From the start of the 1960′s to 1978 the population of Italy was growing at a rate of 0.65% per year. This is not a high rate of growth, but it was reasonable in a developed industrial country. As long as the GDP (as an indicator for the economy) grew by more than that rate then the GDP per capita would be positive.

Italy population 1961-2005—showing the difference between actual population and a 0.65% growth line

In 1978 something happened  to drastically cut the population growth of Italy. It was neither war, famine nor plague; it was an energy crisis, i.e. a drastic increase in the price of oil (see Energy crisis at Wikipedia for historical perspective). The difference between the actual population in 2005 and the linear extrapolation of the 0.65% growth line is about nine million person, that is 18 times the number of Italians lost in the second world war, including civilian deaths due to military action. If the same analysis was done on the whole of Europe I would not be surprised if the number of missing population reached fifty million, almost the total casualties of the second world war.

Nowadays there is an insidious theory contradicting more than 10,000 years of human culture that unfortunately has overtaken the minds of the world’s scientists and politicians :

Roughly speaking, nations or subpopulations with higher GDP per capita are observed to have fewer children, even though a richer population can support more children.

—Demographic-economic paradox, Wikipedia

Of course this innocent statistic is used by death-mongers to preach the falsehood of “fewer children” equals “better life”—Millions of dollars have been spent to prevent the poor from having children in the name of economic development. To understand the paradox one has to look at it dynamically and not statically, i.e. how did economic change effects population and how did population change effects economic.

Italy GDP, GDP-per-capita and population (percentage change from 1960 to 1999).

The above graph is from the increasingly excellent website of the St. Louis Federal Reserve website. Now let us carefully inspect the graph and see what happened over time, i.e. dynamically:  in the mid seventies GDP and GDP-per-capita growth was above 5% percent. This was down from the fifties and sixties, but that was a post-war boom that was destined to end. We can see the effect of the dollar devaluation on Italy: in 1978 GDP and GDP-per-capita plunged to negative territories unseen since the end of the second world war. From that point of time onward the population practically stops growing and the line of GDP-per-capita growth  starts to match that of GDP growth, nothing is ‘wasted’ on reproduction all resources are consumed.

The Italian GDP-per-capita was boosted by holding the population constant for a generation. Many other measures improve when the population is constant: people’s spending power improve when they do not have to feed and clothe several dependents for example. The static paradox only exist as the peak of a long-term economic cycle: as growth declines the last generation does not reproduce to maintain the living standards of their parents, or even fail to reproduce; many Italians in their twenties still live with their parents out of necessity. This false economic improvement is interpreted as increased prosperity by mad men of science and politics.

Let us keep moving and see what happens when a society stops having children: economic prosperity or terminal decline? The decline of population is a universal phenomenon in Europe, population growth in Western Europe is due mainly to immigration and their offspring. This map shows that from Germany eastward the population is declining (from Wikipedia):

Population Growth in Europe 2009.

Some mad people praise this decline as beneficial to humanity, but even if we should agree that less population is a positive fact, this decline in the face of economic prosperity is due to a plunge in birth rates below the replacement rate and not due to any kind of cleansing natural phenomenon that culls the weak and leaves the strong. The result of cutting off new supply of people is an ageing society as this map from Wikipedia shows:

Percentage of population over 65 in 2010

Europeans smile when they hear that Africans or Asians have many children to support them in old age and think they can have the benefit of both worlds: few children that do not put a pressure on them while they work and a pension system that supports them when they stop working. This logic is of course impeccable when argued by a single person, it is a pension time-bomb when followed by everyone, this graph (from ZeorHedge) shows the ratio of workers to pensioners in selected countries:

Workers per Retiree (with future projections)

No need for projections into the far future as the future of Europe has already happened in Russia and it goes like this: population decline, economic decline, capital flight, brain drain, collapse of the countryside, hyperinflation, crime, decline of research and development, loss of sovereignty and war. All these factors come with a nasty positive feedback mechanism.

