The Collapse of the West’s “Business Model”

What Replaces It? [The Daily Reckoning] May 06, 2023 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( The Collapse of the West’s “Business Model” - When you can’t tell the parasite from the host… - A choice between economic collapse and civil war?… - Do what you can do… [IMPORTANT OPPORTUNITY: From The Vice President Of Publishing]( Doug Hill, VP of Publishing, just recorded a 2-minute video clip making a major announcement for readers like you. And it could alter the course of your life forever. You’ll understand everything when you see this important message… [Click Here To Watch Now]( Saratoga Springs, New York Editor’s note: The economy has become heavily “financialized” over the years — possibly overly so. How did we get here? And is reality finally catching up to it? Today, James Howard Kunstler shows you where things may be heading. [James Howard Kunstler] JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER Dear Reader, “Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.” — Thomas Sowell Historians of the future, poaching ‘possum snouts in sorrel sauce over their campfires, will trace the fall of Western Civ in the 2020s to the dissolving hallucination that was called the financial economy. It was a phantom parasitical organism that thrived on the back of a real economy based on making-and-doing things derived from the natural world, turbo-charged by fossil fuels. The orgy of making-and-doing went on for two-hundred-plus years. Even with cyclical “recessions,” the making-and-doing always increased in the aggregate, while its products got ever more plentiful, elaborate, and complex. The phantom financial parasite clinging to its back got used to this “growth” and it, too, developed ever more ingenious ways to suck the life out of its host organism, until it became a greater entity than the host itself, breaking its back. When You Can’t Tell the Parasite From the Host The whole of this chapter in the long-running human project had strange effects on human minds that had not changed much since the late days of hunting and gathering. After the first hundred years of fossil fuel plentitude, humans had a hard time telling the difference between the host and the parasite. Both of them seemed to thrive equally. The real economy produced food and useful things and the financial economy produced money, which could buy food and useful things. People made things incessantly, especially better and better tools and engines. That allowed people to grow more food and make more useful things that provided comfort and convenience. The financial economy made more and more money. It also produced myriad new ways for money to represent itself. At first, these things such as stocks and bonds (ownerships and loans-at-interest) were firmly attached to activities in the real economy — that is, they were sucked directly out of the host’s makings-and-doings. [BREAKING: Elon Musk Bets Big On One Crypto.]( [Click Here To Get The Details]( Later on, the things which represented money became more numerous and more detached from real makings-and-doings, more abstract, more based on promises, hopes, and wishes than on things derived from nature. That is to say, these newer representations of money tended ever more to a realm of the unreal. After a while, it became very hard to tell the difference between money-things that were real and unreal. The financial economy furnished plenty of mystification to blend the two. This confusion prompted plenty of fraud, a brisk commerce in unreality that produced winners and losers. The Slow Collapse of a Business Model Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, of course. As the fossil fuel supply drew closer to its end and further from the long, happy middle time of plenty, the business model for making-and-doing started to shudder and crack. It didn’t fall apart all at once, but it put many makers-and-doers out of business. They stopped making-and-doing. By then, the financial economy was a colossal phantom parasite that dwarfed its host. It was burdened with so much unreality, so many workings dissociated from nature, that it could no longer pretend to be anything but a phantom. To keep the host alive, it upchucked some of what it had sucked out of the host, adulterated with money based on unreal promises, hopes, and dreams. This turned more and more into a spewage of money so debased by broken promises, hopes, and dreams that making-and-doing just about stopped altogether. That is when the phantom parasite of finance began to dissolve and humans began to regard it as an hallucination that had gone away, dissolved into mist. What remained were a lot of humans embedded in nature. And that is the place where the humans of Western Civ find themselves in the 2020s. Western Civ was the first region of the world that tapped into the fossil fuel orgy and it is now the first region exiting this phase of history. Even when the financial hallucination melts into air there will be a lot of real things around that were made before the great age of making-and-doing stopped. A Moment of “Epochal Transition” The condition of our country is so grave now that the actual contest underway is not between political personalities that are paraded before us, but between economic collapse and civil war. In the latter race there will be a winner and a runner up, and it looks like the economic collapse is already well advanced. Inflation is crushing the middle-class and business activity of every kind — except maybe drug trafficking — is falling into a coma. [Warning: Will “Bidenflation” Destroy Your Retirement?]