America's final chapter

The engineered collapse of the global economy and how to navigate the coming troubles

This is gonna be a bit of a roller coaster with a couple major bummers, I tried to keep it at the core points but I wanted to combine all the stuff I’ve been finding in my groups in one spot for clarity.

Diesel is America’s life blood and we’re selling it off

The gas situation is volatile and highly unpredictable on a daily basis, but the overall trend will be upwards for a while, and energy is a prime driver of civil disorder in transitional societies historically.

America is entirely fueled by and supported on diesel - trucking, aviation, freight rail, all are entirely built upon the assumption that diesel is cheap and limitless, which will never be true again.

Right now, Trump is selling off the strategic reserves that we should be keeping at all costs to make a few bucks, not caring that we will be unlikely to refill these tanks ever again if they run dry, but “best” case is everything becomes too expensive for most workers to survive.

The Dollar is dying

The volatility and loss of credibility that America and the empire have caused for themselves are the death knell of the petrodollar, and I believe we may see a move to shove the dollar off the global throne by some new power, sell-offs of immense quantities of dollar instruments at the same time as squeezing domestic pricing, and inducing major dollar convertibility problems that will be like a siren screaming get out to every international capitalist (as in Warren Buffet and other billionaire or multinational corporations who will pick the bones of the republic for a buck on the way out)

This is the exorbitant privilege that has been our economy since the Marshall plan and the world bank and IMF all created dollar debt, to the point where dollars are so desirable anywhere to almost anyone that they’re a global reserve.

That means that if we buy $100 worth of French wine with a printed bill, that automatic acceptance of our petrodollar will be gone, so now that wine needs us to sell 100 euros of something America can exploit and export, we have to do work and have material wealth to trade instead of just printing wealth.

That’s a simplistic model of a complex system but works for the explanation of why oil taking a major hit on supply and juicing prices will be catastrophic for every American whose entire economic reality is built upon imperialist oil barons “interests”, almost like a vexatious trap to indebt the people to the economy without any consent or accountability.

We’re Super Fucked

There is a coming hard jump to at least 5.80 a gallon for gasoline by the end of the month, some forecasts showing no ceiling until 7 plus, so just know that you’ll look back on this time in six months from a significantly more expensive and volatile global economy and supply chain, and plan accordingly.

Diesel drives delivery so that is a good indicator of trends and pricing, and it looks like an economic slaughterhouse from my view.

The economic side looks very challenging but also wide open to some actual work we may be able to do towards permanent replacement of broken systems, because holy fucking shit this is going to be a challenge in a lot of places all at the same time.

Complexity in supply and manufacturing was already out of equilibrium post Covid, this is going to be like whiplash in some cases with shortages and overproduction happening at the same time, all these primarily economic issues are being enforced at gunpoint, which reduces our ability and capacity to make positive change for ourselves.

No idea how the political and military situation will go, wide open possibilities in every dimension, with all the menace and promise that entails.

But the economic side will be catastrophic for a majority of working Americans, globally leading to significant famine and energy shortages, with all the negative externalities of migration and war that such conditions invariably drive.

How might it play out?

This will lead to some weird tragedy in slow motion moments like ten thousand beach umbrellas piled up in a city that cannot provide potable water to the residents and other civil nightmares made real thanks to using avarice and heartlessness as a national ethos.

It could pass for us like a mild version of the 2008 crash for a year or two in some cases, and I don’t think it will be cataclysmic or anything like that, but a lot of systems are about to “fail” right when we need them to resist or avoid being stuffed into the machine.

As market conditions worsen, we consider cases like Portugal’s Estado Novo regime as the empire spun out in the late 60s, the military taking control with widespread civil support against a fascist regime which was itself borne of an officer’s coup.

That’s a good outcome, Portugal is rad as fuck and they decolonized fairly quickly, at least de jure if not economically.

I think that most people in America are fairly docile at the moment, but major shortages and price skyrocketing inflation into wheelbarrow money territory offer yet another example of capitalist exploitation being tied to wealth and profits, and to be defended by the workers most harmed by it.

Catastrophes converge in summer but will hit nadir in winter

This winter in particular is going to be insane between LNG prices, Canada Hydro delivery terms being renegotiated, the low amount of grid scale renewables and battery capacity, we are poised to make our nation into a barren hellscape of frozen grandparents being wheeled out to the sidewalks from exposure in their unheated homes (if we don’t prepare mitigation strategies for these very obvious and rapidly approaching crises).

Price alone looks prohibitively high across literally every single part of every single thing that makes up modern western civilization as a structure, and sustaining for years in energy particularly, we have to radically reduce energy use at the same time that they are stupidly bringing up coal plants so that Elon can be community note checked by grok, his own planet devouring vanity chatbot.

There isn’t any real reason we can’t just do our own thing and build sustainability into communities where we can, the economic outlook is not great but even in the most likely case it’ll be stagnant, and push more and more workers off the bottom of the ladder as they pulled it up.

Social conditioning is making us accept an avoidable disaster

I know this sounds dire and wildly negative and hyperbolic and I will admit this is a lot of inference and cross references, which have been reliable signals but not always the full story, and I cannot stress enough that we can JUST CHOOSE TO NOT DO THESE THINGS.

I think the social and cultural aspects of the two party system have continued to use those simple metrics and greed as their guide, and I think this country is about to touch the stove in a big way as to the dangers of giving a heavily armed and corrupt ruling class without a soul total control over society.

If I’m wrong, which I haven’t been on major points but probably will be on some details and times, the outcome is that we’ve built additional social infrastructure that aligns with pubic good ahead of when it’s truly needed.

I’d like to think I’ve at least partially got a handle on the situation, and I wanted to give a frank and unreserved perspective on what I’m seeing things moving towards, in particular for long term planning and strategic purchasing of things now that may get 20% more expensive every week at some point this summer, so to me the cost/benefit analysis is the critical point I want people to think about as the fundamental economics of the world break around us.

Short term mitigations and long term solution

I just bought two very efficient heat pump hvac units and we are getting adult ebikes, solar is up and I have us set up to use zero gas and a very small amount of reference power from the grid when available, but with a small and still untested battery bank I’m still finishing up.

I wish I had six more months to max out credit cards and build more of a reserve, but it looks like there is barely anything left in the hourglass until this starts making itself known through the markets.

Everyone should be shifting to the thinking that we’ll be short on food, energy, fuel, and all while the environment collapses and weather gets extreme beyond worst case analysis, and planning to build the dual power needed to survive this.

There is nobody coming to help so it’s gotta be us, so I’m starting biweekly get togethers for my group to share skills, trade what we make to encourage building up alternative local sources of knowledge, equipment, and supplies.

I don’t know how normies will react as the floor drops out beneath them, but they’ll be in desperate need with no hope for government support, and it’s on people like us to use the foreknowledge and time available to make ourselves ready to pitch in and help our communities make it through what is certain to be a year of great need.