Of course life is not a mechanical clock it is full of cross-currents and mighty winds; Russia for example enjoined eight years of boom (2000-2008) despite the capital flight and the depopulation of the countryside that was going on. When Georgia tried to play with Russia’s national security it was crushed in three days. Despite all that the main trend for Russia has been since 1914 and still is downwards.

The outlook for Europe is bleak, but the path is unknown and it might even go up at certain points. What I am sure of is that there must be a price paid for the benefits enjoyed from committing demographic genocide. I repeat what I once wrote: Societies that cannot reproduce themselves are dead.

See Also:

• Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
• HSBC’s World Expert Predicts a Rosy Future for The World
• Free Healthcare Causes Economic Ruin (the credo)
• On Georgian Demographics

Jersey Girl, 2004, directed by Kevin Smith, starring Ben Affleik and Raquel Castro.

The Trotsky, 2009,  directed by Jacob Tierney, starring Jay Baruchel, Jessica Paré and Ricky Mabe.

The best characters in literature are those that get transformed. Shakespeare presented one of the best and moving transformations, from Prince Harry to King Henry V, in his trilogy: Henry IV Part One, Henry IV Part Two and Henry V.

Kevin Smith tried to do the same in Jersey Girl by transforming a Public Relations guy, a person who lives by lying to the general public, to a spirited and dedicated public servant, but where Shakespeare was successful Kevin Smith fails: when it was time to present the beliefs of the character through a speech Kevin Smith has nothing to say.

Smith fails to deliver a modern day St. Crispin’s Day Speech because he does not believe in public works the way Shakespeare believed in English nationalism.

In Hollywood anything could be forgiven except believing in something and the failure of Smith was the failure of conviction:

An extended cut was shown at Kevin Smith’s private film festival Vulgarthon in 2005 (and was shown again at the 2006 festival). Cut scenes that featured in the extended version included a much longer extension of the Jennifer Lopez section of the movie that fleshed out the characters more, Ben Affleck’s full speech in the city hall, a longer ending, and some music changes.

—Jersey Girl, Wikipedia [my emphasis]

Either Smith failed to write a moving speech or hesitated when it was time to deliver the final cut.

Slavoj Žižek wrote a book, On Belief, which discussed the need to believe in something to change the world, he presents Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, as an  example of someone acting on his belief even though Žižek personally does not agree with the beliefs. The interested reader can read the book and evalute the arguments for himself, but I like the short judgement given by Hegel: Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion (see Weekly Lesson (2)).

Jacob Tierney,another writer-director, fails to deliver a transforming character, his protagonist has passionate beliefs  from the first until the last frame of the film. Tierney does deliver the speech, the School Sucks Speech, but prefers to let a secondary character delivers it and then have him add that he doesn’t really believe in it, but he will put deeds before beliefs.

Modern artists are unable to observe society and can only express solipsist views, I suspect that Tierney hesitated to let the protagonist of his film, i.e. his avatar, express his views in a compelling speech, but by doing so he gave the best expression for the students’ “revolt” of the sixties: young students following ideas they do not really believe in without any adult leadership, except for a few fellow travellers cheering from a safe distant. This lack of belief, of passion, explains why the students used to take exams in the morning and riot in the evening; they also put deeds before beliefs and one does not sacrifice his future for deeds alone.

This lack of belief is present in every artistic expression of modern society, from the cheapest action film to the historical epic, it seems that there are no more Bolsheviks in modern Western society.

Today we will examine  Grameen Bank—founded by Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh—which uses micro-credit and social engineering to implement its goals.

Wikipedia provides a good summary of the criticism against Grameen Bank:

Sudhirendar Sharma, a development analyst, claims the Bank has “landed poor communities in a perpetual debt-trap”, and that its ultimate benefit goes to the corporations that sell capital goods and infrastructure to the borrowers. It has attracted criticism from the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, who commented, “There is no difference between usurers [Yunus] and corrupt people.”

