Globalization is the first casualty
Well, maybe not the first casualty. But the entire concept of globalization is taking a big hit. And rightly so:
The question about assigning agency and blame is pretty straightforward to answer: The communist Chinese state, which for more than three decades has been draining capital and knowledge from the West, benefiting from our greed and myopia, has just let loose a virus that in the coming months is about to effectively paralyze Europe and the United States and bring severe pain, both human and economic on the world. The “eruption at a wet market” explanation for the virus has to be questioned until we know the full story, if for no other reason than the fact that Beijing suppressed data for two months when the coronavirus first appeared, and even to this day refuses to come clean as to exactly what happened. Indeed, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is now spinning propaganda stories that both seek to somehow pin the blame on the United States, and that try to frame their bungling, denial-ridden, heavy-handed reaction as some kind of model for the world.
As a result of all this, the West is now shutting down, at least for a while. The ultimate cost to the world, in terms of new government debt, failed businesses, and human lives and suffering, is difficult to quantify at this point. But there are indications that the fallout from the Wuhan Virus could be transformative.
I’ve said many times that one of my weakest knowledge areas is economics. However, even as a liberal Democrat of the olden variety, I always thought globalization was a bad idea. But I figured that since so many people who knew so much more than I did about economics thought it was the bee’s knees and the cat’s meow, then I must be wrong.
But over the years, and by the time I had my political change experience, I stopped trusting their opinion. And recent movements in the US, Britain, and so many other countries in the world seemed to reflect what I was thinking: how could it be a benefit to country A to become so tremendously dependent on Country B, especially if B is not an ally? Isn’t it good to be somewhat self-sufficient and/or to have the power to become very self-sufficient fairly quickly if events called for it?
But I also understood that companies wanted to make things cheaply and be able to sell them cheaply in the US, and that quickened the pace of globalization. Trump finally fought against it, and the globalists of the world howled in response because the stupid populist people (is that redundant?) didn’t know what they were doing.
The COVID-19 crisis may have ended that many-decades-long globalization trend, which will have been proven to be a hollow idol liable to blow down in the first strong wind. Who is going to outsource the bulk of an entire vital industry (drugs) to China after this? My answer would be: no one.
The suddenness with which this has happened is also stunning. The globalists who excoriated Trump as a racist xenophobe might have to face the fact that events have been proving him right: we do need to make America great again. It’s not academic, it’s not just a campaign slogan. It’s a reality staring us in the face.
On this very subject I recommend Michael Lind’s recent publication “The New Class War”. It’s more timely than even Lind would have suspected.
The intellectual attack on anyone who believes that the current crisis is a validation of Trump’s agenda of America First will be ferocious indeed, facts, evidence and rational analysis notwithstanding. Anyone arguing for any policy in any way nationalistic is certain to invite the usual accusations of immorality and wickedness (now defined as xenophobia, racism, etc), and not everyone in public life has the fortitude to be unconcerned with being branded by the scarlet letter of bigotry.
I hope you are right about this one silver lining, starting with a decouple from China. Maybe my Millennial daughters who work in the finance industry will realize that their precious iphones need to be dumped first of all to send Apple a message.
“how could it be a benefit to country A to become so tremendously dependent on Country B, especially if B is not an ally?”
That should have become clear to everyone in the United States during the oil embargo in the 70s.
Note that an official organ of the CCP last week threatened the possibility of withholding delivery to the USA of the 90% (yes!) of ALL the antibiotics we use. Generics all, I expect. We like cheap; Big Pharma costs too doggone much.
The CCP totalitarian governance model is of course adopted by Democratic governors who have declared their states Wuhan equivalents… CA, NY, CT, NJ; and DeBlasio is not to be left out.
If Trump loses in November, the Senate will surely fall with him, the House will stay Democratic, and then America is undone forever. Guaranteed.
“The globalists who excoriated Trump as a racist xenophobe might have to face the fact that events have been proving him right: we do need to make America great again. It’s not academic, it’s not just a campaign slogan. It’s a reality staring us in the face.”
I’m no economist either. And I don’t know if its a zero sum game or not. But nothing Trump or the Nationalists say indicate that they don’t want other countries to act in their own interest and make themselves great as well. We encouraged Brexit. Make Britain Great Again, for example.
I can’t wrap my brain around the Globalist position. I got into a heated discussion with a coworker the other night who was incensed that President Trump halted travel from Europe.
“How dare he?” They said.
I said that his job was to protect American lives first. They said, in response, “You’re just another one of those isolationists!”
I just don’t get it. If trade and people can move freely across any border, so can plagues. So can terrorists and human traffickers, etc.
Are they just that naive or do they consider that a feature rather than a bug?
Let us not forget an axiom attributed to French liberal economist Frederic Bastiat, “If goods do not cross borders, armies will.”
While we are lamenting a regrettable downside of globalization, we should not forget one of the most valuable upsides… we have not experienced a major global war in 75 years. Like every innovation in human history, the positive benefits usually come with some unforeseen problems. But that doesn’t mean we should throw out the baby with the bathwater.
One of the standard makers of generic drugs is Mylan Inc. It used to be called Mylan Labs founded in W. Virginia. When the Obama admin. and congress refused to lower corp. taxes, Mylan was one of the pharma companies that moved their headquarters over to Europe, in their case the Netherlands.
Very recent Mylan press release:
“That should have become clear to everyone in the United States during the oil embargo in the 70s.”
Just so. Which brings up the real threat to our economy at this point. No, not the short term shutdown of certain segments of the economy. What’s really economically dangerous and is hardly being covered, except in the commodities business, is the oil price war being conducted by Saudi Arabia and Russia. At $20 bucks or so a barrel, all of our shale producers are selling oil at a loss. Many are carrying big debt loads, they must keep pumping to try to service their debts. If there was some short period of time these oil prices prevail, they could get bridge loans or creditor forbearance to carry them through. Unfortunately, the Saudis are intent on damaging these operators and are willing to keep supply high and prices low for an extended period of time. This is our biggest economic threat. There are 60 million workers in the petroleum industry. That pay roil and the wealth created by drilling and pumping oil and natural gas is extremely valuable to the nation. When it dwindles, as it will, it really hurts the nation economically.
I don’t know what the administration will do, but they must address this problem as soon as the pandemic eases up. If we are to get back to normal economically after the forced stoppage of some industries, the oil patch must be revived. There are things that can be done – filling the National Oil Reserves (already underway), tariffs on imported oil, sanctions against the Saudis, threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz (crazy, heh), or ??
Thought that article quoted came from Dr. Steve Turley on YouTube.
“The globalists who excoriated Trump as a racist xenophobe might have to face the fact that events have been proving him right: we do need to make America great again. It’s not academic, it’s not just a campaign slogan. It’s a reality staring us in the face.” Neo
This!
No way are the globalists and Left going to face the havoc they’ve wrought. Not a chance in hell… far too much graft to be made, far too much ego to admit to being wrong. Nor will the media hold them to account.
A must: https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/evidence-over-hysteria-covid-19-1b767def5894
je,
There will be no “intellectual attack” as accusations of xenophobia and racism do not need “facts, evidence and rational analysis”.
A consensus of accusations is all that is needed. Bork, Thomas, Kavenaugh, Nicholas Sandmann… provide ample evidence of that assertion.
Roy Nathanson:
Brian Preston of PJ Media is thinking of you when he posts today-
“We tried making China rich to make the Chinese people free. The globalists’ theory was that trade would make prosperous people who would then demand their freedom, and the Chinese Communist Party would either grant it or die. It hasn’t worked. China has become more prosperous but less free. Its people live under a digital dictatorship fed by social media algorithms and always-on video surveillance. Their future is cradle to grave monitoring for thoughtcrime. The paranoid communists are as brutal and ruthless as ever, shuttering churches with hammer and sickle and using Uighurs and dissenters as slave labor. China uses its wealth to buy hearts and minds in Africa and positive propaganda press everywhere. China uses its wealth to fracture our own bedrock rights, as when it turned the NBA into its red white and blue thought police right here on American soil. This cannot stand.
“The world cannot get into this situation again. We can’t just pretend this did not happen, resume normal trade relations, go on with our lives, and keep allowing the communists to rob us blind and make us vulnerable. We can’t let China’s criminal caste of communists brutalize their own people, threaten their peaceful neighbors and menace the world. We can’t.
“We depend on China for cheap labor and cheap goods. But we cannot afford China any longer. The price is too high. We must divest. We must redirect. Some of our manufacturing in China must come back home. Some must go elsewhere, to India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, to other free republics with open societies. We must favor free peoples everywhere, shun tyrants everywhere, and do business with friends of liberty everywhere. For our own good.”
Cicero,
“an official organ of the CCP last week threatened the possibility of withholding delivery to the USA of the 90% (yes!) of ALL the antibiotics we use”
Arguably, that would be an act of war…
“If Trump loses in November, the Senate will surely fall with him, the House will stay Democratic, and then America is undone forever. Guaranteed.”
Yes. And then the choice will quickly become civil war or acceptance of a 1984 dark age whose length will be impossible to predict.
America as envisioned is indeed humanity’s last, best hope.
Inertia, habit, and routine–not to mention denial–are powerful things, and I guess it could be argued that, after the Chinese corona virus Pandemic passes, things will generally revert back to a close approximation of what they were before the Chinese corona virus appeared.
However, I think that it is more likely that, to use that well worn phrase, we are in for a major “paradigm shift,” and perhaps quite a few of them; global paradigm shifts.
