Category Archives: Democracy and Community

When Will The AI Bubble Burst?

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I started writing about the big Housing Bubble on March 26, 2005. It was obvious that there was going to be a crash. From that post,

The “For Sale” signs are sprouting like mushrooms. It probably won’t be long now.

It turned out to be long now, then. Until it wasn’t.

AI (And Stock. And Debt.) Bubble Burst Inevitable

It is obvious there has to be a crash to burst this AI bubble. It is inevitable. But this bubble, along with the stock bubble, is on top of (fueled by) the huge, worldwide “debt”* bubble. (See asterick explanation below.)

It is inevitable. But when?

Slowly, Then All At Once

Bubbles pop slowly, then all at once. (“Gradually and then suddenly.”)

The 2008 crash began slowly. The housing bubble itself peaked in 2006 and prices started down, rumors about bad loans and fraudulent collateralized debt obligation “tranches” circulated, but the fallout from that didn’t lead to the big financial panic until September, 2008. So 42 months. It began slowly, then, in September of 2008, all at once. But when it hit… it really hit. (Not that anyone was held accountable, of course.)

So when will the AI Bubble burst? The overall stock bubble will pop when the AI bubble pops. This all risks popping the huge, worldwide “debt” bubble. Worldwide financial collapse on an unimaginable scale. Great. Just great.

End-stage capitalism. Fun for all. Until it isn’t.

*The Asterick Explanation — About That $40 TRILLION US “Debt”

Debt is in quotes because the US government does not “borrow.” It creates dollars. “Mints” them. You don’t “borrow” something you make yourself. Governments sell bonds and pay interest, but that’s another topic.

People don’t know how banks get the money they loan out. They “create” it. They don’t actually HAVE the money, they just make it up out of thin air and deposit it into the account of the borrower. (They put the same amount on their books as money owed to them, so the books balance.) This is true, even though you can’t get your head around it.

Governments create money the same way. This is called a “fiat currency.” A “budget deficit” measures the money that is created by spending it into the economy without taxing it back out. The “national debt” is a measure of all the money the government has spent into the economy without taxing it back out.

$40 Trillion Floating Around At The Top

So the US government has created $40 trillion – the US National Debt. Because the system is rigged much of it has gone to the top few. Musk has a good-sized chunk of that just for himself. The other oligarchs have chunks of it. The rest is floating around at the top, various sovereign wealth funds and minor billionaires and hedge funds and such etc, all looking for places to put it and get a return. This is why there are big “asset bubbles” everywhere. Because “price go up.” (Until it doesn’t.)

The public could have had nice things. That money could have gone to fighting the climate crisis but the Green New Deal “cost too much.” It could have gone to healthcare and ending poverty and high-speed rail like China’s, and housing for everyone… A functioning democracy would have made sure that happened. But, as I said, the US “system” has become rigged to send much of the income and wealth ever upwards. Enshittification, etc.

So $40 trillion is floating around looking for ever-greater returns. AI looks promising, let’s cover the earth with data centers.

End-stage capitalism. Fun for all. Until it isn’t.

Give Wind & Solar Electricity To The Public For Free

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This post was first published at Imagine Democracy – Imagining government of the people, by the people and for the people.

If we had a functioning democracy we would own our energy supply. We would build publicly-owned solar & wind and provide the electricity to each other and our businesses for free. Our economy would BOOM.

We would tax & redistribute the highest incomes & profits that result from this. Healthcare, education, transportation…

Australia is starting to do this.

Most Voters Too Young To Remember

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy.

I was thinking about how most voters out there have no memory of all kinds of things people who are older remember.

Tax Cuts Will Pay For Themselves

They don’t remember Reagan promising that tax cuts for the rich will cause them to invest in the economy and bring all kinds of great things that meant the tax cuts “will pay for themselves.” They didn’t watch the resulting shift from government taxing the rich and doing things for people, into “borrowing” FROM the rich, doing nothing for the people, and paying massive amounts of interest TO the rich. AND the resulting massive inequality. They don’t remember that there weren’t billionaires. Now it’s billionaires with all the money vs people in food lines, etc.

Deregulating Corporations Will Unleash Growth And Bring Prices Down

They don’t remember Reagan promising that deregulation of corporations will “unleash” growth, causing them to provide more great things so we would all be so much better off. Now they pollute at will and scam everyone. They don’t remember the promise that getting rid of antitrust regulations would force prices down and make everything better. They didn’t watch as merger after merger transformed the economy into a few giant monopolies that charge whatever they want and make you pay monthly to use products you already paid for.

