HORMEGEDDON HOW TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING LEADS TO DISASTER k Bill Bonner Copyrighted Material Hormegeddon: How Too Much Of A Good Th ing Leads To Disaster Copyright © 2014 by Bill Bonner ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without prior written permission, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. For information about this title or to order other books and/or electronic media, contact the publisher: Library of Congress Control Number: 2014942933 ISBN: 978-0-9903595-0-0 (print) 978-0-9903595-1-7 (mobi) 978-0-9903595-2-4 (epub) Printed in the United States of America Cover design by: Erin Tyler Interior design by: 1106 Design Acknowledgments pecial thanks to Nassim Taleb for taking the time to read the Smanuscript carefully and making several valuable suggestions. I would also like to thank my sons for helping me with this book: Will, for managing the publishing process. Jules, for editing the English language version. And Henry, for editing the French version. As far as I know, I am the only author who has been aided by three sons on a single book project; I take more pride in this than in the book itself. iii Table of Contents Chapter 1 Too Much Information 1 Chapter 2 Too Much Economics 29 Chapter 3 Too Much Security 61 Chapter 4 Too Much Government 85 Chapter 5 Corrections 109 Chapter 6 Too Much Energy 131 Chapter 7 The Zombie Apocalypse 153 Chapter 8 Healthcare 191 Chapter 9 Debt 231 Chapter 10 Civilization and its Miscreants 269 v Chapter 1 Too Much Information “Perhaps there is a realm from which the logician is exiled.” —Friedrich Nietzsche 1 2 HORMEGEDDON • BILL BONNER December 21st, 2012 I was in Paris when the end of the world came. My company, Les Belles Lettres, has been publishing the Greek and Latin classics there since 1919. We’ve translated approximately 900 of the 1,200 texts that still exist. It seemed a shame that the world would end before we completed our work. So I went into the offi ce, where, amidst a thick blue fog, I found Caroline—the CEO—energetically working her way through a carton of Marlboros. She was determined to go out doing the two things she loved most: promoting Aristotle and chain-smoking at her desk—screw the workplace tobacco ban; they can fi ne me in hell! Impressed with her attitude, I considered writing a very nasty letter to the IRS, maybe I’d park in a handicapped spot while I was at it…but fi rst I needed to get coff ee. At the nearby “café bar bistro,” however, there was no mention of the impending apocalypse. Apparently, management had decided to continue serving coff ee right through the end of the world. Servi kaff e, pereat mundis. I looked at my watch. It was 11 am, the supposed ETA of our apocalypse. We were all still there. I was perplexed. Could it be that the Mayans were just as thick as the rest of us? Was it all just meaningless guesswork? What if their chief astrologer was one of Paul Krugman’s ancestors? Th en it hit me: the Mayans were based in South America. Th ey probably used Eastern Standard Time! But 11 am EST rolled around, and the world was no more destroyed. Caroline tossed her empty carton in the trash and sighed. Th e cosmos had spared us. Th at’s the trouble with natural disasters. Th ey never quite show up when they’re supposed to. And for card-carrying doom and gloomers like me, they are a source of much disappointment. TOO MUCH INFORMATION 3 Manmade disasters, on the other hand, are not only far more frequent, but far more predictable. Th ey’re also extremely entertain- ing…assuming of course, you’re into that sort of thing. Take, for instance, one of the worst military campaigns in history: Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Up until then, Napoleon’s career had been a spectacular success. He could seemingly get away with anything. By the time the French senate proclaimed him Emperor in 1804, he was already regarded as the greatest military genius who ever lived. So when he decided to invade Russia, no one blinked. No one besides Armand Augustin Louis de Caulaincourt, Napoleon’s long-time aide-de-camp. He knew better. He had actually been to Russia. Napoleon was the one who sent him there as France’s ambassador to St. Petersburg. He knew invading Russia was a bad idea. He warned the emperor of the terrible weather, the bad roads, and the savage people. He begged him not to go. It would be the ruin of France, he said. Th e Emperor ignored him and a few months later there they both were, freezing their rear ends off as they fl ed the smoldering ruins of Moscow. We have a chart in our library at home that shows what hap- pened next. It records the temperature dropping to minus 30 degrees centigrade…as the size of the French army dropped along with it. Soldiers burned down barns to try to get warm, but many of them froze. Many of those who survived the cold got shot by the Russian army while still others were attacked by partisans on the roads, packs of wolves in the forests, and prisoners the state had released into the city streets. If that didn’t get them, they starved to death. Napoleon entered Russia with 300,000 troops. Only 10,000 got out. I told this story to my kids over and over again as they were growing up. And I can tell you with some confi dence that it has had benefi cial eff ects. None of my children will ever invade Russia. Th ey won’t make that mistake! 4 HORMEGEDDON • BILL BONNER Knowledge of Napoleon’s 19th century disaster, however, didn’t dissuade Hitler from repeating it in the 20th century, on a larger scale. And he was certainly aware of the dangers. Th e famous German war historian, Clausewitz, wrote extensively on Napoleon’s ill-fated invasion. August von Kageneck’s history of the German army’s 18th regi- ment on the Eastern Front in WWII contains a delightful anecdote to this end. Th e regiment had been annihilated, rebuilt, and annihilated again. Finally, near the end of the war, the remnants of it were captured by the Russians. A Soviet interrogator with a sense of humor posed a question to the survivors: “Haven’t any of you ever read Clausewitz?” None of the prisoners raised his hand. Why do these disasters happen? Th at’s what I set out to explore in this book. To use the words of the Scottish poet Bobby Burns, the best laid plans of mice and men ‘gang aft aglee.’ Is that Scottish? I don’t know. But the sense of it is probably best captured in the old Navy expression: go FUBAR. Th e last three letters of that mean “beyond all recognition.” Th e fi rst two, I leave you to fi gure out for yourself. History is a long tale of things that went FUBAR—debacles, disasters, and catastrophes. Th at is what makes it fun to study. And maybe even useful. Each disaster carries with it a warning. For example, if the Sioux have assembled a vast war party out on the plains, don’t put on your best uniform and ride out to the Little Big Horn to have a look. If the architect of a great ship tells you that ‘not even God himself could sink this ship,’ take the next boat! When you are up against a superior force, like Fabius Maximus against Hannibal, don’t engage him in battle; instead, delay…procrastinate… dodge him, wear him down, until you are in a better position. And if the stock market is selling at 20 times earnings…and all your friends, analysts and experts urge you to ‘get in’ because you ‘can’t lose’—it’s time to get out! You can learn about these disasters by reading history. But be careful. Histories are narratives. Th ey are stories. One theme is TOO MUCH INFORMATION 5 examined in detail, while all the others are ignored. More is ignored than examined, simply because there is always much more that hap- pened than any one story can include. A single storyline makes its teller more in demand at dinner parties, but it also turns him into a fool, because most of what really happened has been shaken out of his history book and left lying on the ground. “We never know what we are talking about,” cautioned English philosopher Karl Popper. He had a point. But the Austrian logician, esteemed philosopher and suspected lunatic Wittgenstein had an answer for him: then, shut up. Silence isn’t much fun though. Instead, we reach…we stretch…we strain to understand things we can never really hope to understand at all. Th e Truth is too big, involving a connection between all things animate and inanimate, from the beginning of time to the universe’s very last breath. We can’t see so much. Th e best we can do is try to catch tiny glimpses of things that are true enough. Th is book has a modest ambition: to catch a faint glimmer of truth, perhaps out of the corner of our eye.