We are Doomed! DOOOOOMMED I say!

[Stubby]

You do not fix a cultural illness with politics.

Some of what we are currently dealing with is the unavoidable consequences of circumstances which came to pass. Much of our foolish economic policy was the result of the lucky circumstance that after World War II, the rest of the World was so devastated that American factories had little competition for supplying goods that the rest of the world needed.

The Economic prosperity which this circumstance brought us, resulted in Americans succumbing to the foolish notion that they could solve problems by throwing money at them. We became economically foolish because prosperity made it possible for us to behave so.

I am thinking that it couldn't have been stopped, because foolishness with Wealth is most likely an inherent aspect of human nature.

Social change from promiscuity couldn't have been stopped either. Anti-biotics coupled with the birth control pill eliminated two of the biggest reasons for unmarried couples to not engage in premarital sex. As a result, it broke the Marriage Minded women's monopoly on the supply of sex, much to the detriment of all women everywhere.

Couple excessive extra-marital promiscuity with foolish economic policy, and you get the "Great Society" with it's resulting mass of young hoodlum criminals emerging in the mid to late seventies, the reaped whirlwind of the previous wind sowing.


Could politics have prevented any of this? I don't know, but it certainly could make the problems worse.

LOL
i understand you now.
very revealing.

[rjaypeters]

Anti-biotics coupled with the birth control pill eliminated two of the biggest reasons for unmarried couples to not engage in premarital sex.

The antibiotics are becoming less effective, again:

"New Treatment Guidelines for Gonorrhea: Antibiotic Change"

Relevent quotes: "Cephalosporins are currently recommended to treat gonorrhea in the United States. For the past few years, providers have used combination therapy with either cefixime, an oral cephalosporin, or ceftriaxone, an injectable cephalosporin, plus a second antibiotic, to treat this common STD.

Recent laboratory data suggest that the effectiveness of cefixime for treating gonorrhea may be declining. For this reason, CDC has updated its gonorrhea treatment guidelines and no longer recommends the routine use of cefixime. Instead, CDC now recommends using ceftriaxone along with a second antibiotic to treat gonorrhea."

And:

"Although there haven't been any documented treatment failures in the United States, the trends reported in this MMWR, the growing number of international reports of cefixime treatment failures, and the bacteria's history of evolving and becoming resistant to antibiotics used for treatment point to the increasing likelihood that gonococcal cephalosporin resistance and treatment failures are on the horizon in the United States."

Go here: http://www.cdc.gov/std/gonorrhea/arg/default.htm

Then click on the article for "New Treatment Guidelines for Gonorrhea: Antibiotic Change" about half-way down the page.

This direct link to the article leads to a registration page.

Original article: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/768883

[Diogenes]

Anti-biotics coupled with the birth control pill eliminated two of the biggest reasons for unmarried couples to not engage in premarital sex.

The antibiotics are becoming less effective, again:

"New Treatment Guidelines for Gonorrhea: Antibiotic Change"

Relevent quotes: "Cephalosporins are currently recommended to treat gonorrhea in the United States. For the past few years, providers have used combination therapy with either cefixime, an oral cephalosporin, or ceftriaxone, an injectable cephalosporin, plus a second antibiotic, to treat this common STD.

Recent laboratory data suggest that the effectiveness of cefixime for treating gonorrhea may be declining. For this reason, CDC has updated its gonorrhea treatment guidelines and no longer recommends the routine use of cefixime. Instead, CDC now recommends using ceftriaxone along with a second antibiotic to treat gonorrhea."

And:

"Although there haven't been any documented treatment failures in the United States, the trends reported in this MMWR, the growing number of international reports of cefixime treatment failures, and the bacteria's history of evolving and becoming resistant to antibiotics used for treatment point to the increasing likelihood that gonococcal cephalosporin resistance and treatment failures are on the horizon in the United States."

Go here: http://www.cdc.gov/std/gonorrhea/arg/default.htm

Then click on the article for "New Treatment Guidelines for Gonorrhea: Antibiotic Change" about half-way down the page.

This direct link to the article leads to a registration page.

Original article: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/768883

I've been noticing that many bugs are developing resistance to anti-biotics. Not a good thing for us humans. Adam Smith's invisible hand covers economics, Another disembodied hand seemingly covers social interactions.

[hanelyp]

The antibiotics are becoming less effective, again:...

That's on top of viral STDs that were very rare before the rise the promiscuity. There's a whole zoo of diseases effectively kept in check by "keeping it in your pants".

[Diogenes]

The antibiotics are becoming less effective, again:...

That's on top of viral STDs that were very rare before the rise the promiscuity. There's a whole zoo of diseases effectively kept in check by "keeping it in your pants".

This is exactly my point in using the comparison between Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of economics, and the disembodied hand of Belshazzar's feast to represent a similar phenomena in regards to social interactions.

Neither of these examples are actual manifestations of a spiritual being controlling events, but it is easy to see how people could get the notion that there is some sort of power behind things which occur.

People having promiscuous sex creates the conditions which increase their chances of dying or becoming diseased. (In days before Anti-Biotics, that was virtually a death sentence.)

