First published in Oct 2022 on LI

Over the years, observing people over Linkedin, everything going around the world, how we have been reacting as a Society, I have come to finally writing my eventual thought, which is the culmination of everything I have written over here. This is the underlying theme, the pattern, the connecting dots, which has been defining most of what is happening around us last decade or so.

Final pieces are usually long. This won’t be different. To thread all major topics governing our life last decade or so, and isolate it to the work of a single needle, my rudimentary writing skills haven’t been able to make it concise enough.

Before I begin, I wanted to highlight that there is very high likelihood, arguments made forth going forward, would offend you. The opinions would appear controversial, very unpopular and most likely make you hate the conclusion.

I want you to know, that is ok.

You don’t have to agree with anything I write here. And I would expect, you won’t expect me to bow down to your “attacks” , if those aren’t supported with cogent data driven arguments.

As I have suggested many times in past:

We can agree to disagree. I will however, hold my line, even if it required holding it alone. You can hold yours.

As I have been doing last few articles of mine, I would start by highlighting the Principles which act as my Sentinel in Life. Those are the yardsticks, which nudge me to see things, the way they are.

With that out of the way, Let’s Begin!

Before I come to the main argument of what is that thread connecting everything around us, let’s take a detour on couple of popular themes - Web3 & Energy, and try to dig a bit into that. Trust me, all of this will fall into place at the end of this article, so while some of this might be boring, it will all make sense eventually.

Going to be a long de-tour so keep patience and feel free to take breaks in between. The main theme of the article on why and how things are happening, is after the de-tour, but this context of Web3 and Energy is important to understand.

Let’s start!

Web3:

Last couple of years, especially starting 2021, you might have been inundated with news of the latest “technology” that is going to revolutionize the world, that is far better, “cares about you” and is overall a “better internet” we all wanted.

Some ppl call it Web3, some refer to this “internet revolution” as Metaverse. The narrative is so popular that even a company like Facebook, which was looking to dilute and keep some distance between the company and the brand “Facebook”, which last few years has had more share of negative news to it’s name than positive, ended up choosing Meta as their new name for the company.

If you google on the term “Web3” or “Metaverse”, I am sure, you will find myriads of articles defining in their own way, what it means. For example, [here’s one such:](https://www.momint.so/post/how-web3-can-change-the-world#:~:text=Web3%20(which%20is%20short%20for,to%20both%20builders%20and%20searchers.)

Sounds very promising and ethical I must say. But is that really so?

To understand it clearly and sort out the chaff from the grain, let’s try to distinguish between what is the Idealism and what is Practice. The Hypotheticals with the Reality.

At core, what is being referred to “Web3” companies or startups are essentially a version of “X-to-Earn” theme. You would see almost every VC putting their money and hyping their investment in these startups which are all some form of X-To-Earn plot. Just replace X with any activity of your choice.

Confused?

Don’t worry, all of this is by intentional design to keep you grasping for Hollow Abstractions and distract you from seeing the real truth.

Hollow Abstraction is the mental model that best explains web3; X-to-Earn models.

So what is this X-to-Earn then?

The activity here isn’t something that you are supposed to do as part of your work life. You already “earn” while doing your professional job. But who likes work?. So the narrative is you get to earn “money” on doing activities you probably like doing. You love playing games?. What if you can earn while playing games?. That’s Play-to-Earn (P2E).

You like exercising and working out?. What if you can earn if you “move” your body. That’s Move-to-Earn(M2E) now. M2E projects like STEPN (GMT), FitMint ($FITT), see users earn rewards for activities like walking, jogging and running.

Don’t like moving your body from the couch and want some opportunity to make money, while keep lying on your couch? Fret not. Web3 has you covered there too.

Contrasting with the Move-to-Earn concept, the Watch-to-Earn (W2E) sector claims to reward the couch potatoes for something that most internet users do every day: Watch videos mindlessly.

But hold on? We aren’t done yet. Isn’t Web3 supposed to be all inclusive for everyone in the economy? What about those who like doing nothing. No activity, no hobby, no entertainment. Excluding them would be bad isn’t it?

Relax.

Yes, Relax. Web3, also has a project, where you get to make money, by doing just that. Relax. DO NOTHING!

Relax-to-Earn (R2E).

If you don’t want to relax, as you might find that even a tiring thing to do, you can just sleep. Web3 has you covered there too and let’s you make money when you sleep.

Literally. No joke. Just sleep!

That’s Sleep-to-Earn (S2E).

In essence, you now get to make money, while you play, move, eat, sleep, relax. I am sure someone in Web3 is even innovating to help you make money while you shit- Shit-to-Earn.

Didn’t I say, Web3 is truly decentralized internet and all inclusive?

Why leave your pooping activity behind if that can be monetized too.

Btw, I just made that category on the fly while writing this. But Web3 innovators have me lag behind on that too.

There is a SHIT TO EARN Web3 Project already.

So what’s wrong in all this? After all, if you get to participate in an activity that is creating an “economy” of its own, while also reaping the monetary rewards for doing that activity, isn’t that a sensible thing?

Earlier, Big Tech used to reap the monetary rewards of your engagement on their apps through advertising, while the user would get no monetary gain. Web3 claims to be working for its users, the community, by rewarding them for their participation.

Isn’t this good thing for the world? Everyone gets to win and not just a select few?

You are correct. This is what it appears all these X-to-Earn are innovating to do. Help the society, the world, become part of the economy by actually making money and not just be part of someone’s monetization scheme.

**But… That’s the Narrative. The Hollow Abstraction you have been made to believe in. **

Lets peel the onions of how this Web3, the X-to-Earn model actually works:

The whole X-to-Earn phenomenon began with Axie Infinity, a Blockchain Game launched in 2018, which was considered the pioneer of X-to-Earn: Play-to-Earn (P2E), that became peak mania in 2021 crypto craze.

To participate in the game, one is required to purchase the in-game assets to participate, either in the **form of inflationary SLP and AXS tokens or Axie NFTs. **

Then as you keep playing the game, you get to do certain activities in game; maybe you breed more Axies, battle other Axie creatures and so on. This helps you “earn” in the form of SLP or AXS token.

The reason I am sharing some details on how the Axie P2E game worked is because every Web3 project, be it M2E, R2E, S2E, all follow the same idea:

• You as a participant, is first REQUIRED to purchase an NFT or token of the project to be allowed to participate and see earning potential.
• This is done by you spending your $ or your country’s fiat currency, via MetaMask, other Crypto exchanges, and convert those into an NFT or certain tokens of the project. In the case of FITMINT, a web3 project in Move-to-Earn category, proudly funded by General Catalyst and considered an innovation in Indian market by it’s partners Anand Chandreshekaran and Niko Bonatsos, you need to buy an NFT of a sneaker, for 170 MATIC. At current price of $0.75/MATIC, you need to buy an NFT of a sneaker, for $127 USD ~= 10K INR.

The cost of a real Nike Sneaker, which you can actually wear on your feet and help you in your actual running, is even lesser than that, with online shops like Amazon and Flipkart in India, selling even lower.