Hasina touches upon one criticism of Grameen Bank: the high rate of interest it demands from those seeking credit. Similar to all microfinance institutes, the interest charged by Grameen Bank is high compared to that of traditional banks, as Grameen’s interest (reducing balance basis) on its main credit product is about 20%. The Mises Institute’s Jeffrey Tucker has criticized the Bank, asserting it and others based on the Grameen model are not economically viable and depend on subsidies in order to operate, thus essentially becoming another example of welfare. They disregard Yunus’ claims that he is working against subsidized economy, giving borrowers the opportunity to make business. Another source of criticism is that of the Grameen’s Sixteen Decisions. Critics say the bank’s Sixteen Decisions force families and borrowers to abide by the rules and regulations set forth by the bank. However, they do not make clear why the leading principles (unity, courage, discipline and hard work) and some rules set up by the bank, like living in healthy houses in good repair, not drinking unsafe water or refusing to give dowries for daughters, can be bad for borrowers. They mostly object to the requisite of having to make a borrower club to cover defaults, which they disqualify as a totalitarian tool, instead of a community building strategy. David Roodman and Jonathan Morduch disagreed with a statistic once often cited by Yunus, that “5% of the Grameen borrowers get out of poverty every year.” Reanalyzing the underlying study, they obtained opposite results. But they did not interpret these to imply that lending to women made families poorer. Rather, the negative causality may go the other way: women in richer families may borrow less.
—Grameen Bank, Wikipedia [my emphasis]

The most important point against Grameen Bank and the ideas of its Vanderbilt University educated founder are the ‘rules’ that Grameen Bank enforces on its borrowers.

Let us take the rules (called decisions) one by one (rules in bold, my comments are in regular font):

We shall follow and advance the four principles of Grameen Bank: Discipline, Unity, Courage and Hard work – in all walks of our lives.

Forget religion, forget traditions, forget everything; remember only to pay the bank on time.

Prosperity we shall bring to our families.

Not really a decision, but a way to convince the poor into believing they have only themselves to blame, because they did not make the decision to become rich.

We shall not live in dilapidated houses. We shall repair our houses and work towards constructing new houses at the earliest.

In the absence of woodlands to provide building material this means more money is spent on cement, iron, plastic, et ceterea. They might afford some of it in the good years but this is not an approach for a long term solution of adequate housing and it will only make the poor more dependent on the world market.

We shall grow vegetables all the year round. We shall eat plenty of them and sell the surplus.

I do not think anybody in Bangladesh is against eating more vegetables, but it is the selling of the surplus that is the real point here. The point of Grameen Bank is push the poor who operate outside the market into the market where they will try to survive alongside multinational corporations.
When the time comes to pay the usurers I am sure they will eat less and sell more.

During the plantation seasons, we shall plant as many seedlings as possible.

To maximise revenue and be able to pay the bank and if the crop should fail they can always buy food from the world market if they can afford it. This worldwide drive to maximise seed utility have resulted in a world with only a few weeks of grain store, compare that to the ancient Egyptians who had a seven year store of grains.

We shall plan to keep our families small. We shall minimize our expenditures. We shall look after our health.

You cannot end poverty by destroying your human resource, that will only result in economic decline. China will soon prove this fact after killing 400 million people to achieve ephemeral economic growth.

We shall educate our children and ensure that they can earn to pay for their education.

Education here only means participating in the schooling system to produce cheap trained labour for multinational corporations who want to outsource their white-collar work to third world countries like Bangladesh.
Zimbabwe had one of the literacy rates of Africa, and the West today is more “educated” than a century ago and yet most people can not even afford to have a couple of children, such is modern prosperity.

We shall always keep our children and the environment clean.

Nice, but modern western consumers are the worst polluters, most of the pollution they cause is on the other side of the world, where resources are mined and processed. Making the people of Bangladesh into consumers will not help the environment.

We shall build and use pit-latrines.

Another way to use imported materials and be dependent on the market for your necessities, just like the western consumer.

