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https://www.oftwominds.com/blognov21/scarcity11-21.html

Eight Reasons Scarcities Will Increase Rather Than Evaporate

While the private-jet crowd is busy selling a future of 1 billion electric vehicles, 1 billion windmills, 1 billion solar arrays, hundreds of thousands of electric aircraft, thousands of new nuclear power plants and trillions more in "wealth" accumulating in their bloated ledgers, reality is intruding on their technocratic fantasies.

The primary assumption of the private-jet crowd is that the developed world will continue to have a free pass to strip developing-world nations of their mineral wealth at the low, low cost of a bribe to the current kleptocrats in power and low, low wages paid to local workers. The profits will naturally flow to the private-jet crowd--it's the Divine Right of Capital.

Knowledgeable readers assure me that the technologies of extracting resources have reached such heights that resources will continue to be low-cost. I have no doubt that technological advances have lowered the costs of extraction and opened access to deeper deposits, but I also have no doubt that the biosphere, physics, chemistry and geopolitics continue to set limits that no technological advancement can circumvent.

In the technocratic fantasy mindset, all that matters is the electricity that recharges the electric vehicle is "carbon-free." The sources and quantities of energy required to fabricate the electric vehicle, pave the roads the vehicle travels on, etc. are conveniently ignored because the metals, plastics, glass, semiconductors, batteries, etc. needed to manufacture the vehicle require vast quantities of diesel fuel to power the mining equipment, transport the ore to be processed, then transported to the mills, then on to the factory, etc., vast quantities of coal to fire the smelting, vast quantities of fresh water for all these processes, vast quantities of electricity, very little of which is derived from nuclear or so-called renewable sources (all of which have to be replaced every 15 to 20 years), and so on.

In the technocratic fantasy mindset, any deposit anywhere on the planet is accessible to high tech processes. In the real world, deposits might be far from paved highways, far from major river or bluewater ports, far from processing plants, and far from sources of the millions of liters of diesel fuel that will be needed onsite to extract the ores.

The entire infrastructure to reach the site must be built and maintained, and millions of liters of diesel fuel delivered to power the massive equipment needed to extract the resources. Then the ore must be transported hundreds of kilometers to a port capable of handling this tremendous bulk commodity. There is no way all this will be low-cost and low-risk.

Here's a list of eight potential sources of scarcities of essential materials. This list not exhaustive, it is merely suggestive of the many real-world limits on the technocratic fantasy.

1. Resources have been depleted globally so there is no longer enough supply to meet rising global demand at affordable prices. Sure, there's always more somewhere--but at what cost?

2. Exporting nations restrict exports to meet their own rising domestic demand. Yes, it's irritating that our oil, cobalt, lithium, etc. is under their sand and they decide to use it for their own people.

3. The low-hanging fruit has been consumed and remaining deposits are in difficult-to-access regions of extreme conditions or political disorder. The developed-world exploiters might end up getting an AK-47 round as a dividend.

4. Exporting nations cut off exports to the U.S. as a form of leverage. Nice high-tech economy of gamers and traders you got there; too bad we're experiencing problems in delivering the cobalt, rare earth minerals, etc. you need to keep your gamers and traders happy. We're sure you'll see the wisdom of complying with the new arrangement we propose.

5. Remaining deposits are under the control of geopolitical rivals. See above.

6. There is no longer sufficient diesel fuel to power the global supply chain of mining and transport of essential minerals: the limiting factor is not the availability of deposits but of the fuel needed to extract and transport ores.

7. Supplies are available but at prices that are unaffordable to American households with stagnant purchasing power, i.e., the bottom 90%.

8. Having tired of neocolonial exploitation of their national resources, revolutionary governments expropriate developed-world resource extraction assets and take control of extraction, limiting exports and sharply raising prices.

There's always more techno-fantastic headlines promising infinite abundance of everything. This is my favorite today: Scientists Perfect Renewable Power from Urine While Cleaning Wastewater in South Korea. Who knew it would be so easy? All we have to do is collect urine and we'll be flying our electric air taxi tomorrow!

There's always more until the real world intrudes.

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http://endoftheamericandream.com/is-joe-biden-killing-the-u-s-economy-on-purpose/

Is Joe Biden Just Incompetent, Or Is He Killing The U.S. Economy On Purpose?

Joe Biden keeps telling us that he wants a strong economy, but he keeps doing things that he knows will hurt the economy.  How can we explain this?  One possibility is that he is simply extremely incompetent.  Perhaps he really does want to improve the economy, but all of the economic decisions that he makes turn out badly because he lacks competence.  Considering how much he has declined physically and mentally, and considering the lack of quality in the team that he has surrounded himself with, that is not a completely implausible theory.  But others would suggest that nobody could do this much damage to the U.S. economy unless it was being done on purpose.  Biden just keeps making more moves that have people scratching their heads, because it almost seems as if he doesn’t even care about the political consequences of his actions.

