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 | James Howard Kunstler |
Agitprop Is Not News  |
| Forget about sharks. In their Valentine’s Day editorial: Why Does Trump Ignore Top Officials’ Warnings on Russia?, The New York Times jumped several blue whales (all the ones left on earth), a cruise ship, a subtropical archipelago, a giant vortex of plastic bottles, and the Sport’s Illustrated swimsuit shoot. The lede said:
The phalanx of intelligence chiefs who testified on Capitol Hill delivered a chilling message: Not only did Russia interfere in the 2016 election, it is already meddling in Friday, February 16, 2018 |
|
| James Howard Kunstler |
 Diminishing Returns  |
| These two words are the hinge that is swinging American life — and the advanced techno-industrial world, for that matter — toward darkness. They represent an infection in the critical operations of daily life, like a metabolic disease, driving us into disorder and failure. And they are so omnipresent that we’ve failed to even notice the growing failure all around us.
Mostly, these diminishing returns are the results of our over-investments in making complex systems more complex, for instance theMonday, August 21, 2017 |
|
| James Howard Kunstler |
Battle of the Behemoths  |
| As the empire deliquesces into a fetid slurry of economic failure, we stand ankle deep in the rising swamp waters witnessing the futile battle of the giants, Walmart and Amazon.
Neil Howe, co-author of The Fourth Turning, wrote this week that “[t]he Amazon-Walmart rivalry will determine the future of retail.” Well, it seems that way, perhaps, and I understand why a lot of people would imagine it, but I would draw some different conclusions. What we’re seeing is more like the battle between GodziFriday, August 11, 2017 |
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| James Howard Kunstler |
| Musktopia Here We Come! |
| It ought to be sign of just how delusional the nation is these days that Elon Musk of Tesla and Space X is taken seriously. Musk continues to dangle his fantasy of travel to Mars before a country that can barely get its shit together on Planet Earth, and the Tesla car represents one of the main reasons for it — namely, that we’ll do anything to preserve, maintain, and defend our addiction to incessant and pointless motoring (and nothing to devise a saner living arrangement).
Even people with IvyMonday, April 3, 2017 |
|
 | Mac Slavo - ShtfPlan |
| What The Hell Is Going On (Part 2) |
| This article was originally published by James Quinn at The Burning Platform
In Part One of this article I exposed the establishment narrative of a strong economy as rubbish by providing hard data regarding imploding gasoline usage, failing bricks and mortar retailers and plunging restaurant sales.
“Inflation may indeed bring benefits for a short time to favored groups, but only at the expense of others. And in the long run it brings ruinous consequences to the whole community. Even a relativelyWednesday, March 15, 2017 |
|
 | Mish - Global Economic Analysis |
| Good Ole Days Return: Nixonian Wage and Price Controls |
| Californians longing for the “Good Ole Days” of wage and price controls under President Nixon may get their wish.
Wage controls in the form of increasing minimums just passed the California legislature. Price controls in the form of rent caps are starting to spread to suburbia.
Please consider Rent Control Spreads from Pricey San Francisco to Suburbs.
Last year, a raucous city council meeting over rent control in Alameda, population 75,000, resulted in two arrests. Farther north, city leaders oMonday, April 4, 2016 |
|
 | Nathan Lewis - New World Economics |
| Let's Take A Look At Hudson Yards |
| Hudson Yards is a major new highrise development planned for the west
side of Manhattan, New York. The site was once a railyard. Once both
phases are completed, a total of more than 17 million square feet of
commercial and residential space will be built.
http://www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com/the-story
Well, let's take a look.
The problem with hirise architecture, over the past century or so as I
see it, is generally not the height of the building itself. There's
nothing particularly unpleaSunday, February 28, 2016 |
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| James Howard Kunstler |
 Discovery |
| I t looks like 2016 will be the year that humanfolk learn that the stuff they value was not worth as much as they thought it was. It will be a harrowing process because a great many humans are abandoning ownership of things that are rapidly losing value — e.g. stocks on the Shanghai exchange — and stuffing whatever “money” they can recover into the US dollar, the assets and usufructs of which are also going through a very painful reality value adjustment.
Of course this calls into question foremMonday, January 11, 2016 |
|
| Nathan Lewis - New World Economics |
HTMAPODWTTC 13: Getting Other People's Cooperation  |
| A friend who works in a municipal government in Canada wrote to me
recently (reprinted with permission):
The town I work in (where I am a planner) just approved
a project in which we tried hard to get close to the traditional
city ideals you promote (and I firmly believe in). We pushed the
developer HARD on narrow streets and we ended up in a major battle
with our own Engineering and Fire Departments. British
Columbia’s building code requires 6 metresTuesday, July 15, 2014 |
|
| Mac Slavo - ShtfPlan |
| Strategic Relocation Preparedness Tip: Find The Perfect Survival Retreat or Homestead |
| Finding the right place to live can be a daunting task. And for those looking to strategically relocate out of major cities to a more sustainable and free lifestyle it could be even more challenging. From balancing your professional needs and familial goals, to finding just the right mix of acreage, security and natural resources, getting into that perfect home may seem like a far off dream at times.
