David Craig, on April 6th, 2023Thursday/Friday blog
A reader recently commented: “I feel that I am reading the same issues over and over, but in this blog I think you are trying to find different ways of looking at the range of problems we are all interested in.”
In fact there only is one story that you can write about – the state of the world.
To simplify slightly, this story – the state of the world – has four main elements and every media report or newspaper article or blogger is either dealing with (bloggers and sites like the Daily Sceptic and Conservative Woman) or avoiding (the mainstream media) these four issues. Here’s what I believe they are:
The collapse of the West
This includes the West’s self-hatred over its own success; its self-flagellation over supposed institutional racism and the supposed evils of colonialism; the destructive identity wars; the ludicrous arguments about whether women can have penises; the end-of-times cult of man-made climate change; the bastardisation of our culture making programmes like Love Island and programmes in which z-list celebs eat insects the most important issues in many people’s lives; the self-prostitution of the media to the self-serving political and business elites; the globalisation of power to corrupt, unelected bureaucrats; the decline of Western manufacturing and the collapse of democracy in the world’s former great power – the USA – as the Democrats use every lie and trick they can think of to destroy Trump;
All these have made the West into a declining civilisation and even a laughing stock which is losing power and influence in the world and is actually bankrupt as its populations expect a standard of living and an abundance of free stuff they have no intention of working to earn.
The rise and rise and rise of China
As the West declines, China rises. The population of China is over 1.4 billion. The USA is around 330 million and Europe 746 million. So China has a vast internal market which means Chinese manufacturers can out-compete every American and European company. Moreover, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) runs the country’s economy and chooses when to target and bankrupt Western industries so they are forced to produce their products in China. China’s share of world GDP is rising:
And the USA’s share of world GDP is falling
The EU’s share of world GDP is also declining:
China controls over 75% of the rare earth metals needed for all our electric and electronic devices. And China, through its debt colonialism, is buying up land, ports, airfields and influence throughout the Third World with its Belt and Road policy.
Just one example of China’s power is the origin of the Chinese lab-leaked plague. Had a new, highly-infectious disease emerged just a few miles from Porton Down, the UK would have been ridiculed if it had suggested that the proximity to Porton Down was a coincidence and countries around the world would be demanding reparations for the damage the disease had caused them. But when the disease emerged a few miles from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the world’s leaders are strangely silent. Their countries are all so dependent on China they dare not antagonise the Chinese.
And as the West becomes a collapsing object of ridicule around the world, ever more countries are throwing their lot in with China rather than the world’s former great power – the USA. And this week even Saudi Arabia – once the USA’s ally – has decided that China is the future.
The African population explosion
The third element of this ‘state of the world’ story is the massive increase in population in Africa while the population of Europe declines:
(left-click on chart, then left-click again to see more clearly)
Most African countries double their population ever 21-22 years. For example, there are over 200 million Nigerians. By 2050 there will be more than 400 million. Where will all these people go to get money, healthcare, education, homes etc? Millions will head to Europe so that soon Europeans will be minorities in their major cities. White British, for example, are already a minority in London and soon will be in several other UK cities.
The rise of corrupt kleptocracies
As the West loses influence and Western values are increasingly derided and shunned by developing and Third-world countries and as ever more countries decide that China is the future, the idea of democracy will wither. Then more and more countries will become corrupt kleptocracies ruled by voracious, often tribal elites and unable to develop because everything of value will be looted by the ruling cliques. Like the African population explosion, this immiseration of the populations of the world’s 100+ utterly corrupt, basket-case countries will lead to massive emigration and millions more heading for the West.
What to write about?
So, in answer to the reader’s comment, I believe there is only one story and every blog I and others write can only deal with different aspects of this one story.
Category: 
The dollar as the world’s reserve currency, mainly due to energy transactions, is changing quickly now. Brazil & China have almost eliminated it, Saudis are on the way out of it and many other smaller countries will soon follow, when they see the success of the Yuan & Rouble in replacing it. This will hasten the demise of the USA, as they will no longer be able to print dollars out of thin air and bully the rest of the world to do their bidding. So the collapse of the West is much nearer every day.
