Charles Hugh Smith

The conventional narrative views AI dominance as inevitable. What’s actually inevitable is the AI Depression, the economic fallout of unrealistic but oh-so-profitable hype, malinvestment,…

In a blockbuster deal, an obscure federal agency has granted Disney the rights to develop the White House and Congress as a new FantasyLand…

I often refer to the dynamics of self-correction and self-liquidation. Systems that use feedback to rebalance extremes are self-correcting: rather than accelerate as they…

What’s the core cause of our distemper? There are several basic ideas that get bounced around but often go unstated. 1. Hidden corrupt/self-serving elites–either…

Is a “democracy” that’s for sale still a democracy, or is it something else? The question arises from the nature of our political system,…

This is a guest essay by longtime correspondent 0bserver, part of our Self-Employment Series. Moral drift has economic consequences. Shortcuts promise speed. They offer…

Risk and Privilege are intertwined in ways that define our lives and the system we inhabit. Privilege boils down to being buffered from risk,…

CHS Note: I considered paywalling this essay but decided to distribute it as widely as possible due to its value in terms of anticipating…

Welcome to the herd jammed into The Stockyard of Unaffordability, where prices keep rising and it gets more crowded as those who reckoned they…

When credit scales faster than it can be absorbed by productive investments, the resulting credit-asset bubbles break the economy. This is the result of…