Citat
Ett antal insiktsfulla och roliga citat från bloggar och kommentarer. Följ gärna ref-länkarna.
Min favoritblog är nog The Consciousness of Sheep av Tim Watkins som också skrivit flera böcker. Jag önskar så att det fanns en Svensk bloggare som var lika kunnig och bitsk, men jag har inte hittat någon.
Ekonomi och Ekonomer
Jag börjar här. Inte för att det är viktigast, men eftersom ekonomer är dummast finns mycket att ta av. Detta citat tillskrivs många personer:
Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist
Ekonomer tror verkligen att verkligheten är deras kalkyler (ref):
On this basis, the combined output of farming and fisheries accounts for only 6% of global GDP. This implies that these industries are not particularly important, and that 94% of the world economy could continue happily, even if we entirely lost the ability to produce food.
Och att “marknaden” automatiskt kommer att trolla bort alla problem (ref):
in the hallowed halls of university economics departments, central bank board rooms and government departments, economists will still be pontificating about infinite substitutability, and about how if the price rises high enough, someone will unlock the next version of the North Sea or the Gulf of Mexico to keep the economy growing
Räntan är ett trollspö som kan styra ekonomin i rätt riktning (ref)
The way in which central banks determine interest rates has been likened to someone trying to drive a car by covering the windscreen and side windows with cardboard and then looking solely out of the rear window.
Ekonomer hävdar också att man kan koppla isär (decoupling) ekonomin från energi och materia och därmed öka BNP i oändlighet (ref):
And while mainstream economists like to sell this as proof for “decoupling economic growth from material and energy use,” this situation is more akin to jumping off a cliff and stating: “I have decoupled my existence from the ground supporting me.” Unfortunately, saying “So far so good” after falling a hundred feet down won’t save anyone from the dire consequences of such a deed.
Det enorma skuldberget och resursbrist pekar nog tyvärr mot en ny Global Finacial Crash (GFC2) (ref)
all that which in 2008 was “too big to fail” is going to be too big to save, even in the unlikely event (in the world of Trump, Brexit and growing national populism) that some form of collective action could be agreed.
Politik och Politiker
Eftersom vi har demokratiska val är väl politikerna en återspegling av majoritetens begåvning (Gustave Le Bon):
The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
Politikers, höger som vänster, mantra är “tillväxt” (ref)
Which is why UK government ministers are currently rain dancing like so many ancient shamans in the desperate hope that “growth” will rain down upon us before the economy falls over.
Men utan energi och material blir det svårt med tillväxten. Särskilt EU ligger risigt till. Det gäller att rikta uppmärksammheten åt ett annat håll (ref):
Liberal societies prefer to be known by their enemies than by their results. When you have no results, you need an awful lot of enemies. This is one of the main reasons for the unreasoning hatred of Russia at the moment.
Jag tror inte Ryssland skulle anfalla Sverige ens om vårt enda försvar var försvarsministern posterad vid gränsen med en slangbella. Sverige, och EU, har helt enkelt inget Ryssland vill ha. Motsatsen gäller dock (ref):
And this poses an immediate problem. The first thing you need to launch a war is not troops and equipment, but an objective. That objective, as we’ve discussed before, is political, and is normally described in terms of an “end-state” related to the real world. So “standing up to Russia” or “demonstrating resolve,” or other examples of word-salad are not objectives: those objectives have to be tangible and measurable. The only objective I can see that makes any sense at all would be to bring about the fall of the current government in Russia and its replacement with one which wanted to be friends with its attackers. Yes, I know, it doesn’t sound very logical, but that’s about the only political end-state that would make any sense at all.
Men man kanske tror att “krigs industrin” ska generera tillväxt utan att användas (ref):
Swelling military budgets, on the other hand — while certainly contributing to a minor increase in industrial output — effectively produce nothing but non-productive assets. Tanks sitting in a warehouse cost a lot of money to make and store, but ultimately create nothing of economic value; only cause death and destruction when used. Compared to a similar amount invested in building a bridge, for example — bringing about economic prosperity by fostering trade — military spending, from a purely economic standpoint, is like throwing money out the window.
Men även om en del (mycker få) politiker inser att oändlig tillväxt inte är möjlig kan dom inte säga det (ref):
Putting any official imprimatur on such a concept would be guaranteed to cause chaos. Nobody in any position of authority is going to concede that the authors of The Limits to Growth (1972) “got it right after all”.
Så istället för logiskt resonemang rör man medvetet till begreppen (ref):
Or if you prefer, it’s more comforting to wield Occam’s Food Blender than Occam’s Razor. With enough effort, you can always get a result, even if it’s an unattractive sludge.
Dilemmat
Ett dilemma (predicament), i motsats till ett problem, har ingen lösning, bara konsekvenser. Detta citat tillskrivs Winston Churchill och användes av Al Gore i filmen An Inconvenient Truth:
The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.
På grund av overshoot har vi hamnat i ett dilemma (ref):
I have been criticized in the past for pointing out how bad things are going to get but didn’t provide any “solutions.” Well, that’s because in reality there are none.
Men det finns väl en Plan B? (ref):
Plan B, you will remember, is that we relatively rapidly reduce our population, our activity, our production and our consumption to a level that can be supported with renewable energy alone. The last time we did this was some time in the seventeenth century, when there were less than a billion humans on Earth. I leave it to the reader’s imagination as to how quickly we might make such a transition. But I also ask readers to note that while Plan B is extremely unpalatable; Plan A doesn’t actually exist.
Men AI då? Det är väl räddningen? (ref)
tags: aboutAt this point, if we had access to a truly general AI capable of understanding our world with all its interrelatedness, it would say only this:
“You shouldn’t have embarked on this journey, and destroyed the planet in the process to ask me at the very end what to do. There is nothing left to do to prevent collapse. Now, its time to prepare for a long, hard and bumpy landing. Oh, and try not to exterminate yourselves in the process. Good day, and good luck.”