First and foremost, this Pandemic has exposed to light something that far too many of us were not really conscious of, and that is our suicidal dependence on our main geopolitical rival, China, for almost all of our drugs, drug ingredients, and medical equipment, and, of course, for far, far too many other key products and supplies.
In turn, the quick and almost global spread of the virus has highlighted—in unmistakable ways—the dangers of Globalism, of quick international travel from one country or region of the globe to another, of porous or even no national borders, and of loosening or even abolishing control over who gets to enter our country.
As well, as a consequence of the economic and financial destruction being wrought by this Pandemic, our economy, businesses and their business models, the investment/financial system, and the government’s role in our economy–and vis-a-vis us as individual citizens–is bound to change, to be “reset,” transformed in as yet unknown ways into something new and different.
As part of this “reset” financial relationships between banks and borrowers, homeowners and mortgage holders, businesses, borrowers and lenders, and many other financial relationships will also change.
And how about the effects of the Pandemic on the stock market itself, on airlines and cruise ships, on the travel and tourism industry, on hotels and restaurants, on the “hospitality industry” in general, which provides a significant percentage of our GDP?
What about the profound effect this Pandemic will have on our health care system, on how it is configured, is supplied, functions, what services it offers, and how it offers them?
How about the effects this experience will have on our educational system, on “distance learning”?
What about its impact on the idea and prevalence of teleworking?
How about the organization of our various supply chains and stockpiles, our “pipelines”? How about the way our long haul trucking system is organized and staffed?
How about it’s effect on our supermarkets, grocery stores, and pharmacies, and how they are supplied, what they carry, and how they operate?
How about the specific items ,and the numbers of each of these items this country has in its various emergency stockpiles?
How about our businesses and other organization’s widespread use of Japanese style “just in time” supply and stock systems, which have greatly reduced or even eliminated the stockpiles of items that all sorts of businesses used to have “in the back,” that they no longer have?
Then, of course, not to be forgotten, will be the changes in attitudes and values, in interpersonal and family relationships wrought by this Pandemic.
You can get some idea of just how profound and lasting such changes can be if, for instance, you know any elderly person who lived through the Great Depression, and you likely have observed what a great and lasting impression this experience made, and how it formed certain attitudes.
It appears that this Pandemic will be—in many and in unexpected ways—a “game changer,” and a prod forcing us to “rethink” a whole host of practices and relationships.
I’m still a strong supporter of free trade, and I still generally oppose protectionism.
Even so, I’ve always been opposed to moving manufacturing to China and other countries with conflicting economic and security interests. Such countries aren’t competitors, they’re untrustworthy rivals eager to become open enemies.
Beyond that, there’s another group of countries that might be called unfriendly rivals. Critical manufacturing from those countries should also be avoided. What we now call globalism has created supply lines that are efficient but fragile. Risk has been ignored.
It’s fair to speculate that the Bat Soup Virus crisis will lead to economic change, but if laws are proposed to enforce a less fragile system, then powerful companies like Apple will cry “protectionism,” and they’ll fund Democratic Party candidates who support their interests. I wouldn’t want to guess the political outcome.
This is one of those comments that I’m tempted to delete. After reading it for typos and spelling errors, it sounds too obvious to post. Oh well.
Fractal Rabbit,
“Are they just that naive or do they consider that a feature rather than a bug?”
Both, the useful idiots are just that naive. The globalists are just that willfully blind and/or uncaring. And some just want the power, no matter the cost.
G.B.,
Yes but that dark age will surely be long.
I prefer civil war. Even if we lose, we’ll take out a huge bunch of the bastards.
Roy N,
“we have not experienced a major global war in 75 years”
Nuclear weapons and Pax Americana have had far more to do with 75 yrs free of major wars than “globalization”.
Economic considerations are not seen as a hindrance to ambition by those who lust for power over their fellows. Other than facilitating the ability to overpower a rival, economic considerations are not even on the radar screen of totalitarian systems.
JJ,
Thanks for providing that very illuminating perspective on perhaps the foremost threat to our economy.
If this goes on long enough it will be “globalism out/tribalism in”.
Turning away from the Globalist ideal does not negate fair trade and international cooperation on shared goals.
Some might say the Globalist’s dream has always been a farce. In large part it has been a one way street. Globalists can pretend it is real so long as the U.S. does the heavy lifting in their sacred UN, or when it comes to defense of the weak or slothful. It has also advanced the illusion when the world’s greatest economy has been willing to cede trade advantages to all and sundry.
On another level, Italy is certainly learning how imaginary was the thread that bound them to their EU brethern.
Hmm, Ray Nathanson. I suggest that the primary reason that the multitude of wars that have occurred in the past 75 years never escalated beyond the limited variety had little to do with globalization, and a lot to do with the fact of thermonuclear weapons; and that one great nationalist state had the ability and will to stare down the major predators.
Cicero @ 6:28,
Bingo. But how to get traitorous congressional democrats and media not just to agree but not to do their level best to hamstring any efforts at reform?
Cicero,
While some may have thought that globalization would liberate all of humanity, I never harbored such illusions. Any totalitarian regime can stay in power as long as they continue to have the stomach for killing their citizens or until there is a foreign intervention.
The benefit of economic globalization is that, when economies are inter-dependent, war becomes much more difficult to contemplate.
That being said, of course, rational nations should assure that their national security is not compromised by such inter-dependence.
Globalization encompasses both trade in goods and movements of people across borders. As an economist my bias is toward free trade, and I like that Bastiat quote above. Open borders are much more problematic, and ironically less beneficial economically if trade is free. (Mexicans can build cars in Mexico and send them to us, or they can come here and be cheap labor. I prefer the former.)
But even free trade has to be tempered by the needs of security (in the broadest sense). That includes protection of intellectual property, defense secrets, and health. We need to assume that secrets and ideas will be stolen, and trade will be disrupted, so we can’t be too dependent on foreign sources, especially from bad actors like China.
“But there are indications that the fallout from the Wuhan Virus could be transformative.” – Neo
Much more so than Obama & Co., who were just accelerating the trends the Left had been putting in operation for so many years.
I think we will get the true paradigm shifts that Snow on Pine described.
Has anyone seen any discussion of this? Seems a little counter-productive in the current situation.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/16/refugee-resettlement-to-u-s-from-23-coronavirus-countries-continues/
These two headlines speak for themselves.
https://www.breitbart.com/border/2020/03/17/mexico-confirms-11-new-coronavirus-cases-in-24-hours-93-total/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/17/nytimes-donald-trump-closes-southern-border-to-migrants-asylum-seekers/
Oldflyer,
Italy may be suffering in relations with Europe now, but it is suffering lots more from working with China to import all those cheap (and slave) Chinese workers to produce their high-ticket items from companies like Gucci and Prada.And don’t forget their Hug a Chinese campaign. I hope the economic downturn we are having will cause Americans to rethink what we buy and whether those things really make our lives better.
Roy Nathanson: “when economies are inter-dependent, war becomes much more difficult to contemplate.”
Perhaps you had the EU in mind, since the World Wars were born there. Except for Poland and Hungary, which have been widely chastised by the smart-heads for maintaining borders, the EU is now grinding to a halt as it suddenly discovers that borders have value, that every trucker must be screened for fever. And the EU wasn’t doing all that great before the Chinese bug- e.g., unemployment in France 10%, negative ECB interest rates, bureaucrats up the wazoo in Brussels, etc.
When I first read the The Third Wave, or maybe The Greening of America, (it was a long time ago) I thought, “That’s a pretty racist notion, that these people will never learn the technology we are asking them to implement and will settle for us managing everything over here.”
My prayer is that this exposes the left, and even if the economy is still crap in November, people will realize why, and who it is that can rectify the situation.
It could even be God’s plan.
He might still have a use for us.
If we’d just quit killing babies.
Snow on Pine,
My father lived through the depression. He was 7 yrs old when it hit. It lasted until 42 and the length of time plus the severity led to the lifelong impression it made upon that generation. Even my very well off mother’s family was deeply affected. Evidenced by her deep belief that waste was sinful and preparedness essential.
They didn’t waste and they threw nothing away because “you never know”.
Dad told a story of his family having nothing to eat but rice for an entire week. Of his younger brother, who hated rice and refused to eat it. Then after a few days, my grandmother put some rice on the stove to cook and all but his brother went for a brief walk, 25-35 minutes later when they returned, his brother was so hungry that he had eaten the entire pot of rice… the rest of the family went without that night.
That’s how lasting generational impressions are entrenched.
Hopefully we won’t go through a decade long lesson, though if we don’t experience the lesson or if singular, it’s unlikely to have a lasting effect. And so we’ll mostly return to the prior status quo.
It’s a given that large corporations, heavily invested in overseas production will resist and mightily, if Covid-19 turns out to be a “tempest in a teapot”.
AesopFan,
Stopping all migrants and asylum seekers would be… racist. Better even that millions should die than be accused of that irredeemable crime.
Edward,
“My prayer is that this exposes the left”
Not a chance. At least for those who get their ‘news’ from the MSM. And the majority of those people are convinced that, Orange Man Bad and that, the deplorables who support him are irredeemable.
It seems that the coronavirus will affect the different parts of the world very differently based on the weather there with some parts being spared completely.
http://www.barrelstrength.com/2020/03/21/weather-and-spread-of-covid-19/
I hope there is a sustained move of manufacturing of all items back to the US. Nothing wrong with having some made elsewhere but not to the extent we have with China.
If so much moves out of China, their economy will certainly suffer. No tears from me.
“..,country A to become so tremendously dependent on Country B, especially if B is not an ally?”