Let me give you a few examples.

On Monday, it was confirmed that the Biden administration is actively considering completely shutting down the Line 5 pipeline…

White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed the administration is considering shutting down a Michigan oil pipeline, as President Biden finds himself caught between an environmental promise and looming gas price hikes.

The administration is exploring the possibility of terminating the Line 5 pipeline – which links Superior, Wisconsin, with Sarnia, Ontario – and gathering data to determine if shutting down the line will cause a surge in fuel pricing.

Needless to say, this wouldn’t make any economic sense at all.

We are in the midst of the worst global energy crisis since the 1970s, gas prices are rising rapidly, and the federal government is projecting that heating costs are going to absolutely explode this winter.

So this is the perfect time to shut down one of our most important energy pipelines?

I don’t think so.

Ohio Representative Bob Latta and 12 other members of Congress are warning that such a move would have catastrophic consequences for our economy…

In a letter dated Thursday, 13 Congress members – led by Ohio Rep. Bob Latta – urged the president to keep the oil line in operation, saying: ‘Line 5 is essential to the lifeblood of the Midwest.’

‘Should this pipeline be shut down, tens of thousands of jobs would be lost across Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the region; billions of dollars in economic activity would be in jeopardy; and the environment would be at greater risk due to additional trucks operating on roadways and railroads carrying hazardous materials,’ the legislators wrote.

No rational president would shut down that pipeline at such a time as this, but I think that Biden is going to do it anyway.

Meanwhile, the various mandates that the Biden administration has already issued are causing all sorts of chaos.

Countless numbers of highly qualified Americans have already been forced out of their jobs, and it is being reported that we could soon see “the termination of over half of the border patrol agents”…

According to a document from a source within Customs and Border Protection (CBP), nearly half of border patrol agents have not registered their COVID-19 vaccination status, and ten percent of those who have registered have yet to receive a jab. In a worst-case scenario, the federal vaccine mandate may result in the termination of over half of the border patrol agents, amid an already devastating border crisis.

Needless to say, losing that many border agents would be absolutely devastating for the security of our borders.

But maybe that was Biden’s intention all along.

And now the biggest mandate of all is coming.  The Fifth Circuit temporarily suspended enforcement of the OSHA mandate as litigation proceeds, and other courts will be issuing rulings in other suits as well.  Ultimately, I expect that the Supreme Court will eventually be forced to rule on whether the OSHA mandate is legal or not, and at this point I have very, very little faith in the Supreme Court.

As all of this legal wrangling goes on, many companies are choosing to comply with the mandate anyway in anticipation that at some point the courts will rule in favor of the Biden administration.

The OSHA mandate would cover more than 80 million American workers, and right now approximately 25 million of those workers are not in compliance…

The White House says the rule will cover around 84 million workers, while the CDC reports that the current percentage of fully vaccinated U.S. adults is 69.8%. That could mean that over 25 million Americans aren’t in current compliance, but the math is very fuzzy.

We are already in the midst of the most epic worker shortage in all of U.S. history.

Can you imagine what our economy would look like if millions more Americans were suddenly forced out of their jobs?

At this moment, companies all over the country are absolutely desperate to find anyone that is willing to work.  When one analyst recently stopped to examine a help wanted sign at Home Depot, he was immediately “accosted” by a manager that was desperate to hire him…

Scott Mushkin, of R5 Capital, told the newspaper: “I was looking at a sign listing open positions at the store when I was basically accosted by a manager asking if I was interested in applying.”

Mushkin was struck by the manager’s desperation and expressed surprise at the number of open positions, The Times reported. “Basically every job in that store is open,” he said. “So who is doing those jobs now? Who is picking up the slack?”

So Biden actually wants to kick millions of Americans out of their jobs in this sort of an environment?

That would appear to be insane.

But it would actually make perfect sense if he actually wanted to kill the economy.

There are so many more examples that I could discuss.  For instance, Biden knows that borrowing and spending trillions more dollars will cause even more inflation, but he keeps pushing Congress to borrow and spend trillions more dollars anyway.  In fact, Biden’s 1.75 trillion dollar “infrastructure bill” just cleared a major hurdle in Congress.

Inflation is already starting to spin wildly out of control, and more mountains of new money will inevitably make things even worse.

Plus, our national debt just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, but very few of our leaders in Washington seem to give much thought to fiscal responsibility these days.

On almost every front, we are literally committing national suicide, and Joe Biden is leading the charge.

The optimists would have us believe that we can turn things around by voting out Biden in 2024.

But meanwhile Biden has more than three years left to keep wrecking our country.

And if for some reason he is not able to serve out his term, we would get Kamala Harris instead and that would be even worse.

We are in the midst of a long national nightmare, and it will not be ending any time soon.