The elephants of our problems

…and why we pretend not to see them…

The elephant is a big animal. We could wonder how ants would describe them…
The blind experts clearly have a problem with it. How can we possibly expect the “experts” to properly evaluate our quite a bit more complex problems?
The year hardly even started, but events with historic significance seem to be happening every day.

• The EU is desperately hanging on to its existence while its member states are falling apart. It is highly unlikely that the EU can survive this decade.
  The - until now- most powerful vassals of the American Empire are progressing quickly toward irrelevance. I see no way to reverse it.

• The Ukrainian proxy war is not going well for the West/NATO/USA
  It is crystal clear at this point that this is an American war and the US is losing it.

• The US cannot stop finding new targets for its desperate late-stage imperial ambitions. All of the new American adventures in the Caribbean, Canada, Greenland, etc. are to compensate for the loss of Ukraine/Russia. This is the map of the sum of the US aspiration:

There is, of course, more, but you got the idea. Many of these conflicts will reach a critical point this year that will have historic significance. Our experts, like the blind observers of the elephants keep dispensing their expert opinions about them.

Expertise and the spectrum of reality

The problem with experts of any subject is that they have a hard time looking beyond their expertise. The more they know about their own field, the less they are able to see the whole picture.
Economists see everything as an economic/resource problem.
Military experts see everything through the lens of military conflicts.
Politician see everything as a political problem and are ready to promise solutions to gain political power.
Demographers, sociologist, ideologues and moralists all see the world through the lens of their specialties.

Their interactions are with other experts of the same field and the stupid media asking gotcha questions from them.
They see a big snake, a tree stump, a leather sheet and a funny little mouse. It is not easy to describe the elephant of our reality, especially if we cannot or do not want to see it.
Most thinking people know that we are living at a time of unprecedented changes with tremendous impacts on the world, but without a coherent vision of what the future could or should look like.

Is the environment doomed? Is runaway global warming stoppable or irrelevant?
Should we try to stop it or adapt to it?
Will we run out of resources?
Was the covid vaccine saving us or killing us?
Was the Ukraine war unprovoked and started by the Russians, or was it the result of decades of Western provocation with the US being the chief provocateur?
Can the West be saved? Does it need to be?
Was Fukuyama right, and some sort of liberal democracy is the only option?
Will we destroy ourselves through overpopulation or depopulation?
Will Trump/Putin/(name your politician) save or destroy us?
Will “we” or “they” win whichever conflict we are in?
Will feminization destroy Western societies? … or asked in a less inflammatory way:
Was feminism good or bad for women and our societies?
Will the right ideology save us? Meaning: will YOUR ideology save as?
Will AI save us from drudgery or destroy our world and subjugate us?
Will dependence on technology drive us to idiocracy?
Can immigration solve the problems caused by falling birth-rates in the West?
In other words: is immigration a good thing or a bad thing?
Are racism, fascism, misogyny, whatever-phobias, income and wealth inequality real or manufactured problems?
Can we ever find societal and global harmony?
Are increased censorship and cancel culture the first steps toward dystopian totalitarianism?

These may be interesting questions, but we don’t even talk about these, let alone the important ones below. It is fair to assume, that each of you reading this have an answer to and even a well thought out position on them. You can go wild and answer all of them.

That’s what I do most often writing this blog, as I am trying to be part of the conversation, but the important subjects are the elephants in the room:

The elephants in the room

There is a lot of talk about geopolitics, about ‘security’, ‘democracy’

1. The elephant in the room is the end of the US global hegemony

2. The elephant in the room is the impending demise of the petrodollar

3. The elephant in the room is the national debt and the unfunded liabilities

4. The elephant in the room is demography

5. The elephant in the room is socialism, the idea of the free lunch

6. The elephant in the room is our apparent inability to discuss these questions.

We are avoiding these subjects, because collectively, we have no idea how to deal with them. There is some talk about them, but it is mostly fear-porn without feasible suggestions. Let’s look at each:

• The US global hegemony
  In 1945 the US represented 45-50% of the global GDP. In 2025 it is down to about 25%. It is still the biggest dog on the block, but its teeth are falling out.
  The fall of communism gave it a boost, but it also gave birth to some fierce competitors.
  Despite recent commitments of the US to spend more on its military than the rest of the world combined, it is an effort that cannot be sustained.
  The US should start rethinking its role in the global community and whether it wants a new role at all.

• The impending demise of the petro dollar
  In 1971, the US ended the dollar’s convertibility to gold.
  In 1973, the US made a pact with the Saudis offering them military protection in return for the Saudis commitment to only sell oil for US dollars. This created a tremendous demand for the US dollar, which became the instrument of a new form of economic colonialism. The power that it represents is being challenged constantly. Kadafi was overthrown after he started negotiation with the EU to sell Libyan oil for Euro. Maduro was kidnapped after Venezuela formally applied to BRICS membership and expressed interest in abandoning the dollar in trading it. The story is the same with Iran. You may be shocked to learn, but the conflict has nothing to do with theocracy and human rights.
  About 50% of the dollar is held by foreign entities. Oil trade is just one aspect of it. The second major part is foreign reserves in dollars. Just recently, Japan sold 1.2 trillion dollars worth of treasury bills at a loss. China sold half of its reserves, about 600 billions’ worth. Blackrock sold 2.1 trillions’ worth.
  The ultimate abandonment of the petro-dollar will be a serious hit on American living standards.

• The national debt and the unfunded liabilities:

(check here if you want to see how it grew since I posted this)

• The national debt of the is US is $38 trillion dollars. With its unfunded liabilities added its obligations are 106 trillion dollars. There is no way to grow their way out of it. There is no way to fight their way out of it.
  Hyperinflation is not a question of ‘if’, but ‘when’.
  Just like with the previous point, every military adventure and land acquisition of the US today is designed to delay the inevitable reckoning.

• Demography
  … is a major issue for most of the world, but it is a chronic issue for Western democracies. A decreasing number of people are paying for the retirement of an ever-increasing cohort of retirees. No social democracy has a workable plant to limit government overspending.
  No government has a plan to stabilize population decline. All systems today are predicated on constant economic growth. None can handle deflation or population/GDP decline.

• Socialism and the idea of the free lunch

  Demography would not be a problem if it was not for the Ponzi scheme of government run retirement plans. Health care expenses would not be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact they are under excessive government control. None of the overbearing government controls would exist if it wasn’t for the fact that by now even conservatives learned to rely on and expect them.
  The problem is not just socialism, but the underlying idea of the free lunch.
  Nothing can change until we can address that.

• Our apparent inability to discuss these questions.
  We talk about what we can talk about. We do not talk about what is uncomfortable, what requires difficult changes. Discussing the current war, the state of immigration or which politician will be our next savior is easy. Reaffirming our position that is part of our identity is easy.
  Talking about hardship and speculating about uncomfortable changes are not.
  Every problem is solvable, the question is: at what cost. Not dealing with a problem is always more costly than making the hard choices required to solve it. That is the biggest elephant in the room.

Obviously, I have the answers, but I want to know what are yours. What do you see as the greatest danger facing us? In your opinion, can we pull ourselves out of it (á la Munchhausen) or will we have to crash before meaningful change can happen?
I was told that I am too pessimistic. Can YOU see some reason for optimism? Will a victory over (name the enemy) save us. Share the post and comment

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