We shall drink water from tubewells. If it is not available, we shall boil water or use alum.

Boil water with imported gas paid for with export-earned dollars. Every effort is needed to support the wanning world-hegemony of the dollar.

We shall not take any dowry at our sons’ weddings, neither shall we give any dowry at our daughter’s wedding. We shall keep our centre free from the curse of dowry. We shall not practice child marriage.

Paying for your daughter to get married is just another nonsensical Hindu practice. As Muslims the people of Bangladesh should follow their religion and have the man pay the woman a dowry. In this way young men are motivated to earn money and those who have half a dozen girls have only to worry about where they should dine.

We shall not inflict any injustice on anyone, neither shall we allow anyone to do so.

I think it is against religious and moral practice to inflict injustice and the worst injustice one can inflict is usury.

We shall collectively undertake bigger investments for higher incomes.

Gamble to pay the bank. You win they get paid (and feature you in their promotional videos), you lose they get paid.

We shall always be ready to help each other. If anyone is in difficulty, we shall all help him or her.

Socialise the losses, as long as the bank is paid.

If we come to know of any breach of discipline in any centre, we shall all go there and help restore discipline.

Your basic social control as used by the best tyrannies. There is no point in writing a formal contract for a load of $2, it takes more to process it and the state will probably not use force to collect. The solution is to use social control, which is useful when one deviates and the others not. If the whole village decided to default on their loans (i.e. sovereign default) then Grameen bank will be in the same predicament as European banks that have lent money to countries like Greece and Latvia.

We shall take part in all social activities collectively.

Just like sheep, easier to herd when they are together.

—Grameen Bank, Wikipedia

These western engineered maxims are drilled into the minds of simple village women:

In a country in which few women may take out loans from large commercial banks, Grameen has focused on women borrowers as 97% of its members are women.
—Grameen Bank, Wikipedia

The bank is pushing women into the social sphere, outside of the traditional family. This greater participation in the labour force have already had disastrous effects on the black family structure in the United States as was explained in The Negro Family by Daniel Patrick Moynihan:

According to the book Representing: Hip hop culture and the production of black cinema by S. Craig Watkins:

The report concluded that the structure of family life in the black community constituted a ‘tangle of pathology…capable of perpetuating itself without assistance from the white world,’ and that ‘at the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family. It is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time.’ Further, the report argued that the matriarchal structure of black culture weakened the ability of black men to function as authority figures. This particular notion of black familial life has become a widespread, if not dominant, paradigm for comprehending the social and economic disintegration of late twentieth-century black urban life. (pp.218-219)

—The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, Wikipedia

I doubt Grameen Bank would have survived all this time if it was truly run as economic enterprise, it only survived thanks to direct western support in the beginning and now it survives thank to direct support from the central bank.

Grameen Bank and its founder were awarded the Nobel peace prize to join past winners who committed genocide and future ones who were still waging war when they received their ‘award’.

See also:

• Bacon on Usury
• Sovereign Credit is State Usury

The alleged gang rape of a 15-year-old girl on the campus of Richmond High School in Northern California while 10 or more witnesses, most of them students, looked on has sparked familiar questions: “Why are our kids so messed up?” “Why didn’t these students try to stop the crime?” “What’s happening in our schools?”

—Ask the right question about gang rape

All it took for things to lurch out of control, investigators, students and community leaders say, was opportunity – and that came when the girl left the school dance Saturday night, walked by a group of bad boys boozing hard in the unlit courtyard, and accepted their invitation to hang out.

Fueled by street-macho bravado and inspired by sexual initiations required to get into some local gangs, they began the attack, investigators say.

—Richmond gang rape seen as nearly inevitable

In How to Reform Schools and Educate People I wrote the following:

Separation of girls and boys is the number one priority of secondary education, without this initial condition whatever system is implemented is doomed to failure. Secondary education was always separate, not only in space but also in style and subject. Only recently has the mixing of adolescent males and females been accepted as ‘normal’, while for centuries these two have been kept apart-for very good reasons.

