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The U.S. Is Facing Record Drug Shortages

The U.S. Is Facing Record Drug Shortages

And just like that, the supply chain crisis we saw for pharmaceuticals during Covid has returned….

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The U.S. Is Facing Record Drug Shortages

And just like that, the supply chain crisis we saw for pharmaceuticals during Covid has returned. ABC reported this week that drug shortages in the United States have reached an "all-time high". 

In the first quarter of 2024, the U.S. faced 323 active medication shortages, surpassing the previous record of 320 in 2014, as reported by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists and the Utah Drug Information Service, the report says. 

The American Cancer Society highlighted a particularly alarming shortage of chemotherapy drugs, which has led to severe impacts on patient care. Hospitals and clinics have reported completely running out, with doctors having to ration or prioritize who gets the limited supplies first.

Dr. Paul Abramowitz, CEO of ASHP told ABC: "All drug classes are vulnerable to shortage. Some of the most worrying shortages involve generic sterile injectable medications, including cancer chemotherapy drugs and emergency medications stored in hospital crash carts and procedural areas."

He continued: "Much work remains to be done at the federal level to fix the root causes of drug shortages. ASHP will continue to engage with policymakers regularly as we guide efforts to draft and pass new legislation to address drug shortages and continue to strongly advocate on behalf of our members for solutions that work."

Abramowitz noted ongoing national shortages of ADHD medications, including Adderall, which began in late 2022 due to manufacturing delays and has since become demand-driven, according to the FDA. A Senate Homeland Security Committee report in March 2023 highlighted that drug shortages have been a persistent issue in the U.S. for over a decade, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to delayed or unavailable treatments. 

During a House Ways and Means Committee hearing, experts testified that these shortages also impose financial burdens on patients as they resort to more expensive alternatives. The ASHP is collaborating with federal agencies to address these shortages, recommending increased transparency and diversity in supply chains, though it expressed concerns about potential financial penalties on hospitals unable to maintain large stocks of medications.

The FDA told ABC: "The FDA can utilize different tools during a shortage to assist manufactures with increasing supply including expediting review of a supplement to add additional supply of active ingredients or adding additional capacity."

It continued: "Unfortunately, we are not able to share specific actions, as they are considered commercial confidential information."

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/13/2024 - 14:35

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Biden’s Sticky Inflation: Auto Insurance Rates Record Biggest Annual Jump Since 1976

Biden’s Sticky Inflation: Auto Insurance Rates Record Biggest Annual Jump Since 1976

Joe Biden’s sticky inflation continues to ravage the…

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Biden's Sticky Inflation: Auto Insurance Rates Record Biggest Annual Jump Since 1976

Joe Biden's sticky inflation continues to ravage the working poor as Bidenomics falls flat on its face. The president's ally at the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, has yet to achieve the 2% inflation Fed target ahead of the November elections. 

As inflation heats up in the first quarter of this year, the cost of driving on American highways is seriously spiraling out of control. Auto insurance in the US increased more than 22% in the 12 months that ended in March, the largest annual increase since 1976, according to Bloomberg. 

The cost of owning and or driving a vehicle in the US is absolutely insane. From $1,000 monthly payments to ridiculous repair bills to the average price of gasoline inching closer to the politically sensitive level of $4 a gallon to, of course, skyrocketing auto insurance, the cost of driving is unbearable for some. For others, still near record high prices for used and new vehicles, plus the highest borrowing rates in a generation, continue to worsen the affordability crisis. 

For more clarity on what's driving auto insurance rates through the roof. Bloomberg's Keith Naughton explained why in five bullet points:

1. Cars are more expensive to fix: 

Today's cars are packed with high-tech gadgetry meant to entertain, comfort and protect occupants. The array of safety equipment now common on cars includes automatic emergency braking, blind-spot detection and lane departure warnings. To give drivers eyes in the back of their head, automotive engineers have embedded cameras, sonar and radar sensors from bumper to bumper. All that technology has driven up the cost of repairing even a minor fender bender.

