pinkfloydpsw's Blog

I got talking with my pal Dave at the weekend, he’s often a source for ideas for my writing by providing a secondary and often contrary perspective to my own sometimes skewed and biased opinions. Everyone that thinks and writes must realise that they themselves do not hold all the answers to all the questions, nobody is that smart no matter how smart they are. In fact I often use the following rules….

• Everyone thinks they are smart….
• Everyone thinks they are fair minded….
• Everyone thinks they are funny….
• But nobody that is actually any of these things ever needs to tell you this about themselves, and if they do happen to throw it into conversation then they are likely not the thing they just stated as a facet of their persona.

“The thing about me that people don’t realise is I’m actually really smart”. No Steve you’re not, you just felt the need to tell us, if you were smart then we’d have already noticed…

The Orange grifter currently occupying the US White House makes many statements concerning himself, all claims of his self-stated enviable cognitive abilities, often this is combined with derogatory remarks toward the persons he is stating this nonsense to, and almost always these are women? I am led to conclude, because of these outbursts, my judgement of his performance in interviews and when he is speaking publicly, that it is his powerful wealthy position, combined with the treatment he receives from his closest sycophants, that has created this obvious narcissism by association. 

I’ve talked before about my theory of false-enablement which arises when a person has too many close voices that wish only to please, rather than to inform. I suppose I sort of think of this as an excuse for being very wrong so very often, yet being so confident about the garbage you spout because people nodded their heads when you brought forth the bile. I do not think that, in a networked world, this provides enough excuse to make it acceptable. In the digital internet age, when information is at the fingertips of everyone, surely this sort of dissonance and ignorance must be a choice?

Insecurity drives us to try to offer forth our beliefs about ourselves when we expect that others may not be understanding us the way we wish them to, or they may have assessed us to be lesser than we would like them to have. If you have to point out your traits, then you do not have them. I know about me that I am occasionally funny and cheeky, but I’m no comedian and I don’t tell funny stories, at least when I tell them they lack hilarity anyways. I have a pal called Ricky, if he read you the phone book it would seem funny, my old Sargent Nick was funny even when he wasn’t trying to be, I served in the Army with a guy called Jamie that I found fuckin hilarious upon every utterance. None of these people had to tell me that what they said would be, or should be, entertaining!

Don wants you to believe that he is powerful, and he is, but that power was granted in a falsehood. He made promises that fooled people into believing in him and they were all lies that I believe he knew were lies. This makes him a con man. If he was in error, and actually thought he could achieve those things, and if he then did the things that experts know would lean toward the outcomes he mooted, yet he failed, I would say that at least he tried and his intentions were noble. If he believed he could but then didn’t learn anything from the evidence before him, then he is a fool.

The above does not appear to be the case, everything he has done has been to self enrich, enrich his class, enrich his family, punish anyone that ever tried to stop his grift, and treat the populous of the US as if they are idiots that don’t deserve any value from their nation. We’ll not list the lies, save to point out a few…. he many times said he would stop the Russia-Ukraine conflict on day one and it would be easy (bullshit), that he stopped a war between India and Pakistan (India says no US involvement), that he would lower prices for ordinary Americans (the opposite has happened), and for the last 10 years or so that he had an alternative healthcare plan to replace the medicare system, and it was a matter of just weeks away. These are lies.

My interest is in the dissonance, the self fooling that goes on in the mind of a person who believes untrue things about themselves and what conflicts that must bring. I think I know how this happens, as I’ve said before I have the theory that a person can only come to believe nonsense about themselves if other people let them. They must be enabled by people who have vested interest, and that means that there will need to be a power dynamic concerning the levers of prominence or the unlocking of wealth, or maybe even survival in the case of those persons who found themselves close to King Henry VIII? A guy down the boozer can’t get away with a ridiculous statement in the same way that a violent thug or a guy that owns all the real estate including the house you live in. I remember renting a house in the early 90s from a guy that was so full of shit that if he had had an enema he could have slept in a matchbox after it, but I had to listen to his garbage because the rent suited me and there was no actual contract.

We temper our responses to people depending on the relationship we have with them, and this leads me to think that the people around the big orange nitwit know that they are also just as full of shit as Don, they just also know that if they were to speak truth to power then they wouldn’t get to speak at all. This mechanism of deplatforming is a common tactic for the powerful, the grifter-in-chief heaps some wasteful litigation on top of this, using a justice system that should be for more important purposes, just to get his lunatic followers, and the media, to chinwag about this as news and not what’s really going on. Distractions, that may be where he is actually smart, like a magician that gets you to look over there while the illusion plays out somewhere else.

