Wage inequality is a topic in elections around the world. What can be done to provide more income for those without jobs, and those with low wages?
Wage inequality is really a sign of a deeper problem; basically it reflects an economic system that is not growing rapidly enough to satisfy everyone. In a finite world, it is easy for an economy to grow rapidly at first. In the early days, there are enough resources, such as land, fresh water, and metals, for each person to get a reasonable-sized amount. Each would-be farmer can obtain as much land as he thinks he can work with; fresh water is readily available virtually for free; and goods made with metals, such as cars, are not expensive. There are many jobs available, and wages for most people are fairly similar.
As population grows, and as resources degrade, the situation changes. It is still possible to grow enough food, but it takes large farms, with expensive equipment (but very few actual workers) to produce that food. It is possible to produce enough water, but it takes high-tech equipment and a handful of workers who know how to use the high-tech equipment. Metals suddenly need to be lighter and stronger and have other characteristics for the high tech industry, thus requiring more advanced products. International trade becomes more important to be able to get the correct mix of materials for the advanced products needed to operate the high-tech economy.
With these changes, the economic system that previously provided many jobs for those with limited training (often providing on-the-job training, if necessary) gradually became a system that provides a relatively small number of high-paying jobs, together with many low-paying jobs. In the United States, the change started happening in 1981, and has gotten worse recently.
Figure 1. Chart comparing income gains by the top 10% to those of the bottom 90%, by economist Emmanuel Saez. Based on an analysis of IRS data; published in Forbes.
What Happens When an Economy Doesn’t Grow Rapidly Enough?
If an economy is growing rapidly enough, it is easy for everyone to get close to an adequate amount. The way I think of the problem is that as economic growth slows, the “overhead” grows disproportionately, taking an ever-larger share of the goods and services the economy produces. The ordinary worker (non-supervisory worker, without advanced degrees) tends to get left out. Figure 2 is my representation of the problem, if the current pattern continues into the future.
Figure 2. Author’s depiction of changes to workers’ share of output of economy, if costs keep rising for other portions of the economy. (Chart is only intended to illustrate the problem; it is not based on a study of the relative amounts involved.)
The reason for the workers’ declining share of the total is that we live in a finite world. We are using renewable resources faster than they replenish and continue to use non-renewable resources. The workarounds to fix these problems take an increasing share of the total output of the economy, leaving less for what I have called “ordinary workers.” The problems we encounter include the following:
- Pollution control. Pollution sinks are already full. Continuing to use non-renewable resources (including burning fossil fuels) adds increased pollution. Workarounds have costs, and these take an increasing share of the output of the economy.
- Energy used in energy production. When we started extracting energy products, the cheapest, easiest-to-extract energy products were chosen first. The energy products that are left are higher-cost to extract, and thus require a larger share of the goods the economy produces for extraction.
- Water, metals, and soil workarounds. These suffer from deteriorating quantity and quality, leading to the need for workarounds such as desalination plants, deeper mines, and more irrigated land. All of these take an increasingly large share of the output of the economy.
- Interest and dividends. Capital goods tend to be purchased through debt or sales of stock. Either way, interest payments and dividends must be made, leaving less for workers.
- Increasing hierarchy. Companies need to be larger in size to purchase and manage all of the capital goods needed to work around shortages. High pay for supervisors reduces funds available to pay lower-ranking employees.
- Government funding and pensions. Government programs grow in size in good times, but are hard to cut back in hard times. Pensions, both government and private, are a particular problem because the number of elderly people tends to grow.
It should be no surprise that this type of continuing pattern of eroding wages for ordinary workers leads to great instability. If nothing else, workers become increasingly disillusioned and want to change or overthrow the government.
It might be noted that globalization also plays a role in this shift toward lower wages for ordinary workers. Part of the reason for globalization is simply to work around the problems listed above. For example, if pollution becomes more of a problem, globalization allows pollution to be shifted to countries that do not try to mitigate the problem. Globalization also allows businesses to work around the rising cost of oil production; production can be shifted to countries that instead emphasized coal in their energy mix, with much lower energy used in energy production. With increased globalization, people who are primarily selling the value of their own labor find that wages do not keep up with the rising cost of living.
Studies of Previous Economies that Experienced Declining Wages of Ordinary Workers
Researchers Peter Turchin and Surgey Nefedov analyzed eight civilizations that collapsed in detail, and recorded their findings in the book Secular Cycles. According to them, the typical economic growth pattern of civilizations that collapsed was similar to Figure 3, below. Before the civilizations began to collapse (Crisis Stage), they hit a period of Stagflation. During that period of Stagflation, wages of ordinary workers tended to fall. Eventually these lower wages led to the downfall of the system.
Figure 3. Shape of typical Secular Cycle, based on work of Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov in Secular Cycles. Chart by Gail Tverberg.
In many instances, a growth cycle started when a group of individuals discovered a way that they could grow more food for their group. Perhaps they cleared trees from a large plot of land so that they could grow more food, or they found a way to irrigate an area that was dry, again leading to sufficient food for more people. A modern analogy would be discovering how to use fossil fuels to grow more food, thus allowing population to rise.
At first, population grew rapidly, and incomes tended to grow as well, as the size of the group expanded to the carrying capacity of the improved land. Once the economy got close to the carrying capacity of the land, a period of Stagflation took place. There no longer was room for more farmers, unless plots of land were subdivided. Would-be farmers were forced to take lower-paying service jobs, or to become farmers’ helpers. In this changing world, debt levels rose, and food prices spiked.
To try to solve the many issues that arose, there was a need for more elite workers–what we today would call managers and high-level government officials. In some cases, a decision would be made to expand the army, in order to try to invade other countries to obtain more land to solve the problem of inadequate resources for a growing population. All of these changes led to a higher needed tax level and more high-level managers.
What tended to bring the system down was the growing wage inequality and the resulting low wages for ordinary workers. Governments needed ever-higher taxes to pay for their expanding services, but they had difficulty collecting sufficient tax revenue. If they raised taxes to an adequate level, workers found themselves without sufficient money for food. In their weakened state, workers became subject to epidemics. Governments with inadequate tax revenue tended to collapse.
Sometimes, rather than collapse, wars were fought. If the wars were successful, the resource shortage that ultimately led to low wages of workers could be addressed. If not, the end of the group might come through military defeat.
Today’s Fundamental Problem: The World Economy Can No Longer Grow Quickly
Because of our depleted resources and because of the world’s growing population, the only way that the world economy can now grow is in a strange way that assigns more and more output to various parts of “overhead” (Figure 2), leaving less for workers and for unemployed individuals who want to be workers.
Automation looks like it would be a solution since it can produce a large amount of goods, cheaply. It doesn’t really work, however, because it doesn’t provide enough employees who can purchase the output of the manufacturing system, so that demand and supply can stay in balance. In theory, companies that automate their operations could be taxed at a very high rate, so that governments could pay would-be workers, but this doesn’t work either. Companies have a choice regarding which country they operate in. If a tax is added, companies can simply move to a lower-tax rate jurisdiction, where no tax is required for automation.
The world is, in effect, reaching the end of the Stagflation period on Figure 3, and approaching the Crisis period on Figure 3. The catch is that the Crisis period is likely to be shorter and steeper than illustrated on Figure 3, because we live in a much more interconnected world, with more dependence on debt and world trade than in the past. Once the interconnected world economic system starts to fail, we are likely to see a rapid drop in the total amount of goods and services produced, worldwide. This will produce an even worse distribution problem–how does everyone get enough?
The low oil, natural gas, and coal prices we are now seeing may very well be the catalyst that brings the economy to the “Crisis Period” or collapse. Unless there is a rapid increase in prices, companies will cut back on fossil fuel production, as soon as 2016. With less fossil fuel production, the total quantity of goods and services (in other words, GDP) will drop. Most economists do not understand that there is a physics reason for this problem. The quantity of energy consumed needs to keep rising, or world GDP will decline. Technology gains and energy efficiency improvements provide some uplift to GDP growth, but this generally averages less than 1% per year.
Figure 4. World GDP growth compared to world energy consumption growth for selected time periods since 1820. World real GDP trends for 1975 to present are based on USDA real GDP data in 2010$ for 1975 and subsequent. (Estimated by author for 2015.) GDP estimates for prior to 1975 are based on Maddison project updates as of 2013. Growth in the use of energy products is based on a combination of data from Appendix A data from Vaclav Smil’s Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects together with BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015 for 1965 and subsequent.
Are There Political Strategies to Solve Today’s Wage Inequality Problem?
Unfortunately, the answer is probably, “No.” While some strategies look like they might have promise, they risk the possibility of pushing the economy further toward financial collapse, or toward war, or toward a major reduction in international trade. Any of these outcomes could eventually bring down the system. There also doesn’t seem to be much time left.
Our basic problem is that the world economy is growing so slowly that the ordinary workers at the bottom of Figure 2 find themselves with less than an adequate quantity of goods and services. This problem seems to be getting worse rather than better, over time, making the problem a political issue.
These are a few strategies that have been mentioned on political sites for fixing the problem:
- Provide a basic income to all citizens. The intent of this strategy is to try to capture a larger share of the world’s goods and services by printing money (or borrowing money). This money would hopefully allow citizens to purchase a larger share of the goods and services available on the world market. If the pool of goods and services is pretty much fixed in total, more goods and services purchased by one country would mean fewer goods and services purchased by other citizens of other countries. I would expect that this strategy would not really work, because of changing currency relativities: the level of the currency of the country issuing the checks would tend to fall relative to the currencies of other countries. The basic problem is that it is possible to print currency, but not goods and services. There is also a possibility that printing checks for everyone will encourage less work on the part of citizens. If citizens do less work, the country as a whole will produce less. Such a change would leave the country worse off than before.
- Lower interest rates, even negative interest rates. With lower interest rates, the interest portion of the Interest and Dividend sector shown on Figure 2 can theoretically mostly disappear, leaving more money for wages on Figure 2 and thus tending to “fix” the wage problem this way. Low interest rates also tend to reduce dividends, because companies will choose to buy back part of their stock and issue very low interest rate debt instead. If interest rates become negative, the sector can completely disappear. The ultra-low interest rates will have negative ramifications elsewhere. Banks are likely to have a hard time earning an adequate income. Pension funds will find it impossible to pay people the pensions they have been promised, creating a different problem.
- Get jobs back from foreign countries through the use of tariffs. Some jobs might be easier to get back from foreign countries than others. For example, programming, call center operations, and computer tech support are all “service type” jobs that can be done from anywhere, and thus could be transferred back easily. In situations where new factories need to be built, and materials sourced from around the world, the transfer would be more difficult. Businesses will tend to automate operations, rather than hire locally. The countries that we try to get the business from may retaliate by refusing to sell needed devices (for example, computers) and needed raw materials (such as rare earth minerals). Or a collapse may occur in a country we try to get jobs back from, so fewer goods and services are produced worldwide.
- Keep out immigrants. The theory is, “If there aren’t enough jobs to go around, why give them to immigrants?” In a world with sagging GDP, job growth will be slow or may not occur at all. There may be a particular point in keeping out well-educated immigrants, if there aren’t enough jobs for college-educated people who already live in a country. Of course, Europe has been doing the opposite–taking in more immigrants, in the hope that they will provide young workers for countries that are rapidly aging. (Another approach to finding more workers would be to raise the retirement age–but such an approach is not politically popular.)
- Medicare for all. Medicare is the US healthcare plan for those over 65 or having a disability. It pays a substantial share of healthcare costs. The concern I have with “Medicare for all” is that because of the way the economy now functions, the total amount of goods and services that we can choose to purchase, for all kinds of goods and services in total, is almost a fixed sum. (Some people might say we are dealing with a zero-sum game.) If we make a choice to spend more on medical treatment, we are simultaneously making a choice that citizens will be less able to afford other things that might be worthwhile, such as apartments and transportation. The US healthcare system is already the most expensive in the world, as a percentage of GDP. We need to fix the overall system, not simply add more people to a system that is incredibly expensive.
- Free college education for all. As the situation stands today, 45% of recent college graduates are in jobs that do not require a college degree. This suggests that we are already producing far more college graduates than there are jobs for college graduates. If we provide “free college education for all,” this offer needs to be made in the context of entrance exams for a limited number of spaces available (reduced from current enrollment). Otherwise, we sink a huge share of our resources into our education system, to no great benefit for either the students or the overall system. We are back to the zero-sum game problem. If we spend a large share of our resources on college educations that don’t really lead to jobs that pay well, more people of all ages will find themselves unable to afford apartments and cars because of the higher tax levels required to fund the program.
- Renewables to replace fossil fuels. Despite the popularity of the idea, I don’t think that adding renewables provides any significant benefit, given the scenario we are facing. Renewables are made using fossil fuels, and they tend to have pollution problems of their own. They don’t extend the life of the electric grid, if we are facing collapse. At most, they might be helpful for a few people living off grid, if the electrical grid is no longer operating. If the economic system is on the edge of collapse already, fossil fuel use will drop quickly, with or without the use of renewables.
Conclusion
It would be really nice to “roll back” the world economy to a date back before population rose to its current high level, resources became as depleted as they are, and pollution became as big a problem as it is. Unfortunately, we can’t really do this.