For example, when Toyota Motor Corp. upgraded its Camry sedan in 2018, its front bumper went from having 18 parts to 43, including sensors for the advanced driver-assistance system that can control speed and lane position automatically as well as provide blind-spot warnings. As a result, it now costs 43% more to repair a Camry after a front-end collision, according to Mitchell International Inc., a researcher that provides data and software to insurance companies and car repair shops. The average repair bill for a car with a standard internal- combustion engine was $5,564 in 2023, according to auto insurance processing company CCC Intelligent Solutions.

2. Electric vehicles are even more expensive:

If your vehicle is battery powered, then the cost to repair it is 22.3% higher than for a traditional car, or $6,806 on average last year, according to the processing company. Even though EVs have fewer parts than internal combustion engine vehicles, they are more costly to fix for a variety of reasons, starting with that big battery underneath the floorboards. 

The battery is the most expensive component on an electric car — by far. It's also costly to handle during repairs. Because of the risk of battery fires, many manufacturers require that the massive lithium-ion battery be drained and disconnected before a repair. If the EV needs to be welded or taken through a hot paint bay, then the battery has to be removed entirely. The result: A battery-powered model takes nearly 50 days to repair, on average, 10 days longer than non-EVs, according to CCC Intelligent Solutions. 

Hertz Global Holdings Inc. cited repair costs for EVs that were twice as high as for traditional cars when it decided to drastically scale back its EV rental fleet last fall. EV repair costs will probably come down as battery-powered automobiles become more commonplace — they accounted for just 7.6% of US car sales last year — but that could take a while since mainstream consumers are passing on plug-in models for now because of high prices and a spotty charging infrastructure.

3. There are more crashes that are more severe 

Despite the additional safety equipment on cars to help drivers avoid crashes, US roads have become far more dangerous. And that's pushing up insurance rates to cover the costs of repairs and health care for those injured in crashes. Nearly 41,000 people died in US traffic crashes last year, up 13% from 2019, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

That increase followed decades of declines in road fatalities, and it coincided with the rise of mobile phone use in cars. Americans look at their phones while driving at three times the rate of drivers in the UK, according to a study by Cambridge Mobile Telematics. Most cars these days are also outfitted with a tablet-like touchscreen in the dashboard to provide entertainment and navigation. In 2022 in the US, 3,808 people were killed and more than 289,000 were injured in crashes involving distracted driving, according to NHTSA. 

Paradoxically, all the high-tech safety equipment in new cars might be giving motorists a false sense of security. "People were concerned that there might be an incentive to be even more distracted while driving because you believe the technology will kick in when needed," said Stephen Crewdson, senior director of insurance business intelligence with researcher J.D. Power. "It looks like they were correct because we're seeing auto collisions are still happening as they did before, and the severity is going up."

4. There's a shortage of mechanics and car parts 

Pandemic-related shortages of parts and a long-running dearth of mechanics to bolt them onto cars has turbocharged repair costs and thus insurance premiums. Though there was an uptick in mechanics last year, there remains a chronic shortage: The industry needs as many as 800,000 more technicians to meet demand over the next five years, according to a study by TechForce Foundation, which tracks the business. 

Between 2020 and 2022, the number of graduates completing postsecondary programs in the auto sector fell by 20%. As the baby boomer-heavy profession loses thousands of mechanics to retirement each year, fewer young people are going into the profession that pays on average $49,690 annually, 20% below the national average wage, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

EV mechanics are even harder to find. Pricey labor accounts for nearly half the cost of an EV repair, and it's the biggest factor in the disparity between the expense to fix an EV and a non-EV, according to CCC Intelligent Solutions. The price of car parts also skyrocketed as Covid shutdowns and the war in Ukraine disrupted global supply chains. The twin shortages of people and parts continue to drive up repair costs, which rose 3.1% month- over-month in the latest core consumer price index, the biggest jump since August 2022.

5. Insurance companies are playing catch-up 

During the early days of the pandemic, driving miles plummeted and accidents declined by so much that auto insurers refunded their policy holders billions of dollars during April and May of 2020. But the snapback was severe. First came the rising costs from the parts shortages, then the price of cars, also in short supply, shot up, and finally drivers returned to the roads with a vengeance. The resulting surge in crashes and claims left auto insurers with their worst underwriting results in decades. They found themselves upside down, with the cost of claims exceeding the premiums they were bringing in. 

