The 48 Laws of Power, and Other Secret Archives

From Sun Tzu to Machiavelli and beyond, clever strategists have sought to unearth the secrets of wealth, power, happiness, and ultimate victory. Today we will focus on Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power.

Law 1 Never Outshine the Master

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.

Law 2 Never put too Much Trust in Friends, Learn how to use Enemies

Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

Law 3 Conceal your Intentions

Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelope them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late.

Law 4 Always Say Less than Necessary

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.

Law 5 So Much Depends on Reputation Guard it with your Life

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once you slip, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.

Law 6 Court Attention at all Cost

Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all cost. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious, than the bland and timid masses.

Law 7 Get others to do the Work for you, but Always Take the Credit

Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.

Law 8 Make other People come to you use Bait if Necessary

When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control. It is always better to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process. Lure him with fabulous gains then attack. You hold the cards.

Law 9 Win through your Actions, Never through Argument

Any momentary triumph you think gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory: The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion. It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.

Law 10 Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky

You can die from someone elses misery emotional states are as infectious as disease. You may feel you are helping the drowning man but you are only precipitating your own disaster. The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.

Law 11 Learn to Keep People Dependent on You

To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.

Law 12 Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm your Victim

One sincere and honest move will cover over dozens of dishonest ones. Open-hearted gestures of honesty and generosity bring down the guard of even the most suspicious people. Once your selective honesty opens a hole in their armor, you can deceive and manipulate them at will. A timely gift a Trojan horse will serve the same purpose.

Law 13 When Asking for Help, Appeal to Peoples Self-Interest, Never to their Mercy or Gratitude

If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds. He will find a way to ignore you. Instead, uncover something in your request, or in your alliance with him, that will benefit him, and emphasize it out of all proportion. He will respond enthusiastically when he sees something to be gained for himself.

Law 14 Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy

Knowing about your rival is critical. Use spies to gather valuable information that will keep you a step ahead. Better still: Play the spy yourself. In polite social encounters, learn to probe. Ask indirect questions to get people to reveal their weaknesses and intentions. There is no occasion that is not an opportunity for artful spying.

Law 15 Crush your Enemy Totally

All great leaders since Moses have known that a feared enemy must be crushed completely. (Sometimes they have learned this the hard way.) If one ember is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will eventually break out. More is lost through stopping halfway than through total annihilation: The enemy will recover, and will seek revenge. Crush him, not only in body but in spirit.


Law 16 Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor

Too much circulation makes the price go down: The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity.

Law 17 Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability

Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other peoples actions. Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables: Be deliberately unpredictable. Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off-balance, and they will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves. Taken to an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorize.

Law 18 Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself Isolation is Dangerous

The world is dangerous and enemies are everywhere everyone has to protect themselves. A fortress seems the safest. But isolation exposes you to more dangers than it protects you from it cuts you off from valuable information, it makes you conspicuous and an easy target. Better to circulate among people find allies, mingle. You are shielded from your enemies by the crowd.

Law 19 Know Who Youre Dealing with Do Not Offend the Wrong Person

There are many different kinds of people in the world, and you can never assume that everyone will react to your strategies in the same way. Deceive or outmaneuver some people and they will spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge. They are wolves in lambs clothing. Choose your victims and opponents carefully, then never offend or deceive the wrong person.

Law 20 Do Not Commit to Anyone

It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause but yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others playing people against one another, making them pursue you.

Law 21 Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker Seem Dumber than your Mark

No one likes feeling stupider than the next persons. The trick, is to make your victims feel smart and not just smart, but smarter than you are. Once convinced of this, they will never suspect that you may have ulterior motives.

Law 22 Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness into Power

When you are weaker, never fight for honors sake; choose surrender instead. Surrender gives you time to recover, time to torment and irritate your conqueror, time to wait for his power to wane. Do not give him the satisfaction of fighting and defeating you surrender first. By turning the other check you infuriate and unsettle him. Make surrender a tool of power.

Law 23 Concentrate Your Forces

Conserve your forces and energies by keeping them concentrated at their strongest point. You gain more by finding a rich mine and mining it deeper, than by flitting from one shallow mine to another intensity defeats extensity every time. When looking for sources of power to elevate you, find the one key patron, the fat cow who will give you milk for a long time to come.

Law 24 Play the Perfect Courtier

The perfect courtier thrives in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity. He has mastered the art of indirection; he flatters, yields to superiors, and asserts power over others in the mot oblique and graceful manner. Learn and apply the laws of courtiership and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.

Law 25 Re-Create Yourself

Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

Law 26 Keep Your Hands Clean

You must seem a paragon of civility and efficiency: Your hands are never soiled by mistakes and nasty deeds. Maintain such a spotless appearance by using others as scapegoats and cats-paws to disguise your involvement.

Law 27 Play on Peoples Need to Believe to Create a Cultlike Following

People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow. Keep your words vague but full of promise; emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking. Give your new disciples rituals to perform, ask them to make sacrifices on your behalf. In the absence of organized religion and grand causes, your new belief system will bring you untold power.

Law 28 Enter Action with Boldness

If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.

Law 29 Plan All the Way to the End

The ending is everything. Plan all the way to it, taking into account all the possible consequences, obstacles, and twists of fortune that might reverse your hard work and give the glory to others. By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop. Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead.

Law 30 Make your Accomplishments Seem Effortless

Your actions must seem natural and executed with ease. All the toil and practice that go into them, and also all the clever tricks, must be concealed. When you act, act effortlessly, as if you could do much more. Avoid the temptation of revealing how hard you work it only raises questions. Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.

Law 31 Control the Options: Get Others to Play with the Cards you Deal

The best deceptions are the ones that seem to give the other person a choice: Your victims feel they are in control, but are actually your puppets. Give people options that come out in your favor whichever one they choose. Force them to make choices between the lesser of two evils, both of which serve your purpose. Put them on the horns of a dilemma: They are gored wherever they turn.

Law 32 Play to Peoples Fantasies

The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes for disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: Everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.

Law 33 Discover Each Mans Thumbscrew

Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usual y an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure. Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.

Law 34 Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated like one

The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated; In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you. For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.

Law 35 Master the Art of Timing

Never seem to be in a hurry hurrying betrays a lack of control over yourself, and over time. Always seem patient, as if you know that everything will come to you eventually. Become a detective of the right moment; sniff out the spirit of the times, the trends that will carry you to power. Learn to stand back when the time is not yet ripe, and to strike fiercely when it has reached fruition.

Law 36 Disdain Things you cannot have: Ignoring them is the best Revenge

By acknowledging a petty problem you give it existence and credibility. The more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him; and a small mistake is often made worse and more visible when you try to fix it. It is sometimes best to leave things alone. If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem.

Law 37 Create Compelling Spectacles

Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power everyone responds to them. Stage spectacles for those around you, then full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.

Law 38 Think as you like but Behave like others

If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them. They will find a way to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.

