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2024-08-15 07:00 by Karl Denninger
in Editorial , 1756 references Ignore this thread
So You Dislike The Prospect Of Civil War? *
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Good.  That means you recognize that whether you believe some sort of "cause" or not you can run basic probabilities in your head and have come to realize that such an event likely gets you, someone you love, or both killed (or worse, you wish you were dead but aren't.)

Now take the next step: Recognize, admit, and make clear you understand to everyone around you that all political power has as its inherent foundation violence.

Oh, you think not?  Let's take the lowly speeding ticket.  Just try to not receive one when you've earned it and see how fast that "non-violent" police encounter turns into serious violence, and the longer and more-ardently you attempt to refuse the worse the violence will be.

Civilizations delegate such acts to government for a very-valid reason: When undertaken individually they are the judgement of one, there is no check and balance on same, no appeal if errors are made and the outcome is usually not only final it is brutal besides.  The exception, in a free society, is that every person maintains the right to defense of self and others because nobody has a duty to submit to being raped, robbed, mugged or murdered and the only means of equalizing the odds and thus forcing negotiation rather than violence when someone decides they're going to summarily relieve you of your life, personal dignity or property is the personal ownership of firearms.

Public courtrooms, judges and juries are imperfect but they're right more often than the summary judgement of one, and that there is a path for appeal means that errors have at least capacity for correction (and compensation.)  Again, this is not perfect but it doesn't have to be -- it just has to beat the alternative, which it does.

When this process is corrupted as it has been on a sequential and increasing basis for decades there are few alternatives. Certainly one person deciding to "take on" the legislature or local police in a one-on-one frontal firefight is going to lose. You'll be branded a nutball and irrespective of the legitimacy of your original beef the facts are that you are a nutball if you thought you were going to "win."  But if your goal was not to "win" but rather to have the score read something different than 0-1 when its all tallied up then the psyop of the media and government will still be run -- but they're wrong, and thinking people can objectively look at both your clear goal as demonstrated by the result and reach a different conclusion whether the government likes it or not.

For example MLK infamously met with Johnson -- after which Johnson supported and signed the Civil Rights Act.  The President had been publicly and heavily-opposed to that law prior to their meeting.  What changed?  Do you really think King made an impassioned speech in private and convinced Johnson with mere words?  Well, perhaps they were words but what words were they?  Perhaps they were something like "Those million black men in DC could sack this -- or any other -- city, you know.... and while you can arrest me and/or shoot or arrest some number of them if they do it it wouldn't be the first time I've been thrown in jail since I started this crusade, that obviously hasn't deterred me from my goals as of yet and the all the other times also didn't result in the people out there deciding not to go along and continue the quest, did it?  Perhaps this time is the one where that's all you have to do before mass-rage by those million instead of praying, chanting and sign-waving is the result."

Of course today everyone runs around with a tracking device in their pocket and despite the courts ruling that "geofence warrants" are in fact illegal general warrants barred by the Constitution please do note that the government did use them on January 6th, they were not forced to dismiss any of the charges, convictions or investigations resulting from the fruit of that poison tree and people did go to prison in size.  Yeah, funny how technology works and how foolish a mob of people can be, but technology is quite-fragile -- much more-so than you think.  Indeed without the 100+ IQ people to run said technology it doesn't work and without the 115+ IQ people it cannot be built and expanded.

The data from the BLS makes clear that 20 years ago the more-intelligent (that is, those on the right side of the bell curve) women of child-bearing age began to simply close off the prime reason their uterus exists -- making another generation of humans.  That's a non-violent and absolutely effective "long game" response to the government deciding that laws on the books since the early 1900s and 1950s will not be enforced -- specifically, anti-monopoly statutes and those punishing anyone helping illegal immigrants to name two.  Said women properly deduced that their children would get fucked -- they'd be fucked out of job opportunities, fucked out of fair housing prices, fucked by DIE initiatives that explicitly penalize their offspring compared with those who are less-intelligent, of some other demographic and particularly illegal immigrants, that prices would be ramped in the economy generally while wages were suppressed to their offspring's gross disadvantage and thus the odds of said child having at least a good a life as she had were too small to be worth the risk.

Of course we've made excuses for this form of General Strike for the last two decades and the biggest lie is to come up with all manner of BS about why said women have decided to shut off their baby factories. Some argue its a "spiritual" problem, others call such women hedonistic and even more simply think its a "sign of the times."  These are all lies; the drive to reproduce is primal and thus only intellectual contemplation combined with deep conviction overrides it.   But like all General Strikes there is no effective way, by violence or otherwise, to break it.  You can only negotiate your way out of it and the only real way to negotiate out of it is to stop doing and reverse the policy actions that caused people to take that step in the first place.