The old crude and accurate description of this situation is that B has A by the, um, genitalia. No one in that case has the illusion that it’s a mutually beneficial relationship.
Roy Nathanson…”Let us not forget an axiom attributed to French liberal economist Frederic Bastiat, “If goods do not cross borders, armies will.”
There were plenty of goods crossing borders in the years before the First World War.
I welcome the news that President Trump has decided against a nationwide “lockdown”. Thank God he has not gotten too fond of the big-federal-interventionist moves that the media and the Democrats seem to love. But there is a more important signal this sends.
President Trump is reinforcing his faith in American Exceptionalism. He is betting his Presidency on America’s well-informed and disciplined populace having the ability to defeat the COVID-19 virus.
He alone among the Presidents in my lifetime uniquely embodies “AE”, and he understands that AE is what the Democrats and the media most desire to defeat!
Recall the stark black and white image of seated President Trump staring at the viewer saying “They’re not after me, they’re after you – I’m just in the way.”
But that’s not it exactly… what they are after is American Exceptionalism! For them to control us, it must be proven to be a myth!
A lot of people have been asserting that the ability of America to have a broadly affluent middle class is dependent on globalization and specifically on massive offshoring from China. Even Art Laffer said:
“China is a huge plus to the U.S. because without China there is no Walmart, and without Walmart there is no middle class or lower class prosperity in America.”
I think this is nonsense, and I responded here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/58984.html
My hypothetical question to enthusiastic free-traders used to be, “Why not have China make our F-35 fighters if they can make them cheaper?
I should have asked, “Why not have China make all our antibiotics if they can make them cheaper?” It wouldn’t have been a hypothetical question.
It’s a big world… If I, at least, take one permanent lesson from this experience, it’s that even if we were bosom friends with every single nation, we would still want to retain some manufacturing/production capacity for critical goods, because massive disruptions like this can happen. That said, I think it’s both impossible and foolish to try always to maintain capacity to make every bit of everything that we think we need – it would be as if I stored 150 rolls of TP at all times (ahem): a waste of space and money for me.
I think the process engineers are probably going through the most interest period if their careers right now. How fast can you turn a line to produce something completely different from what it used to produce? Back in 2008 and again in 2015 (the last time oil crashed), my husband (in energy finance) was both the most stressed and the most engaged in his work that he’d ever been. Each was a wild ride. Each was *highly* instructive.
But I am SO glad he’s out of that field now. J.J. above is right – the Saudi-Russia oil battle that’s been so overshadowed by The Virus could (and might be intended to) bring down the entire American oil industry… and then where are we?
But J.J., where are you getting your “60 million people employed in the oil industry” stat? It seems well past unlikely if you’re talking about the U.S., even if you’re counting support industries like shipping container manufacturers and restaurants in oil towns.
About J.J.’s oil commentary,
If some or many of these smaller oil and/or fracking companies go bankrupt and default on debt, then there are some banks holding that debt could be in trouble. Others have claimed that the big U.S. banks are so well capitalized that they can’t get themselves into trouble anytime soon, but there are medium and small size banks too.
Tuesday and Wed. this week I noticed preferred stocks, a riskier form of bank debt used for bank funding, took a nose dive and then mostly recovered. That might be a sign of panic concerning banks. Or various other possibilities.
My impression was that this turn of events in the oil markets was specifically about Russia hitting us when we are down. The price of oil was always going to decline with a big decline in the U.S. economy, but Russia saw that as an opportunity. I heard that the Saudis would have cut production if Russia did too, but Russia did the opposite.
Some have suggested that this is retaliation by Russia because their gas pipeline to Germany was nearly completed when Trump slapped sanctions on Russia which stopped pipeline construction, and it sat there useless. (And they say Trump is a puppet of Putin.)
And now, China has threatened a laser attack on US ships moving through the South China Sea. I doubt that this will become more than a threat, but I don’t remember the Chinese government doing anything like this before. Timing seems odd, if they’re at all worried about reduced globalization hurting their economy. Instead, they seem to be aggressively pursuing their goal of regional hegemony.
https://warisboring.com/chinese-military-expert-advocates-using-lasers-to-paralyze-us-warships-in-south-china-sea/
“The Chinese military should consider using non-lethal lasers on U.S. Navy warships to discourage their transits through the South China Sea, a state-run newspaper in China said Tuesday.
Chinese military expert Song Zhongping told Global Times that the use of electromagnetic weapons, such as low-energy laser devices, could “send a strong warning” by temporarily paralyzing weapon and control systems on U.S. ships — all done “without visible conflict.””
Jamie, I’m glad you brought that figure up. I had heard a figure on a business show and it stuck in my mind. I didn’t bother to look it up, just repeated what I remembered I had heard. And it’s wrong. 🙁 As near as I can figure from Bureau of Labor figures there are about 1.6 million in the direct exploration and production of oil and another 1 million involved in refining and transportation activities. So, maybe the figure I heard was 2.60 million and the 60 stuck in my mind. With about 160 million total in the labor force as of 2018, 60 million in all phases of the fossil fuels industry is obviously too high and I should have thought of that before I wrote my comment. Act in haste, repent at leisure. 🙁
I like Neo’s article a lot, but I agree with j e about the relative lack of political fallout. Or a backlash against the populist backlash.
Imagine that the GOP takes back the House of Rep., but they give us another Paul Ryan as Speaker. (Paul Ryan wasn’t a fluke, it was the plan.) Then it will be full speed ahead for globalists in congress.
If we really want sensible global trade instead of blind and rapacious globalism, lots of people and Trump are really going to have to fight for it.
The globalist cover story was that it would change them… they would awaken
that was never going to happen, as they helped make that cover story
the real deal was that russia reorganized to appear to change
to remove the force we pushed on, and so had nothing to push on any more
that would lead to our going nutty (which it did)
and the other stuff would have lead to a quick decisive end in conflict
as there would be no way to switch manufacturing or do that given that the support structures for such had moved.. ie machinists, and all those kind of shops that manufacturing companies need to function that we dont think about
the people who had experience with communism, even if not living under directly, knew not to trust a critter that can change its appearance in a few days with a simple order, and had not changed other than to appear nice in exchange for the technology it desperately needed to put its military on top
you dont want to see what they can do with drones..
with metal storm out of business you dont want to see how helpless this makes us
picture 100,000 targeted drones with another 100,000 behind that, with another 100,000 behind that, and more in a holding pattern to replace any shot down…. all using flocking software to swarm any location…
not to mention the 30 million extra men they have against our population which is not healthy, no longer has real men, does not have children to replace itself thanks to feminism, and is in a very poor position compared to the greatest generation and the one after it.
What are the steps to prepare for and strip China of WTO membership and Most Favored Nation status?
Good story about the depression GB. I was born in ’35. My folks married in ’31, I assume they couldn’t afford me earlier. They never said. I never understood whether we periodically had milk toast for dinner (gag) because my Dad actually liked it; or whether he liked it because that was what was available. I will say; never again.
There is no doubt that the depression impacted the psychology of a couple of generations. One generation coped with it; the next watched and learned. The first lesson was that a job, any job, was precious. Another point was that families must bind together and look after each other.
World War II created a another set of psychological attitudes. But, the depression had prepared one generation for the hardships of world war; and my generation, which had yet to see our elders enjoy “good times” were interested observers. We could conclude that life was hard; and people needed inner resources and strong communities (dare I say tribal?) to survive.
Post WWII euphoria and the prosperity that followed changed everything once again.
There are some sadly humorous vignettes on the news today of the reaction of “youth’ after the spring break gatherings were broken up. Pouty faces. “They ruined the spring break that we deserved.” I know from personal observation that those children in adult bodies are not necessarily typical. Still, one can’t help but wonder if the country is prepared for what lies ahead.
Oldflyer:
My dad was born in 1927 (and is still kicking) and my mom in 1933. They are absolutely the reason that I have never quit a job that I didn’t have a replacement for already lined up. Also, thank God for the atom bomb, or my dad would have been hitting the beach in Japan in 1946 armed with a Speed Graphic camera.
We were always solidly middle class when I was growing up in the ’70s, but there were years where we ate pretty much nothing but hamburger, hot dogs, or Spam for dinner, and eat out at Denny’s once a month maybe.
“as a liberal Democrat of the olden variety…”
You might want to work on that.
Dare I say, “Welcome to the party, pal.”
There used to be millions and millions of beautiful Ash trees in America. I had several in my yard. They were all wiped out four to five years ago when just a few beetles from Japan were accidentally imported here on some wood products. That should have been a wake up call to everyone. If a virus can be accidentally and casually imported to wipe out millions of large, beautiful trees that had been here long before we were, then a disease could also be imported that would finish us
That should have been a wake up call to everyone.
A wake up call? Somebody hit a 100 year snooze-button.
The chestnut blight hit Europe and North America from Asia at the opening turn of the last century, 1900. Few Americans alive have any idea how great the chestnut was in this land simply because the trees have nearly all been annihilated — gone to all intents and purposes — though their magnificent wood timber remains holding up barns and other buildings in the eastern half of the country to this day.
A small hope remains for that great species however: The American Chestnut Foundation aims to bring them back one day.
There used to be millions and millions of beautiful Ash trees in America. I had several in my yard. They were all wiped out four to five years ago when just a few beetles from Japan were accidentally imported here on some wood products.
Ash trees? Where I lived it was elms that were wiped by Dutch Elm disease, which also (notwithstanding the name) originated from Asian beetles. But in any case, your point stands.