We are now faced with the question of whether we can do anything to mitigate what may be a near-term crisis. At this point, it may be too late to make any changes at all, before the downward slide into collapse begins. The current low prices of fossil fuels make the current situation particularly worrisome, because the low prices could lead to lower fossil fuel production, and hence reduce world GDP because of the connection between energy consumption and GDP growth. Low oil prices could also push the world economy downward, due to increasing defaults on energy sector loans and adverse impacts on economies of oil exporters.
In my view, a major reason why fossil fuel prices are now low is because of the low wages of “ordinary workers.” If these wages were higher, workers around the globe could be buying more houses and cars, and indirectly raising demand for fossil fuels. Thus, low fossil fuel prices may be a sign that collapse is near.
One policy that might be helpful at this late date is increased focus on contraception. In fact, an argument could be made for more permissive abortion policies. Our problem is too little resources per capita–keeping the population count in the denominator as low as possible would be helpful.
On a temporary basis, it is also possible that new programs that lead to rising debt–whether or not these programs buy anything worthwhile–may be helpful in keeping the world economy from collapsing. This occurs because the economy is funded by a combination of wages and by growing debt. A shortfall in wages can be hidden by more debt, at least for a short time. Of course, this is not a long-term solution. It simply leads to a larger amount of debt that cannot be repaid when collapse does occur.
This is an outstanding article:
This Shows Why Consumers Are Bogged Down
If it were adjusted for inflation, it would look worse:
http://wolfstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/US-consumer-spending-Gallup-2008-2015.png
More http://wolfstreet.com/2016/04/04/this-shows-why-consumers-feel-and-are-bogged-down/
As I understand it, this chart is based on a survey regarding how much people spent “yesterday.” Apparently, certain things were excluded, like rent and car payments, and perhaps grocery shopping. The amount of discretionary income, so defined, is pretty much flat on this basis.
Sounds like rent is included…
When these results are averaged out month after month over the years, going back to 2008, while ignoring the impact of inflation – and there has been a lot of inflation in housing, health care, vehicle prices, tuition, and other big items – we get this.
Many people have felt this way. They’re not making more, and they can’t spend any more on discretionary items because that’s all they’ve got. So rent goes up and health care goes up, and they shell out more money for tuition or the payment on their new car, but they have to make cuts elsewhere. Gas gets cheaper, so they can spend a little more on groceries or they might save up some to be able to pay the deductible and copay and go to the doctor. It just gets shifted around. Nip and tuck.
That discretionary spending chart actually doesn’t look that bad. Presuming it is accurate, the $96 shown in 08 was in the time period of equity loans and people buying 2nd & 3rd investment homes. That it’s now $89 doesn’t seem too bad in comparison to $96. Maybe we are just getting spoiled in the decadent West vs. the time when we could better leverage our homes.
To expound on this a little more, it may be a case of current low oil prices are floating this US economy along fairly well. The unfortunate part of that is oil price is below producers floor price in most cases, so it’s an unsustainable price long term. Something will have to give – either supply dwindles and price goes back up above the producer’s floor price or enough oil companies go under to achieve the same thing. But price must go higher in the long term to substantiate the oil business and Capex for exploration to secure future supply.
As such, it seems peak oil/economic collapse is in a holding pattern until oil price rises again. I see all these people in our area buying enormous trucks (not for hauling lumber but just because it buoys their egos) and that’s going to come back to haunt them. Before Thanksgiving 2015 I predicted oil price would rise to between $60-80 in the latter half of 2016 and I stand by that, although at today’s price it’s hard to see that coming. If wrong I’ll belly up to the bar to eat a little crow. But until then, the prediction stands.
It’s not inflation-adjusted….
Not sure what the real inflation rate is per year since 2008 …. because we are fed only lies…
If There’s No Inflation, Why Are Prices Up So Much?
Many of the costs faced by typical American households are rising faster than the official inflation statistics indicate.
Last week, I ran out of ink for my printer and ordered some more online. My computer automatically pulled up the previous order, and I was shocked to see that the price of the ink cartridges I was buying had gone up 25%.
http://business.time.com/2013/03/12/if-theres-no-inflation-why-are-prices-up-so-much/
A deep dive into Table 2 from the BLS reveals some truth and uncovers more lies. Their weighting of everyday living expenditures is warped and purposefully misleading. Let’s look at the annual increases in some food items we might consume in the course of a month, living in this empire of lies:
Ground Beef – 10.1%
Roast Beef – 11.8%
Steak – 11.1%
Eggs – 21.8%
Chicken – 3.7%
Coffee – 3.4%
Sugar – 4.2%
Candy – 4.6%
Snacks – 3.5%
Salt & Seasonings – 5.3%
Food Away From Home – 3.0%
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-19/lies-damned-lies-inflation-statistics
Not inflation adjusted…. if real numbers were used instead of lies …. we’d see that spending has collapsed
If There’s No Inflation, Why Are Prices Up So Much?
Many of the costs faced by typical American households are rising faster than the official inflation statistics indicate.
Last week, I ran out of ink for my printer and ordered some more online. My computer automatically pulled up the previous order, and I was shocked to see that the price of the ink cartridges I was buying had gone up 25%.
http://business.time.com/2013/03/12/if-theres-no-inflation-why-are-prices-up-so-much/
A deep dive into Table 2 from the BLS reveals some truth and uncovers more lies. Their weighting of everyday living expenditures is warped and purposefully misleading.
Let’s look at the annual increases in some food items we might consume in the course of a month, living in this empire of lies:
Ground Beef – 10.1%
Roast Beef – 11.8%
Steak – 11.1%
Eggs – 21.8%
Chicken – 3.7%
Coffee – 3.4%
Sugar – 4.2%
Candy – 4.6%
Snacks – 3.5%
Salt & Seasonings – 5.3%
Food Away From Home – 3.0%
Rent – 3.5%
Owner’s Equivalent Rent – 3.0%
Insurance – 3.1%
Water, Sewer, Trash – 4.7%
Household Operations – 3.6%
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-19/lies-damned-lies-inflation-statistics
Steak, Hamburger and Dog Food: How the Government Lies About the Real Inflation Rate
Officially, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says the inflation rate, or Consumer Price Index (CPI), for 2011 was 3%.
But a report issued last week by the non-profit group American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) says the U.S. inflation rate for 2011 is far higher – 8%.
More http://moneymorning.com/2012/03/08/steak-hamburger-and-dog-food-how-the-government-lies-about-the-real-inflation-rate/
Let me make another point, one which is often missed by people, but the most systemic thinkers have always recognized it.
We like to think of the class division in society as between rich and poor, but this is misleading. The real division is between producers and spongers. Always has been. The cycle of history is that every single civilization and large empire grows to the point that there are more spongers than producers, and the whole thing collapses of its own weight.
One can be rich and be a sponger, and be poor and be a producer. And vice versa. For example, some corporate people are very rich, but they actually work hard and produce valuable things for society. Others are corrupt bankers, or dependent on debt and subsidy. Some poor people work long hours doing backbreaking work, others sit on welfare etc. Some healthy people make a genuine effort to get better and improve their health, others are content being obese or smoking, etc. Choose your own example.
And I’m not making a moral argument one way or the other, I’m simply observing and describing what happens. All revolutions occur when the producing groups (especially small business owners, middle class, healthy workers, etc.) have had enough of their property and wealth, whatever level it is, being confiscated by the state to distribute to various sponger groups, whoever they are.
The United States is at this phase currently. Because Americans believe in infinite progress and wealth, they don’t recognize this dynamic, which guarantees that politics will not solve the issue. Americans believe they can do anything, they can have anything, and they can save themselves and the entire world. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Americans think of themselves as little Gods. This extreme hubris guarantees collapse.
According to Snowden’s leaks, the US budget for global blackops is roughly $51B per year, and let’s not kid ourselves the private sector + banksters are very likely matching the sum with even more money. With such leverage it’s not difficult to maintain global empire. The US became the latest host for the much older tree of system owner’s class sometime towards the end of 1872-1913 period, so the proverbial 150yrs span for an empire is approaching, but not yet here, plus we have to allow for some transition period and volatility.
Also the hydrocarbon depletion scenarios were over hyped towards the radical-sooner timeliness. However the factors of substitution, efficiency, demand depressions and monetization were not properly estimated.
So in total, this is a question more towards our kids and grand kids, simply he who bet the farm on “instadoom” around 2000-2020s, lost not only the money, but perhaps the more precious element, the time itself. Although the ongoing philosophical debates are indeed interesting..
True dat.
Well written post Dolf. In the end we are all spongers off of fossil fuel no matter how “hard we work”. When the SHTF I think viloence will erupt both within the spongers and “hard workers” as both their paradigms of entitlement end. I like to work hard so I tend toward symathy toward that group but I dont fool myself- Fossil fuels are doing all the heavy lifting.
I would characterise the difference in another way, from the economy’s position; those who Create value, and those who Recycle value.
The real producers are fossil fuels, unfortunately. These fossil fuels produce a limited number of jobs. Some people are fortunate enough to get them. Others aren’t.
Machines that build themselves, and other things:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-manufacturing-interview-dr-marcin-jakubowski-tavares
” currently designing and building the 50 industrial machines that are required to build a modern civilization from scratch. We design and build machines across all the sectors and infrastructures, where the blueprints are published on the internet for free.”
This is a link from a comment oft the latest blog on megacancer.com
It is about the growth ponzi scheme of financing cities:
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/13/the-growth-ponzi-scheme-part-1.html
from 2011
Saludos
el mar
It seems to me that the whole system is this way–not just the system of financing suburbs. But financing suburbs is a good example.
Dear Finite Worlders
If you would like to spend an hour listening to two intelligence guys talking about a variety of subjects and how things may play out in the future, listen here:
http://runesoup.com/2016/03/episode-17-talking-the-future-of-money-with-charles-hugh-smith/
The interviewee is Charles Hugh Smith.
The blogger finishes up with the guess that ‘things will be shit in the short term but, in the longer term, everything is up in the air’. The two agree that things might turn out pretty well in the long term.
Also, near to my heart, a ringing endorsement of gardening.
Don Stewart
That’s too bad about the it being pretty well in the long term….because I’ll only be around ifor the short term.
Vince the Prince
You get the satisfaction of saying ‘I told you so!’
I never figured out Facebook. Then these two guys say Facebook is dead or dying…digital is being replaced with analog. Maybe, if I survive, I’ll be back in style.
Don Stewart
Charles Hugh Smith is another hopium smoker …
In the long term post BAU — things are going to be worse — because if we try to make them better we will cut down every remaining trying in trying to do so…
Even when I post endless facts that indicate that deforestation was a huge problem globally pre-fossil fuels…. the Koombaya Krowd cannot for some reason contemplate that the same out come is inevitable…
Only this time we will Easter Island ourselves because there will be no second act for fossil fuels – or any other energy source – once BAU is done.
Feel free to ignore the obvious.
Feel free to continue to dance about the fire in dreadlocks drinking organic beer and singing If you’re happy and you know it.
It is truly amazing what can happen to the human brain when faced with grim outcomes… even the smartest people are capable of profound stupidity. How they lapse into gibberish when confronted by irrefutable facts…
“… even the smartest people are capable of profound stupidity.”
Plenty of evidence to support that!
Sure having a wicked good time now, Fast Eddy, eat your heart out, Mr. Grumpy
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VEFcKfVZz7M
That’s rhythm. The green shorts adds something too.
10 out of 10 for the costume….
More cowbell!!
More cowbell 🙂
You want MOAR?
Cowbells….you got it!
Better costumes….bring them on!
Fast Eddy…you don’t know what you are missing….join the circle and bang the bell!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-aKCf2r4CMs
Don’t be sure a Party Pooper.
Shooting Koombayists and taking their grog and food will be great sport post BAU — of course the gal in the micro shorts would be spared…
The man with long hair and dark skirt does not seem to think too much about saving the world but in having sex at night with the girl in blue panties . That is obvious.
Greetings.
(Sorry , but I have to use google translator . I am Spanish and I do not know English )
I listened to the interview. It was within the realm of my expectation: something to add flavor to and round out my very limited knowledge. They know (to my limited sense of it) about money and about digital technology. So I couldn’t lose by hearing them. They both confirm my basic approach to meaning and value, but supply a glimpse of what I already recognize as my need to collaborate with the more money and tech smart..
The solution to the inequality problem could perhaps be: Inequality is the solution.
If inequality comes out of natural causes, then perhaps we should endorse it. Today our governments in the West are trying to help those who are being left out of the system with all kinds of benefits that have become government liabilities.
The U.S economy is today on government life support. Government spending has kept the economy running after the Financial Crisis. This is of course expensive, oil consumption is high and the government debt has also started to grow exponentially.
If the government and the Fed had accepted bankruptcies and let people who fell out of the system suffer, then the economy might have been much slimmer and in balance with reality today.
I understand that this is not a moral solution and perhaps not even possible to do politically in a democracy. But if this is a natural force then this will happen anyway. Today we are just making the problem more explosive and postponing the event.
“The chief source of problems is solutions.” – Eric Sevareid
The bankruptcies will extend to the government and to the fossil fuel industries. They will put the electric grid out of business as well as banks out of business.
You say, “Today we are just making the problem more explosive and postponing the event.”
I would just as soon postpone it. It is already very explosive. We depend on a Ponzi Scheme. When it fails, we have a big problem.
The hype around Telsa Motors is reaching new heights. The Telsa III, the model that is suppose to be $30,000, is less than two years from mass production. Peorders are exceeding the most optimistic predictions. There aren’t a lot of details being given. It’s difficult to find out what the socioeconomic profile of the average person placing a pre-order for the Telsa but a lot of people, whom I assume are educated, really think this guy is going to solve our transportation problems.
