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  • You are at the part of The Crash Course where everything you learned comes together into a single narrow range of time we'll call the twenty-teens.

  • What I am offering is a comprehensive view of how all of our problems are actually interrelated and need to be viewed as such, or solutions will continue to elude us.

  • So let’s review the key trends that all seem to be converging.

  • We began with an understanding of money and the fact that our money is loaned into existence, with interest, which means it grows exponentially - by design -

  • and that this results in powerful pressures to keep the amount of credit, or money, constantly growing by some percentage each year.

  • We can easily see this in the charts.

  • Keeping this dynamic in mind, we then learned how debt, which is really a claim on future money, is vastly exceeding all historical benchmarks.

  • The flipside to this, but a significant sociological trend in its own right, has been the steady erosion of savings observed over the exact same period of time.

  • Combined, we have the highest levels of debt ever recorded coincident with some of the lowest levels of savings ever recorded.

  • And we saw that our failure to save extends through all levels of our society, including a rather profound failure to invest in national infrastructure.

  • Next, we saw how assets have gone through a series of bubbles and that ALL bubbles eventually burst When credit bubbles burst, they result in financial panics that end up destroying a lot of capital.

  • Actually, that’s not quite right; this quote says it better:

  • Panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works”.

  • - John Stuart Mill Political Economist 1806 - 1873

  • So we learned that a bursting bubble is not something that is easily fixed by authorities because their attempts tolimit further damageare misplaced. The damage has already been done.

  • The capital has already been betrayed.

  • It has been betrayed by too many houses and too many stocks sold for too high prices, and too many goods imported and bought on credit.

  • Money was borrowed for speculation and consumption, not investment for the future.

  • All of that is done. All that’s left is figuring out who ends up eating the inevitable losses.

  • And right now the system is working hard to assure that’s going to be you.

  • When these speculative bubbles pop, weve seen history’s lesson that efforts to 'fix' the damaging aftermath only results in a larger future bubble which will, of course, be even more damaging than the last one.

  • Then we learned that the most profound US government financial shortfalls rest atop a demographic problem that itself cannot be fixed by any act of policy or law or level of optimism.

  • It is simply a fact.

  • An inconvenient fact of circumstance much like gravity sometimes, but a fact nonetheless:

  • the assets that comprise the wealth of the baby boomer generation -- stocks, bonds and houses --

  • all have to be sold to somebody at some point in order to extract their value

  • But there are simply fewer people behind the boomers to whom these assets can be sold.

  • When sellers exceed buyers, values fall.

  • On top of all of this, the economic numbers we report to ourselves have been systematically debased until they no longer reflected reality.

  • Were flying blind at this point. If false data leads to bad decisions, then it’s no wonder that we find ourselves in our current predicament.

  • Only by returning to an honest self-appraisal can we plot a strategic and meaningful course to the future.

  • Of course, this is just the economic side of the storythe first “E”. The challenges we face become much, MUCH larger when we bring the other twoEsinto focus.

  • We learned that energy is the source of all economic activity and that oil is, by far, the most important source of energy.

  • Our entire economic configuration is built around the assumption of unlimited growth in energy supplies but, it turns out, this is an easily-refuted proposition.

  • Individual oil fields peak and so do collections of them. And so Peak Cheap Oil is not so much a theory as it is an observation about how oil fields age.

  • We then explored the tension that obviously exists between a monetary system that demands exponential growth and the fact that our most important energy source is entering decline and well past the era of being cheap.

  • Somehow, America has not even begun to seriously invest for a future without cheap oil; like nearly every other nation on the planet, the US has no plan “b”.

  • And last, we noted that the environment, meaning the world’s resources and natural systems upon which we depend

  • and the waste and pollution we put back into our ecosystems, is exhibiting clear signs of stress.

