What All Countries With AAA Rating Have In Common

A preview of what is coming when the obligations and entitlements are reduced?

"London paralyzed by fear, shock as businesses smolder"

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011 ... burn_n.htm

A wave of violence and looting has raged across London since Saturday, as authorities struggled to contain the country's worst unrest since race riots set the capital ablaze in the 1980s.

The rioters appeared to have little unifying cause — though some claimed to oppose sharp government spending cuts, which will slash welfare payments and cut tens of thousands of public sector jobs through 2015.

AspenValley wrote:

Joe wrote: I think the AAA downgrade is necessary, we needed a wake up call and some outside pressure on Washington to take some action and stop this can kicking.

Its time to take your medicine America. The coming decade is going to feel like a bad hangover.

The wisdom of stopping the "can kicking" and "taking your medicine" is predicated on the assumption that if we do, things will eventually improve. But is that necessarily so?

The viability of capitalism itself seems to be coming into question here. The paradigm is based on the idea that there can be infinite growth into infinity. But is that true in a finite world? Could it be that our leaders are kicking the can down the road because the only other option is complete breakdown of our economic system with no good replacement for it in sight?

Seems this has not been addressed. If you limit growth to this globe, yes. It is more likely that it will expand into the solar system and ultimately into our Galaxy. Already we see the first commercial enterprises moving in that very direction. They will be the new dot coms in terms of commercial growth. The current awkwardness has its roots in the lack of established space enterprise. Once it takes off, so will the global economy. At least, that is my expectation.

Joe wrote: A preview of what is coming when the obligations and entitlements are reduced?

"London paralyzed by fear, shock as businesses smolder"

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011 ... burn_n.htm

A wave of violence and looting has raged across London since Saturday, as authorities struggled to contain the country's worst unrest since race riots set the capital ablaze in the 1980s.

The rioters appeared to have little unifying cause — though some claimed to oppose sharp government spending cuts, which will slash welfare payments and cut tens of thousands of public sector jobs through 2015.

Interesting. Your observation and conclusion is precisely what I was thinking while watching TV reports on Trottenham developments.

Rockdoc Franz wrote:

AspenValley wrote:

Joe wrote: I think the AAA downgrade is necessary, we needed a wake up call and some outside pressure on Washington to take some action and stop this can kicking.

Its time to take your medicine America. The coming decade is going to feel like a bad hangover.

The wisdom of stopping the "can kicking" and "taking your medicine" is predicated on the assumption that if we do, things will eventually improve. But is that necessarily so?

The viability of capitalism itself seems to be coming into question here. The paradigm is based on the idea that there can be infinite growth into infinity. But is that true in a finite world? Could it be that our leaders are kicking the can down the road because the only other option is complete breakdown of our economic system with no good replacement for it in sight?

Seems this has not been addressed. If you limit growth to this globe, yes. It is more likely that it will expand into the solar system and ultimately into our Galaxy. Already we see the first commercial enterprises moving in that very direction. They will be the new dot coms in terms of commercial growth. The current awkwardness has its roots in the lack of established space enterprise. Once it takes off, so will the global economy. At least, that is my expectation.

You are much more hopeful than I am of that. I look at the huge amount of resources it takes to even do something like an orbiting space station and think that our "Star Trek" dreams are going to remain just that, dreams. There is always the possibility of some huge breakthrough technology solving all our problems but I think that putting too much faith in a technological "fix" to our problems has done more harm than good.

If you look at the problem of declining ability to recover fossil fuels, for example, you will see that few people have been willing to think seriously of what we will do when demand far outstrips the supply because everyone seems to expect that new technology will "rescue" us before that happens. Well, every day it comes a little nearer to the time that the world is in crisis due to scarcity of cheap, abundant fossil fuels and that magic technology does not seem to be coming along. Yes, there are alternative technologies that will become more important as fossil fuels become scarcer and more important and they become more economically viable, but all of the existing technologies have serious drawbacks.

I am just not that optimistic that we will find a technological fix to the problem of a burgeoning population on a finite planet with dwindling resources. Let alone that we will fix our problems by somehow getting resources from incredibly distant planets and solar systems.

AspenValley wrote:

Joe wrote: I think the AAA downgrade is necessary, we needed a wake up call and some outside pressure on Washington to take some action and stop this can kicking.

Its time to take your medicine America. The coming decade is going to feel like a bad hangover.

The wisdom of stopping the "can kicking" and "taking your medicine" is predicated on the assumption that if we do, things will eventually improve. But is that necessarily so?

The viability of capitalism itself seems to be coming into question here. The paradigm is based on the idea that there can be infinite growth into infinity. But is that true in a finite world? Could it be that our leaders are kicking the can down the road because the only other option is complete breakdown of our economic system with no good replacement for it in sight?

