Well, the time has come, Nate, to talk to you directly. I hope you do read this. However, in my behavioral stack, I hold no anticipatory expectations.
I may have watched all the episodes. I appreciate the expertise of each of your interviewees; why I watch.
From time to time I reached out to one or another of them and in most cases have received a response. I have joined the activities of some and followed others to thread me through the forest of possibilities. There is one glaring possibility that seems particularly yours to explore, given your reminder at every turn of your own experience with 100million plus money sinks and energy.
You are the most likely to appreciate that the use of currency, money in all its abstract and practical forms, is the most formidable technology devised by our species. So many of the graphic representations interviewees have used are in relation to the metabolic gradient in particular. To be specific, the one used in the Geoffrey West interview.
In my fluid thinking process I overlaid that metabolic representation over Lyn Alden's curve of energy use since her fathers time (likely mine as I am over 80) as it relates to the growth of "money". The one drives the other and boosts the waste gradient. We are in a desperate place...given that our flawed failed use of the growth of money is not connected to the growth of waste.
There is something to work on here...and work is what we can do.
Unfortunately it seems in the US that even if 100M people agreed with Jeffery explicitly - nothing would really change. I think that was a Biden quote at one time. Or was it Hillary? They all blend together. This is how embedded and corrupt the security state has become. It will take nothing short of a miracle to dislodge them from their obvious power and goals. JFK wasn’t wrong about the CIA and paid the ultimate price for it. Does each new incoming president get a sit down and real time footage of what really happened and asked if they want to challenge them? Obama was never the same after his inauguration.
You seem like you're curious about yourself as well as collectively mapping a less bumpy landing in capitalism's death spiral. Do you know IFS? I'm a big fan of Dick Schwartz and No Bad Parts. Have you seen his work? https://youtu.be/pan_aCXjJqs?si=z1fpArk-EpcWZZGQ
I do not doubt that Jeffery Sachs has an enormous amount of knowledge about the imperialism and corruption of various US Administrations, and of the U.S. generally, nor that his intentions are good.
I do believe he is naive about the intentions and actions of both China and Russia, including his statements about Russia's intentions and actions in Ukraine. Neither Putin, Russian oligarchs, nor the Chinese want to be annihilated in a nuclear conflagration. Sachs has, I suspect, over-pathologized, and simultaneously idealized, Russia and China, perhaps because he has seen that huge nation-states with enormous military power are neither all good or bad, right or wrong, this or that. Amongst the people, and the people who run the governments, they, like us, believe they are good, and may or may not believe other countries are like them. The danger is not one nation, the U.S., it is the nation-state itself - Churchill was right, and the danger is in the genocidal military technologies that, at present, 3 countries have. I have considered myself a citizen of the world, since 1971, when I returned to the U.S. from Vietnam, where I had seen ,heard, felt, and smelled the ruthless destructiveness of the U.S being inflicted on rice farmers who had no involvement with, nor interest in, being sacrificed as trophies in the imperialism of modern nation-states. Sachs is right about Biden's hawkishness, but the problem is the nation-state itself - give people weapons that instill terror, and nation-state leaders will terrorize others (or their own people) with them. Nate, you could have found a far more credible guest to make the argument that bringing the Russian invasion of Ukraine to a negotiated settlement now is the sensible thing to do. The only sensible alternative to world government, if that is not possible, is those small settlements of 100-200 people, where everyone knows, has a relationship with everyone else, and decisions that are to be made amongst many communities can be done so by sending representatives to make them. No nation-states, no extinction-level weapons of war. The nation-state experiment is not working out so well, I think.
Jeffery Sachs brings up a perspective that goes against the usual Western narrative. I want to be on board with what he's saying, but there just isn’t enough hard evidence in this conversation to take his views at face value. It would be more useful if Nate asked tougher questions to really dig into his points and see how they hold up when compared to the facts.
