- Mapping The Most Culturally Chauvinistic Europeans
Around Europe, some nationalities have a reputation for patriotism and chauvinism more than others.
Whether it’s someone from England reflecting on past colonial glories or a Belgian boasting about his country producing the best beer on the continent, Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes that a sense of national pride is certainly evident in many countries. That begs the question: which European countries are the most arrogant about their culture?
A Pew Research Center survey set out to answer that question by surveying 56,000 adults across Europe. Respondents were asked whether they agree with the statement “our people are not perfect but our culture is superior to others”.
The following map shows the share of people in different countries considering their own culture to be superior to others and there are certainly some interesting results. Take Portugal where 47 percent of people agree with the above statement compared to just 20 percent in neighbouring Spain.
You will find more infographics at Statista
The most chauvinistic attitudes towards culture were recorded across Eastern Europe with Romania (66 percent), Bulgaria (69 percent) and Russia (also 69 percent) on top.
The highest score of any country across Europe was actually recorded in Greece where 89 percent of people agreed with the statement.
- Russia Vows "It Will Act" If Ukraine or Georgia Join NATO
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
Russia has vowed that they “will act” should Ukraine or Georgia join NATO. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu voiced his concern over what he described as the “militarization of the European continent,” by promising action instead of empty rhetoric.
This statement by Shoigu appears to be a sign of the country’s unease in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out the United States out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Speaking during a meeting with Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, Shoigu said:
“We are following with alarm NATO’s policy aimed at the active militarization of the European continent. We see efforts being made to involve more and more NATO member countries, I mean the Balkans first of all.”
According to the Express UK, Andrei Kelin, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s European cooperation department, made his remarks during an expert discussion NATO’s Future and Russia’s Interests on the platform of the discussion club Valdai.
“We will have to create a defense belt near Sochi,” said Kelin.
“We will have to spend colossal resources on preventing likely actions by a hypothetical enemy, this is inevitable.”
Kelin also cautioned Ukraine against joining NATO saying that action would have equally serious military and economic repercussions for his country.
“The length of our common border is enormous. It is utterly unequipped, so we will have to build defense lines there and to shift the emphasis of our defense structures towards the south.”
Kelin did concede, however, that it was unlikely either nation would join NATO.
“But if our western partners proceed along the road of building up confrontation, this may happen, of course, and we will have to make fundamental preparations,” Kelin added.
Russia launched a large-scale land, air and sea invasion in 2008, accusing Georgia of aggression against Russian separatists in the South Ossetia region.
Since this conflict, Vladimir Putin’s regime has occupied both South Ossetia and neighbouring Abkhazia.
In 2014, Russian forces annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea, rapidly incorporating it into the Russian Federation.
Meanwhile the Kremlin today said Russian President Vladimir Putin was keen to discuss US plans to exit the INF treaty with Donald Trump when the two meet in Paris on November 11. -Exxpress UK
Russia has also been ramping up their military might and divesting from the U.S. dollar among rising tensions with Washington.
- South Korea Leads The World In Robo-Workers
The rise of the machines has well and truly started.
Data from the International Federation of Robotics reveals that the pace of industrial automation is accelerating across much of the developed world with 66 installed industrial robots per 10,000 employees globally in 2015. A year later, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, that increased to 74. Europe has a robot density of 99 units per 10,000 workers and that number is 84 and 63 in the Americas and Asia respectively.
China is one of the countries recording the highest growth levels in industrial automation but nowhere has a robot density like South Korea.
You will find more infographics at Statista
In 2016, South Korea had 631 installed industrial robots per 10,000 employees. That is mainly due to the continued installation of high volume robots in the electronics and manufacturing sectors.
90 percent of Singapore’s industrial robots are installed in its electronics industry and it comes second with a density of 488 per 10,000 employees. Germany and Japan are renowned for their automotive industries and they have density levels of just over 300 per 10,000 workers. Interestingly, Japan is one of the main players in industrial robotics, accounting for 52 percent of global supply.