Would you prefer a system of rationing like the US employed during WWII?
You only get 10 gallons of gas a week so you rural people better all buy scooters.
Businesses would have quotas to stay under to prevent excess consumption.
Goverment would decide which company was the only one to make lightbulbs because it is wasteful to have more than one lightbulb manufacturer.
I think I will keep capitalism even though I admit it does have faults.

SS109 wrote: I think I will keep capitalism even though I admit it does have faults.

I don't think it's a matter of preferring (or not) to keep capitalism, it's a question of whether capitalism can continue to function when it is based on a paradigm that is running up hard against reality. And as I said above, if it collapses, what do we replace it with? I don't know of any system that works any better.

I think part of the impetus to continue kicking the can down the street is to get as much time as we can out of capitalism before it does collapse.

@ AV. You might say I've a very positive perspective indeed. As with your need by individuals to subjugate their differences for the benefit of a community, so it is on a global level to reach the solar system. Together we have the resources but not sufficiently adequate technology. That too will change as the questions being asked today dictate the research of tomorrow. With that research will come discoveries. Someone wrote in Scientific America about a singularity event that he thought would happen in the relatively near future ( a decade). His expectation is that continued advances in all different fields, medicine, physics, biology, computer science will reach a common point that allows an integratoin and change in technology that will make the iphone seem like a hand-cranked phone by comparison. I'd love to see this point of singularity take place before I die. It will be so exciting and this I believe will pave the way to the stars.

Rockdoc Franz wrote: @ AV. You might say I've a very positive perspective indeed. As with your need by individuals to subjugate their differences for the benefit of a community, so it is on a global level to reach the solar system. Together we have the resources but not sufficiently adequate technology. That too will change as the questions being asked today dictate the research of tomorrow. With that research will come discoveries. Someone wrote in Scientific America about a singularity event that he thought would happen in the relatively near future ( a decade). His expectation is that continued advances in all different fields, medicine, physics, biology, computer science will reach a common point that allows an integratoin and change in technology that will make the iphone seem like a hand-cranked phone by comparison. I'd love to see this point of singularity take place before I die. It will be so exciting and this I believe will pave the way to the stars.

Great point. Even forward thinking sci-fi authors didn't guess that we would be using our phones as a research tool, for banking, filming.
There is a theory as technology increase, the rate of new technology increases.
You look back to the middle ages where agriculture changed very little over hundreds of years, now in the past 20 years, we have farm equipment that steer themselves with GPS and know the proper amount of water, seed and fertilizer per acre.
It will be amazing to see what we will have in the next 20 years.

AspenValley wrote: <snip> If you look at the problem of declining ability to recover fossil fuels, for example, you will see that few people have been willing to think seriously of what we will do when demand far outstrips the supply because everyone seems to expect that new technology will "rescue" us before that happens. Well, every day it comes a little nearer to the time that the world is in crisis due to scarcity of cheap, abundant fossil fuels and that magic technology does not seem to be coming along. Yes, there are alternative technologies that will become more important as fossil fuels become scarcer and more important and they become more economically viable, but all of the existing technologies have serious drawbacks.

I am just not that optimistic that we will find a technological fix to the problem of a burgeoning population on a finite planet with dwindling resources. Let alone that we will fix our problems by somehow getting resources from incredibly distant planets and solar systems.

This is an area with which I am familiar. The lack of "serious" thought is not its absence as much as it is its timing. Current research is asking all kinds of questions about alternatives, but has yet to realize a wow type of breakthrough. Though ongoing, there are not enough people exploring new alternative methods. Continued availability of hydrocarbons allows that. Technologic advances in geophysics make finding hc far more easily than it was even a decade ago. Additionally, comfort lies in knowing there are vast reserves in hydromethane (methane trapped in sea ice at oceanic depth), may ease the feeling of pressure to find alternatives. Additionally, we can grow oil, another deterrent from doing serious volumes of research on alternatives. So, if something new is to come to fruition, it will come from some obscure research effort. Ultimately, I do trust in man's ingenuity.

I have nothing against dreaming about and even cooperating internationally to develop new and better technology, but depending on it to solve all our problems is a little like the guy who was counting on housing prices going up forever when he bought that 5000 square foot house. The one he really couldn't afford using a negative amortization, interest-only loan that kicks up to 12% in a few years. But that he wasn't worried about because you can "always" refinance before that happens.

I have a sad feeling that that what is going to happen to us as a society concerning issues like fossil fuel is going to look very much like what happened to people who bought houses they couldn't afford using those trick mortgages.