Everyone who’s reading this knows what the problems with electric cars are, but the average Telsa Motors fan tends to be blissfully unaware. Telsa Motors, unlike many “clean energy” manufacturers, is also in the unusual position of appearing profitable, on paper, which is leading many people to believe past success will be an indicator of future success.
The average person, whether that person is educated or not, seems to blame inequality on elite mismanagement. They always absolve themselves of any responsibility of supporting the elite. When Telsa Motors fails, will they see the forest for the trees, or will they find a scapegoat?
Why should Tesla fail in the near/mid term at all?
Have you seen the numbers, how they have deeply eaten into BMW/Benz sales already, although in specific segments? Simply, there are so much rich people today, globally, there is a place for such company producing from 500k to a few million carz per year.
We are in undeclared stagnation, depression, while debts are systemically supported, renewable energy continues to be subsidized, so in aggregate this is all favorable trends for Tesla clientele, which seems to be happy with ~20yrs product lifetime for home sized renewable setup and 10-15yrs for the carz batt. pack. They see it as a mere precursor of new start trek future not as a dead end of complexity miracle built on top of other chains of complexities, otherwise people more likely frequenting this forum might ask about.
Tesla, does it make sense? Probably not, but we are currently not living in the world – society, which makes any sense. And by they way the, few years ago their stocks jumped 700%, no leverage and tricks, so many people buy their product now just with those same funny money based on the QE can kicking.
“Why should Tesla fail in the near/mid term at all? ”
Telsa Motors has some very ambitious goals which makes it vulnerable to failure. Telsa Motors is promising that it will deliver an affordable electric car that they intend to sell to the general public and not just rich green energy enthusiasts.
“We are in undeclared stagnation, depression, while debts are systemically supported, renewable energy continues to be subsidized, so in aggregate this is all favorable trends for Tesla clientele, which seems to be happy with ~20yrs product lifetime for home sized renewable setup and 10-15yrs for the carz batt”
Why are these favorable trends if a lack of economic growth threatens the entire system? Slowing economic growth will eventually reach everyone without another massive form of government intervention. An argument could be made that majority of Telsa Motors customers are “elite workers” and are protected from market forces by their relative high social statuses. Governments worldwide will probably intervene to protect the jobs of elite workers if there are economic problems but what Telsa is trying to do is get the non-elite worker, to buy their Model 3 car, while still marketing the Model 3 as a product for the elite worker–basically the Apple strategy–but promising this product will be affordable . If the non-elite worker is vulnerable to termination or wage cuts in the near-future ,how does that not leave Telsa Motors vulnerable to near-term failure if their future depends on getting non elite workers to purchase an electric car.?
esla: Bonfire Of The Money Printers’ Vanities
by David Stockman • February 21, 2015
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The trouble with the money printing madness in the Eccles Building is that it generates huge deformations, misallocations and speculative excesses in the financial markets. Eventually these bubbles splatter, as they have twice this century. The resulting carnage, needless to say, is not small. Combined financial and real estate asset markdowns totaled about $7 trillion after the dotcom bust and $15 trillion during the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
Yes, the Fed has managed to reflate this cheap money bubble for the third time now, but the certainty that it will splatter once again is not the issue at hand. What gets lost in the serial bubble-making process of modern central banking is that vast real resources—labor, capital and materials—- are misallocated owing to mispricing of stock, bonds and real estate during the bubble inflation phase.
During the bust phase, of course, these excesses are written-down on financial statements and often liquidated entirely on an operational basis. But that’s just the problem. These bust-phase corrections amount to deadweight losses to the economy—-a permanent setback to growth and societal prosperity.
Much more http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/tesla-bonfire-of-the-money-printers-vanities/
If Tesla is the thing that will allegedly save the economy, people will pay any amount for the stock. At some point, I expect it to go the same way as SunEdison http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/29/the-worlds-largest-green-energy-company-is-facing-bankruptcy/
and Abengoa http://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/renewable-energy-giant-abengoa-wins-bankruptcy-reprieve-1.2589884
Neither of them has gone bankrupt yet, except the US arm of Abengoa has already filed for bankruptcy.
Strip away government subsidies and Tesla stock goes to 0.
Re Model T…. I forgot to mention in an earlier post that the Model T became ubiquitous because it dramatically reduced the cost of an automobile….
The Tesla dramatically increases the cost…. even with subsidies
there are only 2 US automakers that have never gone bankrupt: Ford and Tesla. Both promised mass production of affordable “family” cars. Ford did well with its Model T. Now there is no reason to assume Tesla wont follow with the Model 3. You have to admit that the rhyme cannot be a coincidence! It will be a money maker for Musk.
I don’t believe that the Model T was subsidized by the tax payer… can you look into that?
Tesla as a company would not exist without government subsidies… they would not sell a single vehicle…. that is fact http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/tesla-bonfire-of-the-money-printers-vanities/
And what is so special about Tesla?
We’ve got loads of other car companies producing EVs — car companies with massive resources including Toyota with the Prius – and Nissan with the Leaf…
The reality is that even with the massive subsidies none of these companies is selling many EVs… they don’t even register on the sales data…
Would you buy an EV? I certainly would not.
Not even if the NZ government were to subsidize them. I like being able to get into my vehicle and be able to fuel it up in a couple of minutes just about anywhere in the country.
Now imagine if EVs actually made economic sense (you know — as in the cost without subsidies allowed them to compete with petrol cars) – imagine if we had a few hundred million of these rolling toxic waste dumps on the roads:
Do you want cancer with that battery?
Tesla Motors’ Dirty Little Secret Is a Major Problem
Think Tesla’s Model S is the green car of the future? Think again.
Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy undertook a study to look at the environmental impact of lithium-ion batteries for EVs. The study showed that batteries that use cathodes with nickel and cobalt, as well as solvent-based electrode processing, have the highest potential for environmental impacts, including resource depletion, global warming, ecological toxicity, and human health.
The largest contributing processes include those associated with the production, processing, and use of cobalt and nickel metal compounds, which may cause adverse respiratory, pulmonary, and neurological effects in those exposed.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/01/19/tesla-motors-dirty-little-secret-is-a-major-proble.aspx
Also note that huge amounts of dirty coal go into the manufacturing of an EV http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/hold-smugness-tesla-might-just-worse-environment-know/
Isn’t it amazing how powerful PR companies are?
Here we have a technology that extremely expensive — extremely polluting — extremely inconvenient…
Yet the PR people have convinced the sheeple that they are ‘green’ — and that they are the way forward.
I am fond of saying 1+1= 2 … not 3… not 4…. that a circle is not a square…
I need to recant that …. with the stupid sheeple anything is possible…. they can easily be convinced up is down… that apples grow on orange trees…. because sheeple do not think… they believe what they are told on the ‘news’
” Simply, there are so much rich people today,” I wonder if they are rich because they can leverage unprecedented amount of human labor at a low cost
(. I’m not sure if human labor, globally, is cheaper now than during the height of the Roman Empire because there supply of human labor is greater than at any point in history )
or are they rich because they spend very little of their income.
Tesla would already be dead if not for the billions in subsidies already granted.
The whole electric car idea simply shifts the transportation power requirements from the liquid fueling station to the Grid Power Generating plants.
BUT…it fools the majority of the population 🙂
Tesla just goes along with the fantasy that wheels make us rich
Tesla also ignores the basic reality that without a hydrocarbon infrastructure—tarmac roads, power transmission , tyres, sophisticated production / supply systems, Tesla would have no function.
Tesla ignores the fact that without a hydrocarbon system, we would have no purpose or use for transport at all.
Your employment depends on people creating a purpose for your employment. And to do that means using fuel of some kind.
You might be a brain surgeon–but your continued employment depends of the continued existence of your industrial/hospital system—without that, you are unemployed and unemployable. So are the rest of the hospital staff.
Running a Tesla car won’t have any effect on your ability to make a living.
You might be a garbage collector—your employment too depends on a constant supply of “stuff” —all of which is derived from hydrocarbons, as does your truck and the road it runs on.
Just about any job you care to name cannot function without hydrocarbon fuel input at the point at which the job function itself is done. It has nothing whatsoever to do with transport to and from that job. Driving to our place of work is a recent luxury, less than 100 years old. Prior to that we had millennia of walking (a very short distance) to work.
Leisure use of EVs follows the same fantasy. We can only move ourselves around in a “leisure” context because we have income from employment. Post BAU there will be no leisure other than sleeping.
Yet those peddling electric cars would have us believe that if only we switch to EVs, we will all continue to earn a living and get richer still.
You have to keep in mind ‘economies of scale’ as it relates to E car development. Obviously any endeavor to even manufacture a car, let alone an electric car that carries with it the infrastructure additions needed for charging is a prohibitively expensive prospect without subsidies, but the overall economy and environment may benefit from the development of E cars if they reach an economies of scale level in which the price comes down to be competitive with lower priced ICE’s and power generation comes from renewables instead of FF.
Look at this way; if no subsidies are provided for E car development and they never really get up to the numbers needed to be a competitive replacement for ICE’s, then we have given up and said to ourselves, “Live short term burning FF, die long term burning FF.” Whether the economics are there to substantiate such an attempt is something I’m not sure about, but at least the effort is being made to make a transition, fail or succeed. I think that’s better than waving a white flag.
I don’t think there’s enough lithium for all of that. Maybe if we had mined the solar system in the 1950s…and conveniently found staggeringly huge quantities of the minerals and metals we would need to make storage for renewable energy possible…maybe..
A lot of “problem solving” by engineers, in practical terms, is just delaying consequences and kicking the can down the road. The difference between an engineer and a politician kicking the can down the road is that engineers get away with it more often.
“I don’t think there’s enough lithium for all of that.”
1) there is an immense amount of lithium compounds in the oceans
2) who says we have to use lithium for electric cars?
3) There are massive deposits of lithium in salt flats, the trouble is getting the rights and regulations sorted out.
Copper may be a bigger issue, sooner, than lithium.
The issue is never “running out.” It is the fact that that sector absorbs a larger share of total resources, leaving less for the rest of the economy. Sort of like a cancer growing within the economy.
“Copper may be a bigger issue, sooner, than lithium.”
Or soon we may be able to replace copper with carbon, and lithium with aluminum, thus avoiding shortages for quite some time.
Not possible – too expensive
Where did I read that there are 30 tonnes of gold particles in the sea off of Ireland…. but nobody is claiming it….
“Not possible – too expensive
Where did I read that there are 30 tonnes of gold particles in the sea off of Ireland…. but nobody is claiming it….”
Are you talking about “mining” seawater? Sure, it would cost four times as much as mining salt flats for lithium. However, carbon and aluminum are abundant and relatively cheap – although you need a lot of electricity for refining the aluminum.
Dont want to wave a white flag. Try to produce food without FF. Whats cars with or without FF got to do with it? Renewables? Stilgar im somewat shocked. Youve been here a while. Grow food. Sharpen a stick. Get good at it and get your children good at it. Not up for it? I dont blame you.
the critical word there is ”economy”
All vehicles consume energy and resources.
They do not produce energy and resources.
therefore it is not possible to build a viable “economy” based on the construction of E vehicles and the consumption of finite resources.
The EV cannot function outside a hydrocarbon based environment–and I don’t just mean roads and bridges. Your employment, the function that pays for the EV, cannot exist without hydrocarbon input. That holds whether you’re a brain surgeon or a garbage collector or anything in between. Musk doesn’t touch that aspect of his potential market.
We may have had an illusion of growing prosperity for a while, but what we are seeing now is that the consumption to sustain it is self destructive.
The steam engine was developed and became the (apparent) deliverer of man’s cornucopia, but instead it devoured only itself, through the resources that fed it.
(we are in the terminal –and denial–stage of that right now)
A billion I/C vehicles are on the world’s roads . Replacing them with EVs simply shifts the problem sideways. We have built a world economy based on transportation, the illusion that wheels make us all rich, together with The ability to shift stuff and ourselves around at will. Think about that for a moment—an entire global commercial function based on the continuation of rotary motion, and being able to travel for no better reason than it seems a good idea at the time.
The entire living function of everyone is now wholly dependent on making wheels go round. The EV isn’t going to alter that by any significant factor.
Thus any “economy” that we know of depends on consuming fuel at a faster and faster rate.
That is not “economy” it is burning finite resources
It would be difficult to write a better explanation than that….
The existing ICE regime and all associated supporting infrastructure is and always has been subsidized by taxpayers. Remove those and even the current personal car/truck ownership paradigm wouldn’t exist. We are going to end changing to a lifestyle without that anyway. I think it is time to stop the ongoing illusion for the masses that our current way of life can and will continue only based on “green” energy. We are simply setting ourselves up for even more pain.
Our whole system depends on having roads and vehicles to use on those roads. While I am writing from the United States, Europe transports most of its goods by trucks. It really needs roads as well. The cost of maintaining the roads is high, but we don’t see it.
In fact, the first owners of automobiles didn’t actually work. They were simply delightful toys for the very rich (wealth founded on the exploitation of coal), and saved them all the trouble associated with carriages, stables and drunken coachmen…… A horse knows the way home if the coachman is drunk, a car doesn’t.
