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Jun 8, 2022·edited Jun 8, 2022Liked by Geary Johansen

This is the Achilles heel of the progressive-socialist "squad" in the USA. You can't have open borders (i.e. rampant illegal immigration) and better wages and conditions for the working class. But they don't have to talk about the contradictions in their activist ideologies as long as the media refuses to call them on it and lets them spin any opposition into identity politics. Minimum wage laws as a protection are a joke as the exploiters just transform the undocumented workers into 'independent contractors' if they aren't already paying them under the table. When uber-liberal rich white folks in my town pushed 'sanctuary' laws and declarations, one of the explicit justifications they voiced was they'd lose cheap house-cleaning services if the Brazilian and Cape Verdean women were deported. It was breathtaking honesty and stupidity all at the same time. I tend to agree with the view that in the not-so-long-run the only way out of the decimation of labor (and society) from automation and feudal-style bullshit jobs (hat tip to the late David Graeber) is Universal Basic Income. But what chance we'll ever get there if we're unable to control our borders? A sane immigration policy is sorely needed but what incentive do the Democrats have to compromise? It seems like we're on a runaway train to a very dystopian outcome: high energy costs, high food costs, high transport costs, high medical costs, high rent and property costs, crappy education, and a bottomless pool of cheap labor governed by a self-perpetuating elite lecturing us on the importance of trans rights and DEI while Chicago, Baltimore, etc. burn to the ground. Fuck the dream, can we at least avoid the nightmare?

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Jun 3, 2022Liked by Geary Johansen

Wow. If people in major political parties, world-wide, were perceptive, they'd be all over this. Or maybe they have already realized it, and are busy working out how to come up with a line on it that the majority of voters will fall for. For the poor voters, alas, as this column acutely observes, "they lack the economic understanding and discipline to investigate the root causes". As economies (and societies overall) become more complex, democracy becomes a less effective way to run it; people can't understand the whole thing, and so they pick leaders based on things like 'too many mean Tweets', or the price of gasoline. The chief goal of most politicians, world-wide (perhaps as ever) is the struggle for power (increasingly, as a goal in itself, not just for what they want to do with it - goals that have become increasingly irrational - 'pregnant men'), only that struggle has now become as Byzantine as the original of the term, or the Russian Communist Party in its heyday. The thing is to come up with a line - no matter how irrelevant to the real issues of the day - that the majority of the voters will fall for. (What was that book in the 60's that talked about the increasing use of the technologies of the advertising world in elections?) And let the Devil take the hindmost. And all the time the increasing pace of technological change leaves people, and societies, struggling harder to keep up - which just feeds into the poorly-understood (by the average citizen) angst that these labor market changes are producing.

Noel

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Aug 4, 2022Liked by Geary Johansen

You seem to engage in excess reductionism when analyzing complexity. Contrarily your solutions to complex problems seem weightily nuanced and prone to collapse from ambiguity. Sometimes extreme and harsh measures are taken by nature and physics itself to correct asymmetric misalignments. You dismiss the march to civil war with reflections on "populisms" two main causative factors of historical reference, finance and immigration. I think, in my opinion you are confusing a vast forest with a grove of trees a hundred feet ahead. It's not about left, right, Trump or Biden. It is about intolerable stresses to systems that have structural limits, created by corruption from top to bottom.

The only way to sustain the system now is more corruption. An old system is dying and a new system is already in place. The only lasting source of power is truth. On this earth global air-sea superiority is demonstrated daily, soon the Americans shall be forced to capitulate . Nuclear genocide is not a healable scar. The patient is in morbid self collapse. Psychologically trapped in a past omnipotence.

Maybe that was the point of inculcating the secrets of physics. To get the target to hit itself in the head with a hammer. The Americans bought Manhattan for 25$. The American's opponent bought their Manhattan Project from them for two bombs.

With thirty trillion in debt, sixty million decapitated and dismembered in the womb, and a nation defeated in every war for a hundred years, it translates to, the American experiment failed. They seek to relitigate the loss of half of Europe in WW2, but the enemy was ready, waiting, clinging to truth.

The forces of nature and physics can not be corrupted. Better to return this experiment to nothing than allow the creation of a barbaric abomination. The hierarchy of predation is an infinite progression. When a system grows weak its predators arrive. A termite mound loses a wall to heat decay, the warrior ants receive the chemical signal and formations of attack are assembled. Truth is the only cure and the humility of understanding that ALMIGHTY GOD CREATOR is here with trillions of warships. Each being processed out according to their allegiance to truth as cause and effect management.

I've seen this sequence many times, termites and warrior ants are more interesting match-ups.