To those of you who think that high housing, transportation, health care and similar prices are good (because you own stock or profit from it personally) recognize that without new entrants to the workforce who are equally capable with those who leave as they get older or die you eventually have nothing.  The 80 IQ person cannot successfully run the power or water plant, say much less expand it, nor do they pay taxes in sufficient amount to support your fantasies for health care and general retirement.  Further, you should recognize that you can't fix this in a short period of time either because it takes 20 years, more or less, to decide to have a child, perform the acts that create one and raise said child to adulthood, and you must fix the problem with affordability and forward outlook for the people making said children "on the come" for the entire 20 year period before you get a payoff from it.  If you renege (or just plain lie) you'll get caught and the baby-making by those higher-IQ people will stop just as it did the first time.

You think all this illegal immigration, medical monopolistic pricing that makes health care a bankruptcy-inducing event, "offshoring", "H1b"ing, "H2" (seasonal worker visas) and similar does not drive this?  Of course it does, along with skyrocketing tuition, fees, room and board costs at colleges and the destruction of academic requirements to actually get the degree that in turn renders them effectively worthless in the marketplace.  Thus you have people pulling coffees with college degrees because in fact the credential doesn't mean anything in the workforce!  You also have "doctors" who can't think and blindly accept whatever is "standard of care" because their IQ is smaller than their shoe size and they refuse to look at the data themselves, never mind that if some of them do and raise Hell they'll be fired which will instantly bankrupt and ruin them because they're $200,000+ in debt with no way to pay it off other than shut up and screw the patients, even if it screws them dead.  If you think that's an abstract problem you really are one of the sub-80 IQ people since over the last four years one million Americans were in fact screwed dead by said monsters in white coats and every one of those "doctors" did or went along with it because they got huge bonuses per body.

Forty years ago I left college about two years into it because I was not only making more than it cost to go -- in field -- but in addition I realized they were trying to train me for specifics within the field that would be extinct within five years and thus would be worthless.  I was right, incidentally, that the computer equipment I had in my dorm room was more-relevant to the future of my earnings capacity than all the computers they had at the university combined and in addition I knew more about it at a more-complete level than the professors but unlike today the mistake of attending in the first place didn't come with any debt as I was able to pay for my time there with cash so while I expended both time and money I already had the money and thus it didn't ruin me.  If that happens to you now you are ruined because you went into debt to do it, the government in addition passed laws to prohibit you from discharging that debt in bankruptcy and the only way to stop this and return value to the post-secondary educational environment is to collapse the price so once again a young person can pay with cash they earned in summer or other work.

The other problem is that on the supply side when it comes to knowledge unlike then where computers were expensive and the Internet did not exist, thus you had to go where the information you wished to learn was in order to access it you now can learn nearly anything from algebra to astrophysics from literally anywhere on the planet for mere pennies comparatively since its all online and accessible at zero, or near-zero, cost.  The only gate standing before you when it comes to knowledge is your own personal level of desire and mental capacity to absorb and use it.  Of course this is not how "industry" and "government" see it; they continue to throw up "licensing" barriers that often include an effective collusive extortion element in requiring College degrees.

Witness medicine.  The Biden/Harris administration is actively cost-shifting Medicare Part "D" coverage through the inflation reduction act in a short-term bid to prevent wild escalation of premiums that would otherwise occur until after the election by temporarily tripling the government's subsidy of them.  The root cause of the wild-eyed price hikes which will occur next year?  Its all the "newfangled" and very expensive drugs, of course.  What did Trump just tout on his conversation with Musk?  More and faster of that.  How is anyone going to pay for it?  Think Harris would be better?  No, she's already presided over this crap and is trying to hide it so you don't vote against her for doing it!  Fuck both her and Biden.

I have long pointed out that a General Strike would be capable of resolving this.  The Government has no effective means to counter a General Strike other than to stop their bullshit.  A general strike collapses GDP and thus tax revenues, and if the market discerns the people mean it then it collapses the funding capacity of Treasury as well because nobody shows up for the auctions until the Government changes policy and the strikers stand down.  You can't jail or shoot people (if you're the government) in that situation because not only is a General Strike not illegal shooting the strikers precludes that person from ever contributing to taxes again.

Recognize this folks -- the young intelligent women in this nation have been engaged in a "soft" form of a general strike for the last two decades.  Its in the data and is irrefutable; there is a 75% rate of change in that data, an all-on no-bullshit collapse.  It is inevitable at this point that within the next five to ten years the non-institutional working population will have a negative rate of change which other than in the World Wars where young fighting-age (and thus working-age) men were killed in size is unprecedented in United States history.  None of the social "gimmedats" were there in WWI or WWII and thus the government funding model was not threatened with collapse but today the "gimmedats" are there and unless we reverse these circumstances and prove we mean it said collapse will occur with mathematical certainty.