I would argue that Bastiat, like almost every other great economic thinker of the age, was making that argument based on the disastrous trade policies of Spain vis a vis South and Central America, and, to lesser but still significant extent, in key parts of Europe. There seems to be a tendency for modern economic thinkers to assume that certain pronouncements made by past thinkers are like Newton’s laws, e.g., Ricardo on Comparative advantage.
Cornflour on March 21, 2020 at 6:38 pm said:
I’m still a strong supporter of free trade, and I still generally oppose protectionism.
Haven’t learned anything yet, Cornflour?
Morning update: active cases continues its exponential rise with at midnight was around 24,000. The most surprising change came from serious cases which went from 64 to an astounding 708. That’s an 1100% increase! Art, you need to dissect this data.
Connecticut went from 190 to 218 active cases, and the trend for the state is linear, not exponential.
Another interesting article on Fauci comparing his response to the H1N1 to his current response to the wuhan virus. His attitude back then was pure Alfred E. Neuman. What’s going on with that guy? Rhetorical question. https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/what_did_dr_fauci_have_to_say_in_2009_about_the_deadly_h1n1_pandemic.html
“There were plenty of goods crossing borders in the years before the First World War.”
Having some trade doesn’t eliminate the risk of war, but having no trade exacerbates it.
None of which means we can’t be strategic about it. If China cuts off our supply of cheap clothing, we can adjust better than if they cut off our medical or military supplies. There’s a reason we’re in the international oil market but still maintain a Strategic Petroleum Reserve and (when sane people are in office) encourage domestic production.
Re Fauci’s about-face: I continue to worry that we’re facing a hospital collapse of the sort we did not face with H1N1. The instant I have solid evidence that the hospital system is up to whatever the peak rate of coronavirus complications is going to be, I’ll go back to the moderate level of anxiety I experienced with H1N1–which wasn’t nothing, by any means, but wasn’t paralyzing, either.
Here’s a little bright spot in Neo’s article
…..bee’s knees and the cat’s meow…..
Neo March 22, 2020
Haven’t heard that since my grandparents were alive. hehehehe.. Thanks for the laugh
Art, you need to dissect this data.
not really… they are charting it in the most scary way…
if you chart and subtract the number from 15 days ago, it wont be so bad assuming 15 days is the time it takes to incubate and cure…
right now you have sympathy hounds, people who WANT the condition so they can brag they have it… people WANT to be victims, they no longer want to wear a badge of honor of health or ability, etc.
take your charts, and subtract past numbers after a period
then watch what your charts do…. they go down a lot
its the illusion of math and charting a certain way…
right now the numbers can lose over 3000 cases just by removing Wuhan from December…
to get a feel as if its a real recording, we would not keep adding..
if we added all the expenditures of the US government without resetting it year on year what would the meaningless curiosity number be?
think of how the numbers progress…
imagine you have 10 cases a day in your chart..
if you chart it day to day, the line would be flat at 10
if you chart it cumulatively the line would go up 10 a day
which one reflects a change and current situation?
the first.. not the second… the first is like how much income do you make day
the second is how much did you make this year…
if you want to scare people, dont use the first.. NEVER show that one..
they would see a huge peak in the start… and then that 3000 would drop…
have you noticed that the recovered never catches up? as if they have not recorded recovered?
in a perfect world, the recovered number would be x days behind the cases number..
meanwhile…
the current world wide death toll still has 10k to go to match the US death toll for flu
“But I figured that since so many people who knew so much more than I did about economics thought it was the bee’s knees and the cat’s meow, then I must be wrong.”
I used to believe this but I have learned over many decades that my evaluation of any given situation is just as likely to be correct as the so-called expert’s evaluation.
Follow your instincts especially if you find yourself telling the experts “I told you so” on a regular basis.
My mother said (after MFN for China was signed by George H. W Bush) that “they just sold out America and threw us under the bus”.
She only had a GED but now I know she was smarter than the smartest people in the country in 1988.
Good stuff Artfldgr,
Sympathy hounds. Panic and Munchausen psychology are powerful. Something like 93 or 95% of people who get tested don’t have it.
Here is a long article by a non-medical person with a ton of data and charts. At least one medical pro hates it and it got removed from another site, but you can ignore any conclusions or summations, and just look at the data.
“have you noticed that the recovered never catches up? as if they have not recorded recovered?” great points Art, especially this last one that started bothering me this morning.
If we go back about a week there were about 4500 active cases. I read that in about a week a person recovers from a mild case, and mild cases are running somewhere around 97%, so we should see about 4400 recovered cases by now. The 178 seems very bogus. OK let’s say 2 week recovery as worse case. 2 weeks ago 500 active cases, so 485 recoveries, still 2.7x times the listed recoveries. Something’s rotten in Denmark as you point out.
This is 100% anecdotal based on a conversation I had yesterday after meeting an acquaintance on my daily walk.
He is a former Nuclear Navy engineer who now runs an alternative energy – windmills – company. His main suppliers of parts are all located in China because no companies here makes what he needs. He is on the phone with them daily if not more frequently.
Now he did not mention the LOCATIONS of his suppliers. But he did say they back to almost 100% work force and capacity. It was touch-and-go for 6 weeks or so. Now, he said, things were back to normal.
Except the west coast ports that would unload his materials were closed.
If this thing blows over in 6-8 weeks we can return to some sort of ‘normalcy’ relatively quickly.
If not …
There is a fatalities table in the article I linked (Aaron Ginn), about 3/4’s down the long page.
Germany……0.34% rate
S. Korea……1.16%
USA..………1.34%
France………3.57%
Spain……….5.07%
Italy…………8.57%
There is a full list of numbers in the actual table. I’m just trying to give the flavor here. Germany is the outlier. They have almost 20K confirmed cases but only 68 deaths.
_____
There seems to be some consensus that most of the spread is either through direct human contact or surfaces contact. The virus can survive about 24 hours on cardboard, though no one knows if a person can actually pick up an infection from a cardboard surface that appears to be dry. Stainless steel and plastic surfaces are the worst.
Note that Ginn’s article has been censored by Medium. No longer available for “rules violations” (i.e. citing facts in support of a dissenting opinion).
There are many problems with the data we see.
1) cumulative… IF you chart it subtracting the past few days, you will detect when we reach the top of the problem faster… ie. the inflection point…
2) its not per capita, there is no 2nd axis to allow one to judge the data vs other data
COVID-19: How it compares with other diseases in 5 charts
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/03/11/covid19-how-it-compares-with-other-diseases-in-5-charts
without comparing it to other things, we have no measure of whether we are acting in accordance to prior history, or just acting out more than or less than needed…
“Note that Ginn’s article has been censored by Medium. No longer available for “rules violations” (i.e. citing facts in support of a dissenting opinion).”
Which is why I suggested ignoring Ginn’s conclusions and summations. Look at the data.
So, using Art’s suggestion I went back on my spreadsheet and calculated 97% of each day of active cases. Then , moving ahead two weeks for worse case recoveries, I subtracted out the recoveries from the cases from two weeks prior from the current active cases. Worldomter’s 178 recoveries is obviously wrong, but this should give a more reasonable estimation. At the present it doesn’t make much of a dent in the total active cases, but in about a week’s time it should turn the curve. This represents the normal curve flattening without any intervention such as isolation. We’ll see…
Thank you physicsguy. I will post here the link I put in the “unknowns” post earlier today. Published 3-9, but still prescient.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-strictly-by-the-numbers-the-coronavirus-does-not-register-as-a-dire/
Mad Max above said: “My mother said (after MFN for China was signed by George H. W Bush) that “they just sold out America and threw us under the bus”.
I ‘spect most of y’all remember the phrase “giant sucking sound” and its context.
Long ago, and I can’t remember the source, I read a definition of “expert” that went something like this: one who has command of all the facts and figures while sweeping on toward the grand fallacy. We’ve had a lot of that going around for some years now.
In case you don’t remember:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3LvZAZ-HV4
This virus is not ‘Trump’s Katrina’- it’s ‘China’s Chernobyl’
TommyJay:
I’ve seen a lot of talk about how long the virus can survive – under ideal conditions rather than real-world conditions – on various surfaces. All the reports I’ve read contain a caveat that there is no reason to believe that surfaces are a major cause of transmission. They all say that by far it appears to be person-to-person, especially close contact but not limited to that. But close person-to-person contact appears to be the most common mode of transmission.
Wendy K Laubach:
Agreed about the overwhelming of hospitals being very worrisome. It depends on how many serious cases happen at one time in one place. We just don’t know, but the visions of China and Italy are there, and they’re very worrisome. I think that’s a big part of the fear that’s fueling this, rather than absolute numbers.
The flu kills a lot of people, but it doesn’t overwhelm hospitals. Or does it? Just today I encountered this about Israel, which as far as I know is a country generally thought to have an excellent health care system [my emphasis]:
It that’s true, that’s a really interesting fact. Israel can’t be the only country where that’s the case. Italy has a lot of regular flu ordinarily and a higher death rate from it than other countries (I’ve been reading up on that and probably will write a post on it soon). Is that part of what’s happening in Italy and is the Italian hospital system stressed out periodically by even the flu?
Also, in both Italy and China (and I don’t know much about whether China gets regularly overburdened by the flu) the initial eruptions of COVID-19 were very localized, which exacerbated the hospital problems.
Sigh. The problem isn’t globalization; the problem is single-sourcing. Getting all of your surgical masks from Wuhan is as bad as getting all of your cars from Detroit or all of your government from Washington.
Most of the time, anti-globalists are defending getting all of your cars from Detroit.
