Apr 1, 2024 6 min read Politics

The REAL Baltimore Bridge Collapse Conspiracy

A view from the first floor of New York City

The other day, the container ship Dali struck a pier of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing it to quickly collapse into the Chesapeake Bay near Baltimore City.

So far, there are six known casualties, men who were the best of us, working in the middle of the night to support their families and keep the economy moving to the benefit of all. My heart goes out to them, to their families, and to the search & rescue teams who went into the dark water to save several lives.

This is a profound tragedy for those directly involved. And it will negatively affect the lives of millions.

A swath of fools have taken to the internet to claim that this was a so-called 'black swan' event, a planned operation designed to distract public attention or otherwise manipulate behavior and belief at a societal level.

One argument is that the bridge collapse is a part of an on-going deep-state effort to keep Trump out of the White House in November. Others have speculated that this was China using hackers to destabilize US infrastructure.

Let me just say, these are stupid takes.

Black swan events do happen, but this is obviously not one of them.

How The Global Economy Works

Raw materials are collected through the back-breaking work of Agriculture and Mining. These Raw Materials are used in Manufacturing to create products which are brought to market through the Transportation Network of planes, trains, boats, and trucks.

This system is largely - but not completely - controlled by the roughly 580,000 people on the planet with a net worth of $30 million or more. That's about a 0.0072% of the total human population.

And while they compete with each other, they also collaborate to keep the current system in place, because collectively they are this system's major beneficiaries.

This tiny group contains the bulk of the economic and political elite of the United States and China, Russia, and the rest of the world. Crippling a busy port bridge inside the most valuable economic zone on earth does nothing to benefit the 0.0072%.

This bridge collapse increases instability in the globalist system, making it more difficult to bring goods to market, and decreasing the levers of control which this 580k use to influence the behavior of the rest of us.

So it's obvious to anyone with even a cursory understanding of how the global economy works that the collision was an accident. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a conspiracy.

The Real Conspiracy

First and most obvious. Declining tax rates on corporations and the wealthy have deferred vital infrastructure maintenance and equipment upgrades. Some of these upgrades might have protected the bridge.

But there's a deeper level of conspiracy happening here as well.

Roughly speaking, in 1900 we could spend 1 barrel of oil to create 100 barrels. Today, we spend 1 barrel of oil to get back 7. This massive decrease in the EROI of energy production and the soaring demand for energy amongst our rapidly-growing population has caused a profound squeeze in our society which is rarely discussed.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856

The result is that our 580k owner-class - and the 52 million global millionaires who serve them - are ever looking for ways to maintain their quality of life and their rising stock values, even at the cost of hollowing out the industrial system built by their grandparents and great-grandparents.

Today, in New York City, as I write this, stockholders, managers and consultants are meeting in offices, restaurants, and private clubs to come up with ways to squeeze more value out of the companies they inherited In order to goose their short-term stock price.

This is particularly obvious in the transportation sector.

There are four main components of the global transportation network that brings raw materials to factories and finished goods to market. Trucks, trains, boats, and planes. In each of these four industries, there is a very similar pattern happening. They're all getting squeezed.

The owners - the 580k, who are more heavily concentrated in and around NYC than anywhere else on earth - are continuously pushing for larger load sizes, decreased safety measures, and lower labor costs.

I've linked to some evidence below, but I don't feel the need to fully support my case, because this is obvious to anyone paying even cursory attention to the transportation system. Trains are getting longer, seats are getting smaller, ships are getting bigger, and safety culture is being eroded Within organizations and at the regulatory level. Look to Boeing as a shining example of this.

This is the conspiracy. To increase profitability during the later stages of capitalism, owners are using industry groups, PR firms, and 'consultants' of all stripes to change laws, grease palms, and silence whistle blowers.

The result is that the entire transportation system is less robust, less safe, and increasingly brittle.

Expect more of this. More bridge collapses. More planes falling out of the sky. More subway delays and craziness. This is the inevitable metabolic shift that happens when a small minority, protected from the realities of life by their wealth, do everything they can to keep and expand their own standard of living, while the people who actually do the work continue to pay a higher and higher price.

The 580k need this system to keep their power. But while they're not stupid enough to actively destroy the infrastructure built by previous generations, they're also not far-sighted enough not to erode it from the inside.

That's the real conspiracy. And it‘s happening every day in New York City.

Evidence

Spend 5 minutes studying any of the four major methods of transport, and you'll see the pattern yourself.

The trucking lobby is pushing for higher weight limits on US roads. Global shippers are building larger and larger container ships. Airlines are squeezing more passengers into their planes. Trains are growing longer, heavier, and less safe. Amazon fights to keep its workforce 'contractors' instead of employees. Safety regulations are under constant threat. It's an obvious pattern to anyone willing to look.