The futility of carz culture is all understood, but we are not in post BAU stage yet, nor exactly is known if we are just about to leave the final BAU bubble and commence deeper reset down shortly.
What we can empirically observe with high degree of certainty though is that past 40yrs meant stagnation and slow decay of status for the wage earners, while system owners (and their lackeys) looted day and night like crazy. We know the US (as the host entity for the global order whoever it actually is) will reach its ~150yrs global dominance within few next decades.
The sequencing, regional impact, length and profile of future stages are unknown-able guesstimates from today’s vantage point.
For instance, from your example, it’s possible that in some parts of the US surgeons might happily continue zipping in their Teslas, even in those future yet announced models decades from now, because by that time large groups of hydrocarbon consumers globally won’t be there anymore (both physically or allowed to participate as demand in the market) to eating from that shrinking pie, also if accelerated depletion thesis is correct.
Hint: if there is a gun shown on the theater stage early on, it will be definitely used for the grand finale..
WofH: why don’t you do a little fact checking before you post — it would save you from being made a fool of….
‘Americans bought just 102,600 such vehicles in 2015, a 17 percent decline from the previous year, according to researcher Autodata’
Autodata estimated that Tesla’s U.S. total rose 26 percent to 23,650.
http://assets.bwbx.io/images/iHzb0NgMMbic/v2/-1x-1.png
Woodcliff Lake, NJ – January 5, 2016… Sales of BMW brand vehicles in December totaled 34,625 compared to 41,526 vehicles sold in December 2014. For the year, BMW brand is up 1.8 percent on sales of 346,023 compared to 339,738 from last year, breaking last year’s all time sales record.
https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/usa/article/detail/T0249098EN_US/bmw-group-u-s-reports-december-and-2015-sales
The U.S. auto industry set a sales record in 2015 as solid December gains by the biggest automakers pushed the annual tally above the 17,402,486 mark set in 2000. Automakers chalked up 17,470,659 light-vehicle sales last year, an increase of 5.7 percent over 2014
http://www.autonews.com/article/20160105/RETAIL01/160109995/u.s.-auto-sales-break-record-in-2015
Tesla may as well not even exist with its puny 23k unit sales… in fact EVs may as well not exist at 102k units.
If they were not heavily subsidized there would be next to ZERO sales
EVs are a joke. A bad one at that.
I would be willing to bet a lot of money that the pre-order numbers are fake… PR companies frequently use such tactics to hype product launches… they also pay people to queue up around the block….
http://restoringmayberry.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/ireland-in-strange-time.html
interesting link here—lots more on their sidebar worth a read too
Any website that has an image of a traditional pub on the homepage is worth a closer look (although I am sorry to see the establishment in question has ‘wide-screen TV’ advertised which is surely not to be encouraged…..)
Good article — however once again we have an indictment of the system — but no solution — because there is no solution ….
We either continue to burn baby burn — or we collapse into extinction.
Therefore the only logical position on this is to support the increasing consumption of fossil fuels.
http://www.techinsider.io/russian-exploding-methane-craters-global-warming-2016-3
Alas — the solution to our energy woes – capture the methane being released from the melting arctic… and burn it!!! (sarc on)
Fast Eddy, maybe we can buy in with the IPO of stock. Seems like reasonable kick the can proposal. From what I read somewhere before, a major University was awarded a grant to study the problem so it is seriously being considered
http://news.utexas.edu/2014/10/22/methane-hydrates-energy-supply
AUSTIN, Texas A research team led by The University of Texas at Austin has been awarded approximately $58 million to analyze deposits of frozen methane under the Gulf of Mexico that hold enormous potential to increase the world’s energy supply.
The grant, one of the largest ever awarded to the university, will allow researchers to advance scientific understanding of methane hydrate, a substance found in abundance beneath the ocean floor and under Arctic permafrost.
The Department of Energy is providing $41,270,609, with the remainder funded by industry and the research partners.
Hey, maybe they will succeed? Wouldn’t that be a surprise!
If I had 58M dollars — I’d bet that against the grant that they will not succeed.
Fast Eddie, the fossil fuel industry is very serious with the intent to exploit this resource.
Speculation is rampant that a new gas cornucopia is coming. After a successful Japanese experiment to extract natural gas from methane hydrates 1,000 meters below the surface and 50 miles off its shores, some are beginning to wonder if the “shale revolution” was just the beginning. But don’t hold your breath.
There is no question that the world is awash in methane hydrates, which is methane gas trapped in lattice-like ice structures in ocean sediment and near permafrost. It is sometimes called “fire ice.”
There is also no question that these hydrates are an enormous potential energy resource. According to the US Geological Survey, the amount of methane trapped in hydrates worldwide is at least 100,000 trillion cubic feet—this completely dwarfs the entire total of known US shale gas reserves, which is at 2,074 trillion cubic feet.
http://www.naturalgaseurope.com/methane-hydrates-a-second-gas-revolution
But then again, who anticipated the shale revolution? In the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2025 report released in 2008, there was no indication that the shale revolution would, less than three years later, begin to completely transform energy markets. So stranger things have happened.
Can you explain to me how shale had transformed energy markets?
From what I see it has been a flash in the pan… and it’s ending… as expected because as we all know when we get to the bottom of the milkshake there’s not a lot left in the cup….
And when the slurping starts — you know it’s the end…
Shale wells are making a slurping sound…
Also gas is not the issue – we have lots of gas left in the ground…. we need cheap to extract oil
You want ad explanation? You answered it yourself many times….it bought 8 plus years of BAU! Perhaps methane hydrates will too….lovely😄
We need cheap oil. Not LNG.
Vince
this is what happens when really bad things kick off
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/04/amid-climate-fueled-food-crisis-filipino-forces-open-fire-starving-farmers
The people who are most affected, start to act violently, while the people with something to lose—ie the establishment plus police, react with force of arms–and the ball doesn’t bounce around, it happens suddenly and people get killed. then the system just falls apart very rapidly.
this has happened throughout history—and as bad things begin to happen in the usa and europe, there will be revolution there too.
There is no alternative. Those in power will cling to it, and pay the military to defend them. The article above is a replay of the Russian and French revolution, driven by the same forces. It might kick off now–or fester for another year or two.
Remember this article?
1.6 Billion Rounds Of Ammo For Homeland Security? It’s Time For A National Conversation
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billion-rounds-of-ammo-for-homeland-security-its-time-for-a-national-conversation/#27c3c5785e01
the ultimate in crowd control….
I recently had a conversation with a Bernie Sanders supporter – a young male. The conversation started with him advocating revolution. My response was be careful what you ask for, some of of the people in Syria wanted a revolution too. As our conversation digressed he became more agitated. He repeatably referred to science to be the solution to all our energy AND carbon problems but had no knowledge of science. He was absolutely convinced that a utopia exists but “they” are keeping us from it. Im afraid you are right. When resources end and delusions are exposed people will turn to violence.
Having just returned from Canada … and observing the pampered spoiled entitled emperors otherwise known as the Millenials…. kids and young adults who believe hardship is the pizza man arriving 10 minutes late… or daddy not buying them the brand of new car they wanted for their birthday….
I must say — the one thing that I see as a positive in terms of the end of BAU — is that these smug buggers get a massive mouthful of suffering.
Time for a story ….
When I moved to Hong Kong I was working in a low paying job and there was one person on our team who came from oil money in Alberta… she constantly made insensitive comments about the poverty of Hong Kong including :why are people allowed to hang clothes on their balconies – it’s such an eye sore ….. on another occasions she said I don’t know how people can handle flying back to Canada economy class – I could only ever do that in business class (of course papa was paying the shot….)
She ended up marrying someone introduced at the ‘country club’ — no idea where she ended up but I can imagine she made the unlucky fellow’s life a living hell…
I’d like to dedicate the End of the World to her (and all others that resemble her).
The day such people are eating rat meat… no… the day such people are selling their bodies for a pound of dead rat meat….. is the day I wake with a giant smile on my face.
“I must say — the one thing that I see as a positive in terms of the end of BAU — is that these smug buggers get a massive mouthful of suffering.”
I so agree with that.
People are so arrogant with their sense of entitlement it makes me sick & the media, especially tv reinforces their attitude.
TV makes the isheep feel there’s something special about themselves…………………………..
Good observations!
“The day such people are eating rat meat… no… the day such people are selling their bodies for a pound of dead rat meat….. is the day I wake with a giant smile on my face.”
Fast Eddy:
Totally agree, you are a poet !
Anyone who wants to impose a world to measure, deserves a good collapse.
Sorry, I use the translator to write here.
Greetings from Spain to all friends of a finite world.
I am a poet – cool 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
“The day such people are eating rat meat… no… the day such people are selling their bodies for a pound of dead rat meat….. is the day I wake with a giant smile on my face.”
The condition you describe that warrants the fate you describe is lack of compassion.
To have compassion is to experience pain. If you are able to feel deeply what another sentient being is experiencing often this will result in pain. Love is pain when what you love dies. To some extent all of us practice desensitizing. The alternative is to spend all your life in pain. Entitlement is more or less the most common strategy. If you are competing for resources its not very convenient to feel compassion as you shove a stick through the eye socket of your competition. The competition must be demonized. If you are left they are right. If you are right they are left. If you are rich they are poor. If you are poor they are rich. If you are religion x they are religion y. If you are religion y they are religion x.
While what you describe is not what I would consider the best of human characteristics it describes a sensitizing strategy that allowed her continuance. This to me is the very crux of the paradox. While it seems obvious to me that we must develop greater sensitivity as a species to survive that sensitivity very often leads to crippling pain and certainly works against individual continuance.
Entitlement allows continuance. Not loving allows continuance.
If the crime she is guilty of is insensitivity then many many deserve to experience the fate you describe. FE does not our entire species deserve a horrible fate? Or is there some glimmer of merit in some? What say you?
Yes the freak show otherwise known as the human species needs to go.
The sooner the better.
Every last one of us.
Zero compassion. Zero.
don’t hold your breath?
I would have thought breathing was going to be a bad idea
Fast Eddy is betting on a fast collapse, like yesterday. He’s got all his chips on the roulette wheel as it spins round and round. He is going to be very surprised on how long it goes round and round as ball of fate bounces to and fro and doesn’t seem to slow down.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zGCdBsOIKYA
Yes Sir, betting our life on the spin…how exciting, right Fast Eddy?
That is an outstanding metaphor!
The wheel does indeed go round and round….. until ….. it suddenly …. stops.
I couldn’t agree more — BAU will continue to spin …. and then one day …. it will stop.
I am glad to see that we are on the same page – finally!
Fast Eddy, just one detail you forgot your final outcome is losing…
Makes these guys look like small potatoes
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Odfus7sJwiE
“Alas — the solution to our energy woes – capture the methane being released from the melting arctic… and burn it!!! (sarc on)”
Might as well catch cow farts and use them while you’re at it:
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2016/04/02/the-stark-realities-of-baked-in-catastrophes/
I was going to post some of xraymikes thoughts in addition to the link. Apparently, he uses bad words. Words that WordPress simply cannot countenance. The horror.
Dear Finite Worlders
I would like to tie three things together: Gail’s article here, Ugo Bardi’s model explaining the Trump phenomenon, and some comments by the biologist Andreas Weber in The Biology of Wonder.
Gails’ post is self-explanatory. Bardi models the breakdown of society when people conclude that it becomes more effective to steal than to obey the rules.
http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2016/04/donald-trump-and-collapse-of-western.html
Weber talks about the inherent conflict in a living creature which wants independence but is also dependent on others for its very existence. Weber states that a society must reach many compromises which involve both what we may think of as private property and a public commons. In the US, for example, the air is a commons, but your automobile is private. The tension comes when your private automobile spews out toxic pollution. The US usually tries to solve these kinds of problems with large doses of cognitive dissonance.
It is well established that there are many cases where cooperation yields more than plain competition. For example, everyone who studies the matter concludes that the 3 Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) yield more together than they yield if planted in 3 separate fields. Likewise, the Bec farm in France and Joel Salatin in the US and, before them, the Nearings in Vermont have all promoted the notion of cooperation between largely independent farmers using some common resources. The scientific observers at the Bec farm found a remarkable sense of teamwork. We can speculate about the reasons which permit stable teamwork to evolve and survive in that small environment.
In the US, I believe that the sense of teamwork in many corporations dissolved at the time the Dilbert comic strip became popular. It became every man for himself in a world which made little sense.
Bardi describes the breakdown of governments. If you have been reading the hacked emails in the IMF pertaining to the manipulation of Greece to accomplish certain objectives in Germany, you probably won’t have much faith left in the goodwill of whatever government body you happen to be dealing with.
I don’t have very much good advice to give. I am skeptical about governments and big corporations. I am obviously more hopeful about very local and small organizations. The difficulty for the small and the local is finding some rocks to hide behind as governments and corporations target them for extinction.
Don Stewart
Yes, the EU and Germany, albeit quite important are only a province out of several for the proprietors of the global financial order, and poor Greece is positioned in few notches lower category as periphery to such a province..
What they fear is disorderly (aka not IMF/ECB/EU managed) default, which would result in impairment at least of several hundred billions and perhaps cascading further through the complex virtual fictionalization structures. This would demand new extra round of global print fest. Now, Greece is locked into beyond desperate, they could have defaulted 2011/12 and now perhaps starting some consolidation, but the fear of acute pain was worse than the actual risk.