Elections Were Competitive

They don’t remember competitive elections before campaign finance was undone. Regular people could run for office. Now a few oligarchs decide elections with “dark money” so no one knows who pays for the ads and bots and propaganda.

They don’t remember the Democratic Party standing up and fighting for working people.

Before The Propaganda

They don’t remember that TV news used to have rules about serving the public interest. They don’t remember that commercials were not allowed to lie. They don’t remember when the benefits of belonging to unions was allowed to be discussed on the air. They don’t remember that “markets are better at making decisions than government (i.e. “democracy”)” was laughed at. They don’t remember that there was a fight to allow non-whites to vote. They don’t remember that women couldn’t get bank accounts or credit cards without their husband’s permission. They don’t remember that government existed to make people’s lives better.

There are all kinds of things they know nothing about…

For a lot of them ALL they are old enough to remember is Trump coming down an escalator and saying immigrants are all criminals who rape and murder, etc…

A Call For A Moral Revolution

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This post first appeared at Imagine Democracy – Imagining government of the people, by the people and for the people.

I was very moved reading Isaiah Poole at Campfire Politics, writing, “What, to the American Black person, is the U.S. 250th anniversary?” Please go read the whole piece!!!

We will not “get over it” until the nation commits itself fully to the work of healing our collective wounds and reconciliation. The first step, in fact, is the recognition that the wounds of some affect the health of all. The ethos of Trumpism is individualism, that each person rises or falls on their own and no one owes anyone else anything. Your successes are yours alone, and so are your problems and failures. But the same Bible hoisted by Christian nationalists tells a different story. The apostle Paul said that we are all part of one body, and each part depends on the health and well-being of every other part. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’” Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians. King made the same point when he said, “All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

It is so brilliant and spot-on: “the wounds of some affect the health of all”. It is one of the best analyses of America’s situation I have read.

This line really resonates and says so much about why the US is where it is: “Instead, we are the cancer patient who took too low a dose of treatment and stopped the treatment too early.” I would add that after every attack by the disease the nation refused to exercise and take other preventative steps to ward off the next one. They could have stamped it out after the Civil War but the warfighters were so relieved thinking the fight was over and stayed home while the South rose again. Rachel Maddow’s Ultra series talks about how America just forgot about fighting its internal Nazi collaborators after winning WWII, allowing them to grow into what we are seeing now.

As he wrote, “We will not “get over it” until the nation commits itself fully to the work of healing our collective wounds and reconciliation.”

A “moral revolution”. The country needs a full Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Full accountability for the crimes and corruption. Preventative measures to protect the future.

And finally, the country must come to full recognition of the “disease,” coming up with a preventative prescription to fight inevitable future attacks from the fascists, monarchists, psychopaths and the rest of that crowd that infect humanity. Maybe use tests at birth and move them to a well-guarded, secure island where they can enjoy being cruel to and fighting with each other. Maybe give them toys to accumulate and hoard and fight over. That is MY vindictive “light that shows the way forward.”

The Old Enemies Of Peace – Welcome Their Hatred

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This post first appeared at Imagine Democracy – Imagining government of the people, by the people and for the people.

In 1932 FDR campaigned asking for help so he could win and “restore America to its own people.” After taking office his administration began working to help the population start to recover from the ravages of depression caused by unregulated banks and stock market speculation. Campaigning for reelection in 1936 he delivered his final campaign speech at Madison Square Garden. He talked about the changes his government had made, and the struggle that lay ahead to continue with that struggle. He described the struggle he and the public faced, saying,

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.

The old enemies of peace are back. Business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism and war profiteering.

Let’s welcome their hatred and send them off.

Hard To Imagine Democracy

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This post first appeared at Imagine Democracy – Imagining government of the people, by the people and for the people.

I haven’t posted here at Imagine Democracy for a while because it is hard to imagine democracy with everything that is happening. I’ve been writing a LOT over at Government Cheese: Chronicling the collapse of democracy because … the collapse of democracy.

So imagine democracy. Suppose We the People manage to get control of the United States again. What’s it going to take to get America back on its feet?

The World Will Need An Ironclad Guarantee It Can’t Happen Again

We the People are going to have to make changes that provide the entire world with an ironclad assurance that this all cannot happen again. Can. Not. The level of systemic reform required before any country, business or anyone dares to trust the US again will be enormous. The damage done by tariffs, threats, withdrawal of assistance, bombs and otherwise is just huge.