Comedians aren’t intimidated by other comedians, they actually thrive and spur each other on. It’s the same for academics of high intellect, they inspire and challenge, which brings debate and content. The one thing we can say for sure based on an observation of Donny is that he ostracizes intellectuals, he gets rid of professionals, he demotes experience and promotes ass-kissing amateurs to take charge. I think he does this because it is the only way he can seem like the head man. My supposition is that the leader of the free world is an intellectual lightweight that would be easily intimidated by any able and credible persons occupying correct positions, so to compensate for his lacking mental capacity he just doesn’t have them at all, he has alternative experts (non experts) just like when his former press secretary said “alternative facts” as a way of explaining blatant falsehoods. This is what makes his second term much worse than his first was, that he immediately replaced those that might caution him with those that would happily go along with anything he wanted.

For our powerful idiot the truth of things, what is demonstrable and provable, is subjective, and what is fact is anything that agrees with what his wishes happen to be. There is no legitimacy to any position that anyone takes that is contrary to his ill-informed opinion, an opinion built on whatever nonsense is said that suits the narrative he has on any subject. The problem with this is two-fold, one it is relativism but not by majority by one person (relativism is where the truth is relative to belief, a busted position and one that nobody takes in the modern age of science where we can actually measure things), the other problem is that to get outcomes to be optimal you must follow science and statistics that lead to actions that then have the effect you wish for, or that people voted for.

To impose tariffs is not beyond reasonable, governments often wish for a leveling of the field of economic battle and have a right to protect their interests, it’s just the ones he has come up with are effectively a tax on the US consumer. There is a very good reason for this, when one nation has an advantage then another nation must work hard to get up to speed if they wish to compete. For the goods and services that Donny has placed tariffs on the US has a long way to go to establish the infrastructure to manufacture in-country, they may be years away in some cases. A secondary aspect to consider is that with consumer confidence being so low, the citizen cannot be fooled by spouting at the lectern by the administration when they know the truth at the checkout or when paying rent, there is little appetite for investment in building the infrastructure to produce and distribute. This sets the internal production back even further, a market must have an incentive for investment and that incentive is usually demand.

If there is goods inflation then people tend to spend less, a government may wish the central bank to lower interest rates to make borrowing more appealing, but investors and businesses may hang back to see the lay of the land, meaning the effect of low interest rates if they do it, which they don’t have to, just puts savers at ill ease rather than stimulating an economy. Don’s tariffs have also had the effect of making global partners look to alternative markets for similar goods, this means potentially lower trade with the US, so exports can fall and the spiral continues. With countries demanding less from the US and more from other countries, and once these links are established they may be for the long term, those other countries need to hold less US dollars, this means they may look to get rid of them, lowering demand for the dollar which will weaken it in global terms. A weak dollar means lower prices for exports, which nobody wants, but a higher cost to US businesses that need materials from other nations, which are not subject to tariffs that make them practically unaffordable, and since the US cannot get up to speed quickly on manufacturing these items the problem exacerbates.  Add in that an MPC will raise interest rates to combat inflation and we have the central bank at odds with the will of a failed businessman who bankrupted a casino in a battle of who knows more about the economy in a macro sense.

Capitalism has spikes and falls built in, I understand this from listening to Max from UNFTR, “It’s a feature not a bug”, and we expect ups and downs, but as Max explains, developed countries have developed mechanisms to cope with boom and bust. The lowering of interest rates would have to be as a result of decisions that consider risk, and in an economic downturn where the downturn is because of consumer confidence tanking as a result of the instability they witness in government action, the risk of loans is not lower it is higher, and higher risks means higher interest rates. This cannot be worked against, even if the central bank acts like risk is low that will not make the actual loaning banks act that way. Also with personal household debt and personal bankruptcy at record levels, a system of loaning further monies will be hesitant when it comes to taking further risks. Simply put the market is not buying Don’s bullshit, and all suspect that lower interest rates would only favour those that wish to borrow, which at this moment is only those that already have wealth.

I mentioned that things can be measured, that relies on people measuring, Don has prevented that also, I suspect the reason for this is that the stats would argue with the things he claims. A fact check of Donny usually leads to a call of “bullshit” from all directions. A recent claim of bringing prices down cannot be true because inflation is still positive, for prices to fall there would have to be a supply side shift to the left, this might be caused by lower material prices, which is not happening, subsidisation, which is not happening, or an increase in demand caused by wage rises (meaning more affordability greater demand and incentive for greater production that increases the pressure downward on prices, this is capitalism), and this is not the case either as wages are flat or falling in real terms. Add into this the falling job rates, measurably at a low point since the 1970s despite the deportations, the rise of Ai replacing labour and pressuring wages downward (more unemployed people means wage suppression, capitalism again), and this doesn’t pan out either.

Don also touted cheaper energy, this also hasn’t happened because of the administrations view of renewable energy sources. While the rest of the world works toward greener energy, the US as led by Donny is looking to filthy fossil fuels to fuel their sprawling data centres, in the hope that emergent AI will save them, or give an advantage. I’ll explain the problem with that idea in the next paragraph. The issue with energy is that so much of it is needed for AI, the demand spike has the effect of driving up energy prices for households and existing businesses. If the US was developing wind farms, solar, and tidal energy sources in compliment with existing historic production it could gain investment to do so and this would mean confidence in energy production, so lower prices, a temporary hit, or at least stability in the medium to long term. California seems to buck the trend and is going green with demonstrably greater success in comparison. So when Donny says that coal is clean, and the rest of humanity knows that fossil fuels are tremendously problematic, and nobody in their right mind can deny the effects of global warming now unless they live in a cave and have no news service, then we can press the bullshit buzzer yet again.