Law 39 Stir up Waters to Catch Fish

Anger and emotion are strategically counterproductive. You must always stay calm and objective. But if you can make your enemies angry while staying calm yourself, you gain a decided advantage. Put your enemies off-balance: Find the chink in their vanity through which you can rattle them and you hold the strings.

Law 40 Despise the Free Lunch

What is offered for free is dangerous it usually involves either a trick or a hidden obligation. What has worth is worth paying for. By paying your own way you stay clear of gratitude, guilt, and deceit. It is also often wise to pay the full price there is no cutting corners with excellence. Be lavish with your money and keep it circulating, for generosity is a sign and a magnet for power.

Law 41 Avoid Stepping into a Great Mans Shoes

What happens first always appears better and more original than what comes after. If you succeed a great man or have a famous parent, you will have to accomplish double their achievements to outshine them. Do not get lost in their shadow, or stuck in a past not of your own making: Establish your own name and identity by changing course. Slay the overbearing father, disparage his legacy, and gain power by shining in your own way.

Law 42 Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep will Scatter

Trouble can often be traced to a single strong individual the stirrer, the arrogant underling, the poisoned of goodwill. If you allow such people room to operate, others will succumb to their influence. Do not wait for the troubles they cause to multiply, do not try to negotiate with them they are irredeemable. Neutralize their influence by isolating or banishing them. Strike at the source of the trouble and the sheep will scatter.

Law 43 Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others

Coercion creates a reaction that will eventually work against you. You must seduce others into wanting to move in your direction. A person you have seduced becomes your loyal pawn. And the way to seduce others is to operate on their individual psychologies and weaknesses. Soften up the resistant by working on their emotions, playing on what they hold dear and what they fear. Ignore the hearts and minds of others and they will grow to hate you.

Law 44 Disarm and Infuriate with the Mirror Effect

The mirror reflects reality, but it is also the perfect tool for deception: When you mirror your enemies, doing exactly as they do, they cannot figure out your strategy. The Mirror Effect mocks and humiliates them, making them overreact. By holding up a mirror to their psyches, you seduce them with the illusion that you share their values; by holding up a mirror to their actions, you teach them a lesson. Few can resist the power of Mirror Effect.

Law 45 Preach the Need for Change, but Never Reform too much at Once

Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract, but on the day-to-day level people are creatures of habit. Too much innovation is traumatic, and will lead to revolt. If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.

Law 46 Never appear too Perfect

Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.

Law 47 Do not go Past the Mark you Aimed for; In Victory, Learn when to Stop

The moment of victory is often the moment of greatest peril. In the heat of victory, arrogance and overconfidence can push you past the goal you had aimed for, and by going too far, you make more enemies than you defeat. Do not allow success to go to your head. There is no substitute for strategy and careful planning. Set a goal, and when you reach it, stop.

Law 48 Assume Formlessness

By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack. Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move. Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed. The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes. _RobertGreene.net 48 Laws of Power

Power, Seduction, and War . . . the blog of Robert Greene

The 48 Laws of Power at Amazon.com

Free Online Library: Works on Strategy and War (Includes Machievelli, Sun Tzu, von Clauswitz, etc) click on the book you wish to study

The Occult Technology of Power

As always on the Al Fin blog, we do not attempt to move anyone to adopt a particular point of view. Our purposes are almost exclusively to inform and to provoke.

Everything you think you know, just ain't so. Until you figure that out, you are only going to be taken advantage of by folks who have a better feel for the deep inner grit of things.

H/T Foseti

New Addition to Al Fin Blogroll: Forward Base B

I learned about the blog Forward Base B while looking over inbound web activity. It seems fairly new, but the posting is prolific, and covers a wide range of intriguing topics.

Take a look and see what you think.

With or Without Putin, Russia is Slipping Away

One of Russia's biggest problems is that many of its best people are moving out, and they are being replaced by people who are -- shall we put it kindly -- sub-par. Unskilled workers from the republics are flowing into Russia, while its best trained and most skilled workers and professionals are finding their ways abroad.

Even worse, ethnic Russians who stay in Russia achieve fertility rates less than 1.5 child per woman -- even with pro-natal Kremlin policies -- while Chechen women maintain fertility rates well above 3 children per woman. Two thirds of births from ethnic Russian women are from women between the ages of 20 and 29 -- a part of the population that happens to be shrinking at this time. In less than 15 years, the number of Russian women in that age group are estimated to be reduced by almost 50%.

Russian women continue looking abroad for marriage, family, and child-raising, because -- frankly speaking -- Russian men are not reliable, and Russia is no place to raise a child.

What really matter are job security, crime-free cities, family life and health, and in all these yardsticks Russia is slipping. I won’t go into the dismal life expectancy for men or the crime stats, but Russia has a major problem. It is a real concern when wealthy Russians start packing up their bags and settle abroad.

For Russia, which boasts a highly educated and intellectual population with vast achievements in science and technology, it is dangerous to be so dependent on fossil fuels and minerals. Russia’s successful military and space programmes have yielded few known commercial spinoffs. More than 20 years after the Soviet Union dissolved, Russia doesn’t have a globally renowned consumer durables brand. _Indrus.in

The quality of Russian higher education, for the most part, is somewhat overstated. The severe brain drain of the post-collapse era left Russia's intelligentsia depleted, the brain drain continues.

Salaries and the terms of faculty appointments and promotion are central to the well-being of the academic profession and its contributions to the university. If salaries are inadequate, the “best and brightest” will not be attracted to academe...in a globalised world, salaries in one country affect academe elsewhere, as professors are tempted to move where remuneration and working conditions are best....Russia and the former Soviet states pay quite low salaries, even when their economies are relatively prosperous.....For academics in those countries with quite low salaries — such as China, Russia, Armenia or Ethiopia — the academic profession faces a crisis. _TheHindu

Not all Russian professors are worth hiring abroad -- just like many social science professors in the west are not worth hiring at all. But for those who are accomplished in science and technology, the temptation to migrate abroad can be overpowering.

Russia's economy has been pegged to its energy resources for decades. Now, Russia is trying to re-invent itself in terms of business and innovation. But doing so will be very difficult.

Russia’s reliance on the export of oil and natural gas and lack of integration into regional and global markets inhibit economic growth. Although Russia’s World Trade Organization accession this year will open the Russian economy to greater foreign trade and investment, there is not yet an effective strategy for economic development. The authors recommend a “twin-vector economic strategy” that simultaneously orients Russia’s economy toward the East and West, so that it can benefit from advanced technology and investment from both.

The most obvious constraint on Russia’s ability to pursue such a strategy [Outlook 2030] is its poor climate for business and investment, in particular the pervasive corruption that crops up at every level of state and society. In addition, the country’s underdeveloped public health system, relatively anemic middle class, continuing “brain drain” emigration and aging workforce will hinder Russia’s competitiveness and attractiveness for investment. Though “Outlook” avoids the “third rail” of Russian politics -- addressing official corruption at the top levels of government -- it recommends the Kremlin adopt policies to foster the growth of small business, eliminate excessive bureaucracy and even offer greater freedom and support for civil society. Putin has shown little enthusiasm in practice for such reforms... _Carnegie Endowment

Russian life expectancy continues to be horrendously low, for a nation that claims to be developed. Few Russian men live long enough to enjoy more than a year or two of vodka-sotted retirement. Heart disease, accidents, and violent crime take care of those that alcoholism, suicide, HIV, and drug resistant TB do not handle.