So the insurance companies began aggressively increasing rates. The latest consumer price index data show rates rose by 2.6% in March, the biggest monthly advance since July 2020. Consumer advocates accuse the insurers of being too aggressive with their rate increases and point to the rising stock prices of the big insurance companies as proof. But since auto insurance is regulated by each US state, insurers have had to make a case for their increases based on the trends of rising claims, costs and accident rates. 

"A gas station can increase and decrease prices by the minute," Crewdson of J.D. Power said. "But an auto insurer has to justify their rate changes, so they are always behind the curve. They're still catching up." And that means rates will continue to rise.

For those who can no longer afford to drive and must take public transportation.

Remember this quote:

Perhaps WEF's dream is coming true after all. 

Tyler Durden Sat, 04/13/2024 - 11:05

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The Political Left Has Proven Beyond A Doubt That They Are Authoritarians

The Political Left Has Proven Beyond A Doubt That They Are Authoritarians

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Nearly 20 years ago…

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The Political Left Has Proven Beyond A Doubt That They Are Authoritarians

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Nearly 20 years ago when I started my work in the independent media the common mantra among my peers was noting the existence of the “false left/right paradigm” – The idea that Democrats and Republicans were essentially the same and were working towards the same exact authoritarian goals. This was before the Ron Paul movement and the libertarian/patriot shift within conservative circles when Neocons (fake conservatives) dominated all Republican discourse.

In the 16 years since there has been some interesting developments at the state level, with a return to true conservative and constitutional principles. Conservative ideals were on the verge of death in the early 2000s, but thanks to Ron Paul and others there has been a resurgence. The false left/right paradigm still applies in many ways and we have to remain vigilant, but the most blatant RINO frauds are quickly losing favor.

Nihilists (and paid federal provocateurs) will constantly claim we aren’t making any progress, but consider this: Decades ago conservatives used to clamor to defend people like John McCain, Lindsay Graham or Mitt Romney, now they despise such fakes (McCain was hated by most conservatives well before he died). Times are changing; this is a fact, and we need to acknowledge the positive move forward.

This is not to say that Americans should rely on politics to fix our national problems, but it would be a lie to claim that there are no political representatives on our side. A common argument against right leaning movements is that conservative ideals are “poorly defined” and that we “don’t stand for anything.” This is simply not true.  In fact, it’s leftists that are constantly changing their positions like they have schizophrenia. Conservatives have been far more consistent in comparison.

The guidelines are relatively easy to understand – Conservatives and liberty activists support a return to constitutional governance, the protection of the Bill of Rights, free markets, meritocracy, the right to choose associations, truth in media, secure borders, the protection of children from exploitation, keeping America out of foreign entanglements, moral and accountable leadership, etc. The degree to which leaders can adhere to these parameters determines how much trust they earn, and trust is the only currency that matters these days.

Do we disagree on certain nuances of these issues? Of course. We aren’t like leftists following a central hive mind, always afraid of being canceled by the mob; we argue. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as long as we unify on basic tenets and principles.

Democrats (and leftists in general) on the other hand have gone in the complete opposite direction. If there was ever a time when the average leftist and conservative could find common ground, that time was LONG gone. Many leftists used to be pro-individual rights; today they argue incessantly against personal liberty as if it’s dangerous to society. They used to be anti-war; now they froth at the mouth over countries like Russia and press for WWIII without any rational thought. Their methods have become violent, vicious, egregious in execution as they adopt an “ends justify the means” approach.

The political left does not care about what is right. They do not care about what is true. They only care about “winning.”

It is this leftist infatuation with the dark side that is driving the US to the edge of civil war. Would a candidate like Trump be taken as seriously under normal political conditions? It’s hard to say – He wasn’t taken very seriously in 2012. However, when Democrats started to go full bore authoritarian suddenly Trump became very appealing to conservative voters.