Ai can save us, but there is a problem with this. To sell anything there must be a buyer, and for there to be consumers there must be disposable incomes, wages. As AI replaces workers, and the reserve army of the unemployed, as Marx called them, grows, forcing downward pressure onto wages as it must, thus lowering disposable income for all person that are not in jobs that require skills, we will see a market that is a bubble, one that destroys itself because it grew too rapidly. Ai remember will replace skilled labour not manual labour, robotics controlled by AI will do that but we are not there yet. If we have less spending ability for the masses we are forced into consumption being reliant on the wealthy, this means Trump’s policy must be designed to enrich and then supply those that have high wealth, and we can see that being the case now. Unfortunately this is unsustainable and unequal. This is referred to as a K shaped economy, and it is not desirable since there will come a point where there is no consumption because there is no incentive to consume at the pace of production.

Interestingly this has always been the case under capitalism, but not under communism. Communism is a failed economic model because it doesn’t incentivise and it cannot produce enough to meet demand. Capitalism produces far to much for what is demanded but does not lack in incentive to produce or consume. A good read on this is to look at C H Douglas’s theory of National Credit.

We are at the point now where you can get rid of the college graduate because AI has been developed for the areas that this person has trained for. Imagine the future landscape if you have just graduated with a degree in graphics design and a firm can buy a license for Adobe Agentic AI that will run a marketing campaign and produce all the materials from a couple of instruction inputs for less than a fifth of what you were hoping to earn. Imagine you are an accounts staff member working in a finance department, that’s going to go the way of the dodo also when Sage and Oracle offer their AI for pennies compared to your pounds. We have seen automation before, but not on the scale or at the rate that it is being adopted right now, and there is nothing for these people to do as their specialisations disappear, it’s not like they’ll be able to move firm since they’re all at it.

It cannot be stopped or even slowed, as one business adopts advantage then other businesses must or they lose out to lower priced offerings from ventures that have greatly affected their supply side costs downward, and we must keep in mind that employing people is mostly the greatest cost any firm has, so shedding persons and gaining technology is always the goal of any firm. This seems cruel because it is, you may like your job and you may like your employer, but he/she does not employ you by accident nor out of kindness, you are an asset that is worth your wage right up until the day you are not, and on that day your employer will replace you with a machine or a technological service in a nanosecond because it is just good business.

Nothing about the US administration is working to mitigate the inevitable job loss numbers that AI will cause, nothing except mass deportations, and this may be in line with the expected slump. Less people means less welfare demands as the remaining people then form a smaller army of reserve workers. I didn’t use the term reserve army accidentally either, I expect a lot of people will look to military service as a way of gaining a needed income, and the way Don’s foreign policy is going they may be needed and busy. As I am writing this piece it appears to me that the US president has sanctioned the takeover of another country’s oil resources, I think likely illegally, so as to gain a cheap energy tap to bolster the US energy prices crisis. He has also gone to war with a middle-eastern nation to gain control of their resources, he wants Greenland again, no doubt because there are resources in the Artic circle, and he’s looking for sunny real-estate off the Florida coast by mooting a move on Cuba.

What else smells like rot?

The FBI did a sting operation on a government employee and the administration took the view that the person alleged to have accepted the bribe and taken the money was the victim of an unfair attempt to set them up. This is maybe an incredible level of mashing the truth. The money has reportedly not been returned, and the US DOJ under Don has is not pursuing the case. This guy, this alleged bribe taker, has now been made the head of Immigration Enforcement.

Venezuela just happen to have an enormous oil reserve so they have found themselves facing the wrath of the US on drug charges. To this end the US under the direction of its war department has been blowing up boats and claiming proof that they were shipping narcotics. One might speculate that the complete destruction of these vessels makes proving any claims impossible. Now the US has taken over the oil, and faces no investigation of the extra-judicial killings at sea. Incredible!

In conclusion let’s get back to our point though, I’m going to use the term Meta-Cognition to describe the sort of self realisation that was called for in the film The Matrix, borrowed from the Lyceum of ancient Greece, where above the door it said “Know Thyself”. I wonder how many people ever achieve this sort of intelligence, and how many continue in a falsehood? A conflict between the self and the facade will cause cognitive issues, this is a given. If you lie to yourself then you will be in that conflict. I prefer to know and recognise my limitations because it is easier to just be me that way, it is not deflationary to accept who you are because you can grow, challenge and overcome, mitigate what holds you back through effort and technology, learn to be better, accumulate skill and knowledge without standing in your own way etc. It must certainly better than self-fooling and knowing that you are doing so, even if that is a subconscious knowing it will still affect your daily life.

Paul S Wilson