Data points and analysis of many of my observations and opinions here have been covered extensively in most of the pieces titled Beyond Mathematical Odds. I will write a new Beyond Mathematical Odds that cover much of what I am “forecasting” and discussing here in the next few days.
If by any chance you are not aware, the title is a reference to the timeless, amazing essay The Coming Anarchy by Robert Kaplan.
Democracy is a fickle and fragile beast, at the whims of the population, and people under the threat of poverty will trade democracy, for whatever the adversary labels as democracy, be it autocracy, “progressivism” (communism by other means). Most of the world lacks the basic cognitive capacity to sacrifice amenities to maintain freedom. Fewer even the foresight to think a few weeks ahead, let alone second, third order effects, and beyond. Starving people though ? They will give power to anyone who feeds them empty promises because when you are starving, you are not rational. Democracy often dies not by ideology, but by empty stomachs.
The words impossible and happen probably crossed your mind and were spoken. The same happened other times in history. To understand where I am going, first, we need a few points.
Few people understand complexity outside the realm of theory, complexity is often relegated to academic pursuit, so part of the efforts of this Substack was to slowly make people more observant of how complex systems works, even if you were not aware, subconsciously you now pay more attention to the intricacy of the system, than to singular events. At this point, many of the readers understand how certain events can have a disproportional effect on the system.
Like in nature, where the loss of specific species of insect can lead to the collapse of a (small) ecosystem, named coextinction cascade, our globalized system resembles natural networks at a simplistic level.
One of the events that had a disproportional effect on the whole planet was China’s ban on phosphate exports, one of the most used fertilizers on the planet, compounded by a similar fear from Russia, which also banned major fertilizer exports last year, and kept responding to Western geopolitical moves by extending said ban.
Governments are often reactive, not proactive, let alone attempting any form of foreseeing, poor planning riddled with wrong modeling by small organizations, and incestuous relationships with think tanks and other organizations got us to our current predicament. Where governments, let by corporate capture attempt to rush the ban of fertilizer use. The Canadian government has been pushing this one for months, and the Dutch government rushed similar legislation and got a proper response in return. Popular Revolt.
As I covered recently in quite a few pieces, many governments following Green policies and ESG demands, which I will abstain from commenting on here, found themselves in growing economic difficulties, or outright collapse (Sri Lanka). In the span of 3 weeks, we went from a few protests to almost 2 dozen.
China has been facing bank runs for weeks and fighting the collapse of its real estate market for months (it is the engine of China’s “fake” economy", and a lot of the West is heavily invested in it). Europe is now facing energy shortage, blackouts, and the threat of a severe winter, and this should not be news.
In many of my more analytical pieces, I forecasted events coming down now, I did say Europe would experience rationing of energy, and possibly of food, and this came to pass, there is a big shortage of cooking oil in many countries, inflation runs unabated. And Russia completely stopped gas flows to Europe for “programmed maintenance”, which the EU sees as a threat of never coming back. In fact, here, is a reference point for my following argument.
Events over the last 4 weeks cemented what will most likely happen in the next 6 to 10 months. In the short-term, many Europeans will be faced with a lot of hardships, brownouts, blackouts, measures to conserve (semantics for rationing) energy, the industry will be affected once again, Yara one of Europe's biggest fertilizer producers will probably cut production (again) because of gas supply and prices. Merely executing rationing, usually aimed at big consumers (industry) will have a big impact on manufacturing, affecting both supply and other parts of the industry itself. Rationing energy is another big part of why the problems in China last year led to a cascade of events affecting the global industry months later, rationing in Europe will have a similar impact, even if it is for a few weeks “only”.
Earlier this year, in my longer pieces, I warned that the non-linear dynamics and the trends back then would create a massive famine problem in MENA (Middle East Northern Africa), and this point was later confirmed by UN analysis, data, and soon after even head of states such as Macron was warning of this concerning trend. Now they expect at least 20 million migrants in the next months alone because of disastrous policies, damage from lockdowns, and the global energy woes.