Why? Because he represents a big middle finger to the communists, a bull in the china shop. If you want to piss off authoritarian Democrats trying to control what you say and what you think, you put Trump in their faces for another 4 years. Does this fix our underlying national problems? No, not in the slightest. In fact, I still believe Trump distracts patriots from what really needs to be done. I’m convinced that, at this stage, only war will resolve the issue. Voting for Trump is a good way to enrage the woke cry-bullies, and I wouldn’t fault anyone for wanting that, but any real return to honor and order would have to be implemented by the public, not the government.

The deeper problem is one of unavoidable cultural division – Conservatives and patriots cannot live side-by-side with rabid leftists, nor can we accept a leftist controlled government. They have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they intend to destroy every aspect of western culture and institute a regime of oppression.

So much has happened recently that I fear many Americans will become overwhelmed and forget the recent trespasses of leftists.  In case you had any doubts at all or know people that still defend them, here are just a handful of examples of the worst authoritarian crimes committed by Democrats in the past four years alone…

Weaponizing The Legal System Using Selective Prosecution

When Democrats talk about “equity” in criminal justice, what they are referring to is the unbalanced application of law depending on the ethnicity or political beliefs of the people being charged. The most blatant example being the kangaroo court for the Jan 6th event and their attempt to lock up conservative protesters as “insurrectionists.”

Not a single death occurred due to protesters, property damage was minimal and capitol police INCITED the riot by firing rubber bullets and CS gas into the otherwise peaceful crowd. Yet, the protesters were painted by Dems and the media as monsters trying to “destroy democracy.”

Compare this to the Democrat response to the BLM and Antifa riots across the US since 2016 in which dozens were killed, thousands of police injured, billions in property damage and multiple government buildings attacked. These people tried to hold the country hostage, yet, the vast majority of those that were actually arrested were released and never charged by Democrat District Attorneys and prosecutors. The media even portrayed them as heroes.

If Jan 6th had been a far-left protest, there would have been no commission and no one would be in jail for 10-20 years today. There are numerous examples of selective prosecution targeting patriots and the message is clear – “If you defy us in any way, we have no problem misusing the legal system to crush you.”

Pandemic Hysteria And Medical Tyranny

Did some Republicans initially support the covid lockdowns? Yes. When it became clear that covid was a non-threat did they end the lockdowns in their own states? Yes, surprisingly most of them did.

Half the states in the US (all red states) blocked attempts to continue the pandemic lockdowns. These same states also passed legislation to disrupt any future attempts at lockdowns or vaccine passports. And, all the governors and legislators involved were accused by Democrats and the media of “killing Americans” because of their defense of freedom.

In reality, these states along with conservatives across the country defeated a draconian agenda that almost brought the US to the brink of full spectrum medical tyranny. Democrats and globalists tried to use covid as an opportunity to institute sweeping anti-liberty mandates without checks and balances. Some of rules they wanted to put in place included:

  • Forced vaccination.

  • No employment for the unvaccinated.

  • No access to public spaces for the unvaccinated.

  • No access to normal medical treatment for the unvaccinated.

  • House arrest for the unvaccinated.

  • Fines for the unvaccinated.

  • Jail time for people speaking against the mandates or vaccines.

  • Government tracking of the unvaccinated.

  • Taking children away from the unvaccinated.

  • Secret vaccination of children at public schools without knowledge of parents.

  • Mass online censorship of anyone presenting information contrary to the government narrative.

Some Democrats including Biden even threatened to go “door-to-door” to vaccinate individuals, though the official position was that they would instead seek to “make life so hard” for the unvaxxed that anyone in refusal would eventually be forced to comply. Luckily their plans failed.  The CDC published a bunch of unverified stats claiming most Americans were vaccinated, no one took the boosters and the agenda fizzled into the background.  That said, it’s important that we never forget what happened.

The true nature of the political left was exposed from 2020-2023, and the difference between conservatives and leftists was made undeniably clear – Red states were made free. Blue states tried to keep authoritarianism in place. Democrats embraced medical tyranny, conservatives did not. Conservatives left blue states (and blue cities) in droves because they were oppressive, red states gained millions of people and turned a deeper shade of red.  This is reality.