The road to local/regional will be very long and painful for many reasons, but one of the primary ones is that people are afraid to be kicked out of the system of “free stuff as long as it does function” – which is next to impossible emulate outside of the dominant system as you will be sanctioned, embargoed, color revolutionized, starved etc.
IMF Discussed Pressuring Germany on Greek Debt, WikiLeaks Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-02/imf-discussed-pressuring-germany-on-greek-debt-wikileaks-says
“Look you, Mrs. Merkel, you face a question, you have to think about what is more costly: to go ahead without the IMF, would the Bundestag say ‘The IMF is not on board?’ or to pick the debt relief that we think that Greece needs in order to keep us on board? Right?” the IMF’s head of European Department, Poul Thomsen, who oversees the Greek bailout program, is quoted as saying in a transcript dated March 19.
In my opinion Germany and Northern Europe won the battle last time against the IMF. I believe that Germany and Northern Europe have decided to make Greece into a warning example for other European governments not to fool around with socialism on borrowed money.
I don’t believe that IMF is an angel, but on this occasion it seems that IMF tried to give Greece a debt relief, but Germany and Northern Europe said no.
Socialism doesn’t seem to be a solution either in a finite world. Soviet Union seems to have been an oil thirsty “beast”.
http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/oil-consumption-as-pct-of-1985-consumption.png?w=640
Looks like from that chart, Russia and the other two never got their economies back up to the speed they were running before the collapse of the soviet union. Even though Russia produces north of 10 million barrels a day, it would seem instead of funneling proceeds to the populace to invigorate the economy, it is going mostly to a few multi-billionaires and government cronies.
I guess that you are right that the chart represents an inequality problem based on corruption and cronyism.
I guess the chart also shows that Socialism or a welfare state is after all expensive to maintain.
I also guess that the world is today waiting for the welfare states in Northern Europe, Japan and North America to start to crumble. The U.S government debt at $19 trillion basically represents a welfare program.
Northern Europe, Japan and North America are the last Socialist states left standing ?
Interesting information
https://lokisrevengeblog.wordpress.com/
Thanks Norman,
Noticed he also links to Cory Morningstar’s “The Art of Annihilation”.
Great, but depressing data. Thanks for the link. Notice that buried in the list is the prediction of 6 degree C rise in 13 years. This mirrors what Guy McPhearson has been saying–that basically we’re doomed in 15 or so years. At a 6 degree rise, agriculture will not exist except around the polar or sub-polar regions and humans will not be able to survive above ground with such temps.
I was making some calculations about water today.
– 1 cow drinks about 100L a day. That´s a cubic meter of water per day per ten cows. Every day.
– One meter of tomatoes beds in the greenhouse need 10L of water each day (by drip irrigation). So I need at least one cubic meter of water each day at the greenhouse. At the minimum.
Then there are all to other water needs that are to be met by the water from the wells (poultry 200L a day etc.) . And there is a limit in the number of wells one can have..
Livestock and greenhouses can´t really use water straight from the well because it is too cold, it is not airated enough (vegetables). So I need more water tanks that I can then use by gravity. If the well doesn´t produce enough water, then I need a huge system of water pumping, filtration (poultry and greenhouses need absolutely pure water to avoid as many diseases as possible) to make everything work.
If a gasoline/ ethanol/ diesel/ biogas pump is not available to pump water, and robust hoses that the fire departments use, then I need one person doing nothing else (year round) than pumping, transporting and filtering water. Talk about dopamine and work satisfaction. Nothing else, day after day, year after year.
My grandfather built a watertank for the livestock that worked for about 60 years. And I´m wondering if I can make something last 10 years. Sad.
And one has to remember I have a large lake at my farm. I live in a country with one of the best water situations in the world. And its this much trouble for me. In most parts of the world Post-BAU is going to be FUBAR..
Just wondering how many people really-really has what it takes to struggle through a collapse and the first few years of Post-BAU http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-02/character-traits-and-skills-are-hard-find-during-crisis
Norman spoke about population drop to 1 billion.
To me that looks like an optimistic view.
In some ways it looks like a collapse has already happened. Normans link again: https://lokisrevengeblog.wordpress.com/
And a sad look on the collapsing and already collapsed U.S. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-30/depressing-survey-results-show-how-extremely-stupid-america-has-become
I would call it some kind of collapse that people all around the world seem to be incapable of looking ahead, and seeing whats coming behind the next corner. People start to cry nowadays when everything has already happened, but its useless to cry when the shit is already in the pants.
We are definitely in our Wile E. Coyote moment.
I share your concern about water. I live in a city with some of the cleanest metropolitan water in America (Eugene, Oregon). We get our water straight from the Cascades after going through lava beds (natural purification). The only reall pollutant upsteam of us (and no town upstream discharges waste into our water source) is spraying of private or federal forest lands. Having said that, while I could walk to the Willamette River should the grid go down and we don’t have running water, it’s probably two miles away. I”m in the hills to boot, so hauling water would be a chore. However, to help mitigate this somewhat, I do have six 55 gallon barrels connected to my downspout—this will help somewhat in the dry summer months. The west coast has summer drought, unlike most of the rest of the US (or even most of Europe) so having water for consumption or watering my “crops” would be critical then. Who knows if this all will work—maybe it’s going to be so gruesome we’ll wish we were dead anyway. . .
‘maybe it’s going to be so gruesome we’ll wish we were dead anyway’
++++
It is rather disheartening when one starts to think through the post collapse scenarios… there is virtually no chance of survival (event if the spent fuel ponds could be sorted out…) …
I reckon these folks will do just fine post-BAU.
A lot of good quotes:
If we put all land vertebrate life on a weigh scale, humans and livestock would take up 97% of all that weight. Ten thousand years ago we were 0.01%.
Green energy doesn’t run on the sun and wind, it runs on mining minerals.
Astonishing numbers
Soybeans are still king in Ohio. Farmers in the state intend to plant 4.65 million acres in beans in 2016, according to Cheryl Turner, state statistician for the Ohio field office of the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. That’s 100,000 acres below last year’s planted acreage, but still above the 3.50 million acres Ohio farmers expect to plant in corn this year, unchanged from a year ago.
Winter wheat acreage, meanwhile, is forecast to come to 600,000 acres statewide later this year, 80,000 acres more than in 2015.
Turner said that as of March 1 corn stocks in Ohio stood at 310 million bushels, 10 percent below where they were a year ago, while soybean stocks were also down, by about 5 percent to 97 million bushels. Winter wheat stocks, meanwhile, have risen in the state, by about 10 percent over 2014 levels to 42.8 million bushels.
All this data was released by the USDA Thursday, with commodity markets quick to digest it.
Meanwhile , Honeybees are taking it hard
A number of factors may account for the rise of colony collapse disorder, or CCD, among pollinators, but nicotine-based pesticides, or neonicotinoids, used in agriculture are coming under heightened scrutiny, even as studies have failed to establish a direct link between the chemicals and increased bee deaths.
The U.S. EPA is reviewing neonicotinoids, but a court in Minnesota didn’t wait for a federal resolution to the issue, ruling recently that a beekeeper there must be compensated for his losses after it was determined that neonic dust from a nearby cornfield damaged his hives. Legislators in Maryland, meanwhile, are considering restricting neonics, something no other state has done, although they would exempt agricultural applications.
Several ag groups, from the American Soybean Association to the National Corn Growers Association and many more, argue that neonicotinoid pesticides are precisely targeted and that usage of them results in fewer chemicals having to be used on fields. The USDA estimates that neonic-coated seeds are planted on 150 million acres across the U.S. each year
http://www.bucyrustelegraphforum.com/story/news/2016/04/01/ag-beat-bees-had-rough-2015/82467292/
Ohio has about 75,000 farms and more than 10 million acres in production. The value of Ohio’s bounty tops $10 billion a year
The state’s organic farmers added 12,000 acres to their more than 500 farms and doubled sales between 2008 and 2014, the only two years of full U.S. Department of Agriculture census data on organic farming nationwide.
Another sign of Ohio’s organic farming growth is that 25 percent of organic operators get all of their income from their farm, up from just 14 percent in 2008. Last year, 34 of Ohio’s organic farms had sales of $500,000 or higher, more than double the number in 2008.
Ohio’s organic producers grow peppers, squash and tomatoes, cut flowers and herbs. They make pickles, grow microgreens indoors and raise sheep. They also grow some organic corn and soybeans for animal feed. But the big growth in Ohio’s organic production has been in dairy and eggs, two longtime Ohio specialties.
Ohio’s organic milk production, with $36.6 million in sales last year, makes up more than 40 percent of the state’s entire organic production.
The U.S. imported more than $1.4 billion in organic foods in 2013, according to the USDA. A lot of that food, such as bananas and coffee, can’t be grown here. Soybeans and wine, of which the U.S. has abundant conventional producers, are also leading organic imports because demand far outstrips domestic supply.
Organic grapes won’t likely be a major Ohio crop, but Lipstreu sees grains like soybeans, wheat and corn as the next big growth area for organic farmers
http://www.oeffa.org/news/?m=201511The%20U.S.%20imported%20more%20than%20$1.4%20billion%20in%20organic%20foods%20in%202013,%20according%20to%20the%20USDA.%20A%20lot%20of%20that%20food,%20such%20as%20bananas%20and%20coffee,%20can’t%20be%20grown%20here.%20Soybeans%20and%20wine,%20of%20which%20the%20U.S.%20has%20abundant%20conventional%20producers,%20are%20also%20leading%20organic%20imports%20because%20demand%20far%20outstrips%20domestic%20supply.%20Organic%20grapes%20won’t%20likely%20be%20a%20major%20Ohio%20crop,%20but%20Lipstreu%20sees%20grains%20like%20soybeans,%20wheat%20and%20corn%20as%20the%20next%20big%20growth%20area%20for%20organic%20farmers
And…don’t forget that 50% of US Soybean production goes to China to feed Pigs.
Big Agra argues that Mega farms are necessary to feed the population.
Perhaps that should read … Mega farms are necessary for market share, profits, and exports to feed other country’s populations.
Don’t forget we NEED to IMPORT non GMO organic corn….because for all practical purposes, non is grown here in the United States.
So, Ohio has 75,000 farms….500 are classified conventional organic….
Sure we have alternatives!
It is the weakest link that brings down the system. We really need honey bees.
Stefeun
Here are two links to recent stuff by and about Adrian Bejan. The first is a Kirkus review of his new book which will come out in May. The second is a brief glimpse into an article he wrote describing the evolution of walk/ don’t walk signs and other drawings.
You have to admit he is coming from an interesting perspective.
Don Stewart
http://constructal.org/2016/04/02/the-physics-of-life-adrian-bejan/
http://constructal.org/2016/02/26/the-design-evolution-of-drawings/
“His theory both reorients how we think of physics, shifting focus from the effect of the individual to a necessary entanglement of the whole, and also empowers us to consider “life” as all manifestations of forward flow.”
I wasn’t clear what (or whom) ‘the individual’ referred to in is context. But this discussion seems to have great relevance for art and land use organization.
So, what is the use of this information? It won’t change anything and it is pseudo science.
Dear Kurt;
You nailed it. For more wisdom of this type see this site, and push the reionize electrons button.
Yours in BS,
Pintada
Van Kent and Others
As an addendum to my last post, please add this from Charles Hugh Smith, writing this weekend. By the way, I can’t make the penguin video play. But you get the idea….Don Stewart
This inspirational video He Rescued A Dog, Then The Dog Rescued Him (6:25) was specifically intended to promote animal adoption–a self-evidently worthy cause.
But the story illustrates a much larger point: we rescue each other, not just in terms of human-pet/animal bonds, but in a great many relationships between humans, animals and Nature. (The program calls this mutual rescue.)
The Penguin Who Swims 5,000 Miles To See His Human Pal Every Year (1:55) reflects a variation on this theme, as the benefit to the human is less direct and measurable than weight loss and improved health, but nonetheless very real.
There are many stories of apparently selfless animals and humans caring for individuals of other species (or of the same species but no blood relation). The rescue may appear to be one-way, but as Adam Smith (yes, that Adam Smith–the ground-breaking English economist) pointed out in his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), the benefits of aiding others or a community are ingrained in human nature: we are not entirely rationalist selfish beings, even though this is the model that underpins virtually all modern economic theory: we maximize our own gain, period.
For Smith, mutual benefit was the key dynamic of the Invisible Hand that guided the market–not 100% selfish gain.
The desire to connect with others, to aid those in need, and to gain something essential within ourselves by helping others, is sorely overlooked in a world riven by seemingly inexhaustible conflict and exploitation.
I wonder if “we rescue each other” isn’t the foundation of many successful marriages, business partnerships and humans-preserving-Nature-for-no-personal-gain stories.
Perhaps we recoil from this idea because the modernist ideal is a self-contained “heroic” personality who never needs rescuing. Perhaps the reality is that we need to rescue and be rescued.
Don,
Yup.
Today we compared notes what works and what doesn´t work, with some Brazilian friends visiting from their organic farm. A portugese friend was also with us. Yesterday we had people from Mexico, Netherlands, Turkey, Marocco and Spain visiting us.
Mutual benefit seems to be the key that make things happen. Relationships. Meaning. Wherever you are.
People aren´t that different. There just happens to be this individualism culture dominant, that encourages to be self “sufficient”. Wich actually makes you have fewer relationships and less meaning.
It´s good to have people around, that you can trust, that you know have no reason to lie to you. I don´t know about the rescue and be rescued part. I would just call it “trust”. People need people who they can trust 100% to be there when “SHTF”.