The exceptional moment of well brought-up girls and boys, living in small New-England twons, where everyone were middleclass and people left their doors unlocked has well & truly passed away (even if we assume it really did exist). To build a universal system on exceptional cicumstances is a great folly only surpassed by the thought that such an abnormal system should be exported by force to the whole world.

Now that life in the US resembles an impoverished police-state, this system has turned into an endless nightmare. The East has learned over centuries of civilisation—that went through good and bad times, through times of safety and times of fear, times of personal self-control and times of animal barbarism—that girls are not to be left alone in the company of men.

Activists of human rights groups particularly Amnesty International, the United Nations Human Rights Commission, feminist organizations as well as public figures and government officials in the West joined the crusade in condemning the Taliban for the restrictions. Some called the restrictions “gender apartheid”, others labelled the Taliban ” oppressors” and “segregationists.” Madam Madeiline Albright even called them “despicable.” Still others viewed the measures as the imposition of Pashtun tribal codes on the liberated city females. Of course, all condemned the measures as a violation of women’s basic rights. More serious, governments even though some of whom had signaled signs of good will toward the Taliban until then withheld recognition of them as government mainly because of the restrictions. They were only called “a rouge state”, and treated as such. Nevertheless the Taliban went on with the restrictions as if not a single voice of protest had been raised.

The critics, to my knowledge, did not address the question why the Taliban did not heed the protests, and why did they impose restrictions in the first place? They just condemned and demonized apparently for political reasons. The short answer is that the Taliban cared for the Islamic Shari’a as they know it, for the lives and security of women, and the suppression of the crimes associated with rape, abduction and fatherless unborn.

Before the Taliban entered Kabul women were, among other criminal acts, raped during the entire Islamic Tanzimat period on a scale unheard of in Afghanistan. Women who disappeared after sexual assault in Kabul during this period numbered 30, 000 according to Sharee’a, the official weekly of the Emirate. Even handicapped and mentally deranged women of an institute in Kabul were raped. The list of rapes of individual women by individual armed men and groups is too long to note. Only a few instances are noted here.

-The Afghanistan Foundation’s White Paper or Dark Paper? by M. Hassan Kakar [author of Afghanistan]

Let us assume that the US will implement healthcare reform that provides adequate care to those without insurance and those who are underinsured, what would be the consequences of such a move?

For the sake of argument I will assume that any reform is actually affordable. Increased healthcare will result in the following:

1. Longer lifespan: This will put pressure on both Medicare and Social Security from the state point of view, while putting more pressure on family members who have to care for the elderly from an individual point of view.

2. Increased disability: This has been the case with the military, improved battle care resulted in increased rate of injured soldiers putting pressure on the veterans infrastructure that could not support them. Is society (economically) ready to support the increased number of disabled people?

3. Lower child coast: Children might be the future, but they coast money even before they are born. If healthcare coast declines, then this will most likely spur childbirth, which is good in principle, in practice it will put pressure on the education system from the kindergarten level all the way up to higher education, it will also means millions of people entering the labour force 15 years down the road, will there be jobs for them?

4. Increased unemployment: Some claim that a 100,000 die in the US each year because of lack of insurance, this means that providing insurance will mean there are 100,000 who either want a job or dependent.

5. Doctor where are thou? The West has been suffering medical professionals shortage for decades, their first solution is to suck publicly educated professionals from poor countries, then from the former Warsaw block countries. Now the whole world is in the grip of the shortage.

“State officials have acknowledged the problem. “Health-care coverage without access is meaningless,” Gov. Deval Patrick said in March.”

—Doctor Shortage Hurts A Coverage-for-All Plan

Nothing ruined the newly independent countries of Africa and Asia than adopting financial and social systems totally unsuitable for their needs and unsupportable by their economies. Providing health subsidies had the same effect as any public subsidy would have, namely a bubble. When the economy started to crumble in the seventies the result was a collapse that caused the death of millions (through war, hunger and disease).