Targeting Children For Indoctrination And Exploitation

There’s no surer sign of authoritarianism than a group that recruits children as foot soldiers using political indoctrination under the noses of parents. Democrats and the woke movement have taken the mask off completely when it comes to America’s youth.

The widespread used of woke symbols such a pride flags in public schools and libraries. The use of drag queen performances (often sexual) as a means to normalize baseless gender fluid theories, mental illness and sexual aberration. State government funding of sexualized content including graphic lessons and books for young kids. The list goes on and on.

I can’t think of anything more insidious and evil as the leftist attempt to hijack American children as a weapon for their political coup. And make no mistake, the woke movement is not a movement for equality, it’s a communist and collectivist insurgency. They see children as tools, not as people.

Democrats are going so far as to pass laws allowing children to engage in sex change procedures including hormone blockers and surgeries without parental consent. This is a monstrous policy that needs to be snuffed out immediately. Children are not capable of consent.

Again, all this is being done in the name of winning. What is moral or ethical never crosses their minds.

Mass Censorship And The Demonization Of “Radical Speech”

Who nominated the Democrats to become the arbiters of acceptable speech? Well, they nominated themselves, and the protections of the 1st Amendment are being quietly degraded every day we allow them to continue acting as if they are the thought police.

The new term being thrown around in 2024 is “radical speech”, meaning any speech that runs contrary to “diversity, equity and inclusion” requirements, or any speech that contradicts the preeminence of the official narrative. Understand that “radical speech” is an arbitrary label; one has to consider what the legitimate consequences are and what the intent is.

For a Democrat, any speech that is detrimental to their goal of extorting public support for their policies suddenly becomes “radical.” The label is designed to elicit images of terrorism and fascism, as if mere words are magical and can compel the public to do great evil without them realizing it. This is childish fantasy based on projection. It’s leftists (collectivists) that believe words have magical powers, and so they put great emphasis on controlling speech in general.

I would partially agree, only in the fact that lies do have power to evoke emotional responses, but the only way to combat lies is with the truth. Anyone who says that the best way to combat lies is to use mass censorship is a liar. Democrats lean heavily on mass censorship, as we have seen with nearly every Big Tech social media platform and corporate news platform in the past few years.

The bottom line is this – When someone tells you exactly who they are, believe them. When a group of people show through a host of actions that they are authoritarians, they should not be allowed anywhere near power. It’s time to rethink our ongoing political relationship here in America and consider whether or not we should continue to live with a political movement that has made it so abundantly clear that they are hostile to freedom.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden Fri, 04/12/2024 - 23:40

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Did Lockdowns Set A Global Revolt In Motion?

Did Lockdowns Set A Global Revolt In Motion?

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

My first article on the coming backlash…

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Did Lockdowns Set A Global Revolt In Motion?

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

My first article on the coming backlash - admittedly wildly optimistic - went to print April 24, 2020.

After 6 weeks of lockdown, I confidently predicted a political revolt, a movement against masks, a population-wide revulsion against the elites, a demand to reject “social distancing” and streaming-only life, plus widespread disgust at everything and everyone involved.

I was off by four years. I wrongly assumed back then that society was still functioning and that our elites would be responsive to the obvious flop of the whole lockdown scheme. I assumed that people were smarter than they proved to be. I also did not anticipate just how devastating the effects of lockdown would be: in terms of learning loss, economic chaos, cultural shock, and the population-wide demoralization and loss of trust.

The forces that set in motion those grim days were far more deep than I knew at the time. They involved a willing complicity from tech, media, pharma, and the administrative state at all levels of society.

There is every evidence that it was planned to be exactly what it became; not just a foolish deployment of public health powers but a “great reset” of our lives. The newfound powers of the ruling class were not given up so easily, and it took far longer for people to shake off the trauma than I had anticipated.

Is that backlash finally here? If so, it’s about time.

New literature is emerging to document it all.

The new bookWhite Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy” is a viciously partisan, histrionic, and gravely inaccurate account that gets nearly everything wrong but one: vast swaths of the public are fed up, not with democracy but its opposite of ruling class hegemony.

The revolt is not racial and not geographically determined. It’s not even about left and right, categories that are mostly a distraction. it’s class-based in large part but more precisely about the rulers vs. the ruled.

