Brexit And the K-shift

Brexit by 52-48

A majority of British voters decided that the United Kingdom should leave the European Union, and Prime Minister David Cameron announced his resignation. Global markets are moving wildly, and currencies are making big moves, but the actual political process will be much, much slower…

Equities futures across the globe took a dive, with the Dow implied to open down more than 700 at one point. That loss was pared slightly, however, as investors digested the results.

Asia was also rocked by the referendum, with Japan’s Nikkei index down about 8 percent.

Perhaps the greatest effect from the leave victory, however, was felt in British pound sterling, which plummeted to a 31-year low against the dollar. It was last down more than 5 percent at $1.3753.

The Brexit is another sign of the beginning of K’s ascension. The vote itself is representative of the broader battle between the two main forces in politics – r and K. On the one side are the K-strategists, who recognize both the coming shortage, and the fact that everyone will be out for themselves. On the other side are the rabbits, who delusionally cling to the ridiculous idea that the coming shortage is unnecessary, if only everyone will gladly sacrifice their own interests and give up everything they own to the greater authority of government.

During times of r, when everyone is drunk on dopamine, that “remain” faction will increase in size as everyone, blinded to reality, will sacrifice their share of the voluminous resources to keep the peace and keep the gravy train flowing.

As K approaches though, the “leave” faction will surge, and as it does, the remaining “remain” faction members will increasingly realize, reality is unavoidable. Clearly this is the Misery Index and the Conservative Policy Mood firing up all over. I would bet if you had been taking Brexit votes all along, a bar graph of the exit voter percentages would line right up along side the other two graphs.

Again, every aspect of the K-shift feeds every other facet. Brexit will spook markets, spooked markets will spook lenders, spooked lenders will reduce lending, reduced lending will scare bank depositors, and bank runs will further constrict resources, to say nothing of how all of that will affect production, consumption and employment. Further resource constriction will amp up amygdalae even more, making more Eurexits likely.

And the splintering itself will force even more suffering on the last remaining fools who stay in the union. It won’t be long before Germans are looking longingly at Britain and wondering why everyone’s hand is in the German pocket, as they are covering the debt accrued by strangers they don’t even know. Reality is the biggest supporter of Eurexits, and reality is coming.

All of this is a spectrum. Right now we’ve gone from everyone joining together, to some beginning to separate. That trend can be carried forward, all the way to war and Holocaust for any group which is on the outside. As it moves, every other aspect of r from tolerance of weirdness, to sexual and rearing drives will shift as well.

What amazes me as I watch all of this is that the real economic collapse isn’t even close yet, and most people aren’t really feeling it. When it comes, and it will, then there will be suffering, followed by a real splintering, and with it a return to a psychology we all have assumed was long gone. Nature truly programmed our brains to cue on the most subtle of stimuli, to bring us up to speed by the time the real action starts.

Of course the funniest thing of all is how Liberals have always used the term “Progress,” and the metaphor of “Moving Forward.”

We will now move forward, but it won’t mean what they think it means, because we are moving forward in the r/K cycle.