In closing I think your a sincere striver for truth trying to fashion well rounded solutions. My point is that we are beyond that point and the opponent has the earth and populace locked in zugzwang.

Every move leads to defeat . I appreciate your opinions and reasoning, but we differ on estimates of the orders of magnitude of malfunctions and decay.

"To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence. Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." So said General Sun Tzu around 500 BC.

109. Jesus said, "The (Father's) kingdom is like a person who had a treasure hidden in his field but did not know it. And [when] he died he left it to his [son]. The son [did] not know about it either. He took over the field and sold it. The buyer went plowing, [discovered] the treasure, and began to lend money

at interest to whomever he wished."

Chevelle - Self Destructor

https://youtu.be/QhPn5EPGN4c

https://youtu.be/QhPn5EPGN4c

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Jun 10, 2022Liked by Geary Johansen

Hi Geary,

Very good essay and i fully agree with your points

however

ummmmmmm, lets look at it from a different angle and not just looking to UK,

which you have described very well and how it affects all the workers (not the elites but yes all the workers, if you think it only affects the unskilled or the medium skilled, then i would ask you "what is the barrier of entry not to be affected" (spoiler: having enough resources to send your children to the elite colleges)

coming to my question

from where it comes that quantity of people??

I mean, see the birth rate in Europe, and see the birth rate in the countries "exporting people", Europeans adapted the number of children to the ones they can support and/or are compatible with their life style/means.

OK that adapting takes time, but we have been seeing this for decades. If it was to change it had time to do so, and has no expectations to finish, who is supporting "people overproduction" in certain countries that then are "exported to Europe", and helped "by these non-for-profit organizations ......".

So first there was a health revolution, then an agricultural revolution, people moved to the city followed by industrial revolution, then war then here we are. See that from my very rough summary initial the children were "the retirement scheme of the parents" and today that we have other retirement schemes we "produce less children". What about the countries currently producing? why they continue doing so at these rates?

At the risk of being described as conspiracy theorist

Can it be that we want to replace Europeans with other people? people that is ready to "postpone consumption" (aka saving) with people used to "live by the day" (aka not saving just make by) because eventually that makes them more dependent?

Same as some theories attribute to evolution the female behavior on mate selection, maybe the different approach between saving Vs live-by-day can be applied. On a book that i recommended you "Tragedy and hope" there is a paragraph about the replacement of Europeans with Africans, and it is based in that analysis without being offensive to any, just a matter of human evolution and human adaptation to the environment.

I have to say that "tragedy & hope" was published in 1966, so it cannot be linked to any current narrative of hate speech, racism, or anything of the sort. By the way, the book can be downloaded for free on http://www.carrollquigley.net/books.htm, it is over 1000 pages if i have the time i would try to find the paragraph for you.

have a nice weekend

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Jun 9, 2022Liked by Geary Johansen

bem colocado e sintetiza a situação de muitas sociedades essa frase é a mestra "Além de qualquer outra coisa, esses empregos preciosos estão em declínio, pois a automação continua a corroer os grampos de emprego anteriores. Caso contrário, estamos colocando nossos adolescentes menos afortunados no caminho da autodestruição, independentemente de serem afro-americanos, brancos ou latinos".

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Jun 4, 2022Liked by Geary Johansen

A critical question for countries with relatively high wages: In a world with global and highly-efficient transportation and communications…and billions of people who are accustomed to low wages…is it possible for a country such as the United States to maintain its accustomed high standards of living for the large majority of its people?…and, if so, what are the key policy elements required to do this?

See my post Labor Day Thoughts:

https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/66613.html

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“ Yes, there are significant things which might help- a more libertarian approach to zoning and planning laws would be a huge boon for house building, blue collar labour and value creation, but it is unlikely to happen because of entrenched interests. Capital loves the huge returns which can be made by artificial scarcity in building land, and finance loves the greatly inflated mortgages which an undersupply of housing creates.”

You anticipated my thoughts entirely!

I think the populist revolt is more about the perception that “the immigrants are taking our jobs” than the reality. I’d point out that immigration also increases the number of consumers and the size of the market in which you can trade your labor/time/goods/services etc.

But obviously, we need to fix our immigration system. We have a hiring gap/shortage right now and falling fertility rates so if anything, we should be increasing immigration not decreasing. But I have no problem targeting the system at people who have the skills to fill the gaps in our workforce rather than those who don’t. I used to work with a bunch of PhD students on visas from India and China. Those are the guys I wish could stay in America because they were smart and they worked harder than most kids I knew (including me) and they would have been exactly the kinds of citizens who would add value to the American workforce.

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Jun 3, 2022Liked by Geary Johansen

Brilliant essay, will definitely reread!

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