I think this is a good step for realising a more peaceful and fairer world – America now resembles the last days of Rome with its insane and perverted ‘culture’.
You are right, it is the state of the world, but people don’t seem to see the wood because they can’t even see the trees. Ed compares it with the collapse of the Roman Empire but it took years to collapse and the Eastern Empire survived for 300 years after the collapse of the Western Empire. Could a collapse happen quickly today because the world is more interconnected than ever?
One of the reasons for the collapse of Rome was loss of confidence in the coinage because the emperors were clipping the coins. People could see this and apparently some were using bartering to trade goods. Recently I heard a reference to Henry VIII replacing silver with copper and the silver worn off giving Henry the nickname “Old Copper Nose”. Elizabeth I apparently restored the value of the currency. Before this Edward III caused a collapse of the European banking system when he could not repay a loan for his wars. Did the rulers and bankers at the time recognise that a collapse was coming? If so they were unable to do anything about it.
Today we have the equivalent of debasing the currency by coin clipping – inflation – but the paper money looks exactly the same. There has always been some inflation but it is now out of control because of printing worthless paper money which most people seem to accept because they have become accustomed to living on the credit that it creates. We had the 2008 banking crisis but more debt got us out of it and we avoided the deep recessions of the 20 and 30. Whilst most people remain relatively well off I think that they don’t want to see that a major recession and mass unemployment can happen again. I have not heard much of what Trump had to say but this morning the news reported that he had said that the dollar was collapsing.
I don’t agree about China and covid. I believe it was created in the USA at the University of North Carolina and the work transferred to Wuhan. But is is not a highly infectious and dangerous virus. It is a mild respiratory illness and some are saying that it does not even exist. It became a problem because of propaganda and China could be responsible for that because of the claims of people dropping dead in the street and the lockdowns they immediately introduced. Why did the west follow when they had rejected all these actions in studies of pandemics? Why did the west promote an untried method of vaccination and inadequately trialled vaccines? What was going on in the US laboratories in Ukraine? I don’t think antagonising China over covid was the issue, it was about the west making money from it and perhaps polticians testing how finding out how easy it is to control us.
Writing and talking about all this is easy. It is doing something about it that is the problem and history shows how difficult that is.
Jacob Rees-Mogg has often said that the purpose of the government is to make it easier for us to live our lives as we want and that we can bring about change through voting. What he does not recognise is that we have had a uniparty for decades and voting hasn’t changed anything for decades and will not do so in the coming years. The Andrew Bridgen issue emphasised this. The voters elected him as a Conservative MP but the party ignored the voters rights and threw him out of the party. The parties are in control, not the voters or MPs or parliament.
JRM discussed human rights with David Starkey and he said rights have become a political issue and our fundamental rights were life, liberty and property. The last of these is important, because the government should have no right to take them from us in the form of taxation which is nothing but legalised theft. End taxation and we will limit the power of governments over us. Nothing will change until this is done. There isn’t a majority to support this because a majority in the west now rely on taxation to survive.
Great article and comments.
I do feel the clown world we find ourselves in is due to the very wealthiest using political lobbying, patronage or just plain old corruption to shape a world for their benefit.
The 0.01% want the rest to believe unrestricted globalisation is good but it’s only good for them. Like Rishi, our politicians are protected from the social costs and seem happy to mis-use force to impose what is required for their masters. The structures to support all this is essentially communism which doesn’t sit well with people whose ancestors have fought and died for freedom.
Most of this is being achieved by the misuse of computer models. But most sensible people realise these simulations cannot usefully measure the costs and benefits of systems so complex such as climate. All they do is confirm already-held assumptions and impress the unsophisticated which is extremely valuable to said globalists.
It is a sad state of affairs. But the west have lost the plot and the crowd and their governments seem increasingly detached from reality. That a figure like Trump can be such a threat to them says a lot about how fragile this all is.
I think what Paul says in the first paragraph is true, but as well there are still a lot of people, including me, who do not have any difficulty paying the increased costs of energy as an example. Many don’t care if it doesn’t have much impact. These are perhaps the worst group of people because they are probably better educated but just accept everything because they think they are above it all.