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This Is Starting to Get Serious
As the saying goes: First things fall apart slowly, then all at once. I see more and more discussion about food shortages here on Ricochet. pResident Biden has made mention of it. Tucker has noted the uptick in accidents at food processing plants. California is restricting water for agriculture. Major sources of supply for fertilizer have been disrupted.
Independent journalist Michael Yon keeps banging his drum about PanFamWar (pandemic, famine, war). And the surging migration unchecked through the southern border from all over the world — estimated at 2 million since Biden took power — adds pressure on our food supply as well. In truth, regardless of the estimated “excess deaths” during the pandemic, depopulation did not occur at a rate to pace the decreases in food production capacity. Or so it is being suggested.
If true, what does the future look like? Scott Adams has a theory about “slow moving disasters”: If it is moving slowly enough, then humans do a pretty good job of adapting and/or solving the problem. This is why Adams, while professing to believe in man-enhanced climate change, is unconcerned whether we will create solutions in time to prevent the worse fears of climatistas from coming about. But there are two conditions that must be met: (1) the disaster must be slow moving, and (2) people must be alert to it.
It is not heartening that the default condition for the people in charge now is to manage scarcity rather than freeing up the people to pursue abundance. From energy policy, to monetary policy, to border policy, to foreign relations, to central planning, the Biden Administration and their allies are seemingly doing everything to make the food supply more fragile and less abundant. If undeterred things will get worse before they get better. Is this then a “slow moving disaster”?
If not, how is this going to play out? How much of our infrastructure and basic civilizational elements can operate without well-fed people, or people at all? Can the elite run it all? Are we facing a Soylent Green future?
As I write this I am sitting in a comfortable home in a beautiful place. A lifetime of working and saving have brought me to a very satisfying point where I might have been expected to have a decade or two (G-d willing) of good living, pursuing my interests and diversions, before having a serious discussion with the Grim Reaper or his nastier brother, The Debilitator. But with these people (I am tempted to say “clowns” but that doesn’t capture their combination of incompetence and malignity) in charge, my expectations are being severely challenged.
Are we all on board that our current course is leading to disaster? There is a lot of building going on in my neck of the woods. Unemployment is about as low as the working capability of my region permits. The boats speeding by on the lake by my house are still fueled, the fish are still there to be caught, the thrill of wind and waves remain. But when will the fuel supplies start to dry up, when will rationing begin and why? Just two years ago this was unimaginable.
Did we learn anything from the pandemic as to what workforce is truly essential to a functioning civilization? Or will food rationing decisions be arbitrary and capricious, with a thriving black market? And, if so, who is to be most advantaged — long time residents of this country or more recent arrivals from societies where barter, bargaining, and food uncertainty is already familiar?
I cannot attribute this quote (or probably more accurately a paraphrase): “The Civil War was fought over whether we were to be known as ‘these United States’ or ‘this United States’.” Similarly we are facing the question of the correct current formulation of the following: “The American Experiment is a triumph of the Enlightenment” or “The American Experiment was a triumph of the Enlightenment.”
Hard times are coming unless we gain an urgency about the hard work necessary to preserve the future we expected.
Published in General
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”
Abolition must occur before the Holomodor.
We have arranged our society for a slow descent. Some of the frogs are feeling the water beginning to heat up. I blame the boomer generation, of which I am a member.
What’s the baseline for this? How many fires, accidents, etc., have happened in the last, say, 10 years and at what rate per year? How does that compare to the “baseline” rate? My gut says it’s higher now, but it could just be an effect of it being covered in the news more.
In the spirit of your either/or formulations, I’ll offer this:
“Hard times are coming unless we gain an urgency about the hard work necessary to preserve the future we expected.”
or
“Hard times are coming, and through them we will gain an urgency about the hard work necessary to preserve the future we expected.”
Are the sins of the sons and daughters to be visited upon the parents? Well, perhaps, but the brats the boomers begat, who in turn “raised” even worse progeny accelerated the decline by quite a bit.
