I hope you're paying attention to this
“The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven't yet come to the end of themselves. We're still trying to give orders, and interfering with God's work within us.”
― A. W. Tozer
The world we knew is dead, if it were ever alive to begin with.
High trust customers, “Closed on Sunday” and personal relationships between patrons, vanished like a late spring frost within only a few generations under the high ideals of liberation. A lofty release from the chains of discipline, free to fly on flimsy wax wings which gradually melted as we arrogantly reproached The Sun.
Now that the wax has almost vanished, the dark sea awaits us below.
“Every week we are scrambling,” Helwig said. “Every week we run out of food and start foraging in the cupboards and in the freezers for something that we can give to people.”
— As cost of living soars, millions of Canadians are turning to food banks (Oct., 2023)
Experiences and voices are hidden behind vacant, arbitrary and well-fonted numbers, yet these fancy lies are adored and revered as a product of some marvellous divine insight from the well-educated expert class.
Statistics are one of the prettiest ways to dehumanize people.
According to a survey carried out in July 2023, 77 percent of Canadian consumers earning less than 25 thousand Canadian dollars found it difficult or very difficult to afford to feed their household. As expected, the higher the income, the easier it was to fee one's household. In fact, 74 percent of those earning more than 200 thousand dollars found it very easy or easy.
— How difficult Canadians found it to feed their household on their food budget as of July 2023, by income level (Jan., 2024)
Take for example this divine insight that uses multiple studies and advanced analytics to reveal that it’s easier to feed your family if you make more money.
Amazing and ground breaking research, worth every rounded red cent.
As part of Western University, the Ivey Business School hosts a specialized organization to “bridge the gap” between business and government, the Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management, by providing expert level officialese through a shared vision and mission. Using pretty statistics and lofty liberating logic, Ivey offers arm chair solutions for the affordability crisis striking Canada.
Also deeply worried about the public’s concern over rising food prices, the Government of Canada assembled a Grocery Task Force and published a Grocery Affordability Report for the House of Commons, which detailed 13 recommendations including novel insights like making food production data more visible, funding indigenous communities, reviewing best-before date regulation, rolling back tariffs on Russian fertilizer and, of course, supporting digitization. Clearly, government must act quickly by adding more oversight, further manage taxation, introduce digital technology and streamline foreign labour. Don’t forget climate change!
But nothing along the extreme lines of thinking like a reduction in spending and taxation, or encouraging local decentralized food production.
Offering its 2¢, which isn’t worth what it use to be and now rounds to 0¢, Ivey summarizes government drivel into concise academic drivel, but accidentally makes an interesting admission.
On the demand side, during the onslaught of the pandemic the central bank dropped interest rates substantially to fight off potential deflation, while government support programs, such as wage subsidies and extended employment insurances, were rolled out.
— Tackling Canada’s Food Affordability Also Means Addressing Challenges in our Primary Agriculture Sector (Mar. 2024)
I believe the opposite of inflation is deflation.
Cutting through the nonsense, inflation has become a visible problem because central bank policy has increased the money supply, to protect the public of course. But instead of simple blunt explanations, public money is wasted on 74 page reports, committees, articles and studies examining how bad the problem is, how many are suffering and to enumerate excuses for more government control.
“Everybody would love there to be a single demon we could name, but the truth is that there's a bunch of little factors, there's a bunch of straws building up on the camel's back,” said Will Huggins, who teaches finance and business economics at McMaster University in Ontario.
— Canada's inflation rate is falling, so why are grocery prices still so expensive? (Aug. 2023)
The single demon is central banking and yes there are many tentacles off its back.
If it feels like you’re being ground to mush between two rocks, taxation and inflation, it’s because you are. That’s the point. And as an excuse for a problem it created, government is giving itself more power to monitor and intervene in the food supply. What will that produce? Probably not more food. Never mistake officialese and credentialism as trustworthiness, more likely it’s the opposite these days.
The goal is to mash the public into a malleable goo, because we’re in an invisible war to subjugate the human mind through escalating madness.
“Soon madness has worn you down. It’s easier to do what it says than argue.