Thanks Don.
Fantastic post, Don.
Stepheun,
Re things like cutting down large trees. (Although I wouldn’t do that on principle):
I seem to have been born a Luddite, and so I have an aversion to power tools. I don’t have to TRY to avoid them; I just despise them, screw up when I use them, and generally don’t understand how to use them. So I cut things with hand saws or knives. If it’s too much work, it doesn’t get cut and I try to work around it.
When I had trees in bad need of cutting back, I also then had enough dollars to pay for a professional to do the job. I’m going to make a crude guess that there are 500 people in these parts to one professional tree cutter (with the interest, motivation, equipment, etc.) who can come to one’s home to cut trees. Someone could do the math to see how much fossil fuel supply would be needed to provide those (and other similar) functions.
There will be no such thing as everyone doing such things for themselves. There will have to be serious planning an cooperation to get those things done that depend on fossil fuels and transportation. We’re talking about communities that are rational and not stuck in the past. (Funny, coming from a Luddite, I know!)
Good point, Artleads. I just cut a bunch of tree limbs to get back our view of the lake and to be able to get down to the bottom of the property. It didn’t take many years to become overgrown. At first I used a pole with a saw on it to reach limbs and cut them, but as my arms got more tired I went up a ladder, then climbed up the tree and cut them with an electric sawzall with a special blade for cutting branches. Even then I got pretty tired of the work and now have someone coming tomorrow to drag the cuttings up to the street, where the local association will use a chipper to chew up the green material.
Your point is a good one, because if you’ve ever seen photos of towns that are abandoned, it doesn’t take long before it’s overgrown with plant life of one kind or another. Beating all that stuff back will still need to be done post collapse, if there is any assemblence of a regular life at that point. Otherwise watch nature take back our towns and cities.
Artleads,
Maybe Luddites have plenty of time (sorry I don’t know much about this philosophy).
I realized that my point was mostly about Time.
Not really surprising, when connected to Energy, since in physics, the Power is the Energy used per unit of Time (P = Q/t).
Hence the constant quest to have tasks made ever faster. In some cases we can go really fast, as e.g. for HFT, but then arises the question about the control we humans have left over it. I don’t believe in any singularity, because such acceleration requires a similar increase in Energy, once you can’t compress Time any longer. The purpose being increasing Power, anyhow. If you can neither compress Time anymore, nor increase Energy consumption, then Power stalls, and eventually drops.
One more, for fun: if Money is Energy (as it actually is), it also represents Power. In order to increase Power, you have to decrease (compress) Time. Hence Time is Money.
To do Work, that is (Work is a type of Energy). But is Work the right purpose?
I think it’s an African proverb: Europeans have clocks, we have Time.
Response to Van Kent and Others
I would like to take an excursion into the questions you raise about the Reductive Materialism of Gail and several commenters on this blog.
I will use as a resource Stuart Kauffman’s new book Humanity in a Creative Universe. I won’t hold myself out as an expert. I’m just a reader, like everyone else. However, I think that Kauffman and many others cast severe doubts on Reductive Materialism.
For example, the Maximum Power law is frequently invoked. Yet Kauffman claims, on page 234, that he and a group have demonstrated that, for E. Coli, the microbe follows an ‘optimal displacement from equilibrium’ growth pattern…not maximum growth rate. If E. Coli can do it, it is a bold claim that humans cannot. So the example of a microbe should make us wary of invoking laws which we believe to be true…but really aren’t true.
Kauffman begins Chapter 4, A Creative Universe: No Entailing Laws, with these words:
‘I hope to convince you that reductive materialism stops cold at the magnificent, but beyond entailing law, evolution of the biosphere, the most complex system we know of in the universe. At stake is our very view of reality, surely of we the living and becoming, and perhaps…the abiotic universe in many ways. Also at stake is our freedom, and re-visioning that freedom, as alive humans, beyond the grip of Newton, whatever the majesty of classical and even quantum physics…in seeking our subjective goal. The evolution of the biosphere presents us with an entire new worldview, one in which its becoming cannot be restated, is not ‘governed’ by entailing laws, in which what becomes constitutes ever-new Actuals that are ‘enabling constraints’ that do not cause, but enable ever-new, typically unprestatable, Adjacent Possible opportunities into which the evoking biosphere becomes….We shall find this theme, one of history, writ large, an expression of the anti-entropic processes in the universe that I discussed in the last chapter. The most complex system we know in the universe has become in an unprestatable historical unfolding. We are its living children, of this Nature, not above it, not to wrest our due, but to cherish as one sense of sacred.’
On page 41, Kauffman had taken on the Second Law:
‘The second law issue concerns thermodynamics and free energy, that is, the energy available to do work. The second law says free energy is running down. But we know now that the expansion of the universe is accelerating due to the mysterious dark energy that comprises about 70 percent of the energy of the entire universe.
The implication of this accelerating expansion is that we do not have to worry about enough free energy. As the universe becomes larger, its maximum entropy increases faster than the loss of free energy by the second law, so there is always more than enough free energy to do work.
In short, two parts of why the universe became complex are the fine tuning of the constants and the accelerating expansion of the universe.’
I don’t want to go deeply into a universe-centric argument. Ordinary thermodynamics explains quite a bit about the practical day-to-day issues that I have to deal with. However, I do want to steal certain phrases and ideas from Kauffman for my own purposes.
The ideas I would like to focus on here are the ‘ever-new Actuals’ and the ‘ever-new Adjacent Possible opportunities’. I would like to apply them to the study of the Bec farm in France. Gail dismisses the example of the farm as irrelevant, because everything is connected to everything else and it is all going down in flames…probably later this year. I will agree that everything MIGHT go down in flames…but then everything might not go down in flames.
Kauffman discusses Aristotle’s listing of the causes of building a house:
Material cause: the bricks used in the house
Formal cause: the design of the house
Efficient cause: the activity of the workmen who build the house
Final cause: the desire to build the house
Kauffman notes that Final causes have gotten very short shrift since Newton and Darwin. Kauffman wants to bring Final causes back into the spotlight. This is related to my harping on neurotransmitters and hormones (which I shamelessly steal from Nate Hagens and Andreas Weber). So…if we are going to examine food consumption, we are now confronted with New Actuals, and the demonstration at the Bec farm shows us some New Adjacent Possible Opportunities. To claim that the new opportunities are irrelevant because the future is already determined is diametrically opposed to Kauffman’s message.
For the last 200 years or so, our society has continuously substituted mechanical for human labor. Yet the results from the Bec farm seem to indicate that we have overshot in terms of at least some parts of food production. Let’s look at some of the negative consequences of industrial agriculture:
*soil erosion
*poisoned soil
*loss of soil carbon
*loss of biodiversity
*chronic disease
*depletion of fossil fuels
*global warming
*depopulation of the countryside
*more brittleness, due to mono cropping, separation of producing and consuming areas, fewer farmers, etc.
*more ugliness and less beauty
*reduced food yield per unit of land
*thermodynamic instability…spending 10 calories to get 1
*bad, boring jobs
The Bec farm shows that these negatives can be significantly turned into positives…while being financially stable if not wildly profitable. Which brings us back around to Aristotle’s Final Cause and all those neurotransmitters and hormones. The two farmers repeatedly refer to their emotional response to the farm. The chief scientist refers to the ‘rare and magical’ farm, and says that even if it is true that the increased productivity of the farm is ‘adopted from the Parisian market gardeners of the 19th century…small and well cared for is better than big and neglected. A principle that is undoubtedly an essential key to their success. But this care also meets an aesthetic logic, aimed at what many can feel, that we enjoy working more in this scenario and therefore work more efficiently.’
In short, we have to confront New Actuals which were not true when we started on this journey 200 years ago, and the Bec farm study opens our eyes to some New Adjacent Possible Opportunities.
One can be pessimistic that humans can conjure up enough sapience to actually take advantage of the Opportunities in time and in sufficient quantity…but to dismiss them as irrelevant is, in my mind, simply not a rational response.
Don Stewart
Don,
Just 2 short remarks:
– about the one-sided materialistic view of Science, a historical point of view by Carolyn Merchant, lots of good points in a short text:
http://www.history.vt.edu/Barrow/Hist3706/merchant.html (already linked here several times)
– about questioning Odum’s MPP and the second law (there’s a third one (MEP) that helps dissipate most of the doubts) and this focus on design, reminds me of the discussion we recently had about Adrian Bejan and the confusion I perceived, not really easy to debunk.
Stefeun
Thanks for the link.
Relative to Bejan. I wasn’t sure what your point was about him. I have two reactions. First is the uncanny resemblance between the evolution of the ‘dead’ and the ‘alive’, although Bejan uses the word ‘life’ to describe anything that is evolving in the direction of easier flow. But the second point is really my main interest. His question ‘what is flowing?’ is a very fundamental question, I think.
For example, in the very good book on Homer, Why Homer Matters, the author points out that the Iliad and the Odyssey record the clash between very wild people from the north meeting the more civilized cultures of the Mediterranean. There are some surviving letters from the Hittite ruler to a Greek warlord reminding him to be respectful of the women in the Hittite court. The Hittite says that people noticed the lustful thoughts of the Greek on his last visit to the court, and the Hittite reminds the Greek that the Hittite had cut off the head of another Greek for failing to respect the Hittite women.
The Greeks had no notion of ‘respecting’ a woman. The Hittites apparent did have such notions, and the Greeks were running a big risk if they violated those standards. So…if you ask ‘what is flowing when a Greek sees a Greek woman vs. seeing a Hittite woman, you get different answers. There may be lust in both cases, but there is also fear mixed with the lust in the Hittite court. Consequently, we would expect the actions to be different.
We can bring that up to today if we ask ‘what is flowing on Wall Street’ and ‘what is flowing in an investor owned credit union?’ Or ‘what is flowing in an old family owned business’ vs. ‘what is flowing in a company which has attracted the interest of an Active Investor?’
Bejan uses his question to ascertain the ideal design of the Atlanta airport, and finds that the actual design is very close to his ideal design. Same with water flowing to the ocean through seepage, creeks, and rivers. I’m not a scholar of the subject, but Bejan certainly opened my eyes to a way of looking.
Don Stewart
Also…a foundational issue for the year 2016 is whether humanity can change the ‘flow answer’ from ‘energy from oil used in blunt instruments is flowing’ to ‘neurotransmitters and hormones manipulated by very subtle use of primary energy is flowing’.
Don Stewart
Don,
No, because the way we’re using energy, as a society, that is, is all through the heat energy step, which is the lowest form/quality of energy.
Then from heat we must re-climb upwards the quality ladder (to mechanical, electric, chemical …) with UGLY efficiency rates.
It’s impossible to copy Nature from there, unless you abandon all man-made stuff and be part of Nature yourself (ie 100% of your outputs naturally recycled).
But then you take the risk to be hunted and shot down by someone who still had a gun and ammo.
This metaphor is valid at different organization levels, including Nations, unfortunately.
Stefeun
Not sure I follow you here. But think about this. Three paths to feeling good. First, work hard to get into an Ivy League school, work hard in college, accumulate a lot of debt which you will spend the rest of your life working hard to repay. Drink a beer and think, ‘I’ve made it!’.
Second way. Drop into a tent revival and find Jesus. Tell everyone, ‘I found it!’
Third way. Get a puppy. KNOW you have found it.
I know people who have followed each path. If one measured the dopamine, I can’t think of any reason it would be remarkably different.
Don Stewart
Don,
I wasn’t looking for any kind of “path” (to nowhere?), or “solution”,
just thinking out loud and trying to explain (maybe to myself only) some general lines and links.
Sorry it wasn’t understandable to others (it was very much to me, as well as interesting, while writing it down)
Stefeun
I will reveal the depth and breadth of my ignorance. I assume you are mostly saying that Bejan isn’t really proposing anything that is new…Don Stewart
The where is the province of raw Physics, and we’re quite advanced in the matter, I think. I’d say it’s mostly based on releases of energy temporarily trapped in energy potential pockets, each of one being triggered by a release upflow, and in turn triggering other one(s) downflow. Or not, if energy content of the pockets is insufficient.
This pattern seems valid for many phenomena, not only avalanches (for which it’s mechanical energy that goes from potential to kinetic).
[Bejan claims that the Constructal Law applies to anything that flows. Equally to what most people consider to be ‘living’ as well as ‘non-living’. Bejan says things like: ‘For a pattern to subsist and evolve over time (to live), then it must evolve in the direction of giving greater access to what is flowing’….So he is quite proud of the fact that he thinks he has discovered principles which apply equally to the organization of a river channel, a tree, an Amazon, Inc. distribution network, and the human nervous system.]
The “what” part is more tricky, I fear.
I’d say it’s a form of energy too, but probably not the same for inert things and for living beings.
As for inert things, it would be the matter itself, moved by triggering energy events.
[Bejan thinks his laws apply to abstract information. For example, the design of walk/ don’t walk signs. We don’t usually think of information as ‘energy’.]
For living beings, the matter keeps its shape, its overall form (in the short timeframe) and the movements would happen internally of the structure, before possibly leading to a mechanical movement of the structure (animals), or not (plants).
[Bejan does not consider plants to be exactly ‘non moving’. He considers ‘what is flowing’ as water from soil to atmosphere through the mechanism of the tree, for example. The tree will evolve to facilitate the flow of water.]
