I was writing a comment on a story on China's response to the meteorological modeling that shows pollution there is causing, or adding to, weird and violent weather in the Pacific and US. I realized it was becoming too broad and long term and should be a blog post. I stuck in several pieces that broaden it further, and make it a bit choppy, but it eventually gets back to China's strengthening their environmental laws and will they enforce them.

Is the goal in China maintenance of a century-old style technology base? China is financial sector and mega-corp projected to become 'the next consumer society.' As workers in the US lose their buying power, the buying power must rise elsewhere to maintain profit. There must be vast numbers borrowing money to create money. It is only created as interest on debt. That, of course, is why credit, even for very bad risks and governments is easy to get. And we'll bail them out crash after crash, so high stakes gambling always pays off. They only lose our money, not theirs.

The problem with the down-here-up-there long-term profit maintenance model is it's a single global economy. You can't have more water in half the glass. Imagine one with a thin piece of cardboard separating the halves. That's where we are now. Seepage has begun. (See Toffler's Power Shift.)

I haven't decided capitalism isn't a viable system (Chomsky makes a good case it inevitably deteriorates.), but that isn't what we have. The competition required doesn't exist. The regulation required to maintain the system fell off at borders and the accumulation of wealth was used to eliminate it. We have a corporate-structured global financial oligarchy. It's still an open oligarchy, but that's ending fast. The system is non-viable and already being supplanted. Yes, the civilization is falling. Yes, it's going to be terrible. However, it's not going to be globally violent. People are just deserting it. Note I said globally.

We'll get out of a lot of the non-global. Mercenary super-tech advisers and supplying both sides with smaller, more expensive weapons is already becoming more profitable, without the US government in it. The 'military-industrial complex' has been incorporated into the greater mega-system. In that system, tax loopholes and defense budget are becoming slow and low.

Freeing capital for faster ROI (return on investment) makes more money. All that oil they're fracking requires buyers. It's becoming far more profitable to loan governments money to upgrade to need the oil, than fight guerrilla war. It creates money to loan them what they need to exploit their own resources. (Remember, the 'oligarchy' don't want all the wealth that exists. They want all that can be created.) Money is not created when resources are exploited. Those are just changed from in storage to in use, by human labor. Even theft of them isn't as profitable as interest on loans.

Noam Chomsky and Jeremy Rifkin (sp?) both have new books out. This civilization has peaked and is falling. Open source and commons are changing the world. The tinkerers can talk to each other. The megalithic structure era is ending. It's becoming unprofitable.

China isn't going to be behind. Loans to factories for required upgrade will create a great deal of money. In China, every home and business building could have a required loan payment for a solar panel.