Credo

I believe that the current level of human productivity can easily support 15 to 20 billion people around the world. This can happen, I believe, without the harmful practises of industrial agricultural and with a higher level of sufficiency. I also believe that development of land in Africa, Siberia, Central Asia and South America can open the possibility for a total world population of 25 billions.

Not as shown in hack director Roland Emmerich’s forthcoming film 2012:

But in a much more serious and historically consistent way. The Mexica people predicted their own demise in the beginning of the sixteenth century, this came true not through brimstone and floods but through an alien invasion that rocked society and brought everything crumbling down.

The world of the Mexica

Today the world is united under one power, just as the world of the Mexica was united under one power residing in Tenochtitlan, that rules without consent of most who live under its power. Any country that tries to resist this rule will either end up like Iraq or in most cases like Zimbabwe.

Any disturbance to the power structure will unleash pent up pressure, just as the arrival of aliens to the world of the Mexica unleashed rebellion:

“Cortés, with up to 500 Spaniards, did not fight alone but with as many as 150,000 or 200,000 allies from Tlaxcala, and eventually other Aztec tributary states. It was not difficult for Cortes to find allies to fight with him, the Aztecs were not generally liked by the neighbouring city-states.”

History of the Aztecs, Wikipedia.

So what could disturb the structure of power in the world? Neither aliens nor religion will do it. Environmental collapse or natural causes have some probability on the long term, but we should not concentrate on either. Let us see if we can learn from history and ask why did the world of the Soviet Union collapse? The answer is economic collapse.

“It is apparent that the quantities of money are increasing in an accelerating fashion. In 1990, the total amount of currency in circulation passed US$1 trillion. Twelve years later, the total amount exceeded US$2 trillion. This doubled again less than six years later in early 2008.”

How Much Money is There?, DollarDaze.org

Doubling in half the time is a characteristic of exponential growth. The next step is a doubling in three years, which means by 2012 the total amount of currency in circulation will pass $8 trillion.

Trillions more is being ‘printed’ by central banks. That money, for now, is being horded by the bank but sooner or later the dam will burst and the money will engulf the whole economy, then there will be no escape from hyperinflation.

In The Fable of the Cannoneer and the Observer I wrote the following:

The social phenomenon of the high priests building ever bigger pyramids at great social expense with no social benefit at all is a worrying phenomenon to those who study history, such a phenomenon usually appear just before everyone ‘decides’ to abandon the cities to the jungle and turn away from complex societies to simple subsistence

Now we read the following in the news:

“The US has finished constructing a huge physics experiment aimed at recreating conditions at the heart of our Sun.

The US National Ignition Facility is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear fusion, a process that could offer abundant clean energy.

…

To work, it must show that more energy can be extracted from the process than is required to initiate it.

Professor Mike Dunne, who leads a European venture that is also pursuing nuclear fusion with lasers, told BBC News that if NIF was successful, it would be a “seismic event”.

-Giant laser experiment powers up, 31 March,BBC [my emphasis]

Yet another “huge” experiment worth billions of dollars! Again fantastic promises are made that cannot and will not be kept. Nuclear fusion is quite feasible and there is no need to demonstrate its “feasibility”, the important point is that it’s a phenomenon that does not exist in nature!

Trying to recreate “conditions at the heart of our Sun” would be like asking a cave man to produce a laser beam, or a small island-state to support the industrial base of China or asking a child to sing like the late Pavarotti.

Nuclear reactors takes a natural phenomenon (nuclear fission) and concentrates it to produce energy, it does not manufacture the phenomenon itself but works like a lens or a laser device or a sound amplifier that takes something that exists in nature and focus it.

Fusion on the other hand does not exist in the natural world inhabited by mankind, it only exist in the heart of a Star, that is beyond nature and any attempt to recreate it will sound like a five year old singing Nessun Dorma.

We return to the news article to read further:

“The California-based NIF is the largest experimental science facility in the US and contains the world’s most powerful laser. It has taken 12 years to build.