In the United States, the pace of automation is slower with a density rate of 189. China is eager to expand its level of automation in the coming years, targeting a place in the world’s top-10 nations for robot density by 2020. It had a density rate of 25 units in 2013 and that grew to 68 by 2016. India is still lagging behind other countries in automation and it has only three industrial robots per 10,000 workers in 2016.
- A Rules-Based Global Order Or Rule-less US Global 'Order'?
Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
“It has taken the US military/security complex 31 years to get rid of President Reagan’s last nuclear disarmament achievement – the INF Treaty, that President Reagan and Soviet President Gorbachev achieved in 1987”, writes Reagan’s former Assistant Treasury Secretary:
“Behind the scenes, I had some role in this, and as I remember, what the treaty achieved was to make Europe safe from nuclear attack by Soviet short and intermediate range missiles [the SS20s], and to make the Soviet Union safe from US [Pershing missiles deployed in Europe]. By restricting nuclear weapons to ICBMs, which allowed some warning time, thus guaranteeing retaliation and non-use of nuclear weapons, the INF Treaty was regarded as reducing the risk of an American first-strike on Russia and a [Soviet] first-strike on Europe … Reagan, unlike the crazed neoconservatives, who he fired and prosecuted, saw no point in nuclear war that would destroy all life on earth. The INF Treaty was the beginning, in Reagan’s mind, of the elimination of nuclear weapons from military arsenals. The INF Treaty was chosen as the first start, because it did not substantially threaten the budget of the US military/security complex”.
The Trump Administration however now wants to unilaterally exit the INF. Speaking to reporters in Nevada, Trump said:
“Russia has violated the agreement. They’ve been violating it for many years and I don’t know why President Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out … We’re going to pull out … We’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and do weapons, and we’re not allowed to”.
Asked to clarify, the President said: “Unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us, and they say, ‘Let’s all of us get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons,’ but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable. So we have a tremendous amount of money to play with our military.”
The tell-tale markers are plain: Russia and China are ‘doing’ new weapons (and the US is behind the curve); China’s ‘doing it’ (and is not party to the INF treaty), and ‘we’ have a tremendous amount of money to play with our military (we can win an arms race and the military-industrial complex will be ecstatic).
A (US) diplomat has told the Washington Post that, “the planning [for the withdrawal] is the brainchild of Trump’s hawkish national security adviser, John Bolton, [a career opponent of all arms control treaties on the principle that they potentially might limit America’s options to take unilateral action], has told US allies he believes the INF puts Washington in an “excessively weak position” against Russia “and more importantly China”.
Trump is not a strategist by nature. He prides himself rather, as a negotiator, who knows how to go after, and to seize, US leverage. A wily Bolton has played here into Trump’s obsession with leveraging US strength to do two things: To return the US to having potentially a first strike capability over Russia (i.e. more leverage), through being able to install intermediate missiles (such as Aegis) in Europe, over and up against Russia’s frontiers. And, secondly, because were some military conflict between the US and China to become inevitable, as tensions escalate, the US has concluded that it needs medium range missiles to strike at China’s mainland. And it’s not China only. As Eric Sayers, a CSIS expert, put it: “Deploying conventionally-armed ground-launched intermediate-range missiles may be key to reasserting US military superiority in East Asia.” (i.e. leverage again).
Indeed, last year’s US Nuclear Posture Review already noted that “China likely already has the largest medium and intermediate-range missile force in Asia, and probably the world.” And the US is in the process of encircling China with intermediate missiles initially with Japan’s decision to buy the Aegis system, with Taiwan possibly next. (Bolton is known to support stationing US troops on Taiwanese soil, as further leverage over China).
President Putin sees this plainly:
“The Americans keep on indulging in these games as the actual goal of such games is not to catch Russia in violations, and compel it to abide by the treaty; but to invent a pretext to ruin that treaty – part of its belligerent imperial strategy”.
Or, in short, to impose a ‘rule-less, US, global order’.