Why would any country agree to any kind of arrangement with the US without some kind of ironclad guarantee? This is real. Right now the EU is talking to the UK about deals opening up more trade, and a few other things. In those talks the EU is asking for the agreement to include reparations payments if the right gets control of the UK again and undoes these agreements – again.

Even domestically. Suppose you’re thinking about joining (or rejoining) the Dept of Justice. Without such a guarantee you are not only facing the possibility of being tossed out in 4 years if the nutcases get control again, you are also facing the possibility of being indicted for trying to help the country recover! Suppose you’re a scientist thinking of coming back to help fight the climate crisis. Same deal. You could get indicted for that – or worse – if they get back in.

That’s a lot of work there to undo the ways the system is rigged against the public. How do you get government back under the control of We the People? Most important: Get money out of the election system. Ban it. Ban corporate money from being used for any purpose other than running the corporation! Getting the money out might give the public a chance to start righting the ship.

Get rid of the Electoral College – it’s a leftover from the slave-state system. Make the Senate represent their share of the population instead of two senators for a state with the population of one county in a state like California! Bring in some kind of preferential/ranked-choice voting system to stop current vote for the lesser-of-two-evils system. Get corporations under control – re-regulate them and put “stakeholders” on Boards. Completely reform and expand the corrupt Republican Supreme Court. Somehow restore an honest system for the public to get reliable news & information that stops the ability to propagandize the public. (Maybe a super and expanded version of Public Broadcasting? Govt funding for news outlets and local news outlets?) Implement ironclad ways to make sure democracy is understood, respected and protected, including a Department of Democracy.
 
So many things will have to be done. But seriously why should anyone trust the US “system” again without this level of real reform?

After what happened with Japan and Germany this is the level of change that had to happen. Complete transformation. It didn’t happen after the Soviet Union fell, and look where they are now!

A Progressive Populist Agenda

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Here’s a first stab at some ideas for a post-Trump agenda that would actually be popular with the public.

Democratic “We the People” Government is based on the reality that all human beings are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights. Government therefore must protect and serve the people of the nation and planet by supporting and assisting in making all people’s lives better and supporting an economy that grows prosperity through investment in public goods and sustainable businesses that work for the public good, while always protecting and restoring the environment.

To this end it is in government’s interest to Work With Other Nations in a cooperative effort to accomplish these goals for all humanity. All human beings are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights.

To achieve this from the ruins of the present system:

Vast personal wealth damages society and causes moral harm to the individuals possessing it. Redistribute Extreme Wealth through very high wealth taxes, very high top bracket income tax rate until societal wealth distribution is much “flatter.” (“Get the money from where the money went.”)

Climate Reparations and other reparations where wealth was accumulated through harms, exploitation, fraud, intentional addiction, etc.

Free Public Energy. Provide a baseline amount of free electricity to people and businesses. Transition completely to renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.

Free Mass Transit – Put the word ‘Public’ back in ‘Public Transit’.

Universal Public Healthcare – Finally join the rest of the world.

Free Public Education through college.

Provide a Guaranteed Basic Income as well as guaranteed jobs in public service. Give people who seek jobs the opportunity to do jobs that need to be done.

Corporations exist to serve the public interest. Strictly Regulate Corporations. Reform corporate governance with Board representation by all stakeholders. Diverse – 50% women, racially diverse. Encourage and assist smaller, local businesses. Note- regulations exist for the good of the public, so government will provide funds and assistance toward compliance.

Limit Corporation Profits with excess going to the government (public). The purpose of a corporation is to aggregate private capital to accomplish things the public wants done. Corporate employment should be rewarded according to contribution. Profits from ongoing operations should be reinvested with excess to public. Reward for capital risk and contribution would come from a low rate of taxation of long-term capital gains.

Nationalize AI. Control & develop it to serve the public interest.

Nationalise or Regulate Social Media and other “network effect” technologies like internet search as public utilities.

Restore the Natural World.

Outlaw Corruption. To ensure government continues to serve the public, we must develop systemic mechanisms and institutions to fight corruption and the influence of other corrupting interests, including anti-democracy ideologies.

Colbert, CBS, FCC and Election Interference

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Colbert stood up to the FCC and the new CBS. This is good.

But what we’re seeing here is not really a story of the little people overcoming the boot on the throat. We are seeing the boot arriving at the throat. This is the beginning of one piece in the coming wave of election interference. The signal has been sent to the stations and networks: No coverage for Democratic candidates, issues & viewpoints.