Well, the time has come, Nate, to talk to you directly. I hope you do read this. However, in my behavioral stack, I hold no anticipatory expectations.
I may have watched all the episodes. I appreciate the expertise of each of your interviewees; why I watch.
From time to time I reached out to one or another of them and in most cases have received a response. I have joined the activities of some and followed others to thread me through the forest of possibilities. There is one glaring possibility that seems particularly yours to explore, given your reminder at every turn of your own experience with 100million plus money sinks and energy.
You are the most likely to appreciate that the use of currency, money in all its abstract and practical forms, is the most formidable technology devised by our species. So many of the graphic representations interviewees have used are in relation to the metabolic gradient in particular. To be specific, the one used in the Geoffrey West interview.
In my fluid thinking process I overlaid that metabolic representation over Lyn Alden's curve of energy use since her fathers time (likely mine as I am over 80) as it relates to the growth of "money". The one drives the other and boosts the waste gradient. We are in a desperate place...given that our flawed failed use of the growth of money is not connected to the growth of waste.
There is something to work on here...and work is what we can do.
Unfortunately it seems in the US that even if 100M people agreed with Jeffery explicitly - nothing would really change. I think that was a Biden quote at one time. Or was it Hillary? They all blend together. This is how embedded and corrupt the security state has become. It will take nothing short of a miracle to dislodge them from their obvious power and goals. JFK wasn’t wrong about the CIA and paid the ultimate price for it. Does each new incoming president get a sit down and real time footage of what really happened and asked if they want to challenge them? Obama was never the same after his inauguration.
Love Jeffrey. I'm a fan for years.
You seem like you're curious about yourself as well as collectively mapping a less bumpy landing in capitalism's death spiral. Do you know IFS? I'm a big fan of Dick Schwartz and No Bad Parts. Have you seen his work? https://youtu.be/pan_aCXjJqs?si=z1fpArk-EpcWZZGQ
Could be helpful as you grow and change.
Onward
Tim
I do not doubt that Jeffery Sachs has an enormous amount of knowledge about the imperialism and corruption of various US Administrations, and of the U.S. generally, nor that his intentions are good.
I do believe he is naive about the intentions and actions of both China and Russia, including his statements about Russia's intentions and actions in Ukraine. Neither Putin, Russian oligarchs, nor the Chinese want to be annihilated in a nuclear conflagration. Sachs has, I suspect, over-pathologized, and simultaneously idealized, Russia and China, perhaps because he has seen that huge nation-states with enormous military power are neither all good or bad, right or wrong, this or that. Amongst the people, and the people who run the governments, they, like us, believe they are good, and may or may not believe other countries are like them. The danger is not one nation, the U.S., it is the nation-state itself - Churchill was right, and the danger is in the genocidal military technologies that, at present, 3 countries have. I have considered myself a citizen of the world, since 1971, when I returned to the U.S. from Vietnam, where I had seen ,heard, felt, and smelled the ruthless destructiveness of the U.S being inflicted on rice farmers who had no involvement with, nor interest in, being sacrificed as trophies in the imperialism of modern nation-states. Sachs is right about Biden's hawkishness, but the problem is the nation-state itself - give people weapons that instill terror, and nation-state leaders will terrorize others (or their own people) with them. Nate, you could have found a far more credible guest to make the argument that bringing the Russian invasion of Ukraine to a negotiated settlement now is the sensible thing to do. The only sensible alternative to world government, if that is not possible, is those small settlements of 100-200 people, where everyone knows, has a relationship with everyone else, and decisions that are to be made amongst many communities can be done so by sending representatives to make them. No nation-states, no extinction-level weapons of war. The nation-state experiment is not working out so well, I think.
Jeffery Sachs brings up a perspective that goes against the usual Western narrative. I want to be on board with what he's saying, but there just isn’t enough hard evidence in this conversation to take his views at face value. It would be more useful if Nate asked tougher questions to really dig into his points and see how they hold up when compared to the facts.