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Neo,
I listened to Dr. Birx. My takeaway was that aerosols wafting some modest distance through the air was the least likely pathway to infection. Then comes hard surface contact in the middle probabilities, and finally direct human contact is the most likely. We can’t attach numbers to any of these yet. But we’ve all seen the videos of public workers spraying down and wiping down surfaces in public places.
While tests of virus survivability on surfaces is lousy data in terms of predicting what will get a person infected, it does have some utility in predicted when you won’t get infected. For example, clean looking cardboard lying in disuse for two days won’t infect.
Globalization will certainly become a casualty (it already has to a large extent), but it’s nowhere near “the first”.
That prize goes, as is generally acknowledged, to “the Truth”:
https://www.amazon.com/First-Casualty-Correspondent-Myth-Maker-Paperback/dp/0801880300
https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-top-10-lies-about-president-trumps-response-to-the-coronavirus/
https://news.yahoo.com/chinas-coronavirus-recovery-fake-whistleblowers-191300391.html?ncid=facebook_yahoonewsf_akfmevaatca
After that, well just ask all those family members and friends and neighbors in…..
But yes, globalization and its adherents are, if not drawn and quartered, going to put in the stocks, even banished for a very long time.
First, though, we have got to get through this minefield.
Some hopeful news…:
https://www.foxnews.com/science/french-researchers-publish-antimalarial-and-antibiotics-combination-that-could-shorten-covid-19
Cornflour —
I’m for free trade, too. When do we start? IIRC, Trump, at some NATO or G7 or EU or sometthig meeting said, “Okay, let’s have free trade. No tariffs, no non-tariff barriers.” Angele Merkel almost plotzed.
“It’s fair to speculate that the Bat Soup Virus crisis will lead to economic change,”
What are you, a speciesist?
physicsguy, Wendy K — at Friday’s press conference, Fauci was asked why Covid-19 is so much more serious than H1N1. He evaded the question. Naturally, the fool reporter didn’t follow-up.
Richard Saunders:
I think the answer would be that it appears so far to have a higher case fatality rate, and to be as easily transmitted or more.
I can’t swear those things are true, but they may be true and they are what health authorities think they’re seeing.
TommyJay:
Direct human contact is by far the most likely.
It’s inevitable that, when this calms down, people are going to demand we go back to “sensible” living. Bring critical industries back home. Schools will be expected to produce students with basic academic skills and knowledge. And they can’t force girls to shower with men/boys or compete against men in their sports leagues. The CDC should be focused on “disease control” and preparedness, not gun violence. Fix our airports, bridges, highways. Pay down debt in good times.
In so many ways we have failed to repair the roof before it rained. This crisis should tell us to stop spending on less than necessary wish lists and get back to basics. Time to act like adults.
The notion of the superiority of free trade, a subset if you will of globalization, originated with Adam Smith’s Treatise of 1776; “’An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.”
Since that time, economists have taken his thesis as dogma, an unassailable fact.
But in 1776, the vast majority of products were agriculturally based and their transport was imported/exported in very small (by present day standards) wooden sailing ships. And the products shipped in those days had to have a “natural” very long shelf life (there was no refrigeration and it would take weeks/months for items to reach their destination).
In short, societies at that time mostly depended not so much on technology, but instead on what could be grown or produced or originated from agricultural products or farms.
Adam Smith nor anybody else could not have known at the time that technology would be developed that is literally independent of items grown or raised and which could determine the viability or survival of a nation.
But that is the situation today and academic economists have turned a blind eye to this.
Their models assume that economic/financial maximization are all that matter or exist and totally ignore the real world fact that societal , political and “human” factors exist.
After all, assumptions must be made (even if not applicable in our solar system) to make their mathematically dense theories tractable. (These theories are not amenable to controlled experiments nor ANY other way to validate the reliability or validity of their theories. (Some have accused economists of being frustrated mathematicians).
This has produced a situation in which, say, the USA , no longer has the capability to produce products that are essential to our well being; e.g. aspirin.
Globalization and it’s economic subset are the result of idealistic, utopian, not of this world academic (and their acolytes) theories.
We are today witnessing the results of this “accepted” dogma of globalization.
By the way, note that the concentration of corona virus victims in Italy is the result of thousands of Chinese, FROM WUHAN !!, who work in the manufacturing facilities in the Lombardy region of Italy (and who have displaced native Italian workers.
Don’t expect to read this anywhere but the BBC has produced a show on this.
…and, of course, the mother lode….
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/debunking-nature-magazines-covid-19-definitely-didnt-come-lab-china-propaganda
But then with all the lies being bandied about—for so many years now—who can really know?
…which is, no doubt, one of the most egregious—and dangerous—aspects of the current predicament.
Me? I’ll go with the one I deem more trustworthy than the rest of ’em. Happens to inhabit the Oval Office at the moment. And I wIsh him God Speed, and wisdom, and nerves of steel, along with the rest of us.
Psalm 23 comes to mind. (Psalm 91 is also right up there.)
Neo,
More likely or more likely by far? Sure whichever. Just don’t get tunnel vision.
From the Whitehouse briefing on March 18.
The knowledge levels being made available to us is very much less than any of us would like. Assume a high degree of ignorance.
“…ignore the real world fact that societal , political and “human” factors exist.”
Indeed. Added to this, given the current crisis, must be the “military”—more specifically, “defensive”—factor.
Because if a certain country (or countries) decides to mortgage its major industries and production capabilities—whether these be construction or steel-making or drugs and health products, or anything and everything in between—to a country that just might not be as “friendly” or “like us” as we’d like to believe, then when push comes to shove (as it has now), that certain country (or countries) will be caught with its pants down. Up the creek without a paddle.
The current crisis, especially its brutal extensiveness and scope, was not anticipated (in spite of the fact that maybe it should have been). Most certainly unanticipated was China’s extraordinarily hostile, antagonistic and threatening response (though maybe that also should have been foreseen).
It makes one wonder just what could happen if a few years down the road, a stronger, more assertive, more aggressive, militarily-confident China would have been planning to use its dominant control of almost every important supply chain connected to global technological and industrial production to blackmail a complacent world.
It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. And if this in fact was the grand design, then one well might claim that in spite of the carnage created by the current global virus—and it’s not over yet, perhaps not by a long shot—then the WAKE-UP CALL that this crisis has so harshly delivered may in fact enable the world—if the inescapable conclusions are drawn—to have dodged a bullet.
One might still wonder if even now, China, weakened but perhaps not as much as it perceives its adversaries to be, will—-foolishly (if Pearl Harbor is any indication)—decide to take advantage of the latter’s perceived weakness.
Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.
Physics guy: At the present it doesn’t make much of a dent in the total active cases, but in about a week’s time it should turn the curve. This represents the normal curve flattening without any intervention such as isolation. We’ll see…
its still on a high rise… but that process, or even removing the old from the stack, will give you a much better determination of when things will turn around rather than looking for declining rise…
the WHO was supposed to have downloadable tables for flu..
the app online spits out nada… so you cant get it
but if you take the total low number of flu and the high number.. divided it by a year and plot that linearly… THEN you really get a feel for where covid deaths are as your only plotting US deaths for flu and world wide deaths for covid… (the flu will be straight lines).
i would love to be able to plot other conditions..
another interesting plot is to take the deaths and divide by the confirmed cases…
if you want to get more complicated… take current days death and subtract yesterdays… do the same for confirmed.. then divide deaths by confirmed..
while this is fun with numbers.. our issue is that we really have nothing to compare it too.. like a monster in an old movie played by a tiny lizard, without some other reference we cant get a true feel for this.. visually its well known without reference you cant tell scale.. well, same thing with charts of conditions vs world populations or other events.. even more so if one is not aware of the other things and their ‘normal’ numbers..
wish i could get daily data for some other conditions or events…
THEN the charts plotted would mean more… especially if one used flu in the US vs covid in the US..
32,644 confirmed cases US vs 409 deaths..
the deaths are the only number that is close to accurate..
Based on census data from 2010, over 306 million people live in the contiguous United States.
you dont want to know what percentage the deaths are
0.00013366013071895%
Current death rate in the US is about 8.8 people per 1000
given that this number is quite a bit over 2 million, Covid isnt even a rounding error
More potentially hopeful news:
https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2020/03/22/good-news-actor-daniel-dae-kim-credits-drug-cocktail-which-included-hydroxychloroquine-and-z-pak-for-his-recovery-1/
H/T Instaspundit.
“The flu kills a lot of people, but it doesn’t overwhelm hospitals. Or does it? ”
What I’m seeing is that Italy also gets overwhelmed with a severe flu season, and has for a while.
I saw the jump in “serious” US cases from 64 (for days) to 409 and now to 795 as a reporting blockage somewhere.
Honestly, that factor, plus differences in how countries report fatalities (e.g. Italy), is making me think that we can’t rely on Worldometers or the other aggregation sites as real-time truth at all. GIGO.
Barry Meislin on March 22, 2020 at 5:48 pm said:
…and, of course, the mother lode….
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/debunking-nature-magazines-covid-19-definitely-didnt-come-lab-china-propaganda
But then with all the lies being bandied about—for so many years now—who can really know?
…which is, no doubt, one of the most egregious—and dangerous—aspects of the current predicament.
________________________________________________________________
Barry Meislin:
I’ve read the paper, published in “Nature,” that argues for a natural, rather than a bioengineered origin for the Wuhan coronavirus. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9)
Unfortunately, their argument requires biochemistry and genetics training that I don’t have.