Colbert has power but the FCC has massive power. What happens now is every local station and national network will be afraid to give local, state & national Dem candidates and viewpoints airtime. And they will likely feel they should boost coverage of Republican and fringe right-wing candidates and viewpoints (even more than they already do).

We have already seen how this works. We’re old enough to remember a time before Reagan brought in the corporatization & commercialization of news, back when all kinds of issues were (required to be) discussed. We’ve seen how “news” – especially local news – became commercialized, sensationalized and fear-mongering. When was the last time you saw coverage of union leaders talking about the benefits to working people from joining a union?

Remember “hard-hitting” documentaries on the nation’s problems, etc…?

I fear that we are about to see another shift in what the public is shown.

Abolish ICE — Stop Dehumanizing People

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If you give them an inch … And look, now they’re taking their mile.

Crossing the border without authorization is a misdemeanor. It only became a crime at all thanks to white supremacist eugenics arguments in the 1920s. They said “they” are “invading” and we have to keep “them” out. So they passed laws to keep them out.

Have a read: CNN, When Americans tried to breed a better race: How a genetic fitness ‘crusade’ marches on,

They started swarming across America’s border, millions of desperate families fleeing poverty or seeking political asylum.

But many people were repelled by their presence. Some warned that the country was facing a “genetic invasion” and that whites were “losing the demographic game.” Another said, “There will no longer be an America for Americans.”

One leader even thought of a radical way to keep them out.

“Can we build a wall high enough around this country so as to keep out these cheaper races?” he asked.

It sounds like a Republican Party campaign ad.

This idea that the border exists to keep “us” safe from being “invaded” by “the other” is so ingrained now that the public accepts the concept – and the far right can use it. So instead of acknowledging that immigrants are human beings, Democrats are adapting the Third Way argument that some lesser people are “illegal” – less than human. ICE is showing “excess,” we still need to “remove” them.

You can’t fight racist bullies by appeasing them. Spain’s government understands that and is showing the way. Go read this whole thing.

Why Spain is offering amnesty to 500,000 undocumented migrants,

Foreign nationals with clean criminal records who arrived before the end of 2025, and who can prove they’ve lived in Spain for at least five months, will soon be eligible for renewable one-year residence permits. People who applied for asylum in the country before December 31 will also be able to apply. Migration Minister Elma Saiz said Tuesday that she expects applications to open April through June.

This extraordinary mass regularisation – the first in Spain in more than 20 years – was born from a citizen-backed proposal signed by some 700,000 people and supported by hundreds of civil society groups, including the Catholic Church.

While most immigrants in Spain have legal status, the country’s booming economy has also drawn hundreds of thousands of largely working-age people from across the world to work in the country’s underground economy. Undocumented migrants work on construction sites, on farms, in shops and restaurants or in people’s homes, cooking and cleaning and caring for children.

Don’t put borders around your humanity.

American Manufacturing Was Sold Off For Profit

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China didn’t “take” America’s manufacturing jobs, greedy American investors and executives sold America’s farm and ate the seed corn. Same in the UK.

Paul Waldman writes about woodworking tools, in A Trump Tariff Case Study: Can the U.S. Again Be the Power Tool King? at The New Republic.

My DeWalt 20-volt cordless drill/driver combo set is a beaut—powerful, smooth, comfortable in the hand, and not too expensive; I got it on sale for about a hundred bucks. It’s also a tribute to the wonders of the transnational supply chain, its components traversing the earth before they came together and found their way to my door. The drill and driver were made in Mexico, but their batteries were made in China, as were the battery charger and the handy tote bag that came with it. DeWalt, a brand familiar to every woodworker and DIY enthusiast, is a division of Stanley Black & Decker, a global conglomerate headquartered in Connecticut that owns brands including Craftsman, Porter-Cable, Bostitch, and many others.

He writes about how tools once made in the US by American companies are now made elsewhere by international companies, why this is, and what it might take to bring the factories back. He nails it, just spot-on: Manufacturing ecosystems, the cost of bringing it back, the jobs that were good in the past. “(M)any started as American companies but are now part of multinational corporations.” “Unfortunately, there are serious impediments to achieving reindustrialization on a large scale, and Trump’s policies are just about the worst way to go about it.” “We could rebuild those manufacturing ecosystems in the U.S., but we can’t just wish it into existence.” “In fact, this entire debate seems animated by a vision of a bygone time.”

Yep, he nails it. And, as we all know, it’s not just woodworking tools. It’s the same story for … everything.