A more in depth look at Russia's demographic prospects (PDF)

The recent crash of Russia's first new airliner design in decades will not help build Russia's new reputation for world-class innovation. And the theft of military technology systems by China -- a growing competitor on second and third tier defense markets for Soviet era weapons systems -- does not help to keep Russian weapons and technology manufacturers in business.

Voters in Russia have never been taken seriously. Now that Putin has achieved "President For Life" status, there is no reason for the Kremlin to do more than give them lip service from now until the military machine rusts, the oil & gas wells give out, and the Russian ethnic demographic passes the point of no return.

Who wouldn't want to get out?

China Is Best Seen As a Vast Organised Crime Syndicate

Update 16 April 2012: Among 100 Chinese government officials, there are 101 corrupted Chinese government officials

China is not a unified power. It is a conglomerate -- or a syndicate -- of multiple regions, sectors, and power blocs, operating under the umbrella of the central committee's oversight and sanction. Just like an organised crime syndicate, it is results that matter -- not necessarily the methods that were used to obtain the results.

Patrick ChovanecThe map above presents just one concept of how China could be divided. But in reality, China can be divided many different ways, in terms of the flow of power, wealth, and information. Rivalries between power blocs are fierce and the pressure to perform is unrelenting.

How is China like an organised crime syndicate? Let's look at just one example -- China's procurement of weapons systems from Russia:

For more than a decade, China has been a major importer of weapons. No more, despite a rapidly growing defense budget. Two years ago, China dropped to second place in weapons imports, and last year slipped to fourth place. The main reason is that China is producing more of the high-tech military gear it used to import. The main reason for that is massive theft of foreign military technology. While the best stuff was stolen from the West (usually via the Internet), the most useful designs were stolen from Russia. That's because Chinese manufacturing capabilities, for many exotic military technologies, are not yet up to Western standards. But the Chinese can make useful copies of Russian tech.

Throughout the 1990s, Russian arms exports to China were brisk, peaking at $2 billion a year. But six years ago, it all stopped. Well, for all practical purposes, with the flood shrinking to a trickle. The reason was Chinese theft of Russian military technology. For example, three years ago, Russia refused to sell China any Su-33 jet fighters for fear that the Chinese would steal the design and manufacture illegal copies. The Su-33 is a modified (for use on aircraft carriers) version of the Su-27. For several years China discussed the possibility of buying 50 Su-33s. But when the Chinese said they'd like to just buy two initially, for "evaluation purposes," Russia recoiled and said they would not sell the Chinese any of the 33 ton Su-33s. Russia uses two dozen of them on its carrier Kuznetzov, although these are being replaced by navalized MiG-29Ks.

The reason behind this refusal was Russia's admission that China was producing unlicensed copies of the Su-27 fighter. Russia had known about this theft for some time. It all began in 1995, when China paid $2.5 billion for the right to build 200 Su-27s. Russia would supply engines and electronics. But after 95 of the Chinese built aircraft were built, Russia cancelled the agreement. They claimed that China was using the knowledge acquired with the Su-27 program, to build their own copy of the Su-27, the J-11. Russia kept the piracy issue quiet, and warned the Chinese that simply copying Russian technology would produce an inferior aircraft. Apparently the Chinese do not agree, and are continuing their work on the J-11, using only, what they claim is, Chinese technology.

Another example of this tech theft is the Chinese HQ-9 anti-aircraft missile system, which is offered for export. This system is believed to contain technology from similar Russian (S-300) and U.S. (Patriot) systems. _StrategyPage

Multiply this small example by thousands of other ongoing instances across the spectrum of economic and political activity, and you will begin to understand how the China Syndicate operates. This is just how an organised crime syndicate works. The central criminal committee or boss doesn't care how the subsidiary crime groups make their money, as long as the tribute keeps coming, and the overall power of the central criminal committee remains intact.

Theft, espionage, piracy, extortion, fraud, murder, vice -- all of these tactics are acceptable to the central criminal committee, and are simply ways of doing business. The syndicate will not publicly admit to these activities, just as China's leadership will not publicly admit to the blatantly criminal actions of its sanctioned subsidiaries.

If a particular criminal chapter or "company" becomes too embarassing to the central criminal committee, pressure can be put on the bosses of that chapter. If pressure isn't enough, there are stronger ways of dealing with those who will not submit to the central criminal committee.

The Chinese culture puts its unique stamp on the various forms of criminal enterprise -- both official and unofficial -- which come together under the umbrella of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. But the general forms could be recognised anywhere -- from Sicily to Russia to Nigeria to Medellin.

What can you do once you have gained this insight? That is something that the governments of the advanced world have to ask themselves. Because the governments of the first world have enough trouble dealing with their own self-made disasters of debt, demographic decline, and energy starvation by carbon hysteria. Being scammed by the world's largest criminal enterprise, on top of everything else, is as useful as a rapid intracranial injection of hot lead.

Germany's Strange Case of Energy Anorexia Nervosa

The following article is adapted from an article on Al Fin Energy

“If Germany succeeds, it could be a role model for economies all over the world,” said Claudia Kemfert, DIW’s senior energy expert. “If it fails, it will be a disaster for Germany’s politicians, society and economy.” _Bloomberg

Germany will serve as a test case to show whether industrialized countries can compete while relying on renewables _TechnologyReview

Germany -- the economic powerhouse of Europe -- has settled upon a risky energy strategy, staking its industrial future on intermittent and unreliable forms of energy: big wind and big solar. Germany is turning away from nuclear power, and aims to use intermittent renewables to generate 33% 35% of its electric power by 2020, and 50% of its electric power by 2050.

Unfortunately for the future of German industry, the intermittency of big wind and big solar will make it almost impossible for German utilities to provide clean, affordable, and reliable power to industry and other consumers, at the high levels of penetration by intermittent renewables that Germany is trying to achieve. Clearly, some form of utility-scale storage would be needed to make such a scheme "work." That is why German planners are considering the "hydrogen option."

The hydrogen option involves using intermittent renewables to convert water into H2 and O2 using electrolysis, then converting the H2 back to electricity when needed, using fuel cells. Unfortunately, the round trip conversion efficiency of the "hydrogen option" is only about 20 or 25% -- in other words, Germans will lose 75% to 80% of the total energy generated by the intermittent renewables. Which is precious little to begin with.

With that information in mind, here is more about the German plan from Technology Review:

If Germany is to meet its ambitious goals of getting a third of its electricity from renewable energy by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050, it must find a way to store huge quantities of electricity in order to make up for the intermittency of renewable energy.

