Posted on 01/27/2023 9:19:53 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Race to the Bottom describes the process of competitive devaluation, where value is gutted to remain competitive with those who are grabbing market share by stripping out quality, value, durability, transparency, accountability and competence.
We see the global Race to the Bottom in everyday products: the quality of goods has plummeted as manufacturers compete to reduce costs to maintain high profit margins by stripping out the quality and durability of components. We see it in shrinkflation, where the cereal box contains less cereal while the price ratchets higher.
We see it when cereals that once contained no sugar are now sickly-sweet because the manufacturer is losing market share to less healthy sugar-bomb cereals.
We see it in healthcare where costs have been so ruthlessly stripped out to boost profits that it takes months to get an appointment and overworked caregivers no longer have the "luxury" of providing the care they were trained to provide. Routine procedures and hospital stays now carry pricetags equal to four years college tuition or a modest house.
The Race to the Bottom isn't limited to goods and services. Consider the bedrock of the social order, civility. Civility in discourse is now rarer than sightings of UFOs / UAPs.
In politics, scoring cheap points while ignoring the nation's social decay and unsustainable bubble economy is another example of the Race to the Bottom. Is getting to the bottom of the Taylor Swift ticketing "fiasco" really the most pressing issue that politicians need to address? It would seem so.
In macro-economics, the Race to the Bottom is often used to describe currency devaluation: nations seek to devalue their currency to boost exports, ignoring the downside of devaluation, i.e. their citizenry's wealth is also devalued as the purchasing power of their currency is reduced to aid a relatively small cohort of exporters.
The decay of transparency, accountability and competence that manifests across a vast spectrum of public and private life is a profoundly systemic Race to the Bottom. Local governments and corporations alike seek to hide their malfeasance, greed and incompetence and evade accountability by any means available.
It's as if hiding incompetence and insider profiteering is now the most valuable form of competence. Real-world competence has decayed to the point that nobody even knows what competence is, as they've never experienced it. The same can be said of transparency and accountability: nobody's actually experienced actual transparency and consequences falling to those in positions of responsibility.
The "solution" of the incompetent is always the same: throw more money at the problem. But doubling or tripling the budget for housing the homeless or improving public transit never results in doubling or tripling the efficacy or efficiency of the failing systems. Instead, the money is squandered on insider profiteering: studies no one ever looks at, PR displays of "caring," spectacles of some new showcased 'solution" that doesn't actually work and was never intended to be anything more than a PR stunt, and so on.
In this Race to the Bottom, power flows from saying "no", not "yes." The list of "stakeholders" is endless, and every one can stall or cancel a project. Nobody's in charge except to make sure nothing gets done of any consequence.
In this Race to the Bottom, it's a major victory if each unit of homeless housing only costs $300,000 each rather than $600,000 each and a grand total of 42 units will be built--eventually, unless of course a NIMBY group or other "stakeholder" nixes the project via endless judicial filings.
No matter how much money is thrown at the system, the bus service continues its downhill slide.
When competence, transparency and accountability are all punished, the Race to the Bottom accelerates. The worst are advanced, and the race to strip value, quality and quantity out of products and services becomes a free-for-all stripmining that favors the ruthlessly greedy.
"Markets" are nothing but platforms to be manipulated and gamed to benefit the few at the expense of the many. In this Race to the Bottom, regulators are either toothless or asleep at the wheel or bought off. Everything is for sale, and auctioned off to the highest bidder.
From low earth orbit, the Race to the Bottom is accelerating on all fronts because we've lost the ability to solve problems due to the power of entrenched insiders and powerful interests who profit so immensely from keeping the corrupt, unsustainable systems of power glued together for just a bit longer so they can maximize their private gains.
That the system they've hollowed out to maximize their private gain might take them down when it collapses doesn't seem to occur to them. Their "faith" in the power of wealth is absolute, and so they think they'll be safe in their fortified compounds, super-yachts, private aircraft, etc.
But all these forms of power are contingent on the vast system they are busy hollowing out.
So go right ahead and join the race to the bottom in every nook and cranny of public and private life. All your gains will vanish with the system that's been fatally undermined by the pell-mell race to the bottom.
The Ibogaine-fueled fantasy is that we can individually pillage the system by stripping it of value, but magically escape the consequence of everyone stripping the value out to maximize their gains, i.e. systemic collapse.
Nice, until the Ibogaine wears off. That's not how reality works. Actions have consequences, and those consequences have their own consequences.
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safe and effective...
He’s got a point about cereal. I can’t find a granola anymore that’s not sickly sweet -and that goes for the expensive Quaker Oats version. Seems that in the last two years many brands have reconstituted theirs until it’s just too sweet to eat. All that’s left is plain Cheerios, and a few plain corn and rice brands.
bkmk
"What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence--moral, cultural, social, or intellectual.
And is I not pretty to notice how 'Democracy' (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods?"
“Routine procedures and hospital stays now carry pricetags equal to four years college tuition or a modest house.”
Have you seen how many healthcare administrators there are compared to pharmacists, doctors and nurses? Once you do you’ll see the problem.
In the fall, Costco has 2 big bags (34 oz each) of Quaker Oats granola for about $6-7. It is too sweet, but I consider it a prepping food.
Products are designed to sell and not to work for any period of time.
Hope they’ve got their bags packed...
Ha! Quaker is the worst. Look at the labels. Quaker “healthy” cereals have more sugar than Capn Crunch or Count Chocula. Lol.
There is also planned obsolescence. Goods, especially appliances, are designed to wear out faster and be replaced rather than lasting decades and being repairable. Clothing goes in and out of fashion so quickly that they are cheaply made and not meant to be repaired.
The bottom line is that it provides a steady stream of income because of demand.
And all the while the left is hyperventilating over landfills, and recycling, and saving the planet.
What hypocrites.
Make your own granola
I have a great recipe if youâre interested.
I have a great recipe if youâre interested.
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I’m interested, please post it. Thanks.
Iâll post the recipe and then some notes about what I have learned about making it over the years. I donât follow the recipe exactly. It is certainly open for adjustment as you prefer.
Mix together:
10 C rolled oats
2 C sunflower seeds (unsalted)
2 C chopped almonds
1 C oat bran
2 Tbsp cinnamon
1/2 C (or to taste) brown sugar
In a pot, put:
1 stick butter
1/2 C olive oil
4 tsp Vanilla
Heat over low until butter is melted, then pour over dry ingredients and mix well.
Bake at 300F for 20 mins, stirring once. I use a lasagna pan because the sides are high enough that granola doesnât end up all over the oven when I stir it.
I donât put in the oat bran. Seems redundant.
For the almonds I use sliced almonds and run them through the food processor. Whole almonds do NOT chop well or easily.
In addition to the vanilla, I also put in about a third as much maple extract flavoring.
If you want to add raisins or coconut, do it after baking the granola. Both burn very easily in the oven and youâll waste time picking out chunks of charcoaled raisins.
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