Musings from the Chiefio

The Question Is Not Are These Bad Decisions – Rather “Stupid or Evil?”

From the start of the Ukraine War, they have shoveled massive amounts of money and military equipment into the corrupt bonfire of a stupid war that can never be won by Ukraine. I’ve said so from about somewhere in the first year. Why? Pretty simple. Russia has a dramatically larger population, a massive arms industry, domestic access to almost anything they need, a long martial history, and are motivated by both a long history of attacks from the west requiring destruction, and by the existential threat posed by NATO in Ukraine.

The latest stupidity (or is someone making a lot of money off of LNG?) is all the crowing over banning ALL Russian natural gas and oil. Well, that’s going to lock the EU into at least a 33% energy cost excess just from the thermodynamic cost of compressing Natural Gas and cooling it to a liquid, but likely even worse (by a lot). Here, in the USA where they are sourcing all this LNG, when we have a cold winter Natural Gas prices spike (due to the stupidity of not using coal – which the EU is also doing). Now add all of the European demand and Natural Gas prices will be stratospheric. Then it still must be shipped across and ocean (with ship and crew costs), unloaded and re-gassified (more facilities and labor costs) and distributed to all the needing countries. That is going to be very expensive gas.

This compounds the “Net Zero” stupidity which bans nuclear and coal power (especially in Germany & England), where wind & solar get first claim on power sales (reducing income to all other plant and forcing them into low capital utilization and distorted costs basis for energy). This leaves gas as the peaking plant fuel when wind is low at night, which will be even more costly from LNG.

All of this makes Europe highly non-competitive economically and has already resulted in a lot of business collapse or exodus. ALL business & industry depends on the cost of energy as a foundation cost. For some high energy users it is a make or break item. A.I. Data Centers, for example, now measure their compute size in GigaWatts. Plural. One Data Center. As a person who managed the build out of a few data centers, I can assure you there is No Way I’d build a new big data center in the UK or EU (or California for that matter, and for the same reasons). Electricity costs way too high and rising, high labor costs, horrible regulatory environments, huge tax burden.

Same thing holds for any other big factory with a significant electric bill or fuel bill; from metals refining, to auto manufacture, and more. The flight of major corporations from Germany demonstrates that this is already in progress. This BTW erodes the tax base, pushing deficits higher, tax RATES higher (which due to being on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve creates lower tax collections), debt higher, and on into a spiral decent into depression.

Then, importing huge numbers of poorly educated low skill 3rd World folks who are put on very expensive Government Welfare programs, and largely have incompatible morals, religious beliefs, and create more crime and violence; well that just accelerates the social decay.

There’s more, like the India free trade deal and the attempt at one with Mercosur. A fast track to the destruction of farming in Europe. What will Europe produce to trade for the manufactures and ag products from a place with $5 / day being good wages?

I just don’t see how Europe recovers from this level of damaging decisions.

But to the question:

I can not see there being enough “stupid” in the world to be this consistently wrong and self destructive behaviour. Just how stupid must you be to get it about 100% wrong?

I could see it being the result of an indoctrination. Clearly that way for Gang Green Programs. But being on the “20th sanctions package” on Russia and seeing that the first 19 accomplished nothing of note? “This time for sure!?”… In a capitalist system, a trade happens only when both parties gain from it. Blocking that trade will damage BOTH parties. Europe is being damaged a lot by their self inflicted “sanctions”.

Which leaves malice – graft, corruption, power lust? The desire to be the biggest fish in a dirty tank? Is the election process so corrupt (like the USA Democrats) that only the corrupt and stupid rise to the top? Those willing to be bought off by major “donors” and those happy to make money out of their position.

I would rather think it was from stupidity than fraud and graft, but “stupid” ought to randomly get some things right. This looks more like Power Lust, Greed, and Corruption mixed with some indoctrination (Marxist & Gang Green). Then again, maybe there is still room for a lot of stupid inside that….