What is happening is that Bolton and Pompeo seem to be precisely taking Trump back to the old 1992 Defence Policy Guidance document, authored by Paul Wolfowitz, which established the doctrine that the US would not allow any competition to its hegemony to emerge. Indeed, Assistant Secretary of State, Wess Mitchell, made this return to Bush era policy, absolutely clear, when in a statement to the US Senate he said:
The starting point of the National Security Strategy is the recognition that America has entered a period of big-power competition, and that past US policies have neither sufficiently grasped the scope of this emerging trend nor adequately equipped our nation to succeed in it. Contrary to the hopeful assumptions of previous administrations, Russia and China are serious competitors that are building up the material and ideological wherewithal to contest US primacy and leadership in the 21st Century. It continues to be among the foremost national security interests of the United States to prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers.
And at the Atlantic Council on 18 October, the Secretary made it very plain that Europe will be whipped into line on this neo-Wolfowitz doctrine:
“European and American officials have allowed the growing Russian and Chinese influence in that region to “sneak up on us.” “Western Europeans cannot continue to deepen energy dependence on the same Russia that America defends it against. Or enrich themselves from the same Iran that is building ballistic missiles that threaten Europe,” the assistant secretary emphasized. Adding, “It is not acceptable for US allies in central Europe to support projects like Turkstream 2 and maintain cozy energy deals that make the region more vulnerable to the very Russia that these states joined NATO to protect themselves against.”
Also addressing the Atlantic Council’s October 18 conference, US Special Representative for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, revealed that Washington plans to stiffen the sanctions regime against Moscow “every month or two” to make it ‘more amenable over Ukraine’.
Plainly, Europe will be expected too, to welcome America’s missiles deployed back into Europe. Some states may welcome this (Poland and the Baltic States), but Europe as a whole will not. It will serve as another powerful reason to rethink European relations with Washington.
The influence of Bolton poses the question of what is Trump’s foreign policy now. Is it still about getting a good deal for America on a case-by-case basis, or is it a Bolton-style make-over for the Middle East (regime change in Iran), and a long cold war fought against Russia and China? US markets have until now thought it is about trade deals and jobs, but perhaps it no longer is.
We have written before about the incremental neocon-isation of Trump’s foreign policy. That is not new. But, the principal difficulty with a neo-Wolfowitzian imperialism, lashed to Trump’s radical, transactional, leveraging of the dollar jurisdiction, of US energy and of the US hold on technology standards and norms, is that by its very nature, it precludes any ‘grand strategic bargain’ from emerging – except in the unlikely event of a wholesale capitulation to the US. And as the US bludgeons non-compliant states, one-by-one, they do react collectively, and asymmetrically, to counter these pressures. The counter current presently is advancing rapidly.
Bolton may have sold Trump on the advantages of exiting the INF as giving him bargaining leverage over Russia and China, but did he also warn him of the dangers? Probably not. Bolton has always perceived treaty limitations to US action simply to be disadvantageous. Yet President Putin has warned that Russia will use its nuclear weapons – if its existence is threatened – and even if it is threatened through conventionally armed missiles. The dangers are clear.
As for an arms race, this is not the Reagan era (of low Federal debt to GDP). As one commentator notes, “no entity on earth (not currently engaged in QE), has as much government debt vulnerable to short-term interest shifts, than the US government. The US Federal Reserves’ “5 more [interest rate] hikes by end 2019”, roughly translates into: “The Fed [interest payments due on US debt may become so large, as to] impose cuts on the US military in 2019”.
Trump loves the leverage Bolton seems to magic out of his NSC ‘black box’, but does the US President appreciate how ephemeral leverage can be? How quickly it can invert? He cannot – Canute like – simply stand on the sea-shore and command the rising tide of US bond interest rates to recede like the tide, or the US stock market, just to levitate, in order to multiply his leverage over China.
- The $80 Trillion World Economy In One Chart
The latest estimate from the World Bank puts global GDP at roughly $80 trillion in nominal terms for 2017.
As Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, today’s chart from HowMuch.net uses this data to show all major economies in a visualization called a Voronoi diagram – let’s dive into the stats to learn more.
Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist
THE WORLD’S TOP 10 ECONOMIES
Here are the world’s top 10 economies, which together combine for a whopping two-thirds of global GDP.
In nominal terms, the U.S. still has the largest GDP at $19.4 trillion, making up 24.4% of the world economy.
While China’s economy is far behind in nominal terms at $12.2 trillion, you may recall that the Chinese economy has been the world’s largest when adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) since 2016.
The next two largest economies are Japan ($4.9 trillion) and Germany ($4.6 trillion) – and when added to the U.S. and China, the top four economies combined account for over 50% of the world economy.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
Over recent years, the list of top economies hasn’t changed much – and in a similar visualization we posted 18 months ago, the four aforementioned top economies all fell in the exact same order.
However, look outside of these incumbents, and you’ll see that the major forces shaping the future of the global economy are in full swing, especially when it comes to emerging markets.
Here are some of the most important movements:
India has now passed France in nominal terms with a $2.6 trillion economy, which is about 3.3% of the global total. In the most recent quarter, Indian GDP growth saw its highest growth rate in two years at about 8.2%.
Brazil, despite its very recent economic woes, surpassed Italy in GDP rankings to take the #8 spot overall.
Turkey has surpassed The Netherlands to become the world’s 17th largest economy, and Saudi Arabia has jumped past Switzerland to claim the 19th spot.
- DARPA Seeks FAA Approval For Military Drones Over American Cities
Authored by Nicholas West via ActivistPost.com,
Just a little over 10 years after drone surveillance inside U.S. borders was declared a conspiracy theory, it is now an indisputable fact of life. So, too, are military grade drones along the “border,” which in reality constitutes a 100-mile-wide swath that encircles the continental United States and 2/3 of its population.
According to a new report from Defense One, this level of access is still seen as a restriction by the DARPA-directed military apparatus. As new forms of autonomous aircraft take to the skies such as the latest Blackhawk helicopter drones that could be ready by 2019, DARPA and aircraft developers want permission to fly over large cities as needed. Utilizing a new artificial intelligence system that is literally called MATRIX, developers see an opportunity for more flexibility in potential use. Of course, surveillance isn’t mentioned among those uses:
After that, similar to Predator drone maker General Atomics, they have their eyes on FAA certification to fly large, unmanned aircraft within the continental United States, to help ferry people and supplies from the mainland to offshore oil rigs, among other potential jobs. Today, large drones likes Predators are forbidden to fly over the U.S. except in a handful of largely unpopulated areas along the U.S.Mexico border.
The FAA is now figuring out how to change guidelines to allow unmanned planes and helicopters to fly over big cities. “We are working with the FAA on that. Our stated goal is 2030. It very much depends on rule making. We are certainly hoping for sooner, for the mid-2020s, to field it,” he said.
In that linked article sourced above, the long-range plans of converting military aircraft to dronesand incorporating them anywhere and everywhere inside America is also detailed and expanded upon as a potential replacement for the already controversial use of police drones.
By 2025, enormous military-style drones – close relatives of the sort made famous by counterterrorism strikes in Afghanistan and Iraq – will be visible 2,000 feet above U.S. cities, streaming high-resolution video to police departments below. That is the bet that multiple defense contractors are placing, anyway, as they race to build unmanned aircraft that can pass evolving airworthiness certifications and replace police helicopters. And if that bet pays off, it will radically transform the way cities, citizens, and law enforcement interact.
We are now seeing various trends beginning to dovetail into what could become the ultimate in military presence over the United States. As I recently reported, new A.I. algorithms are being devised that look for emotional indicators in an attempt to predict crime and social unrest. The “Eye in the Sky” system, developed by Cambridge University, seeks to use small Parrot drones to identify “violent poses” in crowds. The system will be powered by biometric recognition and artificial intelligence, as seen in the video below:
Imagine a system like this being applied to the far more sophisticated military systems that already exist, then connecting all of it to the growing federal biometrics database.