Under normal circumstances, Europe would barely be able to deal with, accommodate, and afford 5 million migrants, but under the current systemic pressure, Europe would not be able to deal with 5, let alone 20 million starving migrants. But 20 million is a fairly conservative estimation, the number could be as high as 50 million. Europe could fall into complete chaos, or become a hostage of bordering countries with MENA, as they will too face resource scarcity, and demand astronomical payments in many forms over not letting the hordes get into Europe. This will become a global political issue, and it is a continental threat, given the current virological circumstances…
There is now a talking point among the media and certain political institutions that “democracy is under attack”, precisely because of everything I described here, and in the first paragraph of this text. Democracy only last as long as you can afford food and have a sufficient energy supply, as disruptions grow in intensity and quantity, democracies will buckle under their own bureaucratic weight. Faced with the reality of a population without food, with little money won’t go down easy, the EU is now reverting some of its sanctions on Russia, to attempt to buy fuel and fertilizers. Still, yields are already compromised (will cover in the next one don’t worry).
Did I mention there are talks among Chinese factory owners on orders from the government that they must convert their factories to produce items of war ? As I said in the revolts piece above, China is likely to invade Taiwan this year, and everything before the data points in that piece pointed towards it, the ID leak of over a billion people just solidified it.
Current trends in climate, regardless of where its source is are fueling talks of Climate everything in many countries, and as I covered earlier and superficially on my Twitter, Ecoterrorism is not only a thing, but a decade-old growing problem, and you can expect bigger, massive fires to start happening in the first world the next months when everything gets dry, among other forms of disruption as unhinged activists don’t think things are moving “fast enough”
All this to say, short-term there will be no stability, the inflationary trends persist even with demand destruction, and the continuous disruptive trends do all but guarantee little reprieve of proper functioning of our globalized system. If the world stopped right now, and governments achieved complete competency or ceased to exist, events would pretty much happen in almost the same manner.
Part II will have enough data points, and sources so you understand my opinions and partial analysis/forecast on this one. I highly recommend my European readers to seriously consider thinking way ahead, and adopting a “prepping mindset”, for the sole purpose of being ready when the “unthinkable” happens. There will not be enough food to feed the entire planet, food inflation is NOT as bad as it will get, the energy woes are far from over, are a huge political dispute between different factions of upper society, Europe is already rationing energy and fuel is getting scarce.
To a lesser degree, the same applies to Americans, Canadian, and elsewhere, as complex systems inevitably begin cascading into failure, the more chaotic they become, no wonder Complexity as an academic field started with “Chaos Theory”. The Ukrainian war won’t be the last war we see, and if certain countries get desperate enough, they might instigate conflict for multiple reasons, all based on nothing but human emotional response.
Quite a few of my earlier pieces, have the necessary framework for you to understand what is about to happen, and how things might (will) play out. After reading that one, tell me, what changed ? That was from 4 months ago, if anything the current dynamics are about to make that look good.
As I warned earlier this year. There was a flock of black swans coming, and they are dive bombing us.
You should also play very close attention to my closing remarks here…
A very big thank you to all supporters here and those who use KoFi =) !
""Democracy is like a train: when you reach your destination, you get off"
- Recep Tayyip Erdogan, current President of Turkey
So much to comment on here (well done!) but I'll say this for now:
"China is likely to invade Taiwan this year"
Taiwan might be a bluff. I agree that China is now in a war economy. This is worth at least considering:
https://www.brighteon.com/54ccdbc2-da81-434a-906e-f011d57251b0
JR Nyquist and Dr. Yan Li-Meng discuss China's INVASION plans with Mike Adams (the invasion target is actually the United States)
Our country has had significant signs of decline for about 15 years. I think people don't come to terms with that reality until the signs are so very obvious right around them, and eventually they are directly affected. I've been mentally preparing for this for a long time, but it's still frightening.