Michael Hudson & Chaos

The ironies of the modern age!

Michael Hudson has the best explanations of current global economic issues that I've seen to date. Mainstream economists of course dislike Hudson – probably because he is too often right – when they are too often wrong.

In this video, Hudson is predictably ironic, in the way only he can be, suggesting that the ‘economy is as good as it gets’—which is what mainstream economic media like the WSJ, FT, Economist and Bloomberg’s are always saying to persuade you to buy stocks and bonds. Of course, they mean something different from what he is saying.

His is a subtle irony because “ s good as it gets’ doesn’t mean the economy is “good” —or “satisfactory” in meeting people’s needs.

“Good as it gets” in this case doesn’t mean “good” at all - -something quite different.

He uses the term “optimum position”in this interview— a technical concept which means the best level anything can achieve under circumstances. Of course, if the circumstances are “sub-optimal”….. or awful—it “optimum position” means maybe slightly above that.

Let’s suppose you have an accident and you are left paraplegic. That’s an “optimum position” because at least you’re not dead, although you might want to be. The US is heading towards quadriplegic.

Continuing in this vein, he says that America’s official policy is “chaos”-- which is all it can do.

He does not mean that the US’s goal is “chaos”. He is talking about the results of US policy.

The US seeks “order” according to an illusory notion of “normal” in a world where there is no normal and no order of the kind the US wants, By trying to control events and factors beyond its capabilities, America creates disorder, further complexity, change and contradiction, with chance a determining factor.

These are what I call the 4 C’s of geopolitical Chaos Theory— although, as you know, there are many iterations of Chaos Theory.

Whatever the algorithms used to explain it, all forms of chaos as defined in mathematical theory are non-linear, dynamic, and multidimensional. Call chaos “quantum normal” — which is to say, that results of any intervention can be unexpectedly the opposite of what you intend. The Uncertainty Principle applies.

This is what underpins the Law of Unintended Consequences.

I think what Hudson is saying here is that the US is generating its own collapse the more it tries to impose its notion of “normal order” on the world. It’s on a tight rope, trying to escape the mess it has made.

It is a very, very, long way down. and the rope it walks is part of the a mass of threads in constant motion — going nowhere.

Down below is a dark ocean full of creatures with sharp teeth and appetites to match. America’s vassal states are already thrashing about there.

There is nothing that can be done to change the outcome.

But….

I like the word “But”….

One of the 4 C’s is, after all, change.

And in change there is,as Sun Tzu says, opportunity.

The US and the G7 are not the “World”. Nor can they control it or dominate it. As the Empire fails, the rest of the world benefits from new opportunities to free themselves from the economic pillage represented by neocolonialism and neoliberalism.

Chaos theory explains that within the visible randomness of complex, chaotic systems, there are inherent repetition, patterns, self-organisation, interconnectedness, self-similarity, and constant feedback loops.

Self-organization, interconnectedness, self- similarity, feedback loops, repetition — something like ….BRICS and “multipolarity”? Of something different down the road? Definitely NOT American hegemony.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy Hamlet, 1.5. 165–66

BRICS and multipolarity are the future— new orders of geopolitical being based on collaboration and the search for mutual benefit. They are not hierarchical but heterarchical (as I define it in my special articles). Not about dominance — but reverse dominance.

Check out the video — Michael Hudson says it all, better than I can.

Chappy’s opinion

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Julian’s Special Article is almost 10, 000 words long. I will get him to shorten it. But I need to give him treats to train him and keep him from peeing on the bed.