• Once, you buy an NFT, You then do certain activity, like, in the case of Axie, breed more Axies, or in case of FITMINT, run, and then you get rewarded in a native token as “money” you earned. In case of Axie, it is SLP or AXS tokens, and FITMINT gives you $FITT tokens.
• But these tokens which these startups claim to reward you as “money” that you earned, isn’t generated from any economic activity in society. It magically appears as a code. Cost nothing, contributes zero to any economic activity to create those. Just write a piece of code to attach a token to Ethereum/Solana/ <enter your favorite blockchain> , and you created “money” out of thin air.
• The user, is now made to feel, they earned something, in return of their initial “investment” of $.
• To keep that feel running, the startups devise more schemes, to make you keep buying more such NFT or tokens. In case of FITMINT, you need to upgrade your sneaker now as they get degraded after running so much, even when you never got to wear them as those are just JPEGs. But ignore that for time being, since we are in make-believe world.
• The lure of earning more tokens, which a user thinks is real money, keeps them spending more real money into the ecosystem, while encouraging other users to join with them.

Ok, so, what’s wrong in this? They are earning something real isn’t it?

That’s the problem. There is nothing real in this. That’s the part when Hollow Abstraction takes over ppl.

Remember, these startups, never give you actual $ or your country’s fiat currency as “reward” you earned. In fact, it’s the other way round. They take your actual money, money which you can use to buy food, an actual sneaker, pay rent, buy medicines, basically anything in economy, and give you “Monopoly Money”, a token which is not accepted anywhere outside in real economy to buy anything.

So, then what gives the lure of “money” for these tokens, if they are basically worthless?.

It’s that they are trading on a crypto exchange.

Every Web3 project, always attaches a native token to its project. Then the project developers, put that token on a crypto exchange for trading.

But something to have any price, any market, there should be someone selling it, and someone willing to buy it.

If there is no one buying it, there won’t be any bid. No Price.

But how do you make someone buy something, that is created out of thin air by two lines of code and has no acceptance in real life? Have your ever won the game of Monopoly with lots of Monopoly money in hand, yet can’t use it to buy anything outside the game?

This is where the VCs, the early “adopters”, and the social media “Influencers” come in.

All these three actors are the initial players of this scheme.

They tell you, that by putting your actual money to participate, you will make more money, by getting the native tokens of these projects. And since these tokens will go up in price as they trade, you can now make money while doing your favorite activity.

The problem: Your token only has a price, if there is someone willing to buy it.

But for someone to buy it, there should be real money flowing into it to convert these to tokens.

The initial actors create that hype and FOMO, creating an initial price. The crowd feels, there is something real as now it has a “price”. They give their actual money, to buy tokens with the only hope that it’s price will either go up or remain at the level they bought. For that to happen, new money from outside needs to continuously keep flowing into the exchange.

This is where, new ppl are encouraged to play this Web3 “game”. Ppl who got sucked in this early after the initial actors, now need more new entrants to keep the real money flow going to keep some price to the token they bought, and hence they now unknowingly become the “evangelist” and proponents of the project. To suck more ppl to join.

Does this remind of something?

Without the flow of new money, the token has no price. No value. It crashes. It only has a price because it is put on an unregulated crypto exchange, where somehow you can suck in new money.

Without new money flowing in, Ppl who got these tokens for actual money they spent, now lose everything. And the whole scheme unravels.

This is in nutshell, every X-to-Earn Project is.

Now, I want you to know that there isn’t something wrong in Web3, NFT schemes. These are schemes for speculation and speculation has existence since the time Language got introduced. Speculation needs Narratives, and Narratives are created via Language.

So, just like we have Vegas gambling, a thriving industry, you can speculate and gamble on these as long as you are not the ones holding the bag.

Gambling is allowed in society so one can gamble on these tokens and projects if you are aware of the reality of these and are the one taking risk on these gambling.

What is wrong however, is deluding the public with lies and falsehood of the “altruistic” mission of “decentralized economy”, “be your own bank” narratives. The “new internet” paradigm that VC bros keep shilling to public, just so that they can enrich and grift off the misery of general public.

Let’s stop on Web3 here, as the purpose of this detour is not to add my personal commentary on these right now or why are they being popularized (we will come to this later), but to provide a common ground, a context on how these themes work in reality.

This would set the stage for the main commentary later, where we will try to connect all of these as a result of single needle threading it.

Let’s move to another theme.

Energy:

One of the most used yet, misunderstood theme of our lives is Energy.

Our entire life, starting from waking up to sleeping runs on energy. Yet, somehow, most ppl never tried learning how exactly Energy Systems work around the world.

As a human species, our sources of Energy have slowly seen a transition to different sources of fuel.

• Mechanical Energy of Muscles- the only source of Energy

Thousands of years ago, The Cave-person, had no access to external energy at their disposal. We were no different than animals, except that we weren’t as strong as them. But just like an animal, our energy was limited to the access to our internal energy, the mechanical energy of muscleswhich we would have after converting it from Chemical Energy of Foods we would eat.

If you didn’t have food one day, we wouldn’t be able to do any work much, which was anyway largely involved in hunting and searching for food to survive, because there isn’t much conversion of Chemical Energy of food to Mechanical Energy in Body. That’s all we could do back then.

Then as time progressed, we as a human species, discovered Fire. This was one of the major “invention” of our entire human history. Fire not only provided an external source of Energy, which would help us now cook raw food and even potentially scare away animals, it led to the development of Language for our species.

Fire, led to gradual shrinkage of stomach and intestines in our body, since we no longer had to eat raw food, and food can be cooked. This with time, led to development of bigger brain and eventually Language.

Language helped us strategize, plan and co-ordinate amongst us better than other animal species, thereby making us overcome the strength of animals and helped us capture and domesticate many of the animals. We as a species, slowly now started rising up the Food Chain as we can now fight the bigger animals like Tiger etc and domesticate other stronger animals like horses, cows.

• This led to further addition in our Energy Source- Animal Energy

The horses, oxen, cows, bulls and elephants led to our increased mobility across long distances. We started moving and traveling far off distances, helped spread the species to far off land and started inter-regional trade amongst us.

The human species was no longer relegated to searching and hunting for food in a small radius. We could transport and seek food from other places where it could be grown favorably compared to the place one lived. Trade started to flourish because we could now harness more energy at our disposal- the external energy provided by horses, elephants.

We also leveraged oxen and bulls, to now help us irrigate land, to grow food, instead of hunting for food.

Until 1800, our primary source of Energy for heating was largely wood, a biomass. For other kinetic energy, we relied on muscle energy from animals or our own.

• From Biomass, to Coal

Sometime in mid to late 1800s, our transition from Wood to Coal started happening. We invented Steam Engine, running on Coal and our mobility, transport of goods/food further increased. We had more Energy at our disposal now.

• Coal to Oil and Natural Gas

Post mid 1900’s we started increasing our reliance on Oil and natural gas (a bye product of drilling oil). Advantage of Oil was that it was in liquid form, so quite easy to use in various applications especially for Jet fuel where Coal could not efficiently help power the engine for jets due to its solid nature of the fuel.

Oil also brought itself with other refined products like Gasoline, Kerosene for heating, Naptha and Petroleum based products that are used almost in every product we use in life. Petroleum led to creation of polymers and plastics that drives medical equipments/devices.

As you see, since thousands of years, our species has slowly moved from an energy source that used to be low on Energy Density to a higher Energy Density fuel. That has propelled us to have more energy at our disposal in the last 50 years than anytime ever in our history.

To put this into context how the changes have happened over a period of 200 years:

In 1800, the global population was 1B ppl.

In 1900, this rose to 1.6B ppl

In 2000, the global population rose to 6.1B

In 2022, Global Population is 7.9B ppl.