The Four Horsemen are caused by man, not nature.
Who saw that coming?
From a chart posted in Tucker’s Monday show: In 2017 there were 8; in 2018 there were 6; in 2019 there were 8; none listed for 2020 during the pandemic; in 2021 there were 11; and 17 so far in 2022.
I don’t have a clear answer to your prescient questions. But I think people might wake up as they continue to be affected by all the things going wrong: supply chain issues, shortages of familiar items, increased crime and other restrictions on our freedom (whether they are real or manipulated). We just need to be active in getting out the information about why these things are happening and how important it will be for us to make adjustments and act.
Thank you sir! I appreciate it.
Could also be bad maintenance due to lack of parts. Buy seeds. Learn how to grow potatoes. You won’t starve. Deer hunters will do well. Most important, lots of ammo to protect the food you grow.
This is the real horrifying thing. It’s like elites are choosing to have a more controlled future rather than a better one – they would sacrifice their own prosperity and well-being to make sure the proles remain under control.
Famine is coming. It will be caused by all the politics we are doing for climate change. Not only supply chain issue but also energy and more importantly fertilizer as well as war keeping Ukraine out of the mix and COVID keeping production out of the mix. Sadly it seems we are doing it ourselves for mostly fictional reasons. Some of this like fertilizer and Ukraine will not truly hit us until 12-18 months out.
When people get hungry then things will get really crazy.
You might be interested in some of the articles in “TheConservativeTreehouse”. For example: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/04/26/goya-ceo-bob-unanu-discusses-food-production-security-and-sustainability-from-field-to-fork/
and
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/04/24/increase-in-industrial-accidents-at-food-processing-plants-has-raised-suspicions/
One theory the Treehouse “proprietor” – Sundance – has is that there are problems due to the sustained high level of production required to catch up from the pandemic shortages and this has led to cutting corners on maintenance and so on.
Another coming crisis to track is the availability of trucking. The overnight conservative radio show “Red Eye Radio” had a report last night about how the amount of ‘spot’ trucking contracts has fallen off a cliff in the last couple of weeks. (I don’t have a reference for that)
There is an enormous amount of resilience in the market, and we remain an extraordinarily rich country. A billion people survive on a tiny fraction of what we take for granted.
There’s a difference between famine and a limited selection at your favorite grocery store. There’s a difference even between famine and some staples being out of stock for extended periods. Yes, it could get much worse. Americans could find themselves losing weight because of food shortages. But we’re an awfully long way from that.
The progressive left is finally being seen, by normal Americans, as the out-of-touch bunch of nutjobs it really is. It is losing power, even as it dials up its demands and tries to rush ahead.
Let’s just win everywhere we can. I think it’s time.
The ugly truth is that the wealthier nations will outbid the rest if there are food shortages so we should expect lots more deaths in the third world.
It is noteworthy that the entire ruling class in the western world is entirely incompetent. They were trained to divvy up the wealth expected to continue to be automatically created by the economic order established by their parents. They think “democracy” is a system in which their sensibilities are served unchallenged. They welcome immigration because they think that adding to the fully dependent socio-economic class will enhance the wealth at the top and further shrink the political power of the unenlightened middle class which harbors their only real political opposition.
The elite have a warped notion of military power–it is just another category of resources like oil or wheat. They have so any attenuated feelings for country, faith or culture that they suspect or openly hate people who still have such bonds (unless such people offer colorful native dances at tourist hotels).
They fantasize that they have the power to mandate innovation and to replace markets with systemized planning.
They treat traditional morals and values as a menu from an unhip restaurant with no awareness of the centrifugal effects of a complete absence of shared observance.
They are blind to the consequences of their policy choices.
In short, we are led by people who are completely unready to handle a world that is changing rapidly at many levels. Being able to adapt quickly while preserving that which needs to be preserved was once the essence of the American character.