I suspect that if the FAA does grant access to larger military aircraft over U.S. cities, it will be with the “strict guidelines” that no forms of surveillance or weaponry will be permitted onboard. Of course, once granted even the slightest access, all it will take is one catastrophic event to remove any restrictions at all.
“Unlike many new industries, which grow unfettered until emerging problems prompt regulation, unmanned flight needs relief from existing restrictions in order to blossom, Scassero said. Once that happens, the market for large unmanned planes could be enormous.”
For reference, here is what I wrote in 2013 regarding the long-term plans and eventuality that was also hinted at in the mainstream media at the time in an Associated Press article entitled, “Drones With Facial Recognition Technology Will End Anonymity, Everywhere.”
AP certainly offers a correct summary of how the databases that already exist (where we thought our personal information was protected) will be opened and utilized any time necessary.
“From seeing just the image of a face, computers will find its match in a database of millions of driver’s license portraits and photos on social media sites. From there, the computer will link to the person’s name and details such as their Social Security number, preferences, hobbies, family and friends.
Adding that capability to drones that can fly into spaces where planes cannot — machines that can track a person moving about and can stay aloft for days — means that people will give up privacy as well as the concept of anonymity.”
Naturally, the AP peddles this softly as it recounts these “new” developments in a tale of researchers with Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab Biometrics Center attempting to assist in sharpening FBI images of Boston bombing suspects, the Tsarnaev brothers. This is reminiscent of the above-mentioned Chris Dorner manhunt where we heard calls for how nice it would have been to have a drone at the ready for quicker identification and possible assassination.
“In a real-time experiment, the scientists digitally mapped the face of “Suspect 2,” turned it toward the camera and enhanced it so it could be matched against a database. The researchers did not know how well they had done until authorities identified the suspect as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger, surviving brother and a student at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
‘I was like, ‘Holy shish kabobs!’ ‘ Marios Savvides, director of the CMU Cylab, told the Tribune-Review. ‘It’s not exactly him, but it’s also not a random face. It does fit him.’”
This astonishment is somewhat absurd considering that drones have already been developed that are equipped with camera systems like DARPA’s Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System (ARGUS). This sensor system can instantly see an area roughly the “size of a small city” with an “all-seeing” eye according to retired Lieutenant, David A. Deptula. The next generation of surveillance tech sees the landscape through a 1.8 billion pixels camera, the highest resolution yet created.
Using a touchscreen interface that can produce up to 65 windows for analysis, military observers can see down to the individual object level to track the movements of vehicles and people. Beyond the real-time surveillance, the system can store everything for future review right down to the minutes and seconds.
The only thing truly new about this Associated Press story is the announcement that what most people thought to be limited to overseas theaters of war will now definitely be used across Battlefield USA.
It would be wise to contact the FAA now with concerns about permitting military-grade aircraft flying over the United States for any reason in order to stave off the imminent arrival of “Battlefield USA.”
- AI Beats 20 Lawyers In Legal Showdown
It’s not just burger flipping and banking; artificial intelligence (AI) is now coming for lawyers.
In a landmark study reported by Hackernoon, 20 corporate attorneys specializing in corporate law and contract review were pitted against an AI in a contest to spot mistakes in five Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) – a commonly used legal document meant to keep people from divulging sensitive information.
It didn’t turn out well for the lawyers…
The study, carried out with leading legal academics and experts, saw the LawGeex AI achieve an average 94% accuracy rate, higher than the lawyers who achieved an average rate of 85%. It took the lawyers an average of 92 minutes to complete the NDA issue spotting, compared to 26 seconds for the LawGeex AI. The longest time taken by a lawyer to complete the test was 156 minutes, and the shortest time was 51 minutes. The study made waves around the world and was covered across global media. –Hackernoon
And what did some of those attorneys say about the contest? Via Hackernoon:
Zakir Mir
“It is crucial to make mundane contract work more efficient, especially when there are 50–100 pages of contracts for some major deals (M&A large tenders with agreements or multinational corporations). It can really help lawyers sift through these documents, and cut down on the sometimes-deliberate verbosity of these documents which can allow one party to mask core issues.”