In this way, it takes over your mind. You no longer know where it ends and you begin. You believe anything it says. You do what it tells you, no matter how extreme or absurd. If it says you’re worthless, you agree. You plead for it to stop. You promise to behave.
You are on your knees before it, and it laughs.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life
The public is plagued by a false belief in a system that no longer exists.
As the real world clashes with comforting fictions the madness is further inflamed. Unsurprisingly, exhaustive statistics and reporting offer no relief to struggling families or households, and no prophylactic value. Its function is to blame this, that and the other thing while avoiding criticisms of the COVID response, heavy taxation and massive government spending. Truth is too political and interferes with funding, so instead institutions have been vanquished into shadows that falsely represent ideals. Government does not represent the interests of the public. Schools do not educate. Healthcare cares nothing for your health.
The system that no longer exists is backwards in its true nature.
More government spending will not solve a crisis caused by government spending.
The new bottle of Dawn Platinum she'd bought contained 431 millilitres of dish soap, 10 per cent less than an older bottle of the same product that she had in her cupboard.
Despite the difference, both bottles had cost the same.
“I just felt a little bit like they were being dishonest,” she said. “It's an ethical issue.”
“It needs to be regulated and it needs to be regulated now,” said Janet Dermody of Sydney, N.S.
— Many Canadians are fed up with shrinkflation. So what's being done about it? (Feb., 2024)
To maintain the illusion of price stability packages shrink. Yes, there are transient supply issues or demand increases, but not in the realm of these sustained prices, especially since other costs are also rising. The word inflation has been bastardized like so many other words and tricks the public into believing the root cause are a combination of factors like “greedy corporations” or “climate change,” but never the money supply and the banking system itself.
Groceries are more expensive because the dollar is worth less.
“It's crazy that they — overnight — can just make that switch,” she said. “I would love to be informed about these decisions because then I can vote with my dollar if I still want to support that company or not.” Now that she knows she's getting fewer Doritos for her dollar, Cornelius said she plans to buy the chips less often.
— Many Canadians are fed up with shrinkflation. So what's being done about it? (Feb., 2024)
No, you’re already voting with your dollar and your vote is worth less.
We have runaway inflation and it’s becoming apparent to the majority through food and grocery prices, which continually rise as a lagging effect from the increasing money supply, facilitated through perpetual government spending. A supply or demand shock to goods and services would revert to normal after a limited period of time, but instead costs are rising like water in a sealed room.
“It's more on the company, as like a social responsibility, to let them, the consumer, know that they are getting less,” she said. “I think it builds brand loyalty.”
After her experience with Dawn dish soap, PepperBrooks said she's still using the product but now feels less loyal to the brand and is keeping her eye out for alternatives.
— Many Canadians are fed up with shrinkflation. So what's being done about it? (Feb., 2024)
Unfortunately, many in the West are still under the illusion that the mighty dollar gives them some kind of privilege. If you have a dollar and can find a better product, then go find a better product, and maybe get lucky and find a good deal, but the quality may not be what you like. In a few months time you will still get less.
Notice how quality standards are also dropping as people become more desperate.
Further west, online grocer Spud says it saved nearly 84,000 pounds of imperfect produce from the landfill last year by selling everything from chipped apples to odd-shaped oranges across British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast as well as the Calgary and Edmonton areas.
— Canadians increasingly turning to ‘imperfect’ food as grocery prices soar (Feb. 2024)
But also somehow rising prices are good, it helps the poor.
While minimum wage increases do lead to higher fast food item costs, the conversation should be about whether they benefit low income people, according to Chris Tilly, a professor who studies labor markets, inequality and public policies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
— Is Greed Causing Shrinkflation? (Apr., 2024)
Another illusion cast over the egalitarian mind.
“We do have to think about how to help people,” he said. “But to do that by hurting other low income people doesn't seem like the right strategy to me.”
— Is Greed Causing Shrinkflation? (Apr., 2024)
In a sound economic system, money is merely a medium used to exchange a good or service. Either there’s less goods and services available relative to production, or the transaction medium is worth less.