…….

World share of undernourished population in 1950: 65%.

World share of undernourished population in 1970: 25%

World share of undernourished population in 2000: 15%

World share of undernourished population in 2019: 8.9%

Malnutrition rate reduced from 2 in 3 in 1950 to 1 in 11 in 2019, even when population increased from 2.5B ppl in 1950 to 7.7B in 2019.

……

In 1800, it used to take 150 hours of human labor to grow 1 hectare of Wheat.

In 1900, it used to take 22 hours of human labor to grow 1 hectare of Wheat.

In 2021, it takes 2 hours of human labor to grow 1 hectare of Wheat.

So, in two centuries human labor to produce 1 kg of Wheat reduced from 10 mins to 2 seconds.

…..

In 1800, the total supply of useful energy (in gigajoules/capita) was 0.05

In 1900, the supply of energy rose to 2.7

In 2000, the total supply of energy per capita was 28

In 2020, total supply of energy : 34Gj/capita.

On an average, inhabitants of Earth now have 700 times more useful energyat their disposal than their ancestors had in 1800.

Our entire civilization, our species has been able to survive, grow, flourish only because of being able to produce increasing amount of useful energy at our disposal due to transitioning to Higher Energy Density Fuel compared to what we were using earlier.

With more increased energy, we have been able to grow far more food at a far lesser time than we could have ever imagined two centuries ago.

More than 100 years ago, 70% of the population was engaged in growing food. That was due to manual labor of planting crops, harvesting, transportation. Because we had limited supply of external source of energy.

With movement to higher energy density source of fuel, now we live in an era, where only under 15% of the population is responsible for growing food and yet feed an entire population.

This allowed us to focus our time and effort as a species in advancing science, technology, better healthcare solutions, better industrial systems to manage natural calamities and disasters, work on software technology to help make our lives easier and efficient.

Everything you enjoy, benefit from science and technological advancement, the internet, the smartphones, everything is possible because we as a society got the luxury of more energy at our disposal to allow us to grow food at a far more efficient way, allowing a large section of population to focus their efforts on other areas.

And the only reason we have been able to do this is because of fossil fuels.

Instead of using 30 oxen in 1800 to using tens of horses in 1900 ploughing the land and growing food, we now use machines built by fossil fuels, driven by fossil fuels to grow, harvest, dry, store and transport food in as efficient manner as it can.

The most important element on our planet is Ammonia. You can literally get rid of semi conductors, steel, cement from the planet and yet it wont threaten the survival of our species.

But you cannot eliminate Ammonia.

Ammonia provides the Nitrogen needed to produce fertilizers.

You remove ammonia , 50% of the world will die immediately as there won’t be enough food to feed a population of 7.9B ppl.

This Ammonia comes from Natural Gas, a fossil fuel via a process called Haber’s Process, one of the most important Invention of our humanity that won Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Without Haber’s Process, our civilization would not have survived as there wasn’t enough nitrogen available for crops to grow from natural fertilizer. Without crops nourishment, yield of food was plunging in early decades of 20th century and the world was on the brink of dying.

Haber Bosch Process was successfully able to synthesize Ammonia at Industrial Scale from Natural Gas, to provide mass scale nitrogen to be used as fertilizer for a growing population.

This was only possible due to access to Natural Gas, a fossil fuel we have been told is evil for us.

However, post 2000s, with the introduction of “renewables” in the form of source of Energy, this is the first time our species is moving from Higher Energy Density Fuel to Lower Energy Density fuel that is also intermittent source of Energy.

A population that even if assumed won’t grow, would still need more energy as many countries in Developing World move up the Human Development Index. As developing countries start shrinking their population % currently in poverty, the demand of energy naturally goes up. Ppl now want to fly, buy that refrigerator, better Air Conditioning Systems at home and so on.

There is a population of 5.5B ppl in India and other developing countries that is on the verge of requiring exponential increase in Energy Demand as their Human Development Index reaches where China currently is.

Yet, somehow, the world has been convinced by govts, climate activists and even many “research” scientists that “renewables” in solar and wind will still lead to abundant energy needs for our population.

The reality is totally opposite. Not only Solar and Wind are highly low energy density source of energy, their capacity factor of producing energy is abysmal amongst all the source of fuel we have ever used since our existence.

Nuclear has the highest capacity factor of above 95% while Solar and Wind crawl around 25% even in the best of conditions (highest sun, and wind availability).

In Germany, Solar is only around 12% capacity factor, meaning Germany’s solar panels produce electricity only about 12% of the time.

No doubt, Germany is currently reeling under Energy Crisis that their industries are collapsing as they don’t have energy to run factories.

In fact, the entire Europe is facing an unprecedented energy crisis with threat to mobile networks shutting down and a run for firewood, something I wrote months ago will happen.

Switzerland is even making bizarre request to its citizens to “shower together” this winter to conserve energy and if not followed, ppl can end up in prison.

And low and behold, ironically Germany’s source of energy in the country is now coming mainly from Coal and other fossil fuels. A country that spent $0.5T last 20 years in Solar and Wind.

Wind and Solar are just not working when it’s needed.

But it’s not just Germany. You can look at Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and France. All have barely any power being produced from Wind and Solar.

It’s Nuclear, Coal, Natural Gas that is helping these countries get any energy.

In fact, if you take last 30 days across Europe for various countries, then here’s all of Wind (on shore and off shore):

And here’s Solar Power for 30 days

Notice, how on an average (Mean) is such a tiny percent of Max Installed Capacity. It’s reaching barely 20%.

That’s the reality of Solar and Wind as Energy Systems.

Another Important concept that is useful to know when it comes to understanding Energy, is the idea of Energy Return on Investment (EROI).

Everything in life needs Energy. To get Energy, you also need some form of Energy. Energy as you know can neither be created, nor destroyed. It just gets transferred from one from to another.

You want Energy source, which are able to provide more net Energy, than it requires to generate them. This is what is measured by EROI. And you can see where we stand when it comes to all Energy Sources.

None of this is surprising to me. I have been writing about this for months, to no avail.

And I haven’t even come to the cost of electricity that has surged so high for ppl in Europe that not only small businesses are getting crippled, residents can no longer afford to have such high electricity cost. And we haven’t even entered Winters yet.

The warnings have already started in Europe and UK, as written months ago.

This is just simple physics , but it is remarkable how often these realities are ignored.

We try to convince ourselves that “technology” will make solar panel more efficient or wind turbine generate more energy.

As if the number of photons that fall on the Earth’s surface from Sun is going to increase because we can move Earth closer to Sun. Or that a software code can make Silica molecules absorb more photons than it can and start magically producing more energy.

To add another perspective, most ppl when talk of Energy, confound Energy with Electricity. Electricity is a very small portion of Total Energy we use in our daily life.

To run factories, transportation, produce food, we need Energy that is outside of Electricity.

A mere 5% reduction. $Trillions of money spent. 50 years.

If you think this is mainly due to Developing World’s dependence on fossil fuel as primary source of Total Energy in Economy, let me also share the actual reality:

The “Green Energy” movement tells you that Battery Electric Vehicle(BEV) is the future. It will help us not be dependent on gasoline and crude oil, which is under the control of some “despots” in the World.

What they however don’t tell you, that all the materials needed to fuel this “green movement” not only require more fossil fuels to mine these metals from Earth, which destroys the earth’s surface, de-contaminates water bodies near by, but these are also mainly concentrated in majority one country. Talk about taking control of our energy needs in our hands.