Same In The UK

It’s the same here in the UK as well. Jaguar/Land Rover are now owned by an Indian company. Trains, water, Royal Mail, British Petroleum (BP), British Telecom (BT) and many other iconic, privatized “British” brands are no longer British-owned. All were sold off to international “investor” conglomerates so a few already-wealthy people could get even more wealthy, under an economic “ideology” (free markets) that was really just a cover story for selling the farm and eating the seed corn. And the public, struggling to get by, now flails around hoping Trump (and here, the Trumpy Reform party) will make good on his promise to “fix it.”

China Did Not “Take” Those Industries

“China” (generic term for “somewhere else”) didn’t “take” those industries. American and British “investors” and executives did that – literally sold out their countries – enabled by US/UK governments run by politicians elected with money that those executives and “investors” took out of their companies to buy the politicians, so they could personally obtain great wealth. They did it because they wanted cheap labor and a way around the pollution and worker safety rules that democracies insist on.

“China” understood what they were seeing and planned and executed a strategy to build their industrial base – as a country. They set up manufacturing zones and put in place everything needed — from local financing, to a modern power grid, to roads, to training centers, to supply chains, to places for workers to come live. Everything.

It was a “public/private partnership” between American executives and the Chinese government. Those exectives also took that ecosystem apart in the US, piece by piece, and it can’t easily be put back together. They sent away the “institutional memory” and “ecosystem” of supply chains and training centers… much like how the Trumpers are now doing the same to the US government itself.

Beyond Neoliberalism

Last week I stepped back into a past life and attended the opening of the “Beyond Neoliberalism” conference (https://beyond-neoliberalism.org/) because it was literally right down the street here in Cambridge UK. Oddly America-centric (and attended by lots of Americans I used to know) it began with a rousing 2.5 hour panel discussion (mostly Americans) on Industrial Policy under Biden. They said a lot of the things you nailed down in your piece.

Biden tried with his IRA to the extent the “system” would let him. Obama tried in tiny ways with his Smart Manufacturing “hub” concept, setting up labs – like a sensor testing lab in Lorain, Ohio around community colleges that would train people to work in the labs, etc. Same with a 3-D printing hub in Youngstown.

They tried. They failed. Now the US has Trump and likely soon the UK will have Farage.

Trump Isn’t The Collapse, Trump Is A Consequence Of The Collapse

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This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy.

People say America and its democracy are being collapsed by Trump. I have come to believe that what we have been calling “late-stage capitalism” was a system that had already collapsed.

Trump isn’t the collapse, Trump is the consequence of the collapse.

The Rule of Law had departed some time ago. The Constitutional system was nonfunctional. The economic system was rigged. The political system benefited only the wealthy and their corporations. That was collapse.

Accountability had long ago disappeared. (A pardon for Nixon? What?) Executives at corporations are never prosecuted. Instead the company itself would be fined – as if companies are sentient entities that can make decisions and do things. White-collar criminals were rarely prosecuted. This is how Trump was able to even be on the scene in the first place to run for office, instead of imprisoned for sex crimes, money laundering, fraud, etc.

The collapse was how Reagan was able to get away with the deal with Iran, and the later Iran/Contra deal.

The collapse was how the Supreme Court was able to make Bush president.

The collapse was how the Iraq War happened.

The collapse was how the climate crisis came about in the first place, how the companies were allowed to continue to put carbon into the air after scientists warned us of the harm it was causing, and how the executives at the companies that caused it got rich instead of being prosecuted.

The collapse was how tax cuts for the rich & corporations, with budget cuts for things government does to make people’s lives better happened.

The collapse was how no bankers were prosecuted for fraud after the financial collapse, and Wall Street but not the public was bailed out.

Rule of Law and accountability had long since disappeared from the United States. That was the collapse.

This wasn’t “late stage capitalism,” it was collapse.

People called these things “late stage capitalism.” This wasn’t late stage capitalism at all. We were already living with the collapse of the Constitutional system, the collapse of Rule of Law, the collapse of accountability. It was corruption taking over. It had been happening for decades.

Trump is just a consequence of that collapse.

In 2017’s Democracy and Corruption I wrote about “democracy off the rails” and democracy “corroded,” not realizing Trump was only possible was because the collapse had already happened.

Trump didn’t just come out of nowhere. The road to Trump goes back a long way. Trump comes out of a steady and intentional undermining of rule of law, norms, equality, civility and democracy.

They say these things happen slowly, then all at once. The collapse was happening for decades, then all at once with Trump.