[theluckycountry]

I am concerned with The Great Reset. Not that Klaus Schwab is in charge of the world, but the WEF, governments and mega-corporations are using the COVID flu to initiate The Great Reset.

Of course, why would they let a good disaster go to waste? The CV lockdowns did in six months what 40 years of jawboning about oil depletion mitigations failed utterly at. Namely to get consumption down from 105 mb a day to 85. More power to them I say, they are finally getting the job done. The fact that they didn't ask "our" permission is what wrangles people.

It's not all doom and gloom though, if you have the money, and are prepared to bend a few rules, then you can live pretty much as before. As we can see they are starting at the bottom of the food chain and all they really need to do is get 80 or 90% of the cars off the roads. In other words, the poor people. After that there is plenty of oil for the rest of us. At least for a decade or so. That's always been the problem with mitigationist thinking, the egalitarian premise that 'the whole world' needs to be catered for. The reality of course is that 'the whole world' has never been catered for and never will be.

For 60 years and more the peoples of the US and it's allies have lived high on the hog, carried aloft by the exploitation of the third world. Now comes the reckoning day doesn't it, and those same people have to take a drastic cut in living standards, end of story. If you're poor all I can say is, Power Down Now, collapse before the rush, sell your car, buy an electric bicycle, and plant a victory garden like in WWII because this will go on and on and a hell of lot more jobs and retirement wealth are going to vanish into the ether.

[Pops]

Just saw a picture of Aaron's cat in the sidebar, made me think of his quote, "don't fear PO, fear people's reaction."

Also just gabbing with my wife over oatmeal. We decided that people aren't any more crazy/deluded/irrational than they ever were, it's just that the internet has made them less shy about sharing.

I also think sociologists who fret about our loss of institutions are ignoring the whole internet conspiracy church. Since this is a reminisce thread, I remember when this site was virtually taken over for months or maybe years by 9/11 conspiracy freaks.

Conspiracy is just god in different clothes. Conspiracies bring order, give meaning, provide a focus in a chaotic world. Most of all they give reassurance that at the very least, someone is in charge, pulling the strings, controlling the chaos. Even if the design is nefarious, it is somehow reassuring

.

[jato0072]

Well Pops, there I am. It keeps coming up in the sidebar, haunting me.

I have lost weight and gotten older.

I have done pretty well in my life for having a high school education. I managed to successfully navigate a 30 year law enforcement career, a 27 year marriage, successfully raising 4 children and managed to stay healthy. Now I own real-estate and I am completely out of debt. I have my whole life invested in the current system. So everyone reading this will know what I am rooting for.

I do think the next 50 years will be drastically different from the last 50 years. I have already watched California's government slide off into insanity. The criminal justice system is being dismantled. From my perspective, everything is changing so fast, it is difficult to keep up.

[Newfie]

Thanks for that perspective.

45 years ago I was just out of the USCG (avionics tech) and after a months rooting I had 3 job offers on the table.
An avionics tech at a small local airline (Ransome>Piedmont>Eastern, IIRC)
A technician at the NJ gas utility (PSE&G)
A laborer in the C&S (Communications and Signals) group at Amtrak.

I took the Amtrak job with a under the table promise to be promoted promptly. I figured that Amtrak, being federally funded would he pretty inflation and lay-off proof. And that bet payed off as expected. I had 7 different jobs and 3 different careers bit always stayed in the rail transit industry. I recently had an offer to ho back to work (decidedly declined) and now see the billions of bucks going into Amtrak and know that that horse still has some legs. It may be one of the last stable career paths available, outside medical and hospice care.

So there has been a lot of stability in MY life, I don’t feel the changes because of the federal buffer.

In retirement we tend to hang out in places that have suffered through degrowth or never grew to start with. I was just thinking how common it is to see a fellow walking down the road with a machete, it is his bread and butter. It does not make me feel vulnerable. Yet in NYC my normal pocket knife rates a felony offense, and I DO feel vulnerable there.

I can SEE changes, I notice the herd mooing and shifting around, not yet in a stampeded, but it feels like it could happen soon.