Siemens says it has just the technology: electrolyzer plants, each the size of a large warehouse, that split water to make hydrogen gas. The hydrogen could be used when the wind isn't blowing to generate electricity in gas-fired power plants, or it could be used to fuel cars.

Producing hydrogen is an inefficient way to store energy—about two-thirds of the power is lost in the processes of making the hydrogen and using the hydrogen to generate electricity. But Siemens says it's the only storage option that can achieve the scale that's going to be needed in Germany.

Unlike conventional industrial electrolyzers, which need a fairly steady supply of power to efficiently split water, Siemens's new design is flexible enough to run on intermittent power from wind turbines. It's based on proton-exchange membrane technology similar to that used in fuel cells for cars, which can operate at widely different power levels. The electrolyzers can also temporarily operate at two to three times their rated power levels, which could be useful for accommodating surges in power on windy days.

Germany, which has led the world in installing solar capacity, isn't just concerned about climate change. Its leaders think that in the long term, renewable energy will be cheaper than fossil fuels, so it could give the country an economic advantage, says Miranda Schreurs, director of the Environmental Policy Research Center at the Freie Universität Berlin. Germany will serve as a test case to show whether industrialized countries can compete while relying on renewables. _MITTechnologyReview

The Need for Vital Energy vs. the Giant Green-Industrial Complex

...in the U.S., new technologies such as hydraulic fracking and vertical drilling have vastly increased estimates of North America’s energy resources, particularly natural gas. By 2020, the United States, according to the consultancy PFC Energy, will surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading oil and gas producer. _Kotkin

All healthy, modern industrial economies require abundant supplies of energy. Any organisation or institution which obstructs the supply of energy to a modern nation is the deadly enemy of that society and those people. Today, the huge, well-funded green-industrial complex is exposing itself as opposed to all reliable and affordable forms of energy. This means that there is a war, of sorts, taking place in modern industrial nations, between the pro-prosperity forces and the energy-starvation forces.

ImageSource
More:

The divide between the fossil-fuel industry and the green movement is increasingly dividing the country by region, class, and culture....President Obama in recent days has gone out of his way to sound reassuring on energy, seeming to approve an oil pipeline to Oklahoma this week after earlier approving leases for drilling in Alaska. Yet few in the energy industry trust the administration’s commitment to expanding the nation’s conventional energy supplies given his strong ties to the powerful green movement, which opposes the fossil-fuel industry in a split that’s increasingly dividing the country by region, class, and culture.

...No single sector affects more people and industries than energy, and none is more deeply affected by the disposition of government. Energy divides the nation into two camps. On one side there are the regions and industries dependent on the development and use of energy. They include the increasingly expansive energy-producing region stretching from the Gulf Coast and the Great Plains to parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the Appalachian range.

...Nine of the 11 fastest-growing job categories are related to energy production, according to an analysis by Economic Modeling Systems Inc. Energy jobs pay an average of $100,000 annually, about the same as software engineers earn in Silicon Valley.

Perhaps more important politically, this bonanza is now spreading to historical battleground states Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Long-depressed areas like western Pennsylvania are reversing decades of decline as new finds and advances in natural-gas drilling have opened up vast new stores of domestic energy. The new energy wealth has created new jobs, enriched property owners, and provided states with potential huge new sources of revenue.

...Given the success in the other energy states, California—with double-digit unemployment—might reconsider its policies, but this is unlikely. “I asked [Gov.] Jerry Brown about why California cannot come to grips with its huge hydrocarbon reserves,” John Hofmeister, a former president of Shell Oil’s American operations and a member of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technical Advisory Committee, told me recently. “After all, this could turn around the state."

Brown’s answer, according to Hofmeister: “This is not logic, it’s California. This is simply not going to happen here.’”

...If all [national] energy subsidies were removed, the fossil-fuel industry likely could shrug off the hit, while the heavily subsidized green-industrial complex would markedly diminish. Yet even if Congress refuses to continue the green subsidies, it’s probable that administration regulators would find ways to slow fossil-fuel expansion in a second Obama term. Responding largely to the Democratic environmental lobby, they have already overruled the State Department to delay the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada.... _Joel
Kotkin

It is slowly sinking into Barack Obama's mind that he confronts perhaps the first real political test of his charmed career. This time, the abysmal economic condition of the country can be laid squarely at his feet. With a real unemployment rate of 11% and an underemployment rate above 20%, the housing market continuing to decline across large swathes of the country, and 73% of the US population saying the country is "on the wrong track" -- Mr. Obama's spin machine has its work cut out for it.

Canada, on the other hand, appears to have been taking a more rational pro-energy approach from the very start of its current administration.

The [Canadian] government’s notion of an energy strategy — emphasize the power and efficiency of markets, get rid of red tape, finger environmental radicals, and remind the U.S. how secure Canadian supplies are — received a double boost this week...

...the main reason for both the strong Canadian dollar and high petroleum prices is that government money factories from the U.S. Federal Reserve to the European Central Bank are trying to bail out their political masters by debasing their currencies. It’s got little or nothing to do with Fort McMurray.

The good news on the policy front is that this spat helps put paid to the notion that Canada is ever likely to get a comprehensive and intrusive energy strategy of the kind usually embraced by left liberal governments _GWPF Peter Foster

Countries across the western world had best get out the disinfectant, to remove the green rot which is eating away at their industrial and economic strength. The alternative to such vigorous spring cleaning is a progressive sinking into the twin quagmires of debt and demographic decline.

You are not likely to enjoy that alternative.

English Speaking Nations Well Positioned Demographically ....

Wiki Anglosphere
If demography is destiny, then the Anglospheric nations appear to be well positioned for the next few decades.

Between 1980 and 2010, the U.S., Canada, and Australia saw big population surges: the U.S.’s expanded by 75 million, to more than 300 million; Canada’s nearly doubled, from 18 million to 34 million; and Australia’s increased from 13 million to 22 million. By contrast, in some European countries, such as Germany, population has remained stagnant, while Russia and Japan have watched their populations begin to shrink.

...Germany already has 33 elderly people for every 100 of working age—up from only 21 in 1985. By 2030, this figure will rise to 48, meaning that there will be barely two working Germans per retiree. The numbers are even worse in Japan, which currently has 35 seniors per 100 working-age people, a dramatic change from 1985, when the country had just 15. By 2030, the ratio is expected to rise to 53 per 100. _CityJournal

CityJournal

Other countries, such as Brazil and Iran, face similar scenarios. These countries, without social safety nets of the kinds developed in Europe or Japan, may get old before they can get rich.

These figures will have an impact on the growth of the global workforce. Between 2000 and 2050, for example, the U.S. workforce is projected to grow by 37 percent, while China’s shrinks by 10 percent, the EU’s decreases by 21 percent, and, most strikingly, Japan’s falls by as much as 40 percent.