I’ve also read the anonymous critique you cited. That was written by someone who calls himself “Harvard to the Big House.” (https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/01/31/logistical-and-technical-analysis-of-the-origins-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov/)
That particular post includes a lot of information, but I didn’t find it coherent. Also, as with the original paper, I don’t think I have the background to evaluate it.
Obviously, a lot a people are curious about the virus’s origin. Do you know of a good explanation for the non-specialist?
Thanks.
SDN:
I have read that Italy has a lot of flu deaths during flu season, more than expected. But I haven’t seen anything specifically about how hospitals handle it or fail to handle it in a regular flu season. Do you have any links that deal specifically with that issue?
I apologize in advance for this comment, but it occurs to me that many haven’t really seen or heard all of the basic preventative information. Here is the really short, two slide guide, for slowing the spread that the Whitehouse put out on the 16th.
15 Days to Slow the Spread
One thing that they left out is that a multi-person household that has one infected resident should isolate that person within the dwelling so that the whole household doesn’t become infected.
Cornflour: Obviously, a lot a people are curious about the virus’s origin. Do you know of a good explanation for the non-specialist?
Why dont i give you an idea of the concept behind the knowing and not knowing?
when any genetic material multiplies it changes, there are no perfect copies. Some parts change faster than others (ie. some parts are more conserved), while other parts change faster.
these chains of code are quite long, even for virus.. i think about 30,000 letters or base pairs for corona… humans have about 3.5 billion base pairs.
so the virus that is in china is slowly changing (usually towards being more benign as it survives better and longer that way), and these changes are like finger prints… lets imagine there is a single 2000 character long segment that changes. each time it goes from person to person a bunch of letters change, but not the same ones.
so if you sequence the genome from wuhan, and then the genome in washington, and then genomes later… you can compare the letters and figure out which came after which.
this makes for a natural progression, and more analysis can show that these changes happen in more or less random ways and numbers… sometimes 10, sometimes 20, sometimes 3…
now… your going to modify the genome of a virus and your going to do so in a lab and basically your going to make changes to the genome. these changes are not going to have the same distribution as the random ones that happen over time. not only that, but your not going to find an example of the lineage from a source type leading to a end type.
the distribution will be odd, because it was inserted not evolved with random changes that went along with it.
by the way… virus and human genomes are not the only things that do this. books do too! you get a first printing which has errors in it, a 2nd printing may correct some errors, but makes others. [i tried to find this, but since google now helps you by thinking it knows what you want (the thing that destroyed previous search engines), you cant find the papers or articles on how books change over time!!! google thinks you want geneology cause you say lineage, etc.
anyway… you can tell how stories were changed over time as different typesetters retyped or re laid type to make a new book or edition.
its much the same with the virus, you can tell which errors were real mistakes which changed a letter, or corrected an error before, or dropped a sentence… as you can tell when someone edited and so changed the meaning of something, which is less an error and more a directed change
thats how they can tell if the virus was made in a lab or not.. much how we can tell who is the author of a book and who wasnt, or who inserted pages because they use different word combinations
hopefully physics guy or others may be able to make what i just said even clearer
found this:
Texts as networks: How many words are sufficient to identify an author?
https://phys.org/news/2019-04-texts-networks-words-sufficient-author.html
Stylometry, the science dealing with the statistical characteristics of the style of texts, is based on the observation that each person uses the same language in slightly different ways. Some have a broader vocabulary, others narrower, some prefer certain phrases and make mistakes, others avoid repetition and are linguistic purists. And in written text, they also differ in the way they use punctuation. In the typical stylometric approach, the basic features of a text are usually examined, including the frequency of occurrence of individual words, while punctuation is ignored. Analyses are carried out for the studied text and for texts written by potentially well-known authors. The creator is deemed to be the person whose works have parameters with the values closest to those obtained for the material being identified.
[snip]
“In the case of English texts, we identified the authors correctly in almost 90 percent of cases. In addition, in order to achieve success, it was necessary to trace the connections between only 10 to 12 words of the examined text. Contrary to naive intuition, a further increase in the number of words studied did not significantly increase the effectiveness of the method,” says Stanisz.
found a interesting site that gives you stats about writing..
i put in my writing from above
Number of characters (including spaces) : 2037
Number of characters (without spaces) : 1601
Number of words : 368
Lexical Density : 51.9022
Number of sentences : 19
Number of syllables : 533
a chunk of neo writing
Number of characters (including spaces) : 1787
Number of characters (without spaces) : 1411
Number of words : 330
Lexical Density : 58.4848
Number of sentences : 16
Number of syllables : 489
fractal rabbit
Number of characters (including spaces) : 1120
Number of characters (without spaces) : 864
Number of words : 206
Lexical Density : 64.5631
Number of sentences : 18
Number of syllables : 304
and JJ
Number of characters (including spaces) : 1595
Number of characters (without spaces) : 1269
Number of words : 279
Lexical Density : 62.3656
Number of sentences : 16
Number of syllables : 429
https://www.online-utility.org/text/analyzer.jsp
Lexical density is defined as the number of lexical words (or content words) divided by the total number of words exical density is simply the percentage of words in written (or spoken) language which give us information about what is being communicated. With regard to writing, lexical density is simply a measure of how informative a text is.
there is always more…
Why this Nobel laureate predicts a quicker coronavirus recovery: ‘We’re going to be fine’
https://news.yahoo.com/why-nobel-laureate-predicts-quicker-210318391.html
as myself and physics guy realize looking at the numbers…
we are not the only ones…
Artfldgr:
Thanks for taking the time to write that out.
Globalization has earned a big hit. Insofar as making China a EU style competitor, rather than an enemy, globalization has been a big failure.
China has become a military, economic, cultural, and medical threat.
The rise of China, and the change from 800 million dirt poor commie farmers, into 300 million poor farmers and over 1 billion factory & city workers, has been a huge reduction in poverty. Human poverty. The kind of human poverty economists are trying to reduce. Free trade, as part of economics, is the best way to “enlarge the pie”.
Globalization did that, and has been doing it for many decades. With the US leading and benefiting from its “Free Trade” -ish sort of policies, and the World Trade Org, and looking for the cheapest makers of T-shirts, aspirin, cars; and many parts used in F-35s.
All investment advisors will agree on one word that investors need to know, and follow: Diversify. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. (There’s an alternative idea – put all your eggs in one basket, and WATCH that basket. Most successful business founders follow this idea.)
Supply-chain fragility will become a big new management thing, and depending on China will become less popular. Commie China is extremely dangerous.
not to mention the 30 million extra men, these extra Chinese men whose expected wives were aborted by One Child Policy, which also helped pull China out of poverty quickly, but has created some 330 million young men but only 300 million young women. (very rough numbers.) A war for the Glory of Great China is what a huge number of Chinese folk want. Many already know how much Americans hate America, by learning English and reading American History books which show how racist and sexist and bad Americans have been.
America will suffer economically, some, even with a treatment soon. China much much worse. The reduced trade that China gets will be a huge huge shock to a Chinese system that doesn’t have experience with developed country econ shocks.
War is, and should be, a very real fear.
Just like a pandemic from China should have long been included as a risk in every company’s risk management document. This was no “unknown unknown”, no “black swan”. There are movies, dystopian novels, SARS & MERS and H1N1; even a fun mobile phone game called Plague, inc. “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, with the infected carrier going to an airport, comes to mind. It has long been a question of when, not if — tho “how bad” was always another known-unknown.
Trump-haters are gonna hate. But on Trump + tariffs on China -vs- experts & free trade, Trump was right, experts wrong. Those who don’t admit Trump was right are not worth following closely.
On closing the border to illegals, Trump was right, open-border experts wrong. (Not all econ folk support open borders, tho many do)
On the Jan 31 travel ban to China, Trump was right, Dem anti-ban experts wrong.
Those public intellectuals who were wrong, but fail to admit it, are being intellectually flabby, if not dishonest. They deserve to be laughed at; I suggest variations on how they’ve been flabby thinkers, lazy thinkers, wrong about important things. Too filled with pride to admit being wrong.
Keep America Great – Trump 2020.
The COVID-19 crisis may have ended that many-decades-long globalization trend
Globalization isn’t decades old, it’s centuries old.
Britain ran the triangular slave trade as a globalized business across three continents from the 16th century. Tea was run to China, from which porcelain was run to the UK from the 1700s. Manchester used cotton from around the world more than 200 years ago. That’s how they become the industrial powerhouse — by being the first to globalize. Others only caught up once they started to do the same.
You can’t stop globalization, because it makes sense. The alternative is to restrict free trade and make us all poorer.
Having economies self-sufficient has been tried many times, and has always made for lower standards of living — in many cases dramatically lower (Franco tried in Spain, and their standards of living lagged massively, whereas similarly fascist Pinochet showed the opposite).
Wallmart buy from wherever is cheapest. If they don’t, someone else will become the new Wallmart — because they will undercut them. If you ban them buying from China, then they will buy from somewhere else — but it won’t be the US.
It’s all very well saying “we need to bring industries home”, but who is going to pay for that? Are you actually going to pay $10,000 more for a car because it has its components made in the US, or will you buy the best car for your money? Because unless the consumer is actively willing to drop their purchasing power for the joys of home made, it is all a pipe dream.
Unless it makes economic sense for the companies involved the world will stay globalised.
If you want America to be great, then globalization is imperative. It can’t have a world class economy run on 15th century ideas.