I haven’t even talked about the raw materials that go behind building those wind turbines, solar panel (made out of dirty coal from China). But just a small example, a 3MW Wind Turbine, contains up to 4.7 tons of copper. Half is from the cable and wiring, 24% from the turbine/power generation components, 4% from transformers, and 19% from turbine transformers. Onshore wind farms use approximately 7,766 lbs. of copper per MW.

All of this copper is mined from Earth using fossil fuels. It also makes shortage of copper for other areas of economy.

Another pervasive belief is that a BEV is devoid of fossil fuel since it’s run on battery and not gasoline. Again, that’s another Hollow Abstraction.

1 ton battery of BEV, that is made out of cobalt, nickel, lithium used in Cathode, has Anode literally made out of crude oil- Graphite, or Synthetic Graphite is a product out of crude oil.

However even when all of these are made out of fossil fuels, somehow, magically the Hollow Abstraction starts spreading narrative that BEVs will be cheaper for us as gasoline cost goes high.

Here’s a reality check:

BEVs go expensive as fossil fuels go expensive.

The problem is conflating solar use on our roof of home and seeing it “works” to using solar farms to power a city or industrial economy. You can use Solar on your roof, and have enough electricity produced to power your house. But a city, an industrial economy needs consistent base-load power that is not intermittent, and can run factories, produce food from the energy needed to run those.

*If there is one takeway, you can get from above, its that Solar panel and Wind Turbines are not only fossil fuel driven sources of Energy, but are highly Low Energy Density, low Capacity Factor fuel, that it does not work for an industrial economy, *an economy that needs to produceAmmonia, Steel, Cement and Plastic as it’s building blocks.

Ah.. Ok, but at least it saves CO2 emission and helps climate in some way, right?

Well, that understanding is also not right. The moment a society relies on Solar and Wind Farms as their main source of energy, that society starts eventually producing more CO2. Sounds unintuitive?

Because it not only needs to keep its existing fossil fuel power plant running to balance for having consistent base load power as sun doesn’t always shine, nor the wind blows every-time, but with less investments in maintenance and exploration of more fossil fuels, the society eventually scrambles to meet its energy needs one day by going back to even dirtier fossil fuel sources like Coal and Wood, that release even more CO2.

This is exactly what Europe is currently doing by rushing for coal and wood as Solar and Wind reliance crippled the energy supply.

But then, 40% of what Europe used to call Renewable Energy all these years was basically a hood to cover up the reality behind it.

40% of the “renewable” energy for EU is nothing but cutting down trees in America and breaking it into wooden pellets, transported across the ocean to EU. Cutting down millions of trees, is somehow known as good for climate as “wood” happens to be renewable. Because trees grow back in seconds.

This has been going on for years in the name of “renewable energy”.

But this is not just for Europe, even UK’s 12% “renewable energy” is basically chopping down logs from some of the precious forests in Canada at the Drax power station. This power plant that is burning wood instead of coal now, releases morethan 30MM tonnes of CO2every year. Yet none of that is now magically counted as emissions since its categorized as “renewables”.

Burning wood pellets give out more CO2 than burning Coal. And still they get to call this as renewable while Coal is evil.

Referenced: BBC Panorama: The Green Energy Scandal Exposed

At the core, this is just a grift. Regret to break this to you if you have not yet realized this, but Renewable Energy narrative at its core is just a major grift.

But then Greta never questions these as its called “renewables and good for planet” since cutting down trees can’t possibly lead to higher CO2 because trees don’t absorb CO2, so who are we to question.

In fact she continues spreading mis-information on how Natural Gas and Nuclear are bad for us.

If there is one reason you need to make sure kids stay in school , study and learn things, this is the one.

Question you should have also asked is, who benefits from her face?

Ok, so this is just Energy. Thats not everything. Why make such a fuss with long rant on this?

Because everything in life, is basically a derivative of Energy.

The Second Order Effect of Energy shortage and Crisis is immediately reflective on Food Prices.

The World can easily feed 7.9B ppl with amount of food it grows. 50% of that food is possible due to Fertilizers.

But Fertilizers are nothing but N, P, K- Nitrogen, Phosphate and Potash.

All of these are manufactured and produced using fossil fuels. We just learnt above how Haber Bosch Process synthesizes Ammonia at large scale to provide nitrogen needed for plants to have yield.

This was not some rocket science when after highlighting how we are entering an Energy Crisis early 2021, in Fall 2021, I had to write on an upcoming Food Crisis.

Referenced: The Great Mass Starvation is Upon Us!

There was no “Putin’s War” or anything anyone knew back in Oct 2021, when the above article was written.

There are many things I write, where I wish I turn out to be wrong. Heart wishes those things not to happen, but mind says they will happen.

When the NYTimes story broke out on tens of thousands of kids in Africa dead due to food shortage as fertilizer price went up, my heart sank. Big.

It was not the fault of those kids. It was not the fault of their parents living in Africa.

It was us who did it.

Our bad govt policies in Western and other developing countries, allowing us to cripple existing fossil fuels supply due to our “green dogma” that led to poor countries bearing the brunt.

When ppl who are now seeing Freight Transport cost fall down, commodities prices going down, and then claim Inflation is getting killed, they somehow never understood their Energy Systems.

Without fixing supply of Energy that is available for a world economy that is only going to need even more energy as billions in developing world cross the critical threshold of Human Development Index (HDI), the fossil fuel, which are the mainstay of our Total Primary Energy needs, is going to keep going higher, leading to persistent , recurring Inflation for years this decade.

The other derivative of Energy is Currency.

Most of the macro economics textbook teach you that a currency’s movement is largely due to Interest Rate Differential of two countries.

While it is not completely false, but in many empirical evidence you find, a currency’s appreciation and depreciation isn’t exactly due to Interest Rates Differential between two countries rates market.

However, one of the main factor behind a country’s currency, is actually the Energy Access that country has.

At a basic level, a currency is a function of a country’s growth(GDP) and debt. Higher the Debt vs GDP, one can expect a currency to not do well unless you are one of the cleanest shirt in the dirty laundry like USD by being a Reserve Currency.

The recent move higher of USD, if seen in detail, will help analyze that USD appreciation right now is largely with respect to other G7 currency’s depreciation namely GBP, Euro and Japanese Yen.

With respect to Emerging Economies currencies, USD appreciation is not that pronounced vs G7 currencies.

And what is the common theme right now when it comes to Japan, Europe and Great Britain?

**All of them are severely short Energy. **

Shortage of Energy-> collapsing Industries-> less economic growth-> more govt. debt to help citizens- > currency weaken.

So, ppl are now faced with a situation where Energy Crisis causes growth to slow down, leading to many industries shutting down, loss of jobs, while cost of goods to produce basic needs goes higher as Energy becomes expensive. Your money in the currency becomes less valuable as currency weaken, while Inflation remains higher.

Nothing destroys a civilization’s solidarity like a famine or cold winter without power. There are countries about to swing hard to the far right in Europe in the next two years precisely because of the insanity of a few seemingly intelligent elites who lacked any common sense.

All because some ppldecided to spread a false narrative to the world on reality of Energy sources and messed up our Energy Systems.