Zakir Mir, former regional counsel for BDP International, a $2billion global logistics firm, now at Allegiance International
Samantha Javier
“The test pointed out issues that NDA agreements generally contain and issues that lawyers look out for when drafting and reviewing NDAs. As for being automated, I think this would help clients in getting better pricing and allow lawyers to focus on more complex projects. However, I do think the test and AI technology must be very thorough to accomplish this and business clients may prefer to have a human lawyer looking at and taking care of their business concerns.”
Samantha Javier is a Lewis & Clark Law School graduate, licensed to practice law in Oregon. Her experience includes law firm, in-house, and transactional work
Grant Gulovsen
“Participating in this experiment really opened my eyes to how ridiculous it is for attorneys to spend their time (as well as their clients’ money) creating or reviewing documents like NDAs which are so fundamentally similar to one another. Having a tool that could automate this process would free up skilled attorneys to spend their time on higher-level tasks without having to hire paralegal support (thereby making the services they offer more competitive in the long run).”
Grant Gulovsen, an attorney with more than 15 years’ experience
Seun Adebiyi
“We are seeing disruption across multiple industries by increasingly sophisticated uses of Artificial Intelligence. The field of law is no exception. The correct identification of basic legal principles in contracts is the kind of routine task that may be amenable to automation. Using AI to spot routine issues in non-disclosure agreements could be a useful time- and cost-saving development for the legal industry as a whole.”
Seun Adebiyi, former corporate attorney at Goldman Sachs
Abigail Patterson
“While having the clauses categorized would make the NDA review process slightly quicker for me in my own practice, I don’t think the true legal review could ever be done by AI. However, I do see the application of the AI as a useful time-saving tool.”
Abigail is a corporate attorney at US-based medical device manufacturer DeRoyal Industries. She is licensed in both Tennessee and Wisconsin and has worked as an In-House Attorney, HR/Employment Law Attorney, and Special Projects Manager
Justin Brown
“As a chess player and attorney I will take from Grandmaster Vishy Anand and say the future of law is ‘human and computer’ versus (another) ‘human
and computer.’ Either working alone is inferior to the combination of both. I view AI and technology as exciting new tools that would allow for such drudgework to be done faster and more efficiently.”
Justin Brown, Partner at Brown Brothers Law
Hua Wang
“AI has huge potential in reducing time on standard contract reviews and making legal advice accessible and affordable for all. LawGeex asked me to review the NDA in a logical and credible manner, similar to how I reviewed documents as a former lawyer at a global law firm.”
Hua is Co-Founder of SmartBridge, and formerly a lawyer at K&L Gates and Proskauer, in-house counsel at Cisco Systems, and a Global Scholar at the Kauffman Foundation. Hua graduated from Duke University and Northwestern University School of Law
Jack West
“Something I did recently that helped keep my legal skills intact was participate in an experiment run by Lawgeex where they asked attorneys to identify issues in NDA’s to compare against their software. It was a fun, practical exercise. Did I beat the machines? Probably not.”
From Birmingham, Alabama, Jack West is a former attorney at Cabaniss, Johnston, Gardner, Dumas & O’Neal LLP, who has now founded a legal start-up called Book-It-Legal. He studied at the University of Mississippi School of Law. He focused on the areas of securities, corporate, real estate, and tax law.
Deja Colbert
“As a Contracts Administrator, I do believe AI will be useful and reduce time on contract reviews. If not done so already, there should be standard contract templates or clauses plugged into the software database and trigger discrepancies within the documents for review based on the means of the contract. Although contracts can be very similar from one another, they all have their own specific purpose, which calls for attention to detail on the use of tags. I find AI logical and credible for the purpose of reducing contract review time, thus, allowing prioritizing other time-consuming tasks at hand.”