With more precision, new voices are emerging among people who detect a “vibe change” in the population.

One is Elizabeth Nickson’s article “Strongholds Falling; Populists Seize the Culture.”

She argues, quoting Bret Weinstein, that:

“The lessons of [C]ovid are profound. The most important lesson of Covid is that without knowing the game, we outfoxed them and their narrative collapsed .... The revolution is happening all over the socials, especially in videos. And the disgust is palpable.”

A second article is “Vibe Shift” by Santiago Pliego:

“The Vibe Shift I’m talking about is the speaking of previously unspeakable truths, the noticing of previously suppressed facts. I’m talking about the give you feel when the walls of Propaganda and Bureaucracy start to move as you push; the very visible dust kicked up in the air as Experts and Fact Checkers scramble to hold on to decaying institutions; the cautious but electric rush of energy when dictatorial edifices designed to stifle innovation, enterprise, and thought are exposed or toppled. Fundamentally, the Vibe Shift is a return to—a championing of—Reality, a rejection of the bureaucratic, the cowardly, the guilt-driven; a return to greatness, courage, and joyous ambition.

We truly want to believe this is true. And this much is certainly correct: the battle lines are incredibly clear these days. The media that uncritically echo the deep-state line are known: Slate, Wired, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, New Republic, New Yorker, and so on, to say nothing of the New York Times. What used to be politically partisan venues with certain predictable biases are now more readily described as ruling-class mouthpieces, forever instructing you precisely how to think while demonizing disagreement.

After all, all of these venues, in addition to the obvious case of the science journals, are still defending the lockdowns and everything that followed. Rather than express regret for their bad models and immoral means of control, they have continued to insist that they did the right thing, regardless of the civilization-wide carnage everywhere in evidence, while ignoring the relationship between the policies they championed and the terrible results.

Instead of allowing their mistakes to change their own outlook, they have adapted their own worldview to allow for snap lockdowns anytime they deem them necessary. In holding this view, they have forged a view of politics that it is embarrassingly acquiescent to the powerful.

The liberalism that once questioned authority and demanded free speech seems extinct. This transmogrified and captured liberalism now demands compliance with authority and calls for further restrictions on free speech. Now anyone who makes a basic demand for normal freedom—to speak or choose one’s own medical treatment or to decline to wear a mask—can reliably anticipate being denounced as “right-wing” even when it makes absolutely no sense.

The smears, cancellations, and denunciations are out of control, and so unbearably predictable.

It’s enough to make one’s head spin. As for the pandemic protocols themselves, there have been no apologies but only more insistence that they were imposed with the best of intentions and mostly correct. The World Health Organization wants more power, and so does the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even though the evidence of the failure of pharma pours in daily, major media venues pretend that all is well, and thereby out themselves as mouthpieces for the ruling regime.

The issue is that major and unbearably obvious failures have never been admitted. Institutions and individuals who only double down on preposterous lies that everyone knows are lies only end up discrediting themselves.

That’s a pretty good summary of where we are today, with vast swaths of elite culture facing an unprecedented loss of trust. Elites have chosen the lie over truth and cover-up over transparency.

This is becoming operationalized in declining traffic for legacy media, which is shedding costly staff as fast as possible. The social media venues that cooperated closely with government during the lockdowns are losing cultural sway while uncensored ones like Elon Musk’s X are gaining attention. Disney is reeling from its partisanship, while states are passing new laws against WHO policies and interventions.

Sometimes this whole revolt can be quite entertaining.

When the CDC or WHO posts an update on X, when they allow comments, it is followed by thousands of reader comments of denunciation and poking fun, with flurries of comments to the effect of “I will not comply.”

DEI is being systematically defunded by major corporations while financial institutions are turning on it. Indeed, the culture in general has come to regard DEI as a sure indication of incompetence. Meanwhile, the outer reaches of the “great reset” such as the hope that EVs would replace internal combustion have come to naught as the EV market has collapsed, along with consumer demand for fake meat to say nothing of bug eating.

