Pandemic of Brainlessness

July 11, 2005
     The glamorous Maria Bartiromo was just on CNBC talking globalism (and China in particular) with two Wall Street cretins. China is a great play said Cretin No. 1 because they have 300 million potential middle class customers for America's manufacturers. Excuse me, what do we still make that the Chinese either can't make themselves or can't copy five minutes from now?

      As Cretin No. 2 waxed effulgent over China's fabulous prospects for growth, CNBC flashed a bunch of American brand logos across the screen, including Pepsi Cola and Exxon-Mobil. These companies are going to so clean up over there, Cretin No. 1 chimed in, or the shareholders are going to want to know the reason why.

      Yeah, soda pop is really hard to make. They'll have to buy it from us. You thought computers were hard? There are four ingredients in soda pop (water, sugar, favoring, coloring ) and you have to get the proportions just right or it don't come out good!

      As for Exxon Mobil, they're going to have enough trouble getting oil to their US customers five years from now -- leading us to the central fallacy of all the current cheerleading for the global economy: there isn't enough oil available worldwide to permit the industrialized nations to continue to expand. In fact, the industrial nations of the world will soon be competing desperately, perhaps even fighting over, the world's remaining oil, while all our economies contract remorselessly.

     The public discussion over the global economy is symptomatic of America's new pandemic of brainlessness, the mainstream media especially. The head cheerleader, of course, has been Tom Friedman of the New York Times, author of The World Is Flat. Friedman and the rest of the cheerleading squad believe that that the global economy is a permanent institution. Now that it is established, we can only expect more of it. More and better. Forever.

      What all these cretins seem to miss is the cold hard fact that today's transient global economic relations are a product of very special transient circumstances, namely, relative world peace and absolutely reliable supplies of cheap energy. Subtract either of these elements from the equation and you will see globalism evaporate so quickly it will suck the air out of your lungs.

      Also, it must be obvious that relative world peace depends on equitable distribution of cheap energy. If the industrial nations don't get the oil and gas they need at a tolerable price, they are going to get very cranky, and when nations get cranky, peace itself is in short supply.

      Three quarters of the world's oil is in the eastern hemisphere -- two-thirds of the total is in the Middle east alone. Guess what? All of it is a lot closer to China than it is to us. Some of it they can walk to. Do you have any idea how desperate for oil both China and America are going to be in five years? Do you have a clue how tapped out America's WalMart shoppers are going to be as jobs vanish and the value of a dollar craters in the face of runaway energy prices?

      Globalism is yesterday's tomorrow. The future is about living locally on a much smaller scale. Pepsi Cola and Exxon-Mobil are exactly the kind of gigantic enterprises that are going to wither and die over the next decade. China is not tomorrow's geopolitical colossus, it's a geopolitical super train wreck waiting to collide with the reality of its environmental devastation, population overshoot, and energy starvation. Americans will be lucky if they can do each other's laundry ten years from now, let alone sell massive amounts of soda pop to people twelve thousand miles away.

       Is it an accident that there is so much Realty TV in America when, in fact, there is so little reality?

Comments

[Jon S.]

I never even considered soda pop.

But yeah.

Soda - American ingenuity at it's finest. Rococo rocket scientists of fizz!

As if the world were short on CO2.

[dangerbird]

Hey, I'll do laundry.
But I won't do windows.

[Al Dole]

Consumerism is an American religion. The prospect of a billion Chinese consumers is enough to make any Wall St glutton salivate at the mouth. Problem is the chinese have proved far better at producing crap that americans consume by the Wal-Mart cartload than americans are at producing crap the chinese want. Hard to see how soda pop and marlboros will balance the trade deficit.

[Al Dole]

The chinese of course are no fools. The keep pumping those surplus dollars right back into the US economy, which keeps the US consumer consuming and sending more dollars over to china. The question is what happens when they cash in their US T-bills and uncle sam can't pay.

[hopping madbunny]

None of the 'China Market' propaganda makes any sense--most "American" products have been made in China for some time now.
I appreciate the remark about the lack of reality in American politics--at least from our viewpoint. Someone in power is going to make a killing, somewhere--else they would not be in favor of anything like this.