**But what if I tell you, it was not just a narrative, but a planned narrative? **

This is where, I stop the detour. It’s already become one of the longest detour, and I hope I have been able to marginally if not majorly, succeed in setting the context of two of the prominent and most popular themes going around today that has got majority of ppl consumed.

The question now comes is if Web3 is what we just learnt it is, and if “renewables” in the form of Solar and Wind Farms do not work to provide us with consistent, adequate and dependable energy to run our industrial economy, why is the pervasive idea around these totally opposite?

To be able to connect everything happening around us across the themes and find “wisdom” , a quality , something I laid out couple of years ago would be the most important skill going forward, lets “zoom” out a bit.

Referenced: The Only Main Skill You Need This Decade and Going Forward!

It might appear a hyperbole, but the world, prior to 2008, was quite different than the world post 2008. You might feel there isn’t much changed, and only technology got better and more common, and that’s definitely true when it comes to technology. However, what also changed is the fundamental structure of society.

Lets dig in.

As laid out in the below article earlier, post 1970s, when the first cohort of Baby Boomers came into economy, Wall Street took over the economy and the financial incentives, creating 401k system, other financial instruments for ppl to move their money into.

Referenced: A Year of Million Robotaxis and a ‘V for Vendetta’​ Moment Decade!

This music kept playing for 40 years, in an economy which was seeing more globalization (China bringing millions of workers into market), more technology advancement in the form of internet, which led to overall low inflation environment. Technology, debt, are inherently deflationary.

However, the greed of Wall St, brought a stop to the music in 2008, when the world economy collapsed due to the gambling game of few banks.

None of them got punished as we know. “Capitalism” in America took over and bailed out every banks, showered tens of millions as bonus for bankers who led to destruction of economy. Bankers went home rich, the public went home losing everything.

You know this story.

Someone else also saw this story.

This time, it was the folks sitting on the opposite end of America, far away from Wall St:

The Silicon Valley

Around the same time in 2008, two major developments were happening in Silicon Valley too:

• Jobs launching iPhone, that would change how we use our mobile phones.
• Social Media starting to hit the critical mass

When you combine these two together, what we got is instant, “decentralized” news creation. Anyone now can take a video of an event happening in any part of the world and share it with everyone else almost instantly. You didn’t have to wait anymore for Main Stream Media capturing some news story and playing it “as-it-is” without any outside political influence.

Ubiquity and near real time dissemination of “stories” proliferated.

After 2008 Great Financial Crisis, the Central Banks all over the world went to Zero Interest Rates Policy (ZIRP) along with “printing” more bank reserves via Quantitative Easing (QE).

In an environment where the cost to borrow money is minimal, investors all over the world especially those with huge cash surplus in the form of pension funds, Sovereign Wealth Funds, got pushed to riskier rung of the ladder as bonds barely had any yield to them. Equities bull market galore, but that was not enough, so a large part of the money started flowing in private equity via VC funds.

Access to too much money seeking some form of return, and near proliferation of stories due to converging of social media and smartphones, led to a Silicon Valley VC binge.

But Wall Street had shook the confidence of public. People could no longer trust big corporations, the “elites”. This was not the capitalism they envisaged. It’s like the thieves not only get away with the loot, but also get rewarded with life long immunity.

The public wanted a hero, a “messiah” who cares about them. Who is not like the Wall Street bankers who laughed at their misery and walked away with their entire life savings. It needed someone who is “against the system”. It needed a new system that is for them. Talks about them. Works for them.

The public needed this even if it didn’t know it needed this.

Enter the rise of Silicon Valley.

The folks sitting in Silicon Valley have been watching like everybody else what just happened to the world economy. Some of their own folks got taken by surprise by the collapse.

Too much capital leads to binge investments in bad businesses and entrepreneurs. Any shining idea that sounds “cool” would get funded because everyone is looking for that elusive yield post ZIRP.

Somewhere, I think Silicon Valley started investing in the “darling” startups of last decade by being deluded themselves to begin with.

VCs really believed you can have 100s of tests in one drop of blood.

Actual VCs in Sarah Tavel did write how you can really nail down “cost structures” by having a ride-hailing startup in Uber, the latter written in 2016, I am sure was not just failure to understand unit economics, but probably also intentionally disingenuous to spread a narrative.

The current VC gurus in Bill Gurley even told you how every other person is wrong on valuation and misses it by a Mile, including those whose bread and butter is to teach valuation and how his investment thesis is the right one

Talk about really missing it by a Mile.

VCs even believed you are actually going to get rid of all hotels by being your own “hotel business” and rent it out on Airbnb.

Consequently an entire gamut of “sharing and gig economy” got propped up. Everyone was doing “Uber for X” startup, valued suddenly in billions by the same VCs who are propping their own investment by marking it up to only dump it on later stage VCs.- Greater Fool Theorywas in full play.

Many started as mere lack of understanding of unit economics, morphed into “we don’t need to know unit economics”.

But how do you convince a world coming out of a major scar, to believe in Hollow Abstraction of future unit economics from an existing “we don’t need to know unit economics”?

That’s where you need a “feel good, do good” mission story.

A messiah driven mission.

You see, before 2008, Silicon Valley did create quite a few meaningful innovations. Google, Microsoft, Apple with re-defining how mobile phones need to be and even Facebook which popularized social media, actually were meaningful innovations. I don’t think people can imagine an efficient world without Google now.

However most of these innovations had their genesis in a time pre 2008, when capital was discerning and in most cases, goes to deserving entrepreneurial ventures.

However, before 2008, the financial world and to a large extent the economy was less tech and more controlled by Wall St and other industries.

Wall St brought the economy to its knees. But Wall St did one thing honest. They never told the world, they are for them.

Everyone saw Bankers as the “suits” class which makes sure they dress like that to distinguish themselves from the commoners. Bankers were shamelessly honest that they are not your friend. Nor they are going to make you thrive. They told you unabashed that they will give you 0.01% interest on your savings account while charge you 20% on your credit card debt.

They told you on your face, you can’t get a loan if you can’t provide a collateral.

The told you that the system they have created works for the rich and less for the poor.

They even gleefully accepted 100s of millions in bonuses after crashing the economy without showing a slightest remorse.

The Wall St lied on everything when it came to economy. But Wall St never lied to the common public on what they are going to do with them- fleece them. It was writ on their face and actions as blatant as you can find.

That “brutal honesty” isn’t going to work anymore with public. The anger was in the air and the “existing system” just cheated them.

But what could possibly work is if you can convince the public that we need a change of the existing system that led to their downfall. A new system that now thinks for common public. That is not fleecing them and the planet, but is going to “save the planet” while making them be part of that “noble cause”.

And that’s exactly what was done.

Suddenly it was now evil to support “fossil fuels” as they somehow going to destroy the planet while the only solution floated was Solar and Wind.

Silicon Valley took over the mantle and now you were told that existing system of automakers is bad as they are enablers of “fossil fuel merchants” while the only system that is going to save the planet is an automaker which runs on 1 ton Battery, made out of fossil fuel, needing you to spend $100k to begin with, while all existing $20K EV cars are no comparison even if a car which is 4-5x costlier than them, is far superior quality and drive. You were made to focus on the feature comparison, you were made to forget the cost factor.

You were told how the existing DOE loan was paid off by this new “against the monopoly automakers” auto company way before time. What you were not told, how a sole magic trick was done to get the stock pumped and pay the loan off via that.

