Quote from: RE on Dec 31, 2023, 06:04 PM

Quote from: TDoS on Dec 31, 2023, 04:13 PMBut unless the wars and geopolitics get out of control, it just looks like the usual slow grind.

You have developed a bad case of normalcy bias. 

How many decades of non collapse, while collapses are being claimed, are required to make normalcy bias a-okay?

I thought you were a ROE participant from way back? That would put your buy in back what, a quarter century? Isn't a bit of normalcy bias creeping in perfectly natural? You bought like RVs and bug out vans years and years ago....how many bug outs because of collapse did you endure in them, waiting for the world to come back to its senses before the cities became safe again? Had fuel, working ATMs, grocery stores open, etc etc.

Considering the age of folks here, normalcy bias might be perfectly safe because it ain't collapse that's gonna get us. More like not waking up one morning in our comfy beds, falling and breaking a hip, never having never missed a meal or become one for the ravaging hordes of starving suburbanites fleeing the cities.

Quote from: RE300,000  refugees/month hitting the border isn't enough for you?  That's like Xerxes Persians hitting the 300 Spartans at Thermopilae with a new army every month.  The Houthis are still sinking Maersk freighters in the Sea of Aiden and the FSoA just sank 3 Houthi torpedo boats to retaliate.  Trumpovetsky still might get himself reelected.

Are you worried about immigrants making it to the Great White North? The US didn't collapse when millions of Germans were flooding the US in the 1880's. How about the Irish in the 1850's? Grandpap came into the US during the Eastern European immigration wave, sometime early 20th century. Does history interpret them as the cause of the Great Depression?

I'm thinking immigrants are immigrants and while I'm no more happy with it than anyone else, it isn't as though this is the first time, and they certainly aren't the collapse we've all been waiting for. When does Yellowstone go BOOM! Magnetic poles shift? Sure the Mayan Calendar gig was good for awhile, but by the time it came and went we didn't even have peak oil anymore, or the BOE event, the AOC still hasn't shut down. Those last two have some hope though, but only for it happening, not for it causing collapse.

Trump getting reelected though could be terribly entertaining, disruptive, and possibly collapsy in weird ways.

And the US has been blowing up pirates and vagrants they don't like since the Marines were bashing the pirates of the Barbary Coast or the Shores of Tripoli. As non-collapse as current events can be, until the Russians start nuking US aircraft carriers or something and then the Big Show could be collapse worthy.

Quote from: REThat which cannot continue indefinitely won't.  Maybe 2024 won't see a catastrophic cascade failure and we'll have to twiddle our thumbs awhile longer, but we're getting closer all the time.
RE

We've been getting closer since the day any of us was born. And "continuing indefinitely" is the same as "it won't require infinite time" and that sure doesn't mean it will be 2024 and doesn't preclude "anytime after we all die of natural causes anyway".

How about some optimism? Not normalcy bias, but optimism, so we can enjoy the time we've got left, and then we;ll croak before being eaten by zombies or whatever, and here is how we do it. Each and every one of us survived the claimed Great Dieoff called for the end of the 1980's. All of us. We zipped right through that one like it wasn't even there because...well...it wasn't. So we can be thriled with having gotten an extra 33 years becoming 34 years this evening, and kick back and enjoy the couple we have left before the ticker stops ticking, or that brain aneurysm turns out the lights, or that drunk driver makes a grill ornament of us.When you only got a little time left, make the most of it!

Happy New Year everyone, and enjoy and be happy that you escaped The Great Dieoff of the late 1980's that was so earth shattering that normalcy bias got us through it without a scratch, and handed us another 34 years to boot! Fingers crossed for 35 years next year for everyone here!