( [Click here for more...]( If you’re like most Americans, you’ve worked hard for decades to build your financial legacy. And now, as a result of Biden’s disastrous money printing policies, that’s all at risk. According to one top retirement expert, “Bidenflation” threatens to destroy your retirement and make your hard-earned savings worthless. That’s why you must take action right away to protect yourself… [Click Here To Learn How]( But humans are ingenious animals, enterprising and resilient, though there will surely be fewer of us around. These fewer humans will likely be healthier, working more directly in nature and no longer compromised by the pernicious by-products of all the bygone making-and-doing. We will figure out how to use the left-over useful things to get food out of nature and keep making other useful things. The new making-and-doing will happen at nothing like the former pitch or scale. It may represent a time-out from the lost experience of the old, ever more elaborate and complex makings-and-doings. After a while, humans may discover a new way to get more out of nature. Or maybe not. It’s Only Life Oh, by the way, I almost forgot to mention it: I referenced civil war above. You’re aware, no doubt of the situation on the Mexican border. Just days from now many tens of thousands of people from foreign lands waiting there will be ushered illegally across the Rio Grande by agents of the US State Department working with a whole bunch of NGOs and the United Nations to enable that rush to the entrance. The inflow will continue indefinitely. The operation has got the blessing of the “Joe Biden” regime, and everybody knows that, too. My guess is that’s what will set off a new civil war: when citizens of the border states eventually take up arms against this invasion, and our government tries to stop them from defending their own country. In the meantime, lodged as we are in the present, in the moment of this epochal transition, anxiety besets many millions of minds. Not a few minds have grown disordered watching all this go on around them, dreading the journey from one disposition of things to the next. Some have made themselves obnoxious. Let them do what they will until they tire themselves out. Keep your own well-ordered minds on the tasks ahead, your own makings and doings within the bounds of what is real. Take some time out to make some music. There are still plenty of good instruments around, and you can always sing. Put a meal together with your friends and loved ones and sing out. It’s all right, Ma, Bob sang out long ago, It’s life and life only. Regards, James Howard Kunstler for The Daily Reckoning [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) Editor’s note: If you live in one of these 43 states… [click here for more...]( Do NOT pay your electric bill for May until you [watch this urgent warning from Jim Rickards.]( (You Need To Learn About AOC’s “Green New Scam” In Order To Opt-Out Before May 29th). [Click here]( or the play button below to learn the single most important move you need to make to protect you and your family this summer. [click here for more...]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for reading The Daily Reckoning! We greatly value your questions and comments. Please send all feedback to [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) [James Howard Kunstler] [James Howard Kunstler]( is perhaps best known for his 2005 book [The Long Emergency]( which predicted the financial meltdown and the implications of the peak oil problem. His 1993 book, [The Geography of Nowhere]( about the fiasco of suburbia, is a campus cult classic among the architecture and urban planning students. [Paradigm]( ☰ ⊗ [ARCHIVE]( [ABOUT]( [Contact Us]( © 2023 Paradigm Press, LLC. 808 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. By submitting your email address, you consent to Paradigm Press, LLC. delivering daily email issues and advertisements. To end your The Daily Reckoning e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from The Daily Reckoning, feel free to [click here.]( Please note: the mailbox associated with this email address is not monitored, so do not reply to this message. We welcome comments or suggestions at feedback@dailyreckoning.com. This address is for feedback only. For questions about your account or to speak with customer service, [contact us here]( or call (844)-731-0984. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized financial advice. We allow the editors of our publications to recommend securities that they own themselves. However, our policy prohibits editors from exiting a personal trade while the recommendation to subscribers is open. In no circumstance may an editor sell a security before subscribers have a fair opportunity to exit. The length of time an editor must wait after subscribers have been advised to exit a play depends on the type of publication. All other employees and agents must wait 24 hours after on-line publication or 72 hours after the mailing of a printed-only publication prior to following an initial recommendation. Any investments recommended in this letter should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company. The Daily Reckoning is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We do not rent or share your email address. Please read our [Privacy Statement.]( If you are having trouble receiving your The Daily Reckoning subscription, you can ensure its arrival in your mailbox by [whitelisting The Daily Reckoning.](