The existing money system became evil too, and a better “monetary system” , which works for you, makes you “be your own bank” narrative was supported. Even if it required to continuously change that narrative into “inflation hedge”, “store of value”, “digital gold” as all previous narratives failed.

The Hotels became Evil. So we need you to be your own hotelier. Silicon Valley to rescue. The Taxi and Cab Companies are Cruel. So you needed to be your own ride hailing business. Silicon Valley to the rescue. The Realtors are Selfish, so you don’t need to sell your own house taking help of any realtor. Again, Silicon Valley to the rescue.

In every area of economy, Silicon Valley started taking over, by not only telling you “Software is going to eat the world”, but by claiming to bringing you along in their journey.

By making ppl believe that every existing system they know of, is not meant to work for them. It’s to fleece them, while every new system Silicon Valley is suggesting is what they need. A system that works for them. Cares for their need. Cares for their kids, their future generation.

Rip off the existing system. Energy, banks, Hotels, Taxis, Real Estate. Every existing system in Economy. Stop investing in their growth.

And it worked.

All these new systems on the surface did “appear” to work for ppl. It was not difficult to get convinced that you are making money in driving your own car, renting your own house, by being your own bank. After all they all were seeing a sudden surge of growth. The economy binged on these whole decade.

But all of that was the Hollow Abstraction.

Some of these ideas were actually cool. It’s pretty sensible to not wait for a cab arrival and not knowing where they are until they arrive, in an era where we have GPS on our phones. The new innovation in mobile phones, made that obvious to use it going forward to make existing system more efficient.

But not every cool idea is a business. And not everything selling cheaper than existing system is because of them able to “recast their cost structures” as Sarah mentioned in her blog.

The Hollow Abstraction was to subsidize the costs via VC money for a decade only to perpetuate the thinking Silicon Valley’s innovation has solved the existing problem which current system could not.

Uber and Airbnb are more expensive than taxis and hotels in many instances now. Shouldn’t over time, things should have got cheaper as Silicon Valley would generally profess early on?

It’s ok as long as Silicon Valley was busy pumping bad ideas as “visionary” or supporting bad entrepreneurs as “heroes” only. It became a problem when their ambition was far bigger than you could imagine.

The goal was to not let anyone else take over the economy. Anymore.

Even if required interfering in areas where Physics dominates everything. Where Technology had no place.

To promote how Solar and Renewables are the only future, only Silicon Valley voice wasn’t enough. Ppl need an incentive to believe. What better incentive to convince someone than by scaring them with fear mongering of “end of the world” narratives?. Scientists were recruited to add “authenticity” to the Doomsday scenarios.

It would appear this is some conspiracy theory I am peddling and no one could have devised any Machiavellian plan all these years. And it sure does seem like Silicon Valley was just busy pumping their bags to dump it on end public with no other malice in mind.

But then if you observe closely, you will notice the trick.

Have you ever thought why almost every narrative that has been given to you post 2008 has somehow ended up being incorrect?

• You were toldSolar and Wind is the only solution and that would be more than sufficient to meet our energy needs. An entire young generation is still convinced on this and is protesting any fossil fuel investments. Kids think not going to school and protesting “Climate Change” because we all are going to die soon, is more noble cause. Yet, we are now seeing the reality of Physics with Europe showing the repercussions of such a narrative.
• You were told fiat money is evil and crypto and Bitcoin is the only sound money. An Inflation Hedge. Digital Gold. Yet, when real Inflation actually came, Bitcoin was the first to collapse.
• You were told by Central Bankers and even famous Nobel Laureate in Economics, Paul Krugman, whole of last year, that Inflation is transitory and it’s not going to be big inflation. Yet, the world is facing highest inflation in 40 years and Central Bankers and the said “Nobel Laureate” nonchalantly telling you “Sorry, we were wrong”. But somehow, someone like me with no Economics academic background knew The Great Inflation is coming early last year?

• You were told, that the traditional automakers are dead and only new age EVs like Tesla will survive by perpetual scammers of Silicon Valley , who took millions for a ride on their scam SPACs, yet, the traditional automakers are thriving and overtaking in EVs while Tesla is barely able to come up with more fraud narratives as its pyramid starts to unravel.

• You were told, Climate Crisis is going to kill everyone on the planet and will destroy ecological systems including Great Barrier Reef, yet, years later you see the highest Coral cover in decades.

• You were told a new magical transportation system of HyperLoop will change how we commute around the world, yet, reality is it was a scam, the core purpose of which was to undermine rail projects in California, so that ppl cannot benefit from having a high speed public rail system and end up buying more cars.

• You were told, how Neuralink will cure ppl of brain ailments, while reality it is just a Theranos 2.0 with even worse consequences of killing innocent animals.
• You were told Full Self Driving cars are here since 2015, yet many are killed in the name of Autonomous driving while billions were made in that fraud.
• You were told by famous AI experts that how AI is the “new electricity” even when limited AI educated ppl like me claimed otherwise years ago. Yet, years later, one of those scientists quietly tells you AI is not what they had been propagating for years.

• You were told, this Inflation , the gas prices, everything is because of “Putin’s War”, yet, inflation has been rising even before that.
• You were told fossil fuels are eviland “we will make sure we bring an end to the fossil fuels”. Yet, when the energy cost goes high, due to preventing investment in fossil fuels exploration, you see same ppl imploring Saudis to pump more fossil fuels in-spite of having access to one of the largest shale oil resources domestically. Because pumping oil in America leads to climate crisis, but asking Saudis to do that doesn’t cause climate crisis.

• You were told all “my SPACs” are better than Warren Buffet’s investing, only to dump all of them on public and lie.

• You were even told by Wall Street, that they will prevent companies investing in fossil fuel, a major cause of supply shortage of fossil fuels now, yet, when the same disinvestment led to Energy Crisis, the same Wall St, is now asking to stay.

Every one of these narratives running for years, didn’t come true as told to you. And everyone of them, told you years later:

They were not Wrong.

They were just Lying.

Every Single one of them.

The lying just did not stop to companies. It even encompassed entire nations.

For those who are a bit aware, you might have heard of Sri Lanka, as a country’s collapse few months ago.

Those who are slightly more aware, would know that Sri Lanka collapsed because of “green dogma” of asking farmers in the country to stop using fertilizers to grow crops and use organic manure.

But if you dig deep, you would realize, the “green dogma” run by Sri Lanka’s President was not some random event.

He was made to follow an “ESG activist”, Vandana Shiva, in Sri Lanka, something World Economic Forum, has been propagating to world since years.

Of course, covid restrictions, economy going down, also exacerbated the crisis. But the impact of forcing the farmers in the country to not use fertilizers in the name of “saving climate” led to a huge collapse in country’s GDP. And by now, from our de-tour on Energy above, you would have learnt how 50% of our food is possible only because of Nitrogen provided to crops via fertilizers. You take ammonia from natural gas away, 50% of the world’s population will die immediately.

When the country collapsed, WEF, quietly removed the post they were propagating on “green narrative” from their website for years.

But this is the same World Economic Forum, which talks of “saving climate” and taxing commercial airliners for “emissions”, yet, very unabashedly thinks private jets of rich ppl flying in Europe will be tax exempted for any emission.

The same rich “elites” who fly into Davos in their private jets from their multiple oceanside homes, yet they tell you if you cook food using fossil fuels, the world is going to drown and you are not doing your part of “saving planet”.

But the next question now comes is, how come all of this has been so stupendously successful in-spite of these narratives completely opposite of facts?