They don’t think they’re sacrificing anything. They know they’ll still dine on Waygu Steak at their summer place on Martha’s Vineyard. You’re the one who has to eat bugs and live in a pod.
Very true and the current leaders don’t realize there is a difference between “workers” and “value producers”. The pyramid builders and all slave labor systems have workers. But people who have the freedom to create excess through their labors are value producers. Increasing the number of workers while decreasing the number of value producers may not create problems in the short run, but eventually it will make everyone starve.
Right now some of us can barely afford that “limited selection” anyway, so the limited selections are artificially more limited — out of reach of the consumer — because of inflation.
Combine inflation with food shortages, and politicians who are deliberately steering us into disaster*, I think we’re a lot closer to disaster than you may realize. At least, a lot of people are living closer to the edge of personal disaster than you realize. Have a little empathy. Your comment feels really dismissive of the struggles people are facing.
Sure, people are waking up to the disaster of the Democratic party. But “awareness” isn’t worth much if there is no practical application.
*The Biden administration knows what they need to do to fix this. They won’t do it. On purpose. And they’re very clear about their reasons. For them, Mother Gaia demands human sacrifice.
I question the sudden “avian flu” that has resulted in the destruction of so much poultry, causing the price of eggs to skyrocket. Another basic staple made scarce. Is there really an avian flu epidemic, or is the government just slaughtering chickens to create more shortages?
Sadly, in the current era, my money’s on the conspiracy.
What’s the problem for these folks?
Any price someone else pays is worth it so long as you don’t have a conscience.
This is the problem with people (especially lefties, but affluent people generally) not having children. No skin in the game. They can feel good about “saving the planet,” for example, because they won’t be around to suffer the diminished future, and neither will their nonexistent children. It’s nihilism in action.
The sidebars on Twitter are always “What the Ruling Class wants you to believe” rather than what’s true.
Here’s another one:
There is no reason that a war in one country smaller than Texas should disrupt GLOBAL food supplies.
If that happens, then your central planners did a terrible job planning.
We have enough farmland and space in this country to feed the world. What’s preventing us? Figure that out and fix it.
(Oh, right . . . the globalists don’t want us to fix it. They want us dead.)
Gates and China own all the farmland.
Send Seal Team Six to take out Bill Gates. That’s a start.
I’d love to hear from someone that knows the agriculture business to tell us what it would take and how long to produce reliable crops for food security for 400 million people. We need to tune out PETA and the vegans for awhile and make sure our sources are adequate and safe, and in amounts that they are affordable to as many as possible without welfare payments. (Printing money to “pay” for food will only make it unaffordable for all.)
There are several questions to this post..
First: Is this purposeful destruction or just incompetence?
Bathos: “It is noteworthy that the entire ruling class in the western world is entirely incompetent. They were trained to divvy up the wealth expected to continue to be automatically created by the economic order established by their parents. “
I would argue several points:
Henry:
“There is an enormous amount of resilience in the market, and we remain an extraordinarily rich country. A billion people survive on a tiny fraction of what we take for granted.
There’s a difference between famine and a limited selection at your favorite grocery store. There’s a difference even between famine and some staples being out of stock for extended periods. Yes, it could get much worse. Americans could find themselves losing weight because of food shortages. But we’re an awfully long way from that.”
Henry is of course right to a point, but will we be swept away right by that tipping point into the abyss of utter destruction by the tsunami of really bad stuff going on and that to come? Really hard to guess or assess, but that there is fairly good idea among those much more knowledgeable than I that much of the world will be absolutely devastated by the consequence of the Left’s and the Biden Crime Family ‘ inexcusable bad actions.
I know this is going to sound Pollyanna, but no one has yet gone broke betting against the end of the world.
Let’s just keep talking, win in November, and keep pushing conservative candidates and policies.
THEY HAVE NO PLAN! THEY REFUSE TO EVEN CONSIDER MAKING ONE!
The one Senator who came up with one was shot down immediately by the Turtle.