Traditional assessments surrounding the concept of strategic relocation are often directed at liTuesday, July 8, 2014 |
|
| Mac Slavo - ShtfPlan |
| Strategic Relocation Preparedness Tip: Find The Perfect Survival Retreat or Homestead |
| Finding the right place to live can be a daunting task. And for those looking to strategically relocate out of major cities to a more sustainable and free lifestyle it could be even more challenging. From balancing your professional needs and familial goals, to finding just the right mix of acreage, security and natural resources, getting into that perfect home may seem like a far off dream at times.
Traditional assessments surrounding the concept of strategic relocation are often directed at liMonday, July 7, 2014 |
|
| Nathan Lewis - New World Economics |
| HTMAPODWTTC 12: Trailer Parks and Mobile Home Parks |
| For a while, I've been proposing actionable, specific ways to create
Traditional City neighborhoods within the context of the present
Suburban Hell or 19th Century Hypertrophic City as it exists in the
United States today. These formats are intended to achieve all of
our Traditional City goals of creating pleasing environments to
live, work, shop and play, while also being highly profitable for
developers.
January
20, 2013: HTMAPODWTTC 11:Sunday, May 18, 2014 |
|
 | John Rubino - Dollar Collapse |
| Welcome to the Third World, Part 13: Suburbs Become Ghettos |
| Not so long ago, a reasonably-presentable American could live an hour outside
of a city and commute in for a government or banking job, thus getting the
best of both worlds: city-level wages and a 3,000 square foot house with a
big yard for the kids.
But then municipal governments ran out of money and started laying off, while
banks, traumatized by their 2009 near-death experience, cut back on mortgage
and consumer lending and fired the related staff. The only other jobs available
weTuesday, May 13, 2014 |
|
| Nathan Lewis - New World Economics |
| Environmentalism is the Key to Growth |
| After you figure out the Magic Formula — Low
Taxes, Stable Money — you begin to wonder why so many others
are apparently not that interested in your “high growth strategy.”
Some people, countries and leaders are very interested in high
growth. China today. Korea and Japan in the past.
But, I would say that most people living in the “developed world” —
Western Europe, the U.S., and Japan today — are not
really that interested in rapid economic expansion. Monday, May 12, 2014 |
|
| James Howard Kunstler |
 Lying or Just Stupid |
| It’s not always easy to define what exactly is wrong with America, but what ever it is, it’s huge.
— Roel Ilargi Meijer, The Automatic Earth.com
Nobody knows, from sea to shining sea, why we’re having all this trouble with our Republic.
— Tom McGuane, Ninety-Two in the Shade
Despite its Valley Girl origins, the simple term clueless turns out to be the most accurate descriptor for America’s degenerate zeitgeist. Nobody gets it — the “it” being a rather hefty bundle of issues ranging from our enMonday, May 5, 2014 |
|
| Nathan Lewis - New World Economics |
| How to Make Billions While Making People Happy and Saving the Planet |
| Real-estate legend Sam Zell said recently that the “End of Suburbia” might be
happening. Right here and now.
Of course, all the suburban dreck that was built in the last six
decades isn’t going to vaporize. But, in terms of new construction —
in other words, the real estate development business — reproducing
the postwar, automobile-dependent Suburbia pattern is a money-losing
proposition.
“You’re drawing all the young people in America to these 24/7
ciSunday, April 20, 2014 |
|
| Nathan Lewis - New World Economics |
| The Eco-Technic Civilization |
| The notion of an "eco-technic civilization" is popular these days.
It is a good alternative to the "retro-eco" idea which is everywhere
today -- that to be in harmony with the earth, one should live in
some sort of 19th century fashion. Actually, people in the 19th
century were not particularly environmentally aware at all. They
scoured the oceans for whales so they could light oil lamps, and
deforested much of the North American continent before coal became
cheaper tWednesday, March 5, 2014 |
|
| James Howard Kunstler |
| Schilling Shilling |
| Such is the power of wishful thinking that a set of fool-making memes now pulses through the word-clouds of financial chatter in America spreading the false good cheer that our economic troubles are behind us and pimping for perpetual motion in wealth expansion. A poster boy for this bundle of falsehoods is financial analyst A. Gary Schilling. Just last week, he was talking out of his cloacal vent about US “energy independence” and “the manufacturing renaissance” that will allow this country to Monday, November 18, 2013 |
|
| Nathan Lewis - New World Economics |
| Let's Take a Traditional City Break 2013 |
| I haven't done so much on the city design or Traditional City theme
this year. There's a ton of material already in the archives, and I
get the impression that very few people have really absorbed what's
in there. They get the basic message, but maybe not some of the
design subtleties.
Click
Here for the Traditional City/Heroic Materialism Archive
For today, let's just look at some niceMonday, September 16, 2013 |
|
| James Howard Kunstler |
| Requiem for Detroit |
| I was in Detroit in 1990 — not my first time — poking around to get a deeper feel for the place so I could write a chapter about it in The Geography of Nowhere. At mid-day, I was driving on one of the great avenues that radiates out of the old Beaux Arts fan of streets that emanates from the Grand Circus at the heart of downtown — Woodward or Cass or Gratiot, I forget.Wednesday, July 24, 2013 |
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