It seems to be based on chemical energy in the first place (while for inert matter it was mechanical in most cases), and the whole Life / Biology has built itself starting from the energy it could harvest from the Sun (electromagnetic form), catch it and store it under chemical forms.
This chemical energy is then released on demand to be used in various processes happening within the biological structure or exchanges with its environment.
The chemical “commerce” is very complex and diversified, as the Evolution has had time to add functions step by step, taking advantage of any possible energy increment let free by other chemical processes. Nature has of course capitalized only on what works, via information storage on DNA.
[Bejan emphasizes that ‘development is not evolution’. So the development of a child is not the same as the evolution of the human to move more easily across the landscape. Sometimes, I get lost in these discussions.]
So information is a sort of energy storage too, but with the peculiarity NOT to be lost when given. Hence the duplication processes that lead to increased overall energy dissipation, either through bigger structures (K strategy) or multiplication of individuals (r strategy).
But that doesn’t explain how the energy flow happen. To animate and regulate all this commerce, a kind of monetary system is required.
Maybe here I’m speculating too far, but I’d say it’s all moved by a complex set of currencies, that we call hormones, the main one probably being Dopamine, which is used in rewarding the tyniest of our actions. We also have adrénalin and many others, each one having specific target and being used in specific cases.
[We know that single celled creatures exhibit what look like ‘feelings’. Stuart Kauffman, a biologist, thinks that ‘Stentor gives signs of emotion ranging from fear to disgust and anger’. Does a tree experience some sort of emotion when it facilitates water getting from the soil to the air? Or is it just a law of nature?]
The metabolism (way the energy is dissipated by an individuals, or any given structure) can be very simple, thus not dissipating much energy, up to very complex, thus allowing bigger energy dissipation, but also requiring a sort of financial system to organize all these currency flows and make the whole structure run correctly in interaction with its environment.
[Can you give some example of what the currency is which governs the root system of the tree?]
This additional layer in complexity is the brain, which uses electrical impulsions (that prealably evolved for the muscles, before the first brains appeared ; and probably for other purposes before the muscles).
[Bejan is describing many examples of events where no brains are involved]
The electrical impulsions are triggered by chemical reactions that release tiny amounts of energy, yet energy, still. I’m not sure, but I think that most of the dopamine is released within the brain.
[I agree that humans do work for dopamine and other reward chemicals. One of my points is that, faced with the reality of energy descent, we need to learn how to trigger the rewards without spending a lot of energy.]
We constantly have to reward ourselves, like a dog-trainer with sweeties in his pocket (and a whip in the other hand..?).
Dopamine is not the only one, and the brain is extraordinarily complex. I’d say it works because it’s been self-developed step by step through trial/failure tests. Then reproduction allows only what works to thrive.
[If we look at the Bec farm, we see scientists who perceive that the people who work there are unusually productive because they are enjoying their work (getting chemical rewards). So how come so many people engage in destructive industrial agriculture which fails to give the chemical rewards? And it turns out that industrial agriculture has historically rewarded people with money, which can be traded for things which people believe will give them rewards (a trip to Disneyland?). And so the capitalist paradigm substitutes an energy intensive process which works indirectly for the direct experience which is the dominant theme at the Bec farm. My belief is that the failure of the fossil fuel paradigm will select for those who are capable of functioning in a low-energy, direct experience environment.]
The next step in complexity (still to increase overall energy dissipation) seems to be the interconnection of human brain with other brains (we already have the society, and are improving the communication means), and connection of the brain with machines. It’s coming fast now, although with failures and disappointments, which is normal in a development phase.
[The Bec farmer said he had an epiphany when he realized that a coral reef and the Amazon rain forest are both impoverished in terms of resources. Yet both are teeming with life. Andreas Weber and Stuart Kauffman both talk about the proliferation of niches. The vision of the Bec farmers and also of Joel Salatin is for the elaboration of niches on a given piece of land, much like the coral reef or the rain forest. The elaboration of niches is not only for humans, but also for the non-human inhabitants. Thus, at the Bec farm, the ecologist who participated in the scientific evaluation found that the farm was not only producing a lot of food for humans, it was also increasing biodiversity.
I have previously expressed lack of conviction in any definition I have heard of complexity. But multiplication of niches may be part of any definition. The review of Bejan’s new book may indicate that he is thinking along the same lines.]
Then I have 2 questions:
– Will we have the energy available for dissipation at this superior level? (NO)
– Didn’t we forget a lot of things on this road to nowhere? (YES)
Don Stewart
Don,
I’m ignorant too, so we can discuss, and hopefully get some clues about that mess.
Thanks for having re-read my wild thoughts, and so carefully!
I don’t pretend anything about Bejan, I only have the impression he uses obsolete our inadéquate tools, and I don’t see any reason for that, that it fits in with his own narrative. Science is supposed to work the other way round. I’m too lazy to dig and find the comment I made a few weeks ago…
As for your other questions, I’ll pick 2 only:
– by “currencies” I mean the set of hormones that living beings are using to tell the organs who makes what and when. Maybe it’s not a good analogy, I didn’t check.
– don’t know much about the root system of a tree. I’d say it’s efficiency-oriented, in order to take best advantages/pay-back/security out of a crowd of parameters from different horizons, with minimum energy inputs. No brain is required to do that, Nature has found other ways. I suspect it has something to do with levels of organization, and then complexity (ay ay ay, not on the head, please!).
About “plants don’t move” that was of course compared to animals. And please don’t find me a counter-example with bacteria! That would require a much longer discussion, by itself.
Thanks again, glad you’re back full speed on this forum.
Stéphane
Stefeun
http://us.macmillan.com/thephysicsoflife/adrianbejan
All the big questions…answered.
Don Stewart
PS I always thought the answer was ’42’.
I dunno about that… the first million dollar bonus a banker receives after college would surely spike the dopamine more than just about anything else….
Don,
Good to distinguish the what and the where, in a flow, IMO.
The where is the province of raw Physics, and we’re quite advanced in the matter, I think. I’d say it’s mostly based on releases of energy temporarily trapped in energy potential pockets, each of one being triggered by a release upflow, and in turn triggering other one(s) downflow. Or not, if energy content of the pockets is insufficient.
This pattern seems valid for many phenomena, not only avalanches (for which it’s mechanical energy that goes from potential to kinetic).
The “what” part is more tricky, I fear.
I’d say it’s a form of energy too, but probably not the same for inert things and for living beings.
As for inert things, it would be the matter itself, moved by triggering energy events.
For living beings, the matter keeps its shape, its overall form (in the short timeframe) and the movements would happen internally of the structure, before possibly leading to a mechanical movement of the structure (animals), or not (plants).
It seems to be based on chemical energy in the first place (while for inert matter it was mechanical in most cases), and the whole Life / Biology has built itself starting from the energy it could harvest from the Sun (electromagnetic form), catch it and store it under chemical forms.
This chemical energy is then released on demand to be used in various processes happening within the biological structure or exchanges with its environment.
The chemical “commerce” is very complex and diversified, as the Evolution has had time to add functions step by step, taking advantage of any possible energy increment let free by other chemical processes. Nature has of course capitalized only on what works, via information storage on DNA.
So information is a sort of energy storage too, but with the peculiarity NOT to be lost when given. Hence the duplication processes that lead to increased overall energy dissipation, either through bigger structures (K strategy) or multiplication of individuals (r strategy).
But that doesn’t explain how the energy flow happen. To animate and regulate all this commerce, a kind of monetary system is required.
Maybe here I’m speculating too far, but I’d say it’s all moved by a complex set of currencies, that we call hormones, the main one probably being Dopamine, which is used in rewarding the tyniest of our actions. We also have adrénalin and many others, each one having specific target and being used in specific cases.
The metabolism (way the energy is dissipated by an individuals, or any given structure) can be very simple, thus not dissipating much energy, up to very complex, thus allowing bigger energy dissipation, but also requiring a sort of financial system to organize all these currency flows and make the whole structure run correctly in interaction with its environment.
This additional layer in complexity is the brain, which uses electrical impulsions (that prealably evolved for the muscles, before the first brains appeared ; and probably for other purposes before the muscles).
The electrical impulsions are triggered by chemical reactions that release tiny amounts of energy, yet energy, still. I’m not sure, but I think that most of the dopamine is released within the brain.
We constantly have to reward ourselves, like a dog-trainer with sweeties in his pocket (and a whip in the other hand..?).
Dopamine is not the only one, and the brain is extraordinarily complex. I’d say it works because it’s been self-developed step by step through trial/failure tests. Then reproduction allows only what works to thrive.
The next step in complexity (still to increase overall energy dissipation) seems to be the interconnection of human brain with other brains (we already have the society, and are improving the communication means), and connection of the brain with machines. It’s coming fast now, although with failures and disappointments, which is normal in a development phase.
Then I have 2 questions:
– Will we have the energy available for dissipation at this superior level? (NO)
– Didn’t we forget a lot of things on this road to nowhere? (YES)
Nothing easy-to-read comes up in a search for heurotransmitters and creativity. The following was longer than I cared and a quick glance didn’t shine any light…
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070620092543AASuyTZ
——————
I wrote this earlier today. Not sure what Mr. Bejan would say about it. 🙂
Dancer and choreographer, Christopher Wheeldon, talks about dancing in terms of painting. Brushstrokes, lines, angles. I would like to apply the same thinking to the design of the built landscape. (It is commonly overlooked that everything built is part of the over all planetary landscape.) Since the diverse groups which construct the built environment don’t consider planetary scale–how the aggregate construction can make a single, unified planetary “picture”–the potential for design is never recognized. This lack of visual coherence reflects, and is reflected by, planetary turmoil. By design, we’re not all in this together. The issue now for the land artist is to correct that wrong.
One approach to correction is to stop constructing on open land. Open land is now at a premium for human survival. The market forces behind human construction are not interested in open land other than as space to build on, as a commodity. But the environmental harm of this thinking is matched only by the creative harm it does. It may be fair to say that the money economy, especially under advanced capitalism, has a problematic relationship with the vision of Earth-as-an-art-project.
Artleads
Scientists have done the math on the compression of visual information. Our eyes and brains enormously compress the visual information which is in front of us. If you stood on a busy street corner in NYC and tried to process everything, you would quickly be overwhelmed.
One of the problems with traffic signs is that they can get lost in the general clutter. I am not an expert, but I think that Bejan sees the evolution of continually more streamlined signs as easing the ‘visual clutter problem’. If ‘what is flowing’ is the information that it is either OK to walk, or not safe to walk, then I suppose you would want the information to take only a small part of the visual and cognitive processing capacity of the human. In other words, you want the pedestrian to get a clear, but very concisely coded, message. The concise coding leaves more capacity for dealing with the rest of the chaos which is happening. But…like I say, I’m not an expert. The article Bejan wrote is in a journal, and the article is not available for free, so far as I know.
Don Stewart
I can only grasp simple things. For me flow would be something like rows of townhouses, all the same size and all aligned. That builds in equality. Or it could be an aboriginal fishing village with straw huts in a row following the shore line. Such things create energy conserving pattern. The problem is with where the pattern ends, or where it becomes needlessly discontinuous. For one thing, nobody thinks in terms of pattern (of huge diversity, suiting culture and geography) for the whole planet. A global methodology of pattern (flow?) is not the same thing as global homogeneity. The land would dictate many of the differences in pattern. Why traffic signs are of great importance, at this time of crisis, is not clear.
Artleads
Traffic signs at this time of crisis are only important because they do illustrate a principle which is widely denied on this web site: infrastructure evolves to facilitate flows. The flows can be good or bad. We can expect the infrastructure which moves heroin to evolve to move heroin more effectively. Likewise, we can find evolution which is moving in the direction of lower stress on the physical systems which support life on the planet. For example, in the interview with Charles Hugh Smith that I linked to, the two men both find evidence that young people under 30 are inventing new structures which are more helpful than legacy structures.
This is in contrast to numerous commenters here who see only bad developments.
Don Stewart
“We can expect the infrastructure which moves heroin to evolve to move heroin more effectively. ”
Only if the supply and demand for heroin are growing, and there is available energy and resources. I think if any of these elements is in decline, the system degrades to a less effective means of flow.
Matthew Krajcik
The statement of ‘evolving flow improvements’ is a dynamic statement. For example, suppose that two events happened simultaneously:
*Wars in the countries which are the principle suppliers of the raw ingredients
*Severe repression by governments
Then the current infrastructure which supplies heroin will largely fail. It will reset to some different and lower effectiveness system. But then that new system will begin to evolve in the direction of more effectively moving heroin.
Don Stewart
Don,
Do you need to check your nomenclature?
“Type physicalism (also known as reductive materialism, type identity theory, mind-brain identity theory and identity theory of mind) is a physicalist theory, in the philosophy of mind. It asserts that mental events can be grouped into types, and can then be correlated with types of physical events in the brain.”
futuresystemsanalyst
I was quoting directly from an author.