[AWhitneyBrown]

Well, China will rise, and India, too. America will for a very long time have things that they want and need, and when jobs get scarce, we will sell them those things. Commodities, agriculture, minerals, pork, corn, hides, and what not. We'll be just another third world country selling off its natural resources.

[davidog]

i gotta tell ya before they catch up to me- the co-cola cops... the secret ingredient is ... hamster farts. yup! they immerse the windy li'l guys in a vat of brown goo... the wind is trapped and capped.
original recipe had rodents whacked on cocaine; now they hook 'em up to mini-scuba, pack 'em fulla beans and high-fructose corn syrup. where the hell is PETA now???

[davidog]

"Realty TV"

freudian typo?

[Bruce Hodder]

Should we even be trading with China while they're imprisoning and torturing innocent Tibetans? We didn't trade with apartheid-era South Africa or Saddam-era Iraq.Is there a difference I'm missing,other than China's vast potential market and their nuclear weapons?

[davidog]

actually we did trade with saddam/iraq- ask cheney. apartheid south africa traded with the 51st state of israel. nothing new babe...

[ross]

I tell you none of what Jim has written matters because the Fantastick Foah has pulled Hollywood out of its three year slump. The FF's box office allows Hollywood's revenues to surpass last year's by a whopping 2.2% Yes indeedy, Happy Days are here again for Hollywood.

http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/eo/20050710/112104612000.html

Never mind that The FF is easily, even by the ant belly low standards of H-wood comic book adaptations, the worst movie of its kind in years, (Trust me, I've seen the five minute trailer) it is only fitting that The FF flick is acting as a Temporary saviour of another dying iconic American business. Yes, it's dying all right. Why, even the most storied SoCal movie star bedroom community is turning its back on the industry. I just read today that Malibu, yes the Bu, where more mega-stars live in sin than any other single community in the L.A. area, is placing a ban on filming. Never mind why! it's a watershed event that the industry that built the toniest (10,000 a month to rent a) beach house community in SoCal is saying No Mas to the moving picture industry. Why it's like, like..I don't know what it's like.

In the meantime, not to worry, as there is tremendous commercial opportunity elsewhere. But as our host points out, it won't be, as the touts would have you believe, in shares of Coke or Pepsi. I personally like Schwinn. Yeah, bicycles are going to be really big when the gas gets expensive, and more importantly, scarce. Anyone want to go in with me on an unmotorized two or three wheeler emporium. Maybe the horse and buggy'll make a comeback. Don't laugh.
emporium

[Rodrigo]

Ever try to make Coke? You can come close, but it never 'comes good."

Maybe the Chineese, like everyone else is buying the brand.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to be Chineese.

[kd]

"I'd like to buy the world a Coke..."

Freedom is on the march, folks!

[jf]

No doubt things will be massively screwed in 50 years.

Is there a particular logic behind predicting that things will unravel VERY quickly? Five years isn't a very long time.

[Dave]

Great Post JHK ! They seem to getting more bitterly satiric and on target as the madness deepens. This whole area of societal collapse in response to Peak Oil only get one unpopular when it is brought up in the company of the uninformed. This week I'm making a presentation before a City Council and leaving the End of Sub. for them to watch along copies of the recent Museletter of Heinberg on Peak Oil and Food Systems. The seem interested in viewing it the last time I proposed it but it was reported in the local papers like I was nutcake from Mars. So I'll let blog know later in the week how it goes and how it is reported. I find it of great interest how small town governing structures are willing to listen while local "news" organizations withere ignore your efforts and the favorable response on the part of local offcials. HOw will this evolve ? Why Red Baiting the Peak Oil movement is to begin in earnest shortly in my opinion followed the ususal survellence and harassment. The question I would like to have considered does the efforts by large governing instituions (either public or private) make any difference as this whole PO issue gets rolling ? What can they do to make the status quo seem normal when it is no longer possible to remain normal or not notice.