  • Oceans are acidifying at the fastest rate in 300 million years, we are in the midst of a 6th mass extinction,

  • and the stable weather patterns that we utterly depend upon to grow our foods are becoming increasingly chaotic and unreliable.

  • Sentinel species such as the pollinators that add beauty to our lives and perform essential services in our food and ecological systems are disappearing.

  • And so here we are. These are the reasons for my claim that the next twenty years are going to be completely unlike the last.

  • Yes, weve successfully faced large problems before in the past.

  • But my concern is over have to face so many tremendous ones all at once.

  • Placed on a timeline, we see that the next asset bubble is cresting just as the first wave of boomers enters retirement.

  • At the same time peak cheap oil is starving the world's economic engine for the growth its money systems demand of it, and someday

  • likely very soon -- world oil production will peak and terminally decline.

  • But that’s not all. Resource depletion, increasing pollution levels, and a shifting climate are costing us more, and diminishing our way of life.

  • Sitting over all of this and limiting our options further is our national failure to save and invest, and historically-unprecedented levels of debt.

  • This timeline stretching from now to 2025 reveals a truly massive set of challenges converging on an exceptionally short window of time.

  • One important question is; how will we fund our efforts to address these challenges if our savings are depleted and our debt levels already in uncharted territory?

  • So far, the answer has been "print more money”. That is as disappointing as it is unsurprising.

  • Any one of these events will prove to be a difficult strain on our national economy, while any two could be truly disruptive.

  • But what if three or more happen simultaneously?

  • What if oil spikes in price as food harvests fail and debts collapse?

  • It’s not hard to foresee the economic destruction of our country as a result, or perhaps see the dollar utterly ruined as a store of wealth.

  • How many trillions will be required to fund boomer retirement?

  • How many trillions will be needed to reshape our transportation infrastructure to accommodate Peak Oil?

  • Where will the tens of trillions come from to make up the shortfalls in pensions and entitlement programs?

  • How do we make good on our pension and entitlement promises while burdened with the highest debt loads ever seen?

  • Where does the money come from to clean up the aftermath of the newest and largest asset bubble bursting?

  • How much more expensive will food and minerals be in the future when oil has peaked,

  • but many more people are placing higher demands on increasingly marginal resources?

  • Each of these key trends or threats will take many years, if not several decades, to address.

  • And yet we find them all parked directly in front of us without any serious national discussion or planning.

  • With every passing day we squander precious time while the problems grow larger and more costly,

  • if not thoroughly intractable. Buying time, as the central bankers and politicians the world-over have opted to do, is not a strategy.

  • Simply hoping for better times has a much different probability for success than having a well thought-out plan.

  • The mark of a mature adult is someone who can manage complexity and plan ahead.

  • The same description applies to an entire society.

  • My opinion is that with precious few exceptions, the current political and corporate leadership of this country are not adequately managing the complexity of the situation.

  • And they are not planning ahead.

  • Simply put: We've lived well beyond our economic, energy and ecological budgets. It's time to change that.

  • It is time, to return to living within our means. We need to set priorities, set budgets, and stick to both.

  • If we do, the next generations following us will have opportunity to pursue, as well as a plan and a narrative that makes sense,

  • into which they fit, and which seems prudent and rational.

  • And you?

  • If you haven’t already, you need to begin to embrace the possibility that the road to the future will not be straight and smooth;

  • it may take a few twists and turns and end up somewhere unexpected.

  • You happen to be alive at one of the most interesting points in human history – a time when a great shift will occur.

  • This can be frightening or it can be exhilarating, and that choice is yours.

  • So what do we do about all this?

  • What can you do and what steps should you be considering right now?

  • Please join me for the final chapter of the Crash Course.

  • Thank you for listening.

You are at the part of The Crash Course where everything you learned comes together into a single narrow range of time we'll call the twenty-teens.

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クラッシュコース 第25章 未来の衝撃 (The Crash Course - Chapter 25 - Future Shock)

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    稲葉白兎 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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