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The System Will Not Return to “Normal,” and That’s Good; We Can Do Better – Charles Hugh Smith (03/25/2020)

Essential home lockdown reading.

The pandemic is revealing to all what many of us have known for a long time: the status quo was designed to fail and so its failure was not just predictable but inevitable. We’ve propped up a dysfunctional, wasteful and unsustainable system by pouring trillions of dollars in borrowed money down a multitude of ratholes to avoid a reckoning and a re-set. And very predictably, that’s the “solution” to the unraveling triggered by the pandemic: borrow more trillions and pour most of it down the same old ratholes.

Here’s what we should be talking about: the entire global system desperately needs a re-set. We can do better, and we should do better. That’s what I’ve been writing about for the past 12 years. To further the discussions we should be having about doing betterI’m cutting 30% off the price of seven of my books: ebooks are now $5, print books are now $10.

Every book has a free summary/sample page where you can find out more about the contents.

What better way to spend the weeks/months of lockdown than reading about the better future we need and deserve? 

To buy a book, click on the cover below: The Nearly Free University and The Emerging Economy: The Revolution in Higher EducationReconnecting higher education, livelihoods and the real economy This book outlines ways we can provide a superior college education for 10%-20% of the current (unaffordable) cost. Why Things Are Falling Apart and What We Can Do About It Our financial-political-social system has been rotten to the core for two decades. It doesn’t have to be this way. Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive ChangeThe credo of liberation:”I no longer care if the power centers of our society–the distant, fortified castles of our financial feudal system are changed by my actions, for I am liberated by the act of resistance. I am no longer complicit in perpetuating fraudulent feudalism and the pathology of concentrated power. I no longer covet signifiers of membership in the Upper Caste that serves the plutocracy. I am liberated from self-destructive consumerist-State financialization and the delusion that debt servitude and obedience to sociopathological Elites serve my self-interests.”An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times Written 9 years ago, the precepts of social capital and controlling your capital are even more relevant today. A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All:The Future Belongs to Work That Is Meaningful We desperately need a profound re-set on the way we work, pay for work and prioritize what work gets done. Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic Our political system and the economy it controls both need to be decentralized and relocalized. Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power and A.I. in a Traumatized World The promise of technology has been harnessed to widen the immense gaps in wealth and power between the super-rich and the rest of us. It doesn’t have to be this way: AI and technology could restore some balance to an ecologically endangered world if we change the predatory economic-political power structure.

If you want a dash of escapist fiction, you might like The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher. To buy a book, click on the cover:

My COVID-19 Pandemic Posts

My recent books:Audiobook edition now available:
Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World ($13)
(Kindle $6.95, print $11.95) Read the first section for free (PDF).
Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 (Kindle), $12 (print), $13.08 ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).

If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.


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