Of Two Minds

As for our central banks’ defaulting on their lines of credit with the Martian Central Bank–that’s another alien intervention we’ll live to regret. I hope this won’t shock the more sensitive readers too greatly, but I’ve discovered undeniable evidence that all our planet’s problems are the result of alien intervention.

Sealing the USD’s coffin requires conjuring up a replacement reserve currency, and that turns out to be a lot more challenging than many understand. You know the scene in movies where the body-bag is being zipped up or the coffin lid slid into place when the recently deceased startles everyone by suddenly sitting upright?

Stocks don’t vanish when sold; somebody owns the shares all the way to the bottom. These owners who refuse to sell because they have convinced themselves the next dip will be the hoped-for resumption of the bullish trend are called “bagholders.” Trends are tricky.

The solutions will come not from those profiting from inequality and scarcity but from relocalizing “money” and production to create degrowth community economies. We think we understand “money”–we don’t. We think the current versions of “money” are the final versions–they aren’t. Understanding “money” requires some heavy-lifting, but it’s important, so let’s dig in.

Our control is what’s irreplaceable. Wealth, status and the illusory security of dependency chains cannot replace control. What’s our personal strategy for navigating tumultuous times? I’ve long advocated controlling as much as you can. We don’t control the availability of fuel and food from far away, or the government’s policies.

This desire for compliance and consensus dooms the autocracy to failure and collapse because dissent is the essence of evolutionary churn and adaptation..The various flavors of autocracy (theocracy, kleptocracy, dictatorship, etc.) look remarkably successful at first blush but they all share a fatal flaw. To understand the flaw we must start with the dominant dynamic of all organisms, natural selection.