Quick primer on how we got here after winning the cold war:
1. In the early 2000s a Chinese military official published a paper acknowledging that the US will likely win any kinetic war, thus the best approach to defeating the US would be a covert war via trade policies, propaganda campaigns, institutional corruption, and technological surveillance, infiltration and sabotage. The window for this campaign started right as the US allowed China's entry into the World Trade Organization and turned its attention to rebuilding the middle east post 9/11.
2. The US racks up somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 trillion USD in debt trying to rebuild the middle east over the next decade. During that time, China uses its cheap labor force impoverished from decades of communist policies to undercut Western manufacturing, thus destroying the US labor and gaining a century's worth of Western manufacturing and trade secrets in about 10 years. China becomes the world's manufacturing base and the primary trading partner for many if not most Western countries. Rural America enters into an economic depression while the coastal states thrive off of banking, tech and real estate industries. Middle America is largely ignored by those in power except for brief moments of condescending commentary on the "deplorables".
3. Global warming was re-branded as climate change and the US government burns hundreds of billions in subsidies on "renewable" energy under the Obama administration who also enters into the Paris Accord. On paper Western CO2 emissions fall, but this is primarily due to manufacturing and the associated emissions being relocated to China. Western government state schools push aggressive climate panic propaganda campaigns on unsuspecting youth.
4. The Western ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) movement aims to remake western corporations to reflect "woke" values. In so doing, the movement has deprived Western oil and gas producers of investment capital to maintain their domestic production. Western government bureaucracies and courts have done their part by canceling oil and gas pipelines, prohibiting exploration, increasing taxes and subsidizing renewables. Many EU member states replace reliable base load power and build out wind farms.
5. Current renewable energy is by and large not capable of replacing base load energy (way too much detail to get into why here). Governments also failed to take into account that the massive amounts of materials (copper, iron, lithium, etc...) needed to build renewable energy at large scales make it completely unfeasible, especially given the more restrictive regulatory environment on mining, fewer new mines being discovered and ore grades declining at existing mines.
6. Parts of the EU have a severe energy shortfall this winter due to aforementioned policies, sending natural gas prices upwards 10x of historical prices. In some parts of the UK, consumers pay thousands of USD per month in heating bills alone. Oil inventories are dramatically below seasonal averages, and with increasing demand and inadequate investment due to government policies, energy prices are likely going much higher.
7. Russia, the world's largest energy exporter, and China, the world's manufacturing base and largest energy importer, move to settle their trade in Yuan and gold, thus lessening their reliance on the Western financial system and their exposure to US sanctions. Russia and China have a lot of leeway in what they do, and while the Western populace may fixate on kinetic actions in Ukraine or Taiwan, they remain largely ignorant of the financial, economic, trade, cultural, and technological war being waged against the US for the past 20 years.
In short, what we are seeing now is the result of 30 years of Western government incompetence and corruption combined with the Western voting populace being largely brainwashed by woke propaganda. The result is that Europe is dependent upon Russian energy, the West in general is dependent upon China for manufacturing, and the media, politicians and elite have been subverted in one manner or another by foreign influence.
The solution is re-shoring US manufacturing, supporting US energy and moving international trade off the US dollar system and onto a neutral asset. Doing so would revitalize the US, but would require the US government to relinquish its waning power over international trade, be fiscally responsible, shrink dramatically and purge all wokism from the remaining institutions. I don't have any hope of this happening until we hit rock bottom. As a realist I prepare for rising inflation, crime, poverty and chaos.
As Ayn Rand said, "We can ignore reality, but we can not ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."
1. In the early 2000s a Chinese military official published a paper acknowledging that the US will likely win any kinetic war, thus the best approach to defeating the US would be a covert war via trade policies, propaganda campaigns, institutional corruption, and technological surveillance, infiltration and sabotage. The window for this campaign started right as the US allowed China's entry into the World Trade Organization and turned its attention to rebuilding the middle east post 9/11.
2. The US racks up somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 trillion USD in debt trying to rebuild the middle east over the next decade. During that time, China uses its cheap labor force impoverished from decades of communist policies to undercut Western manufacturing, thus destroying the US labor and gaining a century's worth of Western manufacturing and trade secrets in about 10 years. China becomes the world's manufacturing base and the primary trading partner for many if not most Western countries. Rural America enters into an economic depression while the coastal states thrive off of banking, tech and real estate industries. Middle America is largely ignored by those in power except for brief moments of condescending commentary on the "deplorables".
3. Global warming was re-branded as climate change and the US government burns hundreds of billions in subsidies on "renewable" energy under the Obama administration who also enters into the Paris Accord. On paper Western CO2 emissions fall, but this is primarily due to manufacturing and the associated emissions being relocated to China. Western government state schools push aggressive climate panic propaganda campaigns on unsuspecting youth.
4. The Western ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) movement aims to remake western corporations to reflect "woke" values. In so doing, the movement has deprived Western oil and gas producers of investment capital to maintain their domestic production. Western government bureaucracies and courts have done their part by canceling oil and gas pipelines, prohibiting exploration, increasing taxes and subsidizing renewables. Many EU member states replace reliable base load power and build out wind farms.
5. Current renewable energy is by and large not capable of replacing base load energy (way too much detail to get into why here). Governments also failed to take into account that the massive amounts of materials (copper, iron, lithium, etc...) needed to build renewable energy at large scales make it completely unfeasible, especially given the more restrictive regulatory environment on mining, fewer new mines being discovered and ore grades declining at existing mines.
6. Parts of the EU have a severe energy shortfall this winter due to aforementioned policies, sending natural gas prices upwards 10x of historical prices. In some parts of the UK, consumers pay thousands of USD per month in heating bills alone. Oil inventories are dramatically below seasonal averages, and with increasing demand and inadequate investment due to government policies, energy prices are likely going much higher.
7. Russia, the world's largest energy exporter, and China, the world's manufacturing base and largest energy importer, move to settle their trade in Yuan and gold, thus lessening their reliance on the Western financial system and their exposure to US sanctions. Russia and China have a lot of leeway in what they do, and while the Western populace may fixate on kinetic actions in Ukraine or Taiwan, they remain largely ignorant of the financial, economic, trade, cultural, and technological war being waged against the US for the past 20 years.
In short, what we are seeing now is the result of 30 years of Western government incompetence and corruption combined with the Western voting populace being largely brainwashed by woke propaganda. The result is that Europe is dependent upon Russian energy, the West in general is dependent upon China for manufacturing, and the media, politicians and elite have been subverted in one manner or another by foreign influence.
The solution is re-shoring US manufacturing, supporting US energy and moving international trade off the US dollar system and onto a neutral asset. Doing so would revitalize the US, but would require the US government to relinquish its waning power over international trade, be fiscally responsible, shrink dramatically and purge all wokism from the remaining institutions. I don't have any hope of this happening until we hit rock bottom. As a realist I prepare for rising inflation, crime, poverty and chaos.
As Ayn Rand said, "We can ignore reality, but we can not ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."