I suppose the good news is that they are making very good advances in the field of treatments for viruses. I've seen many articles indicating that they are having breakthroughs in the field, and we may, in the not too distant future, have anti-viral compounds that can cure people of viral infections.

Of course this will mean that people will be even more sexually reckless because we will have made it even less dangerous. While we're on this topic, I will once again point out, for those who do not know,( which is most people,) that the Homosexual community is the largest reservoir of sexually transmitted diseases in the nation. Prior to Anti-Biotics, most of them would not have survived. The behavior of this community is incredibly dangerous, even today.

[Diogenes]

How China's Rehypothecated "Ghost" Steel Just Vaporized, And What This Means For The World Economy

Of course, the "other side" has been quite adamant that this is in no way realistic and every ounce of precious metals is accounted for. While that remains to be disproven in the next, and final, central-planner driven market crash, we now know that it is not only precious metals that are on the vaporization chopping block: when it comes to China, such simple assets as simple steel held in inventories, apparently do not exist.

As defaults have risen in the world's largest steel consumer, lenders have found that warehouse receipts for metal pledged as collateral do not always lead them to stacks of stored metal. Chinese authorities are investigating a number of cases in which steel documented in receipts was either not there, belonged to another company or had been pledged as collateral to multiple lenders, industry sources said.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/how-china ... ld-economy

[Diogenes]

Chart of the Week: 70% of Spending Goes to Dependence Programs

Federal spending concentrated on the 47 dependence-creating government programs that include housing, farm subsidies, and entitlements now comprises more than 70.5 percent of total federal expenditures as of 2010, according to Heritage’s Index of Dependence on Government.

This represents the fourth year in a row that the Index of Dependence on Government has risen, increasing by nearly a third — 31.73 percent — in that time span.

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/23/cha ... -programs/

[Diogenes]

Chart: Debt-to-GDP Ratio Is Terrible, Worse Than Projected, and Deteriorating Rapidly









http://reason.com/blog/2012/10/09/chart ... rible-wors

[Diogenes]

We are on the road to serfdom

We are now five years into the Great Fiat Money Endgame and our freedom is increasingly under attack from the state, liberty’s eternal enemy. It is true that by any realistic measure most states today are heading for bankruptcy. But it would be wrong to assume that ‘austerity’ policies must now lead to a diminishing of government influence and a shrinking of state power. The opposite is true: The state asserts itself more forcefully in the economy, and the political class feels licensed by the crisis to abandon whatever restraint it may have adhered to in the past. Ever more prices in financial markets are manipulated by the central banks, either directly or indirectly; and through legislation, regulation, and taxation the state takes more control of the employment of scarce means. An anti-wealth rhetoric is seeping back into political discourse everywhere and is setting the stage for more confiscation of wealth and income in the future.

Why do states not cut spending? – I would suggest three answers: First, it is not in the interest of politicians of bureaucrats to reduce spending as spending is the prime source of their power and prestige. Second, there is still a pathetic belief in the Keynesian myth that government spending ‘reboots’ the economy. But the third is maybe the most important one: In all advanced welfare democracies large sections of the public have come to rely on the state, and in our mass democracies it now means political suicide to try and roll back the state.

http://detlevschlichter.com/2012/10/we- ... o-serfdom/

[paperburn1]

[quote="Diogenes"]We are on the road to serfdom


Thank God I am a land owner, now does anybody know where I can pick up a few good vassals?

[Diogenes]

We are on the road to serfdom

Thank God I am a land owner, now does anybody know where I can pick up a few good vassals?

After a collapse i'm sure you'll have your pick, so long as you can feed them, and have weapons enough to defend your land.

[Diogenes]

The Unstoppable March Toward National Bankruptcy: Who's To Blame?

Today, a mere two decades later, we have quadrupled the national debt again, to $16 trillion. (That figure represents the official national debt, but if you add the many “off-budget” items and all the liabilities that are conveniently omitted from government “accounting,” then it’s multiples of the official number.)

The Democrats have led the way toward bigger government. They always succeed in getting Republicans to blink every time the debt ceiling is reached, because whereas Republicans are ambivalent and divided about Big Government, progressives are united and utterly committed to it. They do not vacillate; the Republicans do, and so they buckle.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhendric ... -to-blame/

[choff]

I read somewhere that the 08 collapse started the moment Basil II rules kicked in. It doesn't matter how much money Ben Bernacke gives the banks or how low the interest rates are if nobody can qualify to borrow it.

When Basil III rules become law we'll probably have another big downturn.

[Stubby]

FUBAR

[MSimon]

young hoodlum criminals emerging in the mid to late seventies

They didn't emerge. They were created by government. Prohibition does that you know. You want a thriving criminal class? Enact a prohibition. The more prohibitions the more criminals.

With enough prohibitions everyone is a criminal. Which is exactly what the power and control freaks want. No better way to subjugate a population than with criminal law that makes everyone suspect.

"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against . . . We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted -- and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/045201 ... 0452011876

Things get dicey when the "guilty" no longer feel the guilt.