Deja Colbert is a contracts administrator at Omega Rail Management where she drafts contractual documents and coordinates negotiation of the terms and conditions accordingly, creating abstracts of property-related agreements. She was formerly a contract specialist at Cox Automotive in Atlanta and American CyberSystems in Duluth and Experian Health.
Bender Bending Rodriguez represents Professor Farnsworth - First, Secure The Borders
Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,
As Ludwig von Mises correctly stated, in a free state, no one is forced to remain within the state. Anyone who seeks to emigrate is free to do so. This is, in fact, one of the primary tenets of liberty – if you don’t like it, you can leave.
And so, it follows that, if the right to exit is curtailed in any way, the state has ceased to be free.
There are those, including myself, who feel that, once this line has been crossed by a state, it’s time to skedaddle. Don’t wait for conditions to “get better.” They won’t. History shows us that, in every case where migration has become curtailed, the state never reverses to a more open policy; in fact, it becomes decidedly more restrictive.
We’re presently living in a period in which most of the countries that were formerly the most free, half a century ago, have declined considerably and many are approaching a state of totalitarianism.
Readers of this publication will be familiar with my forecasts that the principle countries that are at the forefront of this decline will be steadily increasing both their capital controls and their migration controls. With regard to the latter concern, the emphasis will not be on keeping non-productive people out, it will be on keeping productive people in.
Please read that last line again, as it’s very telling.
As the reader will be aware, the EU and US are rife with problems regarding large numbers of people immigrating from other countries. The respective governments do all that they can to encourage this immigration, including providing immigrants with rights and benefits that are not accorded to the tax-paying citizens of those jurisdictions.
All the more reason, then, that an eyebrow should be raised when these jurisdictions make it more difficult for their own citizens to travel within or exit the jurisdiction.
The US, for example, now has a 100 mile zone along all its borders, where checkpoints are set up to control the movements of those who pass through them. Citizens are routinely asked intrusive questions that they are not lawfully obligated to answer, yet, if they don’t, they may have their car windows smashed, be tased, apprehended and subjected to search and detainment. As can be seen in this video, the policies set nine years or more ago for the patrols bear a striking resemblance to those of the Nazi Brownshirts of the late 1930’s and early 1940’s.
Of course, it’s quite true that Americans are presently able to fly out of the country, as long as they have a valid passport and submit to a search, so, does this not suggest that it’s paranoia to think that the ever-expanding number of “border” inspections occurring 100 miles within US boundaries has any purpose other than to detain illegals?
Well, there is that niggling problem that the US government goes way out of its way to allow illegals to enter, then provides them with welfare, education, housing, healthcare and other encouragements. In addition, an illegal is far more likely to be released than an American citizen if he commits a crime, even if that crime is murder.
Clearly, the segment of the population that’s being indoctrinated to believe that they no longer have the right to move freely are American citizens themselves.
But the question remains, why?
Well, a simple answer is that, historically, whenever a state has created an economic and/or political time bomb that’s set to go off in the not-too-distant future, that state has instituted migration controls to assure that its most productive members do not leave.
This can be seen throughout history and is presently most visible in Venezuela, whose porous borders have allowed over 2.3 million people to escape to neighbouring Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador in recent years.
The state has ramped up its border controls in order to stem this flow, but has found that merely guarding the border is not sufficient. A buffer zone is additionally necessary – one where anyone travelling is suspected of attempting to exit.
And, again, this is nothing new. Buffer zones and “no man’s lands” have existed throughout history. At present, the US practice of shaking down those in vehicles is merely a nuisance – the removal of the “inalienable right” to liberty on a temporary basis.
However, it does not bode well for the future. If the only reasonable explanation for these inland checkpoints – some of which are placed in small towns where everybody knows each other – is to get citizens accustomed to the concept that they do not have the right to liberty, it’s a necessary step to achieve, if the intent exists to one day curtail migration by US citizens.