[ross]

Just a quick note to say that the mainstream media are doing a first rate job of disseminating in unadulterated form all the rubbish non-news about the "terrorists" that the British and U.S. government are feeding them.

Every day (usually several times a day) since the bombings in London occured has brought a new spate of official speculations that have more than a whiff of desperation about them. The desperation of course is located in the desire to mold and shape public opinion in a Lippmanesque way such that "the Al Queda terrorists" are never far from our thoughts as THE evil perps of the most recent atrocity. Yes, it is possible, possible mind you, not probable, that "Al Queda Europe" may in fact, be the evil perps behind the crime, but the evidence is so flimsy as yet that nothing less than a steady onslaught of innuendo (see this morning's Boston Globe on-line)
and conjecture are called for to erase anyone's lingering doubts. Not that too many question the chain of events and its official interpretation. They don't. TPTB have nothing to worry about as yet where that is concerned.

[Jacob]

Maybe with that massive developing Chinese market for soda we can sequester our C02 emissions in Coca Cola. We'll stop climate change *and* get rich at the same time. Yay Amerikkka.

[One Eye Open]

Suggestion for next article title:

BECOMING PANDEMIC, CRETINOUS,CLUELESS, MONSTERS...Or "How to Survive the Really Nasty Shit That Is About to Rain Down On Our Slothful, Wasteful Heads Without Having to Eat Our Young to Do So."

[kd]

Yesterday I read that Chinese men smoke cigarettes at twice the rate U.S. men do, with about 90% of them believing that smoking is either not harmful or actually healthful. Implicated in these beliefs is the government, whose cigarette monopoly sells over a trillion packs a year & disseminates messages like smoking enhances brain function (& relieves schizophrenia!), despite also requiring small health warnings on the package.

Isn't it comforting to know that our government would never stoop to misleading the people for the sake of profits?!

On the other hand, perhaps our government (acting on behalf of Pepsi & Coke) will work closely with the Chinese government to disseminate the fact that soda pop is not only more healthful than water, but enhances brain (& perhaps even penile) function.

[marym]

I have to wonder, with the Chinese buying up so much of the US, if mass immigration is not also a near term goal. China (as well as other parts of Asia) is facing unbalanced demographic in term of young males to females. This type of unbalance can create havoc in the stability of a society. One way of solving the problem would be increased immigration of young males, and economic investment in the American economy would be one way of purchasing influence into American policies in this regard.

[Si]

Good post Jim!
Nice twist on things in regard to China. I read that since oil is 60 USD bbl that imports rose 10%...Cant remember the sorce..but I think it was a news article on a peak oil blog. Now as oil continues its climb soon imports will be 20-30-50% higher. Thus will thenbe only logical to produce as Jim as stated before locallly.
My sister resides in the USA. She has a girl who is in high school and is the Pepsi Cola-pop culture type junior in high school. They have absolutly NO clue what is comming their way!! I feel bad for her. She is spoiled, never done any real work always given things..has junk galoor and 1000 CD's of pop music. Got her driver lic. as of late and just joy rides while mom and dad pay her gas "she has no job" Now I think when she turn 25-30-or 35 what awaits her? And who will she blame for herself being entirely unprepared? I think people like this young lady will lash out on the older people and play a blame game in the difficult years ahead...Anyone else what do you guys think? I know a few school teachers of high school students write on this blog. What do you think these young people will do? And are they realizing things are comming to an end? I know my neice is totally clueless...
Here in Ukraine 20% of all industrial produces goes to North America. Near 50% of all food produce goes to Western Europe. I wonder how many of those new jobs in Ukraine will also be lose when the global train halts? Thus not only will the USA be screwed so will nations like Ukraine who rely on the west to buy thier iteams....Well if anything at least Ukraine is still the breadbasket of Europe. Farming is still done by 20-25% of the people in Ukraine...People will eat before they will go out and buy a new snow blower.

[llamajockey]

Dear JHK,

In case you missed it Last Night 60 Minutes ran a repeat segment on the brave new world of personal commuter air travel. The perfect solution to America's number one problem, highway gridlock.