In this respect, immigration presents the most important long-term advantage for the Anglosphere, which has excelled at incorporating citizens from other cultures. A remarkable 14 million people immigrated to Anglosphere countries over the last decade. _CityJournal

It’s indisputable that the Anglosphere no longer enjoys the overwhelming global dominance that it once had. What was once a globe-spanning empire is now best understood as a union of language, culture, and shared values. Yet what declinists overlook is that despite its current economic problems, the Anglosphere’s fundamental assets—economic, political, demographic, and cultural—are likely to drive its continued global leadership. The Anglosphere future is brighter than commonly believed. _CityJournal

CityJournalBut beyond mere demographics and current economic rankings, the Anglosphere is sitting on a tonne of energy -- which can be used to provide a bridge between the hydrocarbon age and the nuclear / electrical age.

...the US, Canada and Britain, are re-appraising domestic energy policies to take advantage of vast hydrocarbon resources; although President Obama is certainly doing his best to slow down the impact fossil fuels could have on the US domestic economy.

The impact of US shale gas – and prospectively shale oil – on domestic energy prices and in pegging back global prices, has already been nothing short of a revolution. Canada is not hanging around waiting for its southern neighbor to re-think its Keystone Pipeline strategy, but is already looking to sell much of its vast oil sands resource on the Asian market. Both the US and Canadian markets have also seen significant investment in their domestic energy markets, not least from cash-rich Chinese energy companies.

In Britain, North Sea oil and gas is a resource that just refuses to quit. Indeed, inward investment into Britain’s North Sea energy industries for 2012 already stands at a record breaking £7.5 billion. But Britain now appears to have a world class shale gas resource that could match, or even eclipse, its entire North Sea resource. Add to this the fact that oil prospects in the Falklands Basin are set to triple the country’s reserves, and Britain’s commitment to developing domestic resources leaves the rest of Europe cold (perhaps literally). _EnergyTribune

Meanwhile, Australia has significant supplies of coal and the world's largest resource of uranium.

In many ways, the English language is the Anglosphere's greatest resource, providing a common economic, cultural, and scientific link for the global machine.

Of course, politics and bloated governments are the weakest link, as always. Corrupt rent seeking bureaucrats, politicians, lobbies, and hangers-on, are always a threat to a prosperous future. Witness the US Obama administration and its policy of energy starvation, for example. If not for the persistence of a few stubborn entrepreneurs in the shale energy game, energy prices in the US would be in the stratosphere -- exactly where Obama had planned for them to be.

Fortunately, the bellicose crown prince of dysfunctional government has been forced to backtrack on several of his anti-energy stances. Not nearly far enough, but if the pompous monarch of arrogant ineptitude can be unseated in November, a great deal of promise can still be salvaged for the US and Anglospheric future.

Governments in Australia and the UK have pushed for similarly self-destructive energy policies, and have been forced to backtrack to variable degrees, as well. Canada's provincial governments are quite a mixed bag, but the federal government appears to be relatively pro-energy for now.

The most important purpose of the Anglosphere is to provide a stable environment for the evolution of next level humans. Once that transition moves into a self-sustaining mode, things will begin happening so quickly that ordinary political and governmental classifications will no longer signify to any great extent. But in the meantime, a significant stability and relative prosperity will be very important.

More: An Australian look at the death of peak oil

California's Monterey shale may contain 500 billion barrels of shale oil crude. North Dakota's Bakken is likely to contain a similar amount.

The US shale gas explosion produced so much natural gas that it resulted in a methane glut and a price slump for methane in the US, and we are beginning to see the same in Canada. Will the same thing happen in the UK? Or in Australia, due to coal seam methane? Abundant energy is crucial for industrial production and commercial activity. Let us hope that the people of the Anglosphere never allow their politicians to do what Obama, Rudd, and Cameron were apparently trying to do -- shut down fossil fuels and starve their nations of energy.

A Policy of Energy Starvation in Germany: A Cautionary Tale

Last spring, Chancellor Angela Merkel set Germany on course to eliminate nuclear power in favor of renewable energy sources. Now, though, several industries are suffering as electricity prices rapidly rise. Many companies are having to close factories or move abroad. _Spiegel

When governments embrace the green fantasy, their economies inevitably suffer. Germany's government went even more deeply into energy starvation than US President Obama's government. Germany actually closed its cleanest and most reliable source of electric power: nuclear plants.

Since Chancellor Angela Merkel's government abruptly decided to phase out nuclear energy last spring in the wake of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, the situation for industries that consume a lot of electricity has become much more tenuous.

Energy prices are rising and the risk of power outages is growing. But the urgently needed expansion of the grid, as well as the development of replacement power plants and renewable energy sources is progressing very slowly. A growing number of economic experts, business executives and union leaders are putting the blame squarely on the shoulders of Merkel's coalition, which pairs her conservatives with the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP). The government, they say, has expedited de-industrialization.

The energy supply is now "the top risk for Germany as a location for business," says Hans Heinrich Driftmann, president of the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK). "One has to be concerned in Germany about the cost of electricity," warns European Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger. And Bernd Kalwa, a member of the general works council at ThyssenKrupp, says heatedly: "Some 5,000 jobs are in jeopardy within our company alone, because an irresponsible energy policy is being pursued in Düsseldorf and Berlin."

...There is no sign yet of the green economic miracle that the federal government promised would accompany Germany's new energy strategy. On the contrary, many manufacturers of wind turbines and solar panels complain that business is bad and are cutting jobs. Some solar companies have already gone out of business. The environmental sector faces a number of problems, especially -- and ironically -- those stemming from high energy prices.

...the immediate shutdown of seven nuclear power plants last March is affecting supply, as the Krefeld example shows. The steel mill requires massive amounts of electricity to produce stainless steel, used in such products as sinks and auto bodies. The metal is heated to more than 1,600 degrees Celsius (2,912 degrees Fahrenheit) in giant furnaces. A single smelter consumes about as much energy in an hour as 10 single-family homes in an entire year. Electricity makes up a fifth of the mill's total costs, says Harald Behmenburg, the plant manager.

The price of electricity is moving in only one direction: steeply up. For the Krefeld plant, the cost of a kilowatt hour of electricity has tripled since 2000.

And there is no end in sight. When Merkel's new energy policy was introduced last year, says plant manager Behmenburg, planning for the future became virtually impossible. Behmenburg says that it is impossible now to know what will happen to the supply situation and the price of electricity in the coming years. The mill, steeped in tradition, didn't stand a chance of surviving, he says.

..."The promotion of renewable energy has led to substantial displacement effects on employment in the conventional energy production sectors, as well as in downstream industries that are particularly energy-intensive," concludes the report on a conference held at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research last year. The political opposition has also recognized the importance of the issue. Some believe that the green economy is everything, warns Sigmar Gabriel, chairman of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). "But they forget that they can't make a wind turbine without steel, plastic, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering."

It is equally important to stabilize the power grid as quickly as possible to prevent blackouts from occurring. Until now, the reliability of the German electricity supply was seen as a significant advantage for doing business in the country. But the loss of several nuclear power plants, coupled with the unpredictability of electricity from wind and solar sources, has changed the situation. _Spiegel

Germany's ongoing demographic decline will only be made worse by such abysmally irresponsible policies as the current energy starvation policy. Shutting down reliable sources of large scale power makes a wide range of important industries instantly untenable. The inevitable loss of industry and jobs is accompanied by a tragic loss of opportunity at all levels of society.