Such zones would then be quite effective, not just in discouraging anyone living in the 100-mile zone, but in discouraging any American citizen. If, for example, someone living in Nebraska decided to exit a deteriorating US, he’d know that he’d be unlikely to penetrate a 100-mile zone that included innumerable checkpoints.
That would leave airports as the only alternative. And, in actual fact, for those government agencies that perceive a future problem of thousands and perhaps millions of productive people exiting, creating limits at airports is easy. That system of identification and search is already in place. All that’s needed is for the agent at the desk to say, “I’m sorry, sir, but the computer tells me that permission for you to board this flight has been denied.”
Those who use airports to travel in and out of the US are already familiar with the fact that they are not to refuse authorities in any way whatsoever. Those few who create a fuss are often escorted to the back room. Their fate, whether it be good or bad, is never learned by other travelers, but the message is clear – comply with everything.
Returning to Mises, in a free state, no one is forced to remain within the state. Anyone who seeks to emigrate is free to do so.
For those who recognize that the US is no longer a free country, as it once was, the question arises: Do I accept that my liberty has been removed by my government? Do I wait, in the vain hope that a state that’s moving headlong into totalitarianism will somehow magically reverse itself and reinstate my liberty?
Or do I choose to make an exit now, while the window of opportunity still exists and migrate to one of the countries where liberty is still very much alive?
But, again looking at history, the latter decision has been uncommon in the extreme. From Rome in the fourth century, to Nazi Germany in the 20th century, history shows that very few people take action while there’s still time. The great majority wait until the migration restrictions have been implemented, then attempt to leave, usually unsuccessfully.
In the ramping-up of any totalitarian police state, one of the warnings that conditions are going to become more draconian in the near future is that the state first secures the borders. That warning is as invaluable as it is prophetic.
* * *
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- San Diego Home Sales Collapse To Lowest Level In 11 Years
A combination of rapid mortgage rate increases and decreased affordability, San Diego County home sales collapsed 17.5% to the lowest level in 11 years last month, in the first meaningful sign that one of the country’s hottest real estate markets could be at a turning point, real estate tracker CoreLogic reported Tuesday.
In September, 2,942 homes were sold in the county, down from 3,568 sales last year. This was the lowest number of sales for the month since the start of the financial crisis when 2,152 sold in September 2007.
CoreLogic said median home prices dropped in the region to $575,000, the first decline since January, after hitting a record high of $583,000 in August.
Some experts blamed the slowdown on rising mortgage rates, which have drastically increased the per month debt servicing payments for potential new homebuyers.
“The double whammy of higher prices and rising mortgage rates has priced out some would-be buyers and prompted others to take a wait-and-see stance,” said Andrew LePage, a CoreLogic analyst, in the release. “There was one caveat to last month’s sharp annual sales decline — this September had one less business day for recording transactions. Adjusting for that, the year-over-year decline would be about 13 percent, still the largest in four years.”
On a monthly basis, sales declined 22% in September compared with August. Cyclically, sales tend to drop 10% from August to September, but this time, it seems that industry is experiencing late cycle stress.
The report also said sales of newly built homes are suffering more than sales of existing homes because homebuilder production remains below the historical mean. New home constructions come at a premium. Sales of newly built homes were 47% below the September average dating back to 1988, while sales of existing homes were 22% below their long-term average.
The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller San Diego Home Price NSA Index (data via Reuters Eikon) shows a potential double top with 2005 high. Lifetime high occurred in July 2018 of 259.69, with the index now fading into the Fall period.
Additional S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller San Diego Home Price data
“Price growth is moderating amid slower sales and more listings in many markets,” LePage said. “This is welcome news for potential homebuyers, but many still face a daunting hurdle – the monthly mortgage payment, which has been pushed up sharply by rising mortgage rates.”
Last month, Bank of America Called It: “The Peak In Home Sales Has Been Reached; Housing No Longer A Tailwind.” It seems that the San Diego real estate market woes are more evidence that storm clouds are gathering over the broader U.S real estate market.
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