Its because of You!.

You were made to be part of the Grift. To become the fervent enabler, passionate cheerleader, the supporter.

If you convince a large number of ppl, that everything they are going to witness is needed and is designed with a greater good of the world in a well thought through plan, you get to make ppl do anything you want them to do.

Even if the plan is horrifying. Even if the plan is going to destroy the same ppl who got convinced of it.

Because “Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.”

All you have to tell them Technology will solve all problems. That Technology is the ultimate panacea.

However, it’s technology that has been slowly hollowing out the very fabric of our society.

The systems that have been built by Silicon Valley , enabled by Wall Street to buy out the political class & regulators have led to one sided extravagance while destroying our very basis.

Since the advent of technology, the focus has been to distract us from real life and more towards digital glitter.

Television eroded our time away from spending in real world to spending in front of a box. Advertisers jumped on the opportunity to shape our free will into snatching our attention buying things we didn’t even know we really need.

Banks would monitor the credit card spend data and would build models around who is going to spend where and mold your purchase habits into spending more

Internet , social media led to attention economy where our time spent in real life went even less.

Social Media in order to keep sucking society into this ever increasing cesspool of distracting our attention, even didn’t care if it was used to sow seeds of political manipulation.

Now ppl are clamoring for MetaVerse.

Like the television, the internet, the social media, it’s been hailed as a new technology, a completely new world far better and “enjoyable” for the society.

The same corporations, Silicon Valley and Wall St Capitalists have found an even better way to suck our attention under this garb of “brave new world”.

MetaVerse is not some fun interesting place where our problems of society will get solved. In fact it’s not even a new world.

MetaVerse is not a physical dimension. It has a Time Dimension. It’s not a Place. It’s a Moment.

The Moment in Time when Society as a whole starts valuing their digital life more than physical life. When we get completely sucked into giving away our attention to digital distractions over spending time with each other in real life.

It started the day when Television was introduced to society. A moment when our attention, our time is distracted from real world to digital world.

Internet, social media, smartphones were part of MetaVerse. We have always been slowly nudged into MetaVerse in the guise of convenience and comfort.

Our real economy has caved into distraction economy. A society designed to maximize the clicks and profits made out of those clicks. The narratives are created and spread so it can easily mold the society.

Individualism is scorned on and if any resistance, is abjectly “cancelled”. You are better off as digital herd that can be easily shepherd into slaughter for profits.

But it wasn’t enough. Your attention and clicks could lead to only enough monetization.

NFTs, crypto are created to financialise every aspect of your social interactions.

Every single second of your life can be monetized now.

Not every company, every person in Silicon Valley is looking to grift ppl off. For every Tesla which is endangering and running a fraud of FSD, there are genuine companies in Argo AI, Cruise, Waymo, which are trying to run things ethically and correctly.

However, the larger majority in Silicon Valley has fallen prey to the voices who have the biggest bugle. And those bugle are not in the right hands.

Silicon Valley VCs are now putting even bigger amounts into “Web3” so you can be kept deluded and made to believe this is some amazing technology far better than “internet”.

It now glorifies “Building”. Glorifies “creating”.

But what are we actually building? Ponzi business models?

What are we actually creating? Mis-Information?

Silicon Valley has now very quietly, brushed aside and hacked the whole definition of what exactly Building means even when it came from a person in Steve Jobs, whose name, current age Silicon Valley ironically like to use so often. But never learnt what exactly “building” means.

Now, this “building” is mainly so you can be again used as the ultimate exit liquidity for them to grift off your collective misery.

But the funny part is, this time you don’t even get to cry “Help!!…I am robbed”.

Because you are now made to be part of this entire process. You are now robbing someone else for this grift.

Have you noticed, how the so called “creator economy” has led to this “Influencer” culture around us? Everyone is now busy “creating content” just so that they can gain some followers. With more followers, they now magically get to call themselves “Influencer” and can easily suck in more gullible to believe what they write as “Truth” only to later sell them some course or some book.

Linkedin has more experts in any field, than the real life experts out there. Someone is grifting on AI, someone on “how to lead your life well”. Some even go to the extent of posting their crying selfie, just so they can convince you, they were actually crying because they laid off their employees.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you were taking a picture of yourself when you were crying, then you were actually not crying.

Crying makes you go inwards. Not outwards.

Referenced: On Death, Regrets & Crying!

People are not writing things to share facts. They are writing things that gets the most likes, most shares. Most followers. They are writing things that are popular. Not what is important to say.

Posts aren’t optimized on Truth. They are optimized on virality, popularity.

But no one is even pausing for a moment to think if what I am reading is even correct? Or why am I being shown this story in media? What’s the incentive?

We have suddenly moved from Information Age to Affirmation Age. Truth is now which story, which post has more number of likes, retweets. It’s no longer which one is actually telling Facts. It’s who is telling the story.

So everyone is now just busy trying to be that “Authority”. Not by sharing facts and truth, but by sharing “popular opinions” which the crowd wants to hear. Even if those opinions are opposite of reality. Even if those opinions would spread misinformation.

Because no one cares if it spreads misinformation. We get to shirk from owning it as our responsibility to blaming it on others. “That Social Media companies spread misinformation”. “That AI is dangerous and spreading that misinformation”.

Its us, our greed, our fallibility as a species that creates and spreads mis-information. Not some social network, not AI.

Yet, we ignore that. We have consistently attempted to spread more misinformation and use our position to enrich ourselves by spreading consistently wrong narratives to hype a field where we work.

Even if the hype, the hyperbole is outrageously wrong.

Even if our own enablement of lies and fraud would lead to getting many ppl killed.

Yet, no one cares.

Because it helps run our grift. Helps enrich ourselves, even if the narrative is wrong.

Silicon Valley made our Society, a Grifter Society. A Grifter Economy.

Everyone is stabbing everyone else on the back.

VC and tech bros enable a false narrative and praise bigger frauds of Silicon Valley who

have been running an entire pyramid on lies and Hollow Abstractions, as it helps them get to be on the “better” side of public. Only to later cheat them with their worthless SPACs or pump and dump their fraud EV Trucking company.

Politicians on either side are running their own narrative to keep their vote bank appeased. Even if it means encouraging fear mongering against one section of society, or running so deep in our extreme liberal belief, that it ends up destroying World’s Energy Systems.

The Right wants to take control of your body, while the Left wants to take control over your Food.

SEC is supposed to prosecute blatant fraud. Yet keeps ignoring as long as the stock price is up.

NHTSA is supposed to keep Americans safe on road, yet is still investigating for 6 years, death of first guy who got beheaded in a “Self Driving” Tesla, while tens of other ppl keep dying since then.

Ppl are running their own grift too. They claim to condemn racist culture and sexual harassment at work, yet, when exposed with deep racism and sexual harassment at Tesla, everyone magically goes quiet. As if none of that matters anymore.

Because doing virtue signaling of driving an EV and buying its stock is far more self enriching grift than actually doing the right thing and abandon such products.

Referenced: ‘How Many Women Were Abused to Make That Tesla?’

People claim to support Diversity and Inclusiveness. Yet, the moment an unpopular opinion surfaces, it gets cancelled out or banned.

Scientists tell you a mere 1.5 degree rise in temperature will destroy the entire planet, yet you never asked them to share their model, what data they used, how was that data collected, what assumptions they made. A model is as good as the data and its assumptions. And the data is as good as it is collected unbiased. But you believe it blindly. Because it’s coming from some “authority”.