More than ten years ago I warned people that the most-serious impact, if we didn't force the government to cut this crap out would be the need for "maintenance" medical care for chronic conditions, and that if you needed any of that you would not get it and thus would suffer and likely die.  That drew lots of guffaws and snickers but you better not be snickering now because here it is and reality is that CMS is now, on a monthly basis, consuming far more than income taxes are contributing and that spiral toward collapse continues to accelerate.  Add to that a negative contribution from new entrants to the workforce and the flat spin will tighten and continue until the fiscal capacity of the government impacts the ground.

There are three things that must be done now on a conclusive and immediate basis -- and not as a gimmick that can be reversed either.  They will not prevent the pain, but they can prevent an all-on collapse.  We either accept the damage we've accrued or there will be plenty of people willing to try to take what they were promised but can't have by violence, and thus whether you dislike the prospect of the title of this article or not if we do not force the government to do all three that is coming here to the United States.

Here they are:

  • All medical monopolies and price-fixing, including differential pricing, must be banhammered right now.  Here is, once again, a reasonable plan to do it.  Cost will and must collapse by 80% and yes this means some things "promised" today can't be delivered.  However, with an 80% collapse in price 90% of what is actually necessary can be delivered.  The choice is between getting 90% and an effective zero.  Deal with it because the alternative is that you won't get any of it anyway and it will be worse when someone is trying to eat you while you're fighting off whatever condition you have.  If you're in the medical/pharmaceutical field and have been exploiting or making excuses for all this bullshit then everyone else needs to tell you to fuck off and get away from them or you will be their food, period, even if you're friends or family.  This has to stop now on a "chainsaw", not "dribble" basis.  Taking this step will collapse spending on medical care by 80%, immediately and permanently whack the fiscal deficit, stop the debt from expanding and take enormous pressure off consumer budgets.  It will also cause a huge employment dislocation (and in fact economic depression) for a short period of time.  We must accept this and the short-term economic pain without any attempt to displace or blunt it -- and do it immediately.  Yes, immediately -- right now.

  • All illegal aliens must be forced out of our economy -- and thus forced to leave.  Can we reasonably deport them all? Well, we could, but not easily.  But we don't have to physically deport them all because we can enforce 8 USC 1324 which mandates a ten year felony prison term for anyone assisting (and a five year term for employing) illegal immigrants.  Lock a few people up and while the first would likely generate shrugs (figuring the person was politically disfavored -- and that'd probably be correct too) as soon as it started to sink in that the cops really meant it and you were were going to go to prison no matter how rich you were every single one of the illegals would be ejected from their housing and fired from their jobs.  They'd all leave except for the gangbangers -- those we either jail or (if they refuse to be arrested) shoot.  Doing this will collapse the price of housing and transportation, along with boosting wages in construction, domestic and other lower-skill work.

  • All offshored employment and sourcing and similar must be subject to wage, environmental and exchange parity tariffs and both H1bs and H2s must be banned entirely unless they are paid at a penalty rate of not less than 200% of the prevailing US wage with violations carrying 10 year hard prison time, serve every dayMost sourcing of production that actually occurs Europe would not be charged anything under this since they're reasonably comparable but everything coming out of China, Taiwan, India and similar would with many of these products and offshored labor being assessed at 100% or more.  Philippine and Indian labor, for example, would be hit with tariffs of three to five hundred percent.  Any company selling a good or service into the United States must be subject to this no matter where it is domiciled; if you want access to our markets you either do the work here or pay -- period.  This work will return here to the US since the "advantage" of cheaper price will be foreclosed.

Yes, this will collapse asset prices and yes, there will be a lot of bankruptcies.  That's fine; buying things you can produce with at 10 cents on the dollar makes for cheaper goods and services for consumers and while its bad for the guy who goes bankrupt it is really good for everyone else!

It would also bring into parity blue collar labor for a single member of a household of four and the cost of housing, food, insurance, transportation and other necessary services (e.g. energy) so a single-earner family of four with a reasonable blue-collar production income or better could afford to create and raise a family of at least two children with one of the two adults being home to raise them and keep the household operating.

We could do this all the way through the 1960s and into the 1970s and we must return to that capacity and put in place policies so young women are convinced it will remain that way or those who can think will keep their uterus barren because (1) they refuse to be one small misadventure through no fault of their own, all of which befall us from time to time, from disaster and (2) they must be convinced that their children will have at least as good a life as they do.

We've fiddle-fucked around with "I got mine, fuck you!", laying off that cost on those not yet born for more than two decades beyond the point where young women have figured it out and since technology, which we cannot stuff back in the bottle, does not require a women to submit to pregnancy to have an adult sexual life you can't coerce her and must now convince the intelligent women that it makes sense to have kids.

The consequences of what we've done cannot be avoided but collapse can still, if we act now and not defer further, be prevented.

Within the next four-year term that option will expire so if you think we can play politics with this the math says you're wrong; once that BLS table goes negative, and it inevitably will at this point, if we have not yet fixed the incentives -- all of them in a durable, visible and provable way, this nation is fucked.

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