60 minutes interviewed all these airplane inventors and entrepreneurs who are betting their life savings that in the future the wealthy will be able to commute to work using personal vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. Better yet these complex aircraft will be simple to operate and navigate.
It seems that our NASA has spent a fortune on a GPS tracking system that will allow the FAA to effortlessly cooridinate the commings and goings of ten of thousands of airway commuters of the near future. A vision of the future right out of Star Wars, Minority Report and the Jetsons.

Of course no serious mention is made as to where one would park all these combination helicopter/airplanes or the amount of space required. Nor is any thought given as to the
incrediable fuel consumption involved in operating VTL aircraft. Peak Oil was never given a moment's thought. That way the Sheeple can rest soundly dreaming of not so distant future were like George Jetson of our childhood Saturday Mornings we can all experience gridlock from the view of ten thousand feet.

[Weaseldog]

Just wait until China buys Exxon and Coca Cola. They're get more use out of those name brands than they do from T-Bills.

I think Kunstler's 5 year date may be based on a few factors.

1. This is the year of Peak Natural Gas in North America, according to Exxon. So we can expect permanent grid problems in the next few years.
2. This could very well be the first year of PO. We'll only know from looking in the rear view mirror, but reports from a variety of sources say that the Saudi fields are about to make their big downturn. Well depletion rates are going higher than expected. Expected by some anyway. Colin Campbell was arguing long ago that sucking a field dry faster, means it will collapse faster. Curve fitters at the USGS and EIA thought that draining the oil faster meant there would be more oil.
3. Seems uranium is running out faster than expected. Of course, we're using it up as ammunition in Iraq. Perhaps that's part of the issue. In commercial applications, only depleted uranium is used. but in military uses it seems the cheaper, hotter waste is being used also.
4. We can't seem to get coal out of the ground fast enough to fuel our current power plants. Outages in coal fired plants are becoming more common. The grid for now is holding.
5. Our rail system is in a poor state of repair. Getting the coal to power plants is becoming problematic. An railway accident in Powder River Basin, recently shut down the mine.
6. Most of our mineral resources are depleted. We don't mine much but coal in the US these days. There's no copper mines left that I'm aware and if we tried to open one, where would the energy come from to smelt the stuff?
7. The current warming trend in the US is reducing snowmelt. This is causing droughts and reducing hydroelectric capacity.
8. Much of the best cropland near populated areas has been converted to suburbs. For our generation, this can be considered a complete loss. Due to droughts, topsoil loss, loss of good land, the US now imports more food than it exports.
9. Most of the ground water (if not all) in populated areas is poisonous to drink. It's high in nitrates, pesticides and herbicides. It's not necessarily even safe to irrigate with.
10. Water supply requires steady supply of electricity. The water is pumped up hill and then allowed to flow back downhill to homes. Without electricity, the water does not get pumped.
11. Water treatment relies on high energy chemicals made from natural gas. Once the natural gas runs low, chlorine will become expensive and prone to shortages. Municipal water supplies won't be able to guarantee the delivery of safe and clean water.
12. Sewage and sewage treatment also requires electricity and high energy chemicals.

Anyone have anything else to add?

[k]

Jim, did you miss the Rove incident?

http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-rove11.html

It all comes back to creating the need for war.

Also, the Chinese are buying American products. We export a shit ton of banking and financial services. I wouldn't give up on their role in the global capitalism just yet. There's always coal and uranium to burn on the transoceanic ships. And you think I'm joking...

I think instead of worrying about America's economy, I think you need to worry about the short-term economy of blue collar America, the ones who have not been able to take advantage of the U.S. education system. Whether we regard this as laziness, short-sightedness, or informationless, I don't know. Probably some combination of the three.

On another note, I just returned from China's Yunnan province. It's in the south, in the wake of the Himalayas. My friends and I are thinking about exporting our entreprenureal skills. We will dam up all their valleys for energy. Then, in the resevoir, rent coal powered jet skis by the hour.

[Weaseldog]

After the coal runs out, you could make the jet skis wind powered, and add solar powered boom boxes to provide the loud screaming jet sounds, we need to drown out the voices of nature.