You feel disheartened, when you see State taking control over your Body. Your disappointment is rightly so.

However, Overturn of Roe vs Wade is not just the Conservatives’ Blame as the Liberal America is protesting about.

You see countless posts on social media blaming it on Republicans or the Conservative judges in the SCOTUS.

No it’s not.

It’s as much the responsibility of the Liberal America as it is of the Conservative America.

Every Action has an Equal an Opposite Reaction.

The Liberal America wants no arrests for crime under thousand dollars, No Border Wall for country, free Medicare for illegal immigrants, gender reassignment surgery for 11 year olds , cheerleading non biological female to participate in female sports, championing only Green Energy while threatening to kill fossil fuel industries completely even if will cause massive crisis and genocide around the world.

The Liberal America has been living its life on Extreme too.

What do you think going to happen?

If you live on one side of the extremes, the other side will try very hard to go to the other extremes.

You threaten them with championing gender re-assignment surgeries for 11 year old, they go more Conservative banning any abortion, no morning after pill, all archaic religious practices outdated with current times.

And it goes both ways. Left or Right.

The more you pull the pendulum towards the Right, the more hard it will swing later towards the Left.

The more you pull the pendulum towards the Left, the more hard it will swing later towards the Right.

One side wants to take you to religious traditions thousands years ago.

While the other side is too woke in their fervent desire to save future civilization from climate change, that it is blind to the fact it won’t even have a civilization to save then with their current action.

This is what happens when a society starts to live on the Extremes.

You create more Conservatives when you go complete Woke.

And you create more Extreme Liberals when you go complete Conservative.

The society loses the balance and it ends up living on the fringes.

A society that loses its malleability and becomes brittle. Easy to break with even a slight outside pressure.

Nothing destroys a civilization’s solidarity like a society that lives on the fringes.

There are countries about to swing hard to the far Right in Europe in the next two years precisely because of the insanity of a few seemingly intelligent liberal elites who lacked any common sense. Italy and Sweden have already shown that.

And there are some countries which will swing the other side.

That’s the point when that society starts to break.

But we never get it. We never get it. Every single time in History.

This brings to my last question:

How is it possible, a large section of society, the majority are made to believe in something that is not in sync with realities of life?

It’s clearly not the data. Because humans have the habit of looking at the same data, and coming to different interpretation driven by what they want to interpret.

So what is it?

When I think about it deeply, I realize at the core, it’s Silicon Valley and the so called “authorities” hacking the very nature of your psychological vulnerabilities.

At a fundamental level, everyone wants to do “some good” for mankind. Wants to contribute some meaningful work, a work of purpose.

And this is the very core “need” , which some ppl have exploited to their benefit.

If you convince a large section of ppl that the work they will be supporting, the work they become part of, is going to fundamentally change our society for good, will make many ppl’s lives better, then you are almost certain many will get excited to join that “mission”.

This is why, Silicon Valley professes, “Life changing Mission Statements”.

“Saving the Planet”,

“Accelerating World’s transition to sustainable energy”,

“Economic Freedom for Everyone”,

“to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere”,

“Transportation as reliable as running water, everywhere for everyone.”

Even if the reality of the work is opposite of the mission.

Once you have a heart-warming mission statement, all you need is to let Bandwagon Effect take place. A Cognitive Bias in most ppl, that causes people to think or act a certain way if they believe that others are doing the same. Makes them follow the crowd.

Because somewhere, deep rooted in the mind, many ppl think - “Wisdom of the Crowd”. That Crowd can not be wrong if there are so many believing in something.

But Wisdom of the Crowd is only if majority of the people are thinking critically.

However, this often gets overlooked as Technology and Critical Thinking are inversely related. More technology, the more ppl end up thinking less critically.

So, if BandWagon Effect needs a crowd to delude ppl, then what gets a Crowd to form in the first place?

This is where “Price” comes in.

The general notion in life is that if something has a Price, it’s because it’s valuable. It’s of an important Value to you.

This relation definitely holds true when it comes to things of utility. In a desert, you value Water over Diamond. So it won’t matter how much Diamond is priced, you would value Water over it. And consequently, Water’s Price will go up.

However most of the times on many other things, this relation is reverse.

Price drives Value, then the other way round.

If you can jack up the Price of anything in Life, it will start appearing more Valuable to everyone. And the crowd FOMO will kick in.

The Price doesn’t need to be just monetary. It’s the Price of “currency” in which something is measured. For social media, the price someone is “valuable” is the count of followers, the likes, the retweets.

You want your company to appear valuable and doing something really “great work” to a large section of ppl?

Just pump up the price of its stock. Doesn’t matter how. By hook or by crook. By outright lies and fraud. Doesn’t matter. Just keep the Stock price up.

And suddenly everyone will start questioning their own all very valid scepticism, because the Price is up. As it now makes them think that the Crowd must be knowing something which they don’t. You let the crowd take over. You then get a Tesla.

You want to appear some “expert”, some sort of “Influencer” to grift the ppl off later? Just get the “followers” count high. Doesn’t matter how. By writing only popular things even if they are wrong. Just do whatever gets your “Price” high- the count.

You want ppl to think your startup is doing some great work and is a tremendous business?

Just get the valuation high. Doesn’t matter if it needs VCs shilling each other’s bag. All you need is keep the Price of startup high. A Unicorn, Decacorn. And the crowd now believes this startup is something great and they need to buy its stock during IPO. Even if your startup won’t ever make any money. Even if it’s just a ponzi business model which will eventually collapse.

You want ppl to buy worthless pic of a rock as NFT as something valuable?

Just pump the initial Price. Doesn’t matter whether you do it via wash sale, creating your own fake wallet. Just pump the price. And suddenly crowd will think, it must be valuable that’s why it has a Price. And a BandWagon Effect ensues.

Price Drives Crowd to come in. And Crowd Kicks in the Bandwagon Effect for others to come in.

So, then what makes others’ to come in and join the Bandwagon Effect?

Greed and self-interest is an obvious answer.

But another important factor driving ppl to come into the Bandwagon Effect, is their own Self.

People choose Reputation Over Character.

Everyone is focussing on appearing “reputed”. Hardly anyone is looking to have the right Character.

Ironically, the more transparency you add, the more ppl choose Reputation over Character. There is a reason why Linkedin sees more cringe and made up stories, because there is more transparency involved. People are focussed on their reputation more than speaking what is right.

When you put mask on someone, ppl are more open to sharing the truth. Take the mask way, ppl give in to social pressures and focus on maintaining their Reputation.

In the end, we see certain section of society take over the entire society for its self-enrichment, because somewhere we have allowed that.

In this age of unprecedented propaganda, narrative shaping, and outright lies, ascertaining truth has never been more challenging.

We have entered an era in which all truth has been made controversial – and stating it openly a revolutionary act. In a Society that wants to see everyone thrive, this shouldn’t be this way.

But unfortunately, those who take a stand notwithstanding the opposition, they get cancelled; remaining few step back further in the crowd for fear of having their true stance revealed.

It requires not only focused research and “scientific method”, but now more than ever – a refined sense of discernment.

The most valuable trait and skill is a judicious sense of what not to believe.

The second most valuable trait and skill is to believe in your own sense. Not of others. Not of the Crowd.

Because in the end, Truth is the only daughter of Time. Not of any Authority.

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