Neo — according to the latest numbers from worldometer (10:19 pm PDT) as of 3/22/20 there are a total of 34,717 cases in the US and 452 deaths, for a death rate of 1.3%. Since everyone agrees that there are many more unreported, or even asymptomatic and unknown cases, that rate must be much lower. The death rate peaked on March 4 at 6.5% and has been declining ever since.
Bryan Lovely,
Same here – my dad born in 1927. He is my biggest worry re the WuFlu.
My late father in law, 1926.
Born on the same day, a year apart. Intelligent, hardworking, and real gentlemen through and through. Such a privilege to know them.
Yes, yes, yes, thank G-d for the atom bomb!
“thats how they can tell if the virus was made in a lab or not.. much how we can tell who is the author of a book and who wasnt, or who inserted pages because they use different word combinations” – Artfldgr
Very informative.
Thanks for the text analysis also.
I learned about that in the early days (1980s) when it was called “wordprint,” but it’s gotten much more refined.
“That’s how they become the industrial powerhouse — by being the first to globalize.“
How many British companies closed down operations at home to reopen them in a foreign land? How much immigration did Britain allow or tolerate in that era? This is such a profound misreading of history that it’s hard not to attribute it to bad faith. I mean, pretending that a country IMPORTING raw materials to supply its native industry is the exact same thing as a country EXPORTING entire industries to foreign lands is almost too stupid to accept that any vaguely intelligent person honestly believes it.
But plenty of people honestly believed Communism was leading us all toward a better world.
Mike
Cornflour,
Here,’s another article/testimony, FWIW (but once again, caveat emptor):
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/03/08/dr-francis-boyle-bioterrorism.aspx
Here’s another, far less technical assessment. How much is factual, how much speculative is anyone’s guess—much (albeit not everything) depends on one’s political views and, correspondingly, how much credence one therefore gives to certain publications/sites…):
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/the_wuhan_virus_escaped_from_a_chinese_lab.html
Follow-up (on China’s OBOR project AKA “Silk Road initiative”):
https://www.business-standard.com/multimedia/video-gallery/general/one-belt-one-road-one-virus-obor-participating-nations-pay-hefty-price-for-ties-with-china-amid-covid-19-scare-101355.htm
And mapping the massive, multi-continental project itself (note the RED-line “overland” route and the places through which it goes, among them—but not limited to—Northern Iran and Northern Italy… (also note the blue maritime route…) and then, given the number of Chinese workers who have no doubt been sent to all those places, hope real hard (and if you’re inclined in that particular direction, pray…):
https://www.google.com/search?q=one+road+project&safe=active&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=8_hwBw3q62ZkcM%253A%252Ca2EWuJOLShSlRM%252C%252Fm%252F013180bh&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kQD80RB3E36NSqnxQMAkDuyVrlg4g&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjq7ISXobDoAhWKQkEAHYskC0oQ_B0wEnoECAkQAw#imgrc=8_hwBw3q62ZkcM:
(Franco tried in Spain, and their standards of living lagged massively, whereas similarly fascist Pinochet showed the opposite).
Whatever Franco may or may no have attempted, Spain’s loss of position antedated his rule. Per the Maddison Project, per capita product in Spain in 1877 (after the close of the last Carlist War) stood at 94% of that in Britain and 94% of that in the United States as well. In 1929 (on the eve of the Depression), it stood at 81% that of Great Britain and 57% that of the United States. At the close of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, it stood at 45% that of Britain and 38% that of the United States. In 1948, as Britain began its post-war recovery, Spain’s per capita product stood at 47% that of Britain and 29% that of the United States. At Franco’s death in 1975, it stood at 65% that of Britain and 44% that of the United States.
Neither Franco nor Pinochet are properly described as fascists, btw.
Artfldgr, very impressive.
(So who DID write Shakespeare?….)
is the exact same thing as a country EXPORTING entire industries to foreign lands is almost too stupid to accept that any vaguely intelligent person honestly believes it.
Gross output in manufacturing in this country stood at $5.3 tn in chained (2012) dollars in 1997 and $6.2 tn in chained dollars in 2018. Value-added in manufacturing in this country in chained dollars stood at $1.46 tn in 1997 and at $2.1 tn. Employee compensation as a share of gross output did decline in that period of time, from 20% to 18%. Manufacturing employment did decline, from 17.2 million (FTE) in 1998 to 12.4 million in 2018. The economy grew less-oriented toward manufacturing and manufacturing itself grew less labor-intensive. The quantum of production did not decline.
NB, gross fixed capital formation is around 25% of GDP for the bulk of OECD countries. In China it’s been around 40% for the last generation. However, foreign direct investment has accounted for between 2% and 5% of China’s domestic product over the last 25 years. China’s financed its industrial expansion through domestic savings, by and large.
Art D – China also has HUGE gov’t debt. Like Japan level, some 200% of its annual GNP, but with unreliable numbers (including the 200% est. of both real GNP and real debt.).
Franco was a nationalist, with a coalition that included fascists, but it seems he didn’t call himself a fascist. Many, maybe most, historians do call his dictatorship fascist, but it was never imperialistic.
He and Pinochet violated many human rights, but their support for private property and markets led both of their countries to achieve better economies than the commie countries – or, recently, Venezuela. (Allende in Chile would have been a Chavez like disaster of a far poorer country.) Those against market capitalism like to mislabel those regimes as fascist to demonize them, and attempt to merge capitalism with human rights violations. With lots of elite Dem professor help.
Franco was a nationalist, with a coalition that included fascists, but it seems he didn’t call himself a fascist. Many, maybe most, historians do call his dictatorship fascist, but it was never imperialistic.
It was an authoritarian regime which assembled corporatist institutions. It ressembled Mussolini’s in that way. However, it was never a revanchist regime in any enduring way. (There was a brutal run of executions undertaken in 1939 and 1940 contra the opposition). It was a status quo power which had businesslike dealings with the rest of the world. It’s army was an army in reserve. Neither did it have totalitarian signatures like travel restrictions or the liquidation of private initiative. One student of Franco offered: “He had no ideology; none was necessary to justify his right to rule”. The ruling party had three notional strands incorporated into its thought: Falangism, Carlism, and Alfonsine monarchism. Falangism bore the most resemblance to Italian Fascism, but was not identical to it. Ramon Serrano Suner, the chief ideologist of the Falangist movement, maintained that parliamentary institutions were bad for Spain but satisfactory in other settings (e.g. as Britain).
As for Pinochet, he was an adherent to a Latin-American conception called at the time the ‘national security state’ which saw the military as a sort of autonomous guarantor of the political order. Chile’s return to constitutional government was conducted under a charter that his advisers had composed. The economic order of the regime was a modified whig model. (The term ‘neo-liberal’ has been used as an epithet).
“…HUGE…”
Funny you should mention that…
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/chinas-housing-bubble-bursts-evergrande-cuts-earnings-guidance-50
It can’t have a world class economy run on 15th century ideas.
Why do some people seem to think in slogans?
Morning update, about 33000 cases as of midnight last night, still on tight exponential fit. Following the link Artfldgr gave early this morning I started plotting daily new cases also. The author claims (who predicted almost to the day when China would see their cases stop) that this is a more sensitive indicator. At present it also is exponential, though if plotted on a log scale its slope is much lower than the total cases, ie the exponential growth is less.
Serious cases still at 795. As Bryan Lovely stated there is some reporting errors going on here. And as he also stated can we trust worldometers? My answer is No. However, I’m using their data as I suspect a number of politicians et al are also using it. Is it giving data that Art would like to dig into the “truth”? Probably not. I’m interested in to see if we can predict when the politicians come to their senses while also trying to tease out something useful.
Recovered cases still at a nonsensical 178. Using what I started yesterday, I predict the recovered cases should be around 640 for a two week recovery and around 4400 for a one week recovery.
Despite the Gov. Lamont induced panic in my state, CT cases continues on a *linear* progression.
Stat mech was one of my weaker subjects, so I’ll leave that sort of analysis to Artfldgr who seems to have a good feel for it. PDE and Linear Algebra (stuff used in E&M and QM) are more my strengths.
Artfldgr,
That was an excellent explanation of the way viruses and their mutations are analyzed. Thank you.
Keep in mind, y’all, that one of the reasons posited (by some reports) on why the virus essentially “stopped” spreading in China was because the Chinese stopped testing.
(Pretty clever, if you ask me.)
As I understand it, the main problem with obtaining accurate stats on this virus is that we can NEVER truly know just how pervasive it is, this simply because not everyone can be tested, and certainly not tested every few days (given the lengthy incubation period of the virus).
So except for deaths and people currently in hospitals and people currently tested who are not in hospitals (which is likely a mere fraction of all those who ARE infected), what are we talking about exactly?
In short, how can we really know what’s going on until we can get those test numbers up sharply?
Warning!!!!!!!!! graphic video
https://videopress.com/v/pPZH1NX0
[young man eating live frog]
example of Chinese market..
“The economy grew less-oriented toward manufacturing and manufacturing itself grew less labor-intensive.“
If manufacturing grew less labor intensive, why did we see companies opening factories elsewhere at the exact same time they closed them in the U.S.? For example, a big issue at the moment is how much of America’s medical supply chain is located in China. Are robots doing all those jobs? I’m pretty sure they are not. And I’m pretty sure if those jobs had remained in the U.S. they still wouldn’t ALL be done by robots.
This gets at the heart of the whole globalism debate. Globalists, free traders, and the like propagate the myth/lie that the economic changes over the last several decades are the result of some sort of natural evolution. Every argument with them boils down to “We can’t do anything about it. It’s just the way things are.”