US president Obama has embarked upon a similar path to green oblivion, but fortunately for the US, he has been more tentative and cautious than Germany has been. Obama has also been lucky, in that his government has been unable to shut down oil & gas fracking of tight hydrocarbons. As a result of Obama's fortunate failure to shut down the North American shale bonanza, the US economy is still able to tread water.

But Obama has shut down several coal energy plants -- de-stabilising the power grid to a small but significant degree. He has delayed the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, thus unnecessarily reducing global supplies of crude. Future US nuclear development under Obama and NRC chairman Jaczko has been set back many years. But at least they have not shut down the crucial existing nuclear plants. Not yet.

Extra Bonus: Here is a summary of a recent set of 5 future scenarios for the year 2050, from the Deutsche Post DHL. Al Fin futurists find it fascinating that the German futurists failed to include the ongoing demographic decline in the German welfare state, or the ominous consequences of German green policies such as carbon hysteria and anti-nuclear hysteria.

It is possible that the scars from 1930s and 1940s Nazism, and from Communist dysfunction in the East, have not yet healed cleanly in the national psyche of Germany. Wiser Germans had best find a solution quickly, because it is the dysfunctional German psyche that is at the root of the nation's problems.

Russia Playing War Games with Global Oil Markets

Russia has intentionally maneuvered Iran to the brink of war over its nuclear reactor program, in order to help raise global oil prices. With Russia's unflagging assistance, Iran is processing its uranium ore so as to produce highly enriched uranium. The most likely indications are that Iran will have enough enriched uranium to build fission bombs in the near future -- again, with Russia's assistance.

Russia is the main beneficiary of the run-up to war and oil market instability -- its oil profits are keeping its corrupt government afloat. China is a secondary beneficiary, able to buy Iranian oil at a significant markdown. The Iranian people are the big losers, sinking into poverty, drug addiction, and despair.

Russia is now the world's largest oil producer, pumping about 10 million barrels of oil a day, slightly more than Saudi Arabia. Of this, Russia exports seven million barrels a day... The Russian oil industry was already reaping the rewards of higher global oil prices from Iranian tensions, even before Tehran raised the stakes Wednesday by threatening to cut off oil to six European nations.

Now, whether Iran carries out that threat immediately or Europe proceeds with its previously planned embargo of Iranian oil this summer, the Russian industry could capitalise more directly. Its pipelines stand ready to serve customers willing to pay a premium price — with a grade of oil closely resembling Iran's._NYTimes News Service _ via TheHindu

Clearly, given their growing capability to produce and deliver oil wherever the market dictates, and the tie between the price of oil and price of gas in Russian supply contracts, it is in the clear interest of the Russians to push up the price of Brent crude. Therefore, could it be that the tumult around deliveries of Iranian oil is merely a smokescreen to escalate prices, and that some thing far more nefarious is taking place? _Learsy_HuffPost

Russia is having problems with its own ineptitude and corruption. It is also troubled by the threat of the coming global shale oil & gas boom. Other competitive pressures likely to arise in the near future include massive supplies of unconventional liquid fuels from GTL, CTL, BTL, bitumens, kerogens -- all eventually facilitated by high quality nuclear process heat.

It is clear that Russia had to take matters into its own hands in order to drive up oil prices -- one way or another.

As the NYTimes reported, "The Russian oil industry was already reaping the rewards of higher oil prices from Iranian tensions." The Russians have been cashing in brilliantly while rendering support to Iran by such acts as vetoing or emasculating any and all meaningful U.N. resolutions that would force Iran to comply with the terms of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency mandates. It is an open question whether this is being done in solidarity with Iran, or more malignly, to solidify Iranian intransigence on matters nuclear, in the hope that the European and other world consumers' boycott of Iranian oil has maximum impact, making Russian oil more sale-able at ever higher prices. _Learsy

Meanwhile, Russia is seeking the help of the international oil companies to upgrade its oil production and refining procedures and operations. Given how Russia has behaved toward international oilcos in the past after having received help and technology transfer, it is difficult to see how this turns out well for either western oil companies or western countries in general.

At the same time that Russia is ramping up international tensions over Iran in order to pull in greater oil profits, it is also looking for the world's sympathy by claiming that Russian oil fields are declining rapidly, to the point that Russia's oil production "has peaked" and in danger of rapid decline.

Yes, certainly we should all feel sorry for Russia, the nation that is enabling nuclear proliferation in Iran and driving the world to the brink of war -- all for oil profits that will go into the Swiss bank accounts of Russian oligarchs, insiders, and quasi-dictators. The nation that lets its oil fields go to crap out of neglect, asks western corporations for help, then abruptly nationalises any resources, technologies, and assets which the outsiders naively leave within the kleptocratic reaches of the Russian government.

Russia's energy reserves remain vast, deep, and wide -- and largely unexplored and undiscovered. In the hands of competent organisations, Russia's hydrocarbon production would not peak for several more decades. But pay no attention to reality -- heed only what you are told by your masters.

Raymond J. Learsy thinks that Russia is manipulating global oil markets to the detriment of all of Europe:

So here we have Russia, a major supplier of oil and gas with an economy deeply dependent on the revenues received from the sale of those commodities. According to the NYTimes article, "And the taxes the Russian government has received from those sales have been a political windfall for Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin as he campaigns to return as Russia's president. The extra money has helped further subsidize domestic energy consumption, tamping down inflation." Combine this with a Russia that is in large measure governed by that unique version of our Wall Street "ole boys network," the alumni of Russia's highly touted secret service, the KGB. The KGB helped form Putin and many of his associates in government. Here was an organization that was the nonpareil masters of clandestine intrigue, knows how to keep secrets, and now in a sense, is running the country albeit with the trappings of democratic governance.

Fast forward-only this week, "a group of brokers and traders successfully managed to manipulate an interest rate that affects loans around the world" (Please see "Traders Manipulated Key Rate, Bank Says," Wall Street Journal). If this could happen to interest rates, so widely traded throughout the world, just think what a KGB oriented Russia could do, and not with $6,500 at their disposal, but billions upon billions. It should not be a stunning surprise to those, be they government agencies, the press, or energy focused think tanks, that the traded price of Brent crude is being gamed. _Learsy

That would be an interesting "one-two!" play by the Russians, if we believe that they are so clever and manipulative. First ramp up international tensions over Iran, then behind-the-scenes, use a bit of leverage to shift global markets to their advantage.

We know the Russian government needs every bit of hard currency it can get, to keep its people happy, and to keep powerful insiders well compensated. But the price being paid by the Iranian people is severe, and has no apparent end-point.

Needless to say, the strategy is not guaranteed to work to the satisfaction of top Russian players, indefinitely. A lot of things could go wrong....

Meanwhile, behind the scenes in Russia, a demographic, infrastructural, and public health disaster continues to play itself out, below the happy Potemkin facade. Putin has a grand strategy, but it is built on a foundation that is slowly crumbling.

