A few threads below, Andy posted "Endemic Distortions to the U.S. Economy (i.e. Toast). I urge all of you to read it because it has a lot to do with the power disruption today in Chicago. Here's one striking quote in the essay: "A troubling example of this huge imbalance is that while hundreds of billions are being spent on an absolute communications arms race, over the past few weeks tens of millions of Americans have had to deal with brown and black-outs due to the lack of investment in electrical generation capacity. Additionally,.....

With all the mass building going on and the over population of cities if Y2K doesn't bring the grid down, we consumers will.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), August 12, 1999

Answers

Gadgetry gone glitz, not enough telephone #s around either. Gonna have to start dialing 10-digits for local calls because they're "overlaying" area codes. Use is exploding beyond capacity for numbers and airwaves in all types of ways. Consumption frenzied. Everybody enjoys pushing slices of the digital pie.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), August 12, 1999.

That is a great article. Hats off to Andy for digging that one out. He should stick to the financial dirt rather than the "odd" stuff.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), August 12, 1999.

It is an excellent piece. I tired to make the same point in my 'Y2K Economics for Mr. Decker' thread.

The point is that when people go to collect their savings, pensions, 401k, stock, bonds, etc next year, they are going to be surprised to learn that all of the money has already been "spent" on new construction loans, yachts, luxury cars, etc for the corporations, the elite, the middle class yuppies and the newly techno-rich. When the system finally stalls out this fall or winter, all that will be left is a lot of worthless paper from bad loans and defaulted bonds.

-- a (a@a.a), August 12, 1999.

Money is never "spent", it's just passed into new hands. The moment the rich man takes posession of his yacht, the company that made the yacht takes posession of the money paid for it. They then start building another one for another rich man, paying their suppliers and their workers.

The real danger isn't that money is spent, it's that it stops being spent and starts being hoarded. This is called a liquidity crisis if short-term, a depression if it lasts a decade.

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), August 13, 1999.

Overpopulation is the root cause of all the over worked systems whether electricity, food or highways. When is everyone going to wake up to the fact that if we don't start controlling our population, it is going to bring us down, Y2K or not.

-- gilda (jess@listbot.com), August 13, 1999.

Bardou,

Excellent connect-the-threads! Unfortunately, the only way we could ever hope to control the world's population would be without their knowledge or against their will, I think it highly likely that we're all going to pay a terrible price. If not Y2K consequences, failing infrastructure, or warfare on a massive scale, then Mother Nature is going to teach us cause and effect big time.

-- RUOK (RUOK@yesiam.com), August 13, 1999.

Prince Phillip and his old buddy Jacques Cousteau are on record as saying they want a population cull.

Cousteau is dead, old Phillip isn't and you can bet he's moving and shaking in that direction as we speak...

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), August 13, 1999.