…

Experiments will begin in June 2009, with the first significant results expected between 2010 and 2012.

…

Fusion is looked on as the “holy grail” of energy sources because of its potential to supply almost limitless clean energy.

But the challenge of creating a practical fusion reactor has eluded scientists for decades. Now, however, they believe they are nearing their goal.

“We are now very close to the culmination of 50 years’ effort,” explained Professor Dunne.

There are currently several experimental facilities around the world aimed at demonstrating the building blocks of nuclear fusion.

Fusion naturally occurs at the centre of stars where huge gravitational pressure allows the process to happen at temperatures of about 10 million Celsius.

At the much lower pressures on Earth, temperatures to produce fusion need to be much higher – above 100 million Celsius.”

-Giant laser experiment powers up, 31 March,BBC [my emphasis]

Well now California can boast of having the biggest laser as well as the biggest state deficit in the union. The madness contained in the first sentences alone boggles my mind. Building dedicated experimental facilities for science is madness, building the world’s largest laser for scientific research is madness and spending twelve years on the project is twelve times madness.

There is not a single commercial project financed by private capital that takes half as much time since the railroads connected the coasts of North America. Whether the machine will work or not is yet to be seen, the European’s fanfare about the new accelerator turned into embarrassment when it failed to function.

In my previous post I wrote:

They have spent huge amounts of money on building larger and larger accelerators, the failure of each one to advance the science becomes the reason for building an even bigger one; this process of enlargement has resulted in an accelerator as big as a city, the biggest pyramid is always built shortly before the end.

We go back, one last time, to the news article:

“NIF’s beams are intended to deliver more than 60 times the energy of any previous laser system. When fired, the pulse will last just a few nanoseconds (billionths of a second) but it will impart an energy equivalent to 500 trillion Watts – more than the peak electrical generating power of the entire United States.

…

Other experiments have shown that ignition is possible, but so far none have been able to demonstrate a net energy gain.

“The world is looking to NIF to provide a clear, unequivocal demonstration that lasers can initiate fusion energy gain,” said Professor Dunne.

“This would lay the fundamental physics question to rest, allowing the community to focus on harnessing this energy.”

Although NIF is only at the beginning of its experimental life, scientists are already planning its successor, a European project known as Hiper (High Power Laser Energy Research).

…

At approximately the same time, scientist will also get their hands on another mammoth fusion experiment, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter), currently being built in Cadarache, France.”

-Giant laser experiment powers up, 31 March,BBC [my emphasis]

The big numbers sure do dazzle, even thought they are wrong! Watt is the unit of power and not energy. The energy imparted by the laser will be the power multiplied by the duration, thus 500 trillion by billionths of a second, or 10¹⁴ by 10^-9 or a hundred thousand joule. This energy according to Wikipedia is about “the average kinetic energy of an automobile at highway speeds” (Orders of magnitude (energy))!

“Net energy gain” will forever elude them, no matter how close they come to zero they will never achieve it. The problem has nothing to do with technology it is a problem of mathematical education! Engineers are always trying to trisect the angle or square the circle, they keep coming up with system that approximate the desired end but never really get there. They refuse to accept that it is mathematically proven that one cannot trisect the angle or square the circle, or generate energy from fusion on Earth for that matter.

What is the “fundamental physics question” that will be answered? Or maybe we should ask: should we build such an expansive experiment when the “fundamental physics question” is still unanswered? How is it possible that Einstein could come up with the special theory while working for the patent office-I could name many others, Descartes is another good example-and the legions of current scientists are unable to do anything without first spending a couple of billion dollars-and even after spending the money they cannot come up with the goods.

These “scientists” belief in the power of science is just as irrational and dangerous as ancient priests’ belief in the power of a statue housed in a temple to change the climate. As more resources are directed towards building larger temples instead of better irrigation-works collapse becomes inevitable-the film Rapa Nui (1994) demonstrates this points wonderfully, it is the film that Apocalypto (2006) wanted to be.