Parts of the above were cross-posted from articles previously published at Al Fin Energy.

Meanwhile, contrast the lucrative game of realpolitik being played by Russia, with the ham-handed, self-destructive voodoo environomics being practised by the Obama administration, to the detriment of North Americans everywhere.

The Rocket Men of Private Space: The Future, Finally?

Rocket Men and Futurists
Ever since Albert Gore Jr. took control of NASA funding in the 1990s, the US space agency has been on the decline, in terms of human exploration of space. Mr. Gore helped shift the emphasis of NASA funding over to climate research, and paybacks to powerful campaign backers -- shunting funds away from the type of programs that space enthusiasts wanted to see.

With the coming of President Obama, NASA is really and truly passing the baton of manned space travel and exploration to private entities -- and none too soon! Below are excerpts from a Reason Magazine article profiling the "Rocket Men," the men who are opening the new frontier of private space:

The Daredevil: Elon Musk

Musk, a Stanford grad school dropout who was born in South Africa, made his fortune—estimated at $670 million—as one of the founders of the online payment site PayPal. Then he founded Tesla Motors, where he led development of an all-electric sports car.

After the space shuttles were retired, NASA was forced to start paying Russians to ferry Americans and their gear back and forth to the International Space Station, at about $63 million per seat. Musk says SpaceX can do it for one-third the price. The added risk of throwing humans—or as Musk refers to them, “biological cargo”—doesn’t seem to worry him.

The Mogul: Richard Branson

Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson isn’t a rocket scientist, but he knows a good publicity stunt when he sees it. The Ansari X Prize, which offered $10 million in private money for the first nongovernmental organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft twice in a two-week period, brought a burst of public attention to the commercial space race in 2004. Branson quickly snapped up the rights to the winning vehicle, SpaceShipOne, and the team that went with it, including famous aviation whiz Burt Rutan.

Since then Virgin has been working on SpaceShipTwo, which would carry two pilots and six passengers a few miles above the Karman line (the generally accepted threshold 62 miles up that separates Earth’s atmosphere from outer space) to check out the view and enjoy a brief period of weightlessness. Charging $200,000 per person (with a $20,000 deposit, please) Virgin Galactic already has 450 people signed up to fly as soon as the technology is ready and the regulatory hurdles have been cleared....

In August, NASA announced that it would be purchasing a full suborbital flight from Virgin, with an option for two more, to carry research payloads as part of the Flight Opportunities Program, a government initiative designed to “foster the development of the commercial reusable suborbital transportation industry.” The price for those three flights is a bargain at $4.5 million, about 1 percent of the cost of a single (orbital, to be fair) shuttle mission. Virgin was just one of seven companies to cut similar deals with NASA, but as is his wont, Branson grabbed the headlines.

The Dark Horse: Jeff Greason

“The technology that we’re missing is capitalism,”... at an April TEDx conference in San Jose. “The same thing that makes things work in every other arena of modern life.”

...Insiders see XCOR as an underrated rival to flashy players like Branson and Musk. XCOR has taken a gradualist approach, flying a succession of small but ever-larger rockets, including the aptly named EZ-Rocket. The current Lynx model is a two-seater that allows horizontal takeoff and landing but only goes up 38 miles, leaving the goal of outer space for the next generation rocket. But that distinction may not matter if Greason becomes the first entrepreneur to fly a paying customer on a rocket he built himself. At $95,000 for the Lynx’s single passenger seat, this small company is also offering the cheapest ticket on the market.

The Prize Giver: Peter Diamandis

Peter Diamandis is the chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, the nonprofit organization that dreamed up the Ansari X Prize—$10 million for a reusable suborbital launch vehicle—and is now offering prizes for everything from better oil spill management technology to rapid sequencing of human genomes. Richard Branson snagged the first winner, SpaceShipOne, to form the basis of Virgin Galactic’s program. But just as important, from Diamandis’ perspective, were the 25 losers. Collectively, the teams spent more than $100 million in pursuit of the prize. And that was precisely the idea.

The Hotelier: Robert Bigelow

Robert Bigelow knows hotels. He owns the Budget Suites of America extended-stay hotel chain here on Earth. But after a long rocket ride, when you need a place to crash—just figuratively, of course—Bigelow is your man. His Las Vegas company, Bigelow Aerospace, has launched two experimental orbiting modules, Genesis I and Genesis II, into space since its founding in 1996. Bigelow already has spent well over $200 million of his own money and says he’s ready to drop another $300 million on his quest to be the final frontier’s first hotelier and commercial real estate baron....

Bigelow isn’t just another space entrepreneur, he is also a client. Cheap, safe rockets are a crucial part of any plan to build while aloft. It’s big and empty up there, for the most part, so materials have to come from Earth. Bigelow sent up his test modules on Russian Dnepr rockets but has made no secret of his desire to use rockets from an American company for crew and cargo as soon as they become available.

The Rocketeer: John Carmack

The mascot of John D. Carmack’s rocket company is a cartoon armadillo wearing goggles and a scarf. It’s an oddly warm and fuzzy choice for such a nerdy founder. Armadillo Aerospace is the part-time venture of the lead programmer of Doom, Quake, and other 3D graphics-intensive video game megahits.

It’s also the leanest of the companies described here. Before he started Armadillo Aerospace, Carmack had very little experience in building spaceships, but his company went on to scoop up a couple of prizes that NASA was offering for building lunar landers while simultaneously working on suborbital (and eventually orbital) rockets. Armadillo’s strategy is physically different from those of most of its competitors, featuring a rapidly evolving form that adhered to Carmack’s credo to try out lots of options and abandon failures quickly—pretty much the opposite of NASA’s modus operandi. _Read the full article at Reason Rocket Men

Robert Zubrin: How Much Is An Astronaut's Life Worth?

There are a lot of valuable resources and real estate outside the Earth's atmosphere. The first human $trillionaire is fairly likely to earn his first $trillion via off-planet enterprises. Perhaps that is what attracts so many billionaires to space ventures.

Whatever US President Obama's reasons for opening part of the NASA budget to private space companies, the move is likely to spur a great deal of momentum toward a more economical and sustainable approach to space launch, space travel, space exploration and exploitation, and eventually space colonies. If only he would begin to shunt all of the NASA climate hysteria research funds to more productive private sector use!

Is Giant Russia a Dying Bear?

The people won't be fooled again. The demonstrations have been going on since December, and despite hundreds of arrests, the people keep coming out... Putin is...finding that many of his publicity and information management techniques that had served him so well for over two decades, no longer work. It was that damn Internet again, where a lot of smart Russians had collaborated to pick apart the reality from the myth that Putin had created in the media. There are many real problems in Russia and the Internet has allowed details, and names, to be collected and made available to all. _StrategyPage

Russia is in decline on several fronts:

• The very high death rates for men reflects a horrendous public health situation in Russia.
• The core population of Russia -- ethnic Russians -- continue to die faster than they can reproduce
• Russia is losing a large proportion of its best people via emigration to countries offering higher wages and greater opportunities to achieve
• Russia's educational system is in free-fall collapse
• Capital flight out of Russia continues to grow
• The Russian military is in decline in terms of both human capital and weapons competence
• Russia is declining in power and population at the same time that its neighbor China seems to be growing in power economically, politically, and militarily.
• Russia's economic trump card -- its oil and gas reserves -- are doomed to decline in importance as some of its best customers discover and learn to exploit massive reserves of unconventional hydrocarbons within their own borders.