Has anyone noticed how the BLM protests have either shut down or are not being broadcast? Here in Philly there have been a couple of police shootings with not a peep while a few months ago they would have resulted in riots. What changed? Who changed it?

[JuanP]

Has anyone noticed how the BLM protests have either shut down or are not being broadcast? Here in Philly there have been a couple of police shootings with not a peep while a few months ago they would have resulted in riots. What changed? Who changed it?

I have been thinking about this almost daily this last couple of weeks. I expected it to happen. Bye, bye BLM! These movements usually don't last long. It seems like trans issues are all the rage now on MSM. I don't expect this to last either. I wonder what they will come up with next. I think it is all to do with our very short, and constantly diminishing, attention spans. The COVID MSM flurry has lasted longer than I expected it to, though, and I admit that it has held my attention since the beginning. The whole woke thing is still around, too, but lacks order, coordination, or consistency, and I don't expect much to come of it.

[ROCKMAN]

Newfie - Same situation in Houston. But all along the vast number of black/hisp killed here were killed by other black/hisp civilians. Which has always been the case. In general our cops and deputies tend not to be too trigger happy. In fact, lately many are getting taken out by bad guys shooting first.

But there are a few rare exceptions that lead to questions of unneccesary fatal shooting by the LEO's. But most don't understand that Houston is the most diverse major city in the country: The 5 largest ethnic groups in Houston, TX are White (Hispanic) (31.2%), White (Non-Hispanic) (23.3%), Black or African American (Non-Hispanic) (22.4%), Other (Hispanic) (12.9%), and Asian (Non-Hispanic) (6.47%). 49% of the households in Houston, TX speak a non-English language at home as their primary language, and 81.6% of the residents in Houston, TX are U.S. citizens.. We do not have a major white population. Not sure of the % but we do have a lot of black/hisp cops and deputies. Thus difficult for the BLM folks to point to racism in many shootings. In fact, lately our cops/deputies are getting snipped at more and more often.

[gollum]

Social media really took over for a lot of special interest boards like this one. I closed my Facebook account this week because it long ago lost any semblance of being a place where ideas could be exchanged and became a sewer of political talking points at every turn. I think Americans would be a lot better off if most of the social media companies went bankrupt.

[jato0072]

gollum, I totally agree. I never did the iPhone or social media thing. I dabbled in Facebook to track my family. However, as soon as I got onto Facebook, they all left for newer social media tech (Instagram I think).

Being GenX the old PC and keyboard have always been my preferred technology.

[evilgenius]

I'm not so concerned with any great reset, which may just be imaginary, so much as the reaction of real countries, like Russia and Saudi Arabia, to PO. Because I'm certain that both of their long range plans include being able to sell vast amounts of crude well into the future.

They aren't planning on lowering production down to some remaining state level while the EV future takes off. They will probably try to over produce, I guess?

They don't hold the corner on the lithium market like they do oil. They could combine, and conspire to maintain their way of life. They could keep oil prices reasonable, so that alternatives become that much more expensive.

Russia, in particular, has been telegraphing that they won't go gently into that good night. All you need is a time of national pride where it is expected of people that they will lay down their lives for the country, no questions asked. Expected by society., not even the government.

When you consider the temptation that Putin must be under to actually take up what the Russian people have offered him, which he is accused of doing, you know he is a strong man. It is just blind luck, though, if such a strong man should be in place when the people come to such a time in society. Not that he hasn't governed to excess here and there.

He isn't quite Napoleon. You can see them acting in their national interest, but on such a shoestring budget that they make huge nuclear poison sized mistakes. It used to be that the same things happened, political executions, only they were better at it and there was no reason for suspicion.

Anyway, Putin is probably going to disappear from Russian public life right about the time the whole story of diminishing oil revenue returns really begins to bite. You know, about five years after EV's really take off, something like that. Right about when they will need to come up with the money to develop the Arctic, so that they can maintain the overproduction. He's not going away any sooner than that, or he risks too much by going out of power. His is not a position you can return to after ten years away. He has done remarkable things, changing jobs back and forth, to stay in place. The people accept it.