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Zhao's avatar

Hello Mr. Bardi,

I feel like I wish to share my reaction to your essay.

Yes, I agree with you that Europe is starved of energy, but even when, a few years ago, when the pipelines were running, Western Europe's was already slowing down and de-industrializing. It probably has been slowly since the 1990s and less slowly since 2009 and even less slowly since the bureaucracies furiously tried to smash a cold virus with a brick but ended up smashing the economies over 2020-2024.

And, can we perhaps talk about psychic energy, or perhaps you have a better term? There is no evident national will or, perhaps a people's will to build and grow industry. The people's will to make families and children is also quickly fading. Growth and optimism are the territories of the youth and the youth are not optimistic and they are not interested to make more and bigger.

What is the cause of this thing that seems so antithetical to human nature? Maybe it has to do with the marginal value bureaucracies (if not actually actively destructive) that have grown bigger than their host of humans engaged in value-added activities?

Institutional corruption so brazen it can no longer be contained behind polite curtains?

Smartphone dopamine dispensers that create negative emotions as the easiest path to harvest billable seconds and generate revenues?

The result of observing our unhappy parents and grandparents neglect healthy and social family life so they can dedicate their lives to meaningless jobs only to grumpily "retire" to God's waiting room? What meaning of life - what LIVING - is that?

The lack of a positive national story and the absence of a charismatic national storyteller?

The coddling, care and preference by OUR public servants for serving hoards of non-invited foreign nationals of in-compatible cultures and religions over the native - and paying-population?

The unsustainable tax burden that finances our oppression without providing accountability or offering political representation?

The institutional skewing of commerce to preference the importation of Asian-produced goods over domestic production - because the Asian banks will use a portion of their profits to buy state bonds that allow the political/bureaucratic machine to be far bigger (and more unaccountable) than the domestic economy could ever support?

I could go on, but not today.

I suppose my point is that no amount of cheap energy of fiat investment funds can create what there is no "people's" will to create. Buildings and physical capital can be built, but WHO CARES?

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Buliamti's avatar

COVID is mentioned a bit too often in my humble opinion. What did you think one could have expected back in 2019? Twas a novel virus. Science, engineering, and technology have done much for humans. We create problems and solve problems with predicaments. It's like mentioning JFK or 911 everytime you post an article dealing with fuckups. Throw a dart at the globe and pick a random date from the past and pontificate on the fuckups, the horror, the painful getting on with it, or choose a rosy field, a cafe table in Paris with Earnest Hemmingway blathering away. When was the last administration in the USA that had a sense of Reality? They play the Great Game because they've been trained to do that. You have so many solid insights. I've read your book. Have you not set your opinions out on the C19 matter already? Please direct me to your detailed article about the many ways the response to a novel pandemic was screwed up. I'll save it with all the others. Our leaders are screwups, but many people worldwide worked hard to help people during the worst moments of the event. COVID is endemic now and will always be with us. There are still plenty of people living their lives in my part of Europe. Flu strains kill people every year. I, along with most people my age here, got our jabs. I took a 50k bike ride last week. I feel fit as a fiddle. (Anecdotal, I know.) How is RFK doing managing the United States of New Miracles healthcare? Have all the causes been explained, and all the blame and shame for personal ill health put on the socioeconomic system? Do all the obesity drugs have off-label uses that will save us from ourselves? It would be a miracle if world leaders could coordinate across nation states and cultures to focus on mitigating the worst possible outcomes of civilizational collapse, overshoot, and the One Big Polycrisis in human nature's heart. We will live with mismanagement until there are far fewer people on Earth, and our medical interventions once again require leeches and medicinal herbs, and infections kill on contact.

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