That’s crap. The U.S. and global economy would have changed over the last several decades no matter what anyone did but the reason it changed one way and not another was due to deliberate policy decisions. Things didn’t just happen. We made them happen.
Again for example, could we have saved every manufacturing job the U.S. has lost over the last few decades? No. Could we have saved some of them? Yes. Would the policies that saved those jobs have produced a better America than the one we have now? That’s debatable.
BUT WE NEVER HAD THAT DEBATE. Instead, we were told there was only one option, one solution, one way forward. That was wrong and it is long past time we corrected that mistake.
Mike
Finally, a sign of hope in Italy?:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8141861/Has-Italy-started-turn-tide-coronavirus.html
Related (on testing, etc.):
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/the-doctor-who-helped-defeat-smallpox-explains-whats-coming/
H/T Instapundit.
Barry,
I saw that article. My stomach wasn’t strongest enough to withstand the requisite OrangeManBad smearing and lies at the beginning of the article. I find that I have less and less tolerance for it as the days pass.
After that, did he have anything new to add to the discussion?
And on a lighter note:
https://hotair.com/archives/jazz-shaw/2020/03/23/nyc-short-medical-supplies-somebody-forgot-order/
Keeping in mind that de Blasio could have (well, at least in theory) become POTUS!
(New Yorkers would have voted for him en masse. Anything to get him out of the city….)
This gets at the heart of the whole globalism debate. Globalists, free traders, and the like propagate the myth/lie that the economic changes over the last several decades are the result of some sort of natural evolution.
That’s generally the case. There are some industries which might have been more inclined to remain here had we a better labor relations regime. (Recall Mark Steyn’s crack that GM had by 2009 turned into a vast welfare operation with a modest, loss-making, industrial subsidiary).
Trum is going to use the Stafford Act during an Emergency Powers period, to declare a kind of martial law. This is part of a final push and campaign against what people know as the Deep State.
People barely know anything about how deep the Deep State goes. This Civil War 2 against the Invisible Enemy has been ongoing for some years now.
I told GB before, in 2015, that there was nothing they could do to stop a dictator Trum from going totalitarian. Apparently, not even the Leftist alliance or Deep State can counter Trum now. The ball, as we say sometimes in the Divine, is now in Trum’s hands.
FR,
You’re right about that. The by-now obligatory derogatory statements based on mostly fictionalized episodes heavily laced with distaste were certainly a turn-off; but I thought that in spite of it all that he had something to contribute. It’s his field of expertise, as it were.
One would figure that smarter people would know better, but obviously that’s not the case.
I was a bit surprised, to be sure, when he had some positive things to say about Anthony Fauci, which seemed to undercut his whole anti-Trump diatribe in one fell swoop…. But I guess people (even brilliant ones) aren’t always logical.
Oh well…
Take a look at this information about the reported number of Chinese cell phone users as an indicator of the possibility that China massively under reported it’s death toll from the Corona virus–
https://pjmedia.com/trending/report-china-may-have-massively-underreported-coronavirus-deaths/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5IjD8Ut0lQ
This is not the Zombie Apocalypse humanity endlessly sees in games, tv, and movies.
This is something greater and also worst.
The End of the Age of Humanity, of the Cabal, of the current Financial System of fiat slavery.
For the most part, this Dream and War, will have ended by the time the vast majority here and online figure it out and confirm the truth. If it is a clean victory, the nation’s civilians will only hear of the aftermath. If it is a prolonged quagmire… then there’s a problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I10P5tMLlI
For those that want a briefing, they are free to choose. For those that want to stay with the status quo system, they will be aided by forces both mundane and Divine to continue in the Matrix utilizing a Blue Pill.
My faction is overseeing the overthrow of the Cabal, the rulers of what you call the Deep State here and online.
This will be a magnificent Prelude to the Last Battle for Humanity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_HXgEyRtZY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuLASvt3s5k
The End of this Age will be soon apparent in 2020 and 2021 for those that survive. If your hearts can take the emotional fluctuations, pain, and fear of the world… without stopping.
As for me personally, the Peace that Surpasses Understanding is hard to give up. Although I notice that humanity thinks it is some kind of Zombie Apocalypse. When doom and warnings are prophesized, people discount it as non reality. When humanity panicks and starts prophesying doom utilizing their limited human potential and the main sewer media, I am the one that discounts their mental EGO/Self/Identity as sane. It is not sane for the world is not sane.
Let us look at it like this. A person in 2008 or 2012, did not think the world was ending. When confronted with the idea that the world is not what they thought it was or that there are things that must be ended in a Civil War, this was discounted, as the Identity of the Self, the Mind Ego, fights back to protect what it has.
Now that it is 2020, the Ego Mind Self, panicks and no longer can think long term or even revive the memories of the previous warnings it discounted. Now it is panicking. Now it is more extreme than any warning of a doom prophesy given before. It did not prepare for a civil war because it thought civil wars were not possible in America.
Now it thinks anyone that discounts a civil war in America is an idiot or a threat to their survival. This extreme polarity shift is an example of insanity.
Those that warned of disasters 10+ years ago, are prepared now, thus they have no reason to fear. Everything is going according to Divine Plan. Although Trum’s plan is not always the Divine Plan, in this instance at least, we are all in agreement. The Cabal Must end their control of humanity.
Now Pelosi, with her stooge Schumer have now blocked the relief bill 3 times to put in solar credits and fuel emissions standards for airlines…Green New Deal via the virus. These people are truly evil. They even lost the NYT’s support.
Or… they will be Ended. Either way works. China’s fall and transformation is only a start. Almost all Westerners, the only thing they know about China is what they have heard. They do not know the true and historical/traditional China, much as foreigners do not know the real American. They just know about the Deep State CIA and the controlled politicians.
President Hussein, kowtowing down to all America’s superiors… that was the true America, right? Hah.
“…truly evil…”
Alas, orgiastic hate can do that…even to the nicest people(!)…. And the past three-plus years have been a Democratic bacchanalia of sheer, unmitigated hatred.
What we are witnessing now is merely(!) the result of their no-holds-barred hate-fest…such that the challenge for Americans—and the US—at this critical juncture is that there are several simultaneous, severe challenges that We the People must be able to overcome and survive.
It is now this generation’s turn to engage, stand up to and vanquish adversity.
https://spectator.org/the-impeachment-that-killed-americans/
H/T Powerline blog
Sheer malevolence, continued (but then there’s so much of it…where does one stop?):
https://spectator.org/the-game-changer-president-trump-was-right/
H/T Powerline blog
File under: We will take down this president even if we have to kill every last American to do it…because TRUMP is the GREATEST DANGER America has ever faced!!
Americans stepping up:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/03/jeff-jacoby-charity-in-the-time-of-coronavirus.php
https://twitter.com/BillOReilly/status/1242111883542478849
Fractal; Barry:
I read the article too. He led with an easily-debunked lie and/or inaccuracy, so I don’t trust his word right at the outset.
But in addition, I think that anyone with an “epidemiologist” after his or her name is now the new authority. We hang on their every word; they are the gurus. And it is definitely true that they have expertise in this arena that we lack, and that we can learn things from them. But they disagree with each other in their prognostications. They are good at describing something (often with estimates derived from statistics that are far from exact) ex post facto. Sometimes it takes years to understand what has happened in an epidemic or pandemic. But their forecasts? Well, someone’s correct, but who? The worst doomsayer? The sanguine optimist? The one in-between? This particular guy has not earned my trust at all. And smallpox was eradicated by this worldwide campaign that occurred within my lifetime and that I remember. Many thousands of people were involved, and Brilliant was one of them and as far as I can tell he wasn’t leading the pack.
Here is the story of Brilliant’s involvement:
The last case of smallpox recorded in the wild was that of a man in Somalia in late 1977. There were a couple of other cases in Britain the following year, from some sort of laboratory mishap. This fellow would have been just out of residency during the last years of this campaign.
He seems like a self-promoter.
Neo,
He sounds like a consummate BS artist. I’ve worked with a couple.
It also reminds me of a scene in the movie ‘There’s Something About Mary’. Matt Dillon’s sleazy private eye talking about his time in Nepal with the animals while in the Peace Corps.
Pure BS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H_XZ_Nh8AI
Yamarskar… put a sock in it… only losers in their moms basement speak like that..
“That’s generally the case.”
Natural evolution doesn’t require or involve input from Man. You’re a fairly well-informed guy so I KNOW you are aware of the long history of deliberate policy decisions made to facilitate and assist the globalization of the American economy. When a system of laws/regulations is in place and they are deliberately changed/dismantled, you cannot call the result a product of “evolution.” It’s the result of a choice.
And just so the point isn’t lost, you stated that American manufacturing jobs declined because the industry became less “labor intensive.” Yet at the same time factories producing Product X were shuttered in America, factories producing Product X were created in foreign countries and that Product X was then shipped back to America for sale.
Mike
Artfldgr on March 23, 2020 at 4:53 pm said:
Yamarskar… put a sock in it… only losers in their moms basement speak like that..
Lol, Woah Art, that is strange coming from you. Are you sure you are the one controlling your hands to write like that? Because what I see behind your words is… something else controlling you like a puppet.
Witness the power of the Elohim. In order to remain free of suffering and evil, Art, you must choose.
Service to Other with compassion and kindness Or
Service to Self, which is another way of saying Service to Artfully dodging the x.
If you have chosen the path of service to self at the expense of all others, the Path of Divine Darkness, then talking to me or reading my material, will only depolarize you. If, however, you choose to become free of suffering and illusion in the Matrix, then you need to repent and change yourself. Before you are eligible for higher graduation and wisdom.
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