So which is it then?
Greedy corporations, helping the poor, or the money itself?
At the same time concerns for general food safety are being raised.
He believes that “it's really incumbent upon all of us, including us in academia, the government and so on, to really try to nip this [disinformation] in the bud and make sure that there is no myth around mRNA vaccines for livestock.”
There haven't been studies on the side effects of humans eating animals that have been vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine, Sharif said, but there's no evidence to show that there would be any.
— We need to talk about mRNA vaccines in the meats we eat, says Guelph veterinary professor (Jul., 2023)
Of course there’s no evidence if no one runs a test!
Quite frankly we don’t know what’s in the food anymore, and exhaustive fact checks or stupid articles won’t restore confidence either. Stop pretending any of these systems or organizations operate in our best interests. I’d first assume they’re lying! (For me, the give away is the constant use of “misinformation” and “disinformation.”)
Don’t you find it strange that food costs are putting pressure on regular people while food quality, and possibly safety, is deteriorating?
The root of the problem is the money itself, weaponized against the public.
Despite the scaling differences, there’s a reason the shapes between the USD and the Wiemar Republic German Papiermark look similar. Gold isn’t magical, it’s used as a stable measurement of value, just like how a meter measures length. The above pattern implies Western currencies are on a frightening trajectory, like what was experienced in France and Germany. Utter madness and social chaos may lay ahead.
Universal basic income, price controls and more nonsense regulation will do nothing but exacerbate the problem. The system is dead, and the only practical solution is to return to an agrarian lifestyle — and also to pray really really hard.
The bad news: groceries are cheap now compared to where they’ll go, and wages will not keep up. If you can’t handle another doubling, a tripling — or more — then you need a plan now, because the lies and misdirection will continue to get more ridiculous.
Another indication of how the cost of living is impacting how residents spend on food, the report shows Canadians are facing additional pressures, including higher costs for rent and utilities and rising personal debt.
— ‘Not as dire’: Canada’s 2024 food price report released. Here’s what experts are forecasting (Dec. 2023)
No it’s dire, unless the definition of “dire” has changed too.
You better get ready and prepare because we haven’t seen anything yet. The higher that gold curve goes the crazier it’ll get, and barely anyone realizes our wealth has been stolen ages ago and replaced by numbers on a ledger. And how much is domestically produced? And how competent and productive are the successive generations relative to the increasing money supply?
Our “prosperity” is an illusion created by momentum and perpetual borrowing.
What future are we leaving our children? Insanity? Slavery? A future where their lives are another statistic to be monitored and controlled through some lofty ideal?
Several actions have been proposed that could aid in gradually reducing the global population. Some of these include one-child policies, women empowerment, and global wealth distribution.
— Scientists appeal for global population control (Jul. 2022)
At minimum, you and your children need to be growing as much food as possible.
Planting season is a few weeks away. Think about dropping in potatoes, squash and other set-and-forget crops. Think about eggs. Chickens are fun, simple to take care of and highly productive. Bawk bawk. Judging from where this nightmare could descend, lifestyle changes would be prudent. Maybe share a garden or chickens with a trusted neighbour or relative to minimize the effort, but please do something.
Stop listening to the bullshit and complaining about detergent sizes.
Take food security into your own hands now because we haven’t seen anything yet.
What I find most amusing about the complaints of inflation is they generally come from the same types of people who were suggesting that people like me were evil because we saw that shutting down the economy for a “virus” was going to have severe longterm consequences.
This is before getting into central banking, peak oil, falling EROI, and other complex topics. The average person is incapable (and as Carlin reminds us from the grave, 50% are below that) of even beginning to understand the future that awaits them. They have no concept of why the way things are now and why they will be different in the future beyond “I’ll buy fewer Doritos”.
Adoption of the «Food Programme» in 1982 was perhaps the first time Soviet leadership admitted that the country isn't well and isn't moving in the right direction. From there, it however took another nine years for the USSR to circle the drain one last time.
This might be roughly the point where the West is now, which might mean false revival («perestroika») is still ahead of us.