shortage is also trumpeted but the immigrants themselves create additional demands for services that they themselves are not filling. That we continue to have a labour shortage while we've had a high immigration rate for quite a few years shows that immigration itself is contributing to our labour shortage. Economic growth is also supposedly a benefit of immigration but more commentators are noticing that it isn't useful economic growth -- per capita gdp isn't increasing and the country continues to have a productivity problem. Immigration is also seen as a way to deal with our deficit problems but this fails to account for the fact that immigrants themselves need services so the cost of government increases. We are heading for big social problems because our housing stock is not growing quickly enough to accommodate everyone and our medical system already had insufficient capacity to support those of us already here. Of course none of this seems to matter to our Federal government as they just want to keep growing the amount of immigration every year.