There have been many attempts to deny the ongoing and accelerating decline of Russia as a world power, but these have not been convincing. The main reason for this is that such Russian apologists are typically reduced to comparing Russia with its Eastern European neighbors, rather than comparing Russia with genuine world powers. Such irrelevant comparisons should not even be printed in reputable media outlets.

Russia is likely to remain a net mortality society for the foreseeable future.Official Russian statistics anticipate a continuing and widening gap separating deaths and births between now and 2030. Rosstat envisions a surfeit of 205,000 deaths over births for 2011, rising to more than 725,000 in 2030, with a cumulative total of 9.5 million more deaths than births between 2011 and 2030. Even in Rosstat’s most optimistic scenario, the agency projects a mortality surfeit of 2.7 million between 2011 and 2025, reaching 4.7 million by 2030. In these official Russian forecasts, further depopulation can be fore-stalled only by massive immigration from abroad.

Russia has certainly benefited over the past two decades from a net influx of millions of workers, most of whom hail from former Soviet states in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

...Although Russia today accounts for about six percent of the world’s population with a post-secondary education, barely 0.1 percent of the worldwide patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office over the last decade and a half were awarded to Russians. This is not some U.S. conspiracy against Russian inventors: the records of the UN’s World Intellectual property Organization show that Russia’s share of out-of-country patent applications over that same period was less than 0.2 percent of the global total. The picture is hardly better when it comes to the output of scientific papers: the number of articles by Russians in peer-reviewed journals was no higher in 2008 than it had been in 1990,whereas output almost everywhere else in the world rose over those same years. By 2008, Russian authors were publishing far fewer scientific papers than the authors of Russia’s bric peers: Brazil, China, and India. In effect, Russia stands as a new and disturbing wonder in today’s globalized world: a society characterized by high levels of schooling but low levels of health, knowledge, and education.

...Unlike Beijing, which is committed to military modernization in the coming decades, Moscow is in effect preparing to fight this century’s wars with last century’s technology. In fact, as the Russia analysts Anders Aslund and Andrew Kuchins noted in 2009, as China’s military capabilities have improved, Beijing has reduced its imports of Russian military technology and even exports its own versions to traditional Russian clientssuch as Angola,Ethiopia and Syria. Russia’s dwindling conventional military is on track to become the Polish cavalry of coming generations. _AEI Dying Bear PDF

Putin is taking Russia in exactly the wrong direction. Instead of giving Russians greater opportunities and more reasons to form families and build a better Russia from the bottom up, Putin is moving the nation back toward a Soviet style of authoritarianism and hyper-centralisation that will only accelerate the nations decline and dissolution.

Eventually, Russians will grow tired of being manipulated by Putin's and the communist's endless paranoid ravings about "western foreign provocateurs," and will begin to look much closer to home for the sources of Russia's accelerating decline.

In China, Cheating, Lying, & Stealing are Legitimate Business Tools

Chinese efforts to cool down their overheated economy, and deal with some of the extensive damage corruption has inflicted on the banking system, has also caused an economic slowdown. Like the West, China also has a real estate bubble, and property prices are collapsing. But in addition of bad real estate loans, banks have lots of other bad loans that are becoming a major problem. Overall domestic demand is down and export markets have still not recovered from their three year slump. The government has put off dealing with its bank problems, but believes that a dictatorship has all the tools needed to sort out this mess without triggering a major recession. At the moment, the economy is still growing, but each month the forecasts are lowered.

The economic problems are complicated by growing unrest among workers. Strikes are increasing, as are worker demonstrations and riots. China does little to protect workers from bad employers, and workplace deaths and injuries are much higher than in the West. Chinese workers have become aware of this, and want change, they want it now, and a growing number of them are willing to fight for it.

China's corruption is spreading overseas. Not just in terms of bribes paid to businessmen or government officials, but in the way Chinese use the Internet. It's not just the commercial and government sponsored hacking, but the use of fake posts on review and opinion message boards. The Chinese attitude seems to be that, if you are not family, a close friend or business associate (or someone that can arrest you or promptly retaliate), anything goes. Cheating, lying and stealing are all considered legitimate business tools. _StrategyPage

Chinese factory workers across the Pearl River Delta have gone on strike, protesting low wages and limited opportunities, in the midst of an export slowdown. Regrettably, even bra factories have been affected, with the result that even fashion models are being caught without bras.

The strains underline recent warnings of a looming export slowdown from a senior Guangdong official and a survey of country-wide industrial activity in November that showed the worst contraction since 2009.

At Yue Yuen Industrial Holdings' giant shoe factory in Huangjiang town — a major supplier for sports brand New Balance — the mood remained tense after most of its 8,000 workers took to the streets on Thursday, blocking roads, overturning cars and clashing with police.

...Experts and labor advocacy groups warn an external economic slowdown in debt-stricken Europe and countries like the United States could exacerbate the risk of social upheaval in China.

Besides labor disputes, Guangdong province — a crucial locomotive of China's economic growth with a GDP matching Indonesia's — has been roiled in recent months by riots over rural land grabs in Lufeng city, and abuse of power several hours drive west in the city of Zengcheng that saw angry crowds ransack government buildings.

A former deputy editor-in-chief of the official party newspaper, the People's Daily, said the number of “mass incidents” in China, an official euphemism for social disorder, was consistently above 90,000 per year from 2007 to 2009.

...As leaner times provoke aggressive factory cost-cutting and wage trimming, Chinese workers increasingly lashed by persistent inflation are often in no mood to compromise.

In a recent report, consultancy Exclusive Analysis said it sees growing risks of “violent labor unrest” flaring up in Chinese factories and causing property damage and losses, adding: “Real-time use of social media by striking workers and firms' decreased ability to meet workers' demands due to falling Western export demand are likely to drive this violence.”

Europe's economic woes, Chinese manufacturing fragility and flat consumer spending in the United States have all raised the risk that the world is headed for a steep downturn. _ChinaPost

If China is forced to reduce its consumption of commodities due to its economic slowdown, the repercussions on global commodities markets would be significant.

Another interesting development which is likely to reduce Chinese demand for certain global commodities, is the unlocking of the vast Chinese shale oil & gas resource. China is estimated to possess as much as twice the unconventional gas reserves as the United States. If China learns to develop its gas & oil resources -- and particularly if it embraces advanced gas to liquids (GTL) technologies -- the impact on global commodities markets is likely to be significant.

Parts of the above posting were borrowed from an abu al-fin article.