As for politics, yes, it does seem like the backlash has empowered populist movements all over the world. We see them in the farmers’ revolt in Europe, the street protests in Brazil against a sketchy election, the widespread discontent in Canada over government policies, and even in migration trends out of US blue states toward red ones. Already, the administrative state in D.C. is working to secure itself against a possible unfriendly president in the form of Donald Trump or RFK, Jr.

So, yes, there are many signs of revolt. These are all very encouraging.

What does all this mean in practice? How does this end? How precisely does a revolt take shape in an industrialized democracy? What is the mostly likely pathway for long-term social change?

These are legitimate questions.

For hundreds of years, our best political philosophers have opined that no system can function in a sustainable way in which a huge majority is coercively governed by a tiny elite with a class interest in serving themselves at public expense.

That seems correct. In the days of the Occupy Wall Street movement of 15 years ago, the street protesters spoke of the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent. They were speaking of those with the money inside the traders’ buildings as opposed to the people on the streets and everywhere else.

Even if that movement misidentified the full nature of the problem, the intuition into which it tapped spoke to a truth. Such a disproportionate distribution of power and wealth is dangerously unsustainable. Revolution of some sort threatens. The mystery right now is what form this takes. It’s unknown because we’ve never been here before.

There is no real historical record of a highly developed society ostensibly living under a civilized code of law that experiences an upheaval of the type that would be required to unseat the rulers of all the commanding heights. We’ve seen political reform movements that take place from the top down but not really anything that approximates a genuine bottom-up revolution of the sort that is shaping up right now.

We know, or think we know, how it all transpires in a tinpot dictatorship or a socialist society of the old Soviet bloc. The government loses all legitimacy, the military flips loyalties, there is a popular revolt that boils over, and the leaders of the government flee. Or they simply lose their jobs and take up new positions in civilian life. These revolutions can be violent or peaceful but the end result is the same. One regime replaces another.

It’s hard to know how this translates to a society that is heavily modernized and seen as non-totalitarian and even existing under the rule of law, more or less. How does revolution occur in this case? How does the regime come around to adapting itself to a public revolt against governance as we know it in the US, UK, and Europe?

Yes, there is the vote, if we can trust that. But even here, there are the candidates, which are that for a reason. They specialize in politics, which does not necessarily mean doing the right thing or reflecting the aspirations of the voters behind them. They are responsive to their donors first, as we have long discovered. Public opinion can matter but there is no mechanism that guarantees a smoothly responsive pathway from popular attitudes to political outcomes.

There is also the pathway of industrial change, a migration of resources out of legacy venues to new ones. Indeed, in the marketplace of ideas, the amplifiers of regime propaganda are failing but we also observe the response: widened censorship. What’s happening in Brazil with the full criminalization of free speech can easily happen in the US.

In social media, were it not for Elon’s takeover of Twitter, it’s hard to know where we would be. We have no large platform in which to influence the culture more broadly. And yet the attacks on that platform and other enterprises owned by Musk are growing. This is emblematic of a much more robust upheaval taking place, one that suggests change is on the way.

But how long does such a paradigm shift take? Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” is a bracing account of how one orthodoxy migrates to another not by the ebb and flow of proof and evidence but through dramatic paradigm shifts. An abundance of anomalies can wholly discredit a current praxis but that doesn’t make it go away. Ego and institutional inertia perpetuate the problem until its most prominent exponents retire and die and a new elite replaces them with different ideas.

In this model, we can expect that a failed innovation in science, politics, or technology could last as long as 70 years before finally being displaced, which is roughly how long the Soviet experiment lasted. That’s a depressing thought. If this is true, we still have another 60 plus years of rule by the management professionals who enacted lockdowns, closures, shot mandates, population propaganda, and censorship.

And yet, people say that history is moving faster now than in the past. If a future of freedom is ours just lying in wait, we need that future here sooner rather than later, before it is too late to do anything about it.

The slogan became popular about ten years ago: the revolution will be decentralized with the creation of robust parallel institutions. There is no other path.

The intellectual parlor game is over. This is a real-life struggle for freedom itself. It’s resist and rebuild or doom.

Tyler Durden Fri, 04/12/2024 - 21:40

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