Yes I heard an anecdote that describes this trajectory well on a podcast recently: when a society or economy is at the beginning of a development arc, each mile of sewer, road, power, rail, etc can be justified, as it leads to economic growth that was not possible yet. But like you say, 50-100 years later all of that infrastructure requires replacement, maintenance . And the problem is, that investment does not deliver growth, it simply maintains the economic base you already have. So you’d have to be a really long term thinking society and factor in replacement costs in upfront somehow, which would make development substantially more expensive, all for a population that doesn’t exist yet, that you won’t know… a staggeringly difficult ask.
Hotspur
Have never heard of these before, they are amazing looking. Thanks for expanding my world a little bit today!
I was thinking that also, but perhaps it has it coiled back in between its legs?
This isn’t the term, but I remember reading piece years ago discussing the concept of catabolic capitalism, which has a similar vibe; basically capitalism runs out of new frontiers to mercilessly exploit, and it retools to eat itself. So you end up with an economy (very much like the one we have now) where all growth is in dismantling and busting out the infrastructures and institutions previously erected to support the previous phase.
Yeah seems totally plausible to me, I got to see elephants in the wild a few years back, and it left me with no doubt that they were extremely intelligent. Looking into their eyes felt like locking eyes with a fellow human, you just felt there was thinking sentient creature in there. And their behavior in certain situations is very relatable, saw a mother route her calves around a too-aggressive camera tourist car, and once she was sure the babies were safe on the other side, she came back and did what I could only believe was a huge “F YOU” trumpet at the offending car to let them know they were out of line, turned around and went back after the kids.
Yeah these examples are somehow more profound to me than elephants recognizing the moon as a thing.
Based on my research (watching Justified on FX) they’d sidle up to the executive, say a few pithy lines and draw down on and kill him when he goes for his gun or pen, walk away putting their Stetson back on, then get chewed out by their bosses.
So yeah this sounds like a useful and relatively cheap and simple way to get another good indicator. But I’m a little confused also, because I thought that for the most part, these funeral directors and facilities produce death certificates for each person that they handle, so I had assumed that this data was already being collected or was collectible.
For instance many of these processes are set up to avoid “fraud” so they’re almost automated once a death certificate exists—thinking for example social security maintaining a death list and getting automatically transmitted notices of death, etc.
Uh huh, but worth it to who? So far all we’ve heard is some vague existential nonsense about how they have to implode the economy in order to save the economy. Based on the messaging I’ve heard all my life, “stagflation”is one of the least desirable economic modes to have under capitalism.
If we believe that the democrats didn’t properly recognize or hear the very real economic anxiety that Americans felt prior to the election, and that that disconnect in part contributed to their failure, I think we might also assume that Americans as a whole will not simply “take his word for it” that they should become homeless in order to drive crypto prices up.
Sweet is that what colugo means? If so, it’s a well-applied name for that (lemur? Squirrel?). I’m guessing they’re another weirdo nocturnal primate-ish thing like the tarsiers?