Don Stewart
These give us a glimpse into the artist’s mind. Before we all give up and throw in the towel, let’s just take a look at some possibilities…
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/category/photography/
————–
DENVER POST
Friday April 1st, 2016
Page 14A
LAYOFFS LATEST SIGN OF COAL COLLAPSE
North Antelope Rochelle Mine, The Country’s Largest Produce At 109 Million Tons, Is Cutting 235 Jobs
by Tim Loh
It’s the country’s biggest coal mine, producing one of every eight tons in the U.S. last year. The coal is dug from seams as high as 6-story buildings, buried beneath the rolling Wyoming plains of yellow grass and sagebrush. Now, Peabody Energy Corp. is cutting 235 jobs, or 15% of its staff, at its North Antelope Rochelle Mine — evidence that coal’s collapse has spread beyond Appalachia’s hills to the biggest open pit in america’s cheapest coal-producing region, the Powder River Basin. The Casper Star-Tribune reports that Arch Coal is also laying off 243 workers at its Powder River Basin mine, Black Thunder. Black Thunder produces 99 million tons in 2015, making it the country’s second-biggest, according to data compiled by the Mine Safety and Health Administration. North Antelope produced 109 million tons. North Antelope is “an incredibly efficient, low-cost mine, and the fact that job cuts are occurring there shows even the low-cost guys aren’t completely unscathed,” said Jeremy Susssman, an analyst at Clarksons Platou Securities Inc., in a phone interview. “This is a trend that’s going to continue. Peabody’s cuts come at a fraught time for the company, which is on the verge of bankruptcy under its $6.3 billion of debt. The St. Louis-based company has until April 14 to make an overdue interest payment. It’s struggled to complete the sale of three Colorado and New Mexico mines to Bowie Resource Partners, which it has said it probably needs in order to comply with loan covenants. On Thursday, Peabody and Bowie pushed back from March 31 the date when they can terminate that deal. Peabody can now cancel the sale after April 7, while Bowie won’t be able to do so until after April 15, Peabody said in a filing. They intend to use the time to investigate other payment structures, “which may include cash and non-cash consideration,” the filing said. The coal industry is being ravaged by shrinking demand as power plants burn less of the fuel because of cheap natural gas and tougher environmental policies. Wyoming had produced 66.5 million tons through March 26, down 30% from a year ago, according to the U.S. energy Information Administration. “Utilities are burning as much natural gas as they can and will likely spend the entire year whittling down their bulging coal inventories,” Mark Levin, an analyst at BB&T Capital Markets, said in a note Tuesday. Peabody’s rivals including Alpha Natural Resources Inc. and Arch Coal Inc. have already filed for bankruptcy. “We are taking these actions to match production with customer demand,” Kemal Williamson, Peabody’s president for the Americas, said in a statement. “We regret the impact of these actions on our employees, their families, and the surrounding communities in the Campbell and Converse county areas.”
________________________
Many people do not realize how badly the coal industry is doing now. In fact, all fossil fuels are doing close to equally badly. Renewables aren’t doing very well financially either.
This French engineer explains the whole thing as it has already been explained in the peak oil community many times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb_GNIa2joE
Jancovici again,
@ the assemblée, again,
What a success, that’s good!
Even if it’s 5 years old…
I bet it’s due to recent subtitles in English.
Don’t forget the English version of his site:
http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/energy.html
Same page, again, but go ahead, there’s a lot to dig there, follow the links!
it was a good presentation until he stated: we must build an economy that will progressively less and less fossil fuels.
At that point I decided to wash my hair.
Yes FE,
as I said: very good analysis, dubious conclusions.
One has to eat every day.
Can’t really blame (won’t change outcomes anyhow, so…)
http://www.eniscuola.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Per_capita_oil_consumption.jpg
Are you American’s smoking this stuff ?
Obviously there isn’t room for China to rise peacefully with a population of 1.3 billion. To make room for China the West would have to lower their oil consumption to global average. The “Level Playing Field” would mean that large parts of the Western population would have to accept living standards that are much lower than today.
Lets jump into specifics, given the oversupply (and old stock), negative demographics and jobs for the young, gov mandates to push carz from city centers, it’s not hard to spot the trend where “the carz culture” is getting seriously hit at least in Europe and some regions of North America, ME as well. So in the sense the acceptance to “living poorly” is already here, it’s reality. Hard to tell how much oil is it in the aggregate, but you have to also take into account that China is spatially structured for less miles per capita driven anyway, including better rail network etc.
ps look at deflation in auto industry, nowadays you can get budget family carz for EUR 7.5k and decent diesels start at EUR 13k, in terms of price of money – it’s historic low, so the product is almost for free and still lagging sales..
Sure. There is room for oil savings in the transport sector. High speed rail and other public transportations could reduce our need for oil.
http://blog.fuelclinic.com/wp-content/energy_consumption_by_sector_2030.jpg
The auto industry would “collapse” though and all the industries around it. But I guess that is something we could survive.
There is an awfully lot interconnected parts to our current system, including the financial sector. It is our debt system that needs to not only survive, but keep growing, to make the system work. This is a major oversight of most people. The debt system is a major part of what keeps prices of commodities high enough to enable extraction.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-01/doug-casey-warns-were-exiting-eye-giant-financial-hurricane
I was trying to copy & paste from that article, but didn’t seem to work on that site anymore. But it’s some really good doomerish stuff. Does a good job of summarizing events since 07 and serving up what to expect.
Now I can copy & paste. This is a good article – this is has some gems. Here’s one:
“This isn’t some vague prediction about the future. It’s happening right now. The Canadian dollar has lost 25% of its value since 2013. The Australian dollar has lost 30% of its value during the same time. The Japanese yen and the euro have crashed in value. And the U.S. dollar is currently just the healthiest horse on its way to the glue factory.”
Here’s another quip:
“I’ll be genuinely surprised if some form of currency controls isn’t instituted within two years. If you don’t get significant assets out of your home country now, you may soon find it costly and very difficult to do so.”
Get out of the country with your assets? Really – sounds like a pricey adventure. What country am I leaving to go to what country? Maybe it’s time to get that cave and load it up with freeze dried food. Did you know that when you put the water back in it returns precisely to what it was before and tastes just as good (if you’re starving).
People are always talking about fleeing to supposed safe havens with their precious assets, (I know at least one person who is accumulating passports at the moment, based on ancestry) but on the the whole I’d suggest the maxim ‘Better the devil you know than the one you don’t,’ applies here.
Above all, because in a hyper-stressed world corruption and xenophobia can only grow worse. It’s just so easy to asset-strip the stranger without real connections.
However, if you can get a passport to somewhere in a different jurisdiction where you have family and can fit in instantly, above not stand out racially, then why not? It’s only prudent.
But you may very well only get out with your skin, which is arguably the greatest of all assets.
Xabier, you say
“But you may very well only get out with your skin, which is arguably the greatest of all assets.”
No, you must have the whole system functional and in good enough shape to run the system, ie not only the skin, but also the brain, the bones, the stomach, and lots of other burdensome things, all interconnected.
What a mess.
Stefeun
Indeed! Somehow, maybe, we have to imitate rats, and their quite amazing ability to squeeze through the smallest holes: I’m sure our ancestors who survived were more rat-like than hero-like…… (Although personally I’d rather imitate our Henri IV: ‘Navarre, Toujours Brave!)
“I’d suggest the maxim ‘Better the devil you know than the one you don’t,’ applies here.”
Agree, xabier. I know these neighbors, including the 09 period in which numerous houses in our area were empty and going to auction. So we’ll hunker down here and take our licks. They’re not a bad group, and who knows, maybe being a gated community will provide an opportunity to pool our resources for security, food and other things needed.
My mother who is a bit of a historian, said in the days before civilization men use to go off to war to avoid hard work farming but also to plunder. Some would gain so much advantage from plundering it would set them up for the rest of their lives. Seems like we are headed for another similar time period.
Perhaps the audience doesn’t match the speaker, or the other way around.
Casey and da boyz, basically bunch of mid-sized international speculation riders, which seem to present advice for people with assets available to juggle around, i.e. USD multimillionaires, there are millions of such people globally, some of them eager listen to the diversification of portfolio mantra. And why not. Instead of acquiring another vacation house near ski resort or megacity penthouse, they could see some merit in buying land and or stake in down to earth small businesses around the world.
From recent conversations on this forum, we can perhaps agree upon the conclusion that at least for the near term future the pre-collapse situation will differ quite dramatically inside semi/core and 3rd world regions. So imagine that as an equity stake owner or inheritance winner you are starting to freak out from current developments, you feel you must act now. There is a reason why country side real estate continues to be bid specifically in “peaceful” and “investor friendly” perceived regions. Very long term it perhaps doesn’t make any difference but near term, people want to feel somehow protected or take steps ahead the danger. It’s natural reaction to widespread threat, I’m not discussing the actual effectiveness long term in the light what is coming. However, this trend at the moment constitutes not trivial portion of the global capital sloshing around.
What should “the little” people do is completely different matter though and more around the lines of locally nurtured resilience.
I am afraid that “internationalizing our assets” is not going to save us.
hie fast eddy looks like the beginnings of the cashless society is starting in europe
http://www.carbonbrief.org/new-coal-plants-rise-in-2015-despite-falling-consumption
In spite of falling consumption, new coal plants are being built worldwide. Check out the graphs in the link.
There is a long time line for building coal power plants. I expect the ones coming into service now were planned 7 to 10 years ago.
Gail,
If I understand your previous articles, you think increasing costs of oil extraction mean declining worker productivity with a resulting pressure on GDP, making accumulated debt unsustainable. Less debt means less ability to buy oil and less financing for oil extraction, resulting in both declining production and low oil prices. Leading to precipitous decline.
Do you think the current situation bears you out? Prices are low and production is rolling over. Wages are stagnating and productivity growth non existent. The fracking revolution was created by FED liquidity which caused speculative buying in oil keeping prices high and easy financing for drillers. With the crash in the number of rigs operating, its like fracking never happened. As soon as the drilled, but not completed wells are all fracked, production will fall off a cliff.
I feel you analysis, which I have greatly appreciated, was and is correct. Your most recent articles have a different focus. You haven’t changed your thinking on the above?
Best regards,
Michael Jones
Big layoffs in the most profitable coal mines in the US. Not unexpected to the readers here.
What is interesting is that they are keeping less profitable mines on line because, if they shutter them completely, they then would be forced into reclamation mode costing them millions in clean up.
Much the same as nuclear clean up costs are dumped on the public, these will be also…along with pension liabilities and healthcare costs.
http://trib.com/business/energy/mass-layoffs-announced-at-black-thunder-and-north-antelope-rochelle/article_0d217a3a-5a9d-5b1d-8d0d-8a5081724bb2.html
How to keep a dead soil producing crops….
Typical application:
=====================
-Previous Fall Herbicide application (to aid harvest and kill off the remaining crop)
-Spring fertilizer application
-Spring herbicide application (weed control)
-Summer Insecticide application
-Summer anti-fungal spray
-Summer fertilizer application
-Summer insecticide re-application (if needed)
-Fall Herbicide (Round-Up) to aid harvest and kill of the remaining crop
-Start Again next spring….
The food growing system is drenched in petroleum derivatives.
(And don’t forget the 5000+ liters of fuel used by the tractor(s)
Beats using a horse and plow, along with a host of kids for only 200 acres.
Perhaps, but you state that extreme comparison as if it’s the only alternative.
Veggie, believe me, without BAU those fancy ideas of living the Permaculture dream will all be forgotten. Its a nice vision, but it needs the backup support we have in place now to make it work.
“believe me, without BAU those fancy ideas of living the Permaculture dream will all be forgotten.”
I think the techniques, if they survive, could be quite successful post-BAU. The challenge is in surviving the starving, diseased hordes during the collapse.
Exactly
The challenge is in surviving the starving, diseased hordes during the collapse.
That is why I stated the Permaculture dream will all be forgotten.
I was around back in the late 1980’s, when Permaculture made its way to the shores of United States. Since that time the cultural transition, as we called it back then, has not materialized as needed. It is a fringe, edge sub culture, l place it on par with the Transcendental movement of the 1820’s, 1830’s.
Perhaps some elements will survive….that would be nice😁
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bvQ5FmM-5mI
https://scontent-bru2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-9/12647111_10153805258194277_7602270223002931284_n.jpg?oh=10bb128a5095f1d174bfdef51f324672&oe=577D4284
Today I will just search for Zen in a bottle of nice Portuguese vine.
http://bobbiblogger.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/today-i-will-live-in-the-moment.jpg?w=820
How much wine is required before you hear the sound one hand clapping? Far more civilised than vodka in any case, whether or not one reaches Enlightenment.
For my part, I’ve written of our civilisation and mankind.
What troubles me now is the possibility of reincarnation…… 🙁
I’m not in the mood for reincarnation today. Obviously one bottle wasn’t enough to clap me off.
This is very very very very crazy idea…. but I like it… I like it a lot….
The takeaway is this — the Elders obviously don’t expect to get paid back — they are approaching the end of the road — they NEED you to borrow to keep the hamster running — anything goes …
So … if you are in the EU why not tap into this — take a month vacation and live large — buy a new car — they are URGING you to go your part…. they are throwing money at you … don’t be one of those suckers who is saving and investing … what is the point?
The ship is sinking — order another bottle of the best champagne — and charge it to your brand new zero interest ECB card.
Yesterday’s leaks confirm the ECB’s plans will effectively give Europe’s consumer lenders access to unlimited zero-cost finance – going far further than the free money showered on them by the multiple previous TLTRO financial packages.
Under the proposed scheme, European banks have the option to issue their clients a new branded European Banking Union debit card – which will have a raised ECB logo to make it meet EU regulations for visually-impaired users. Although these will still bear the names and logos of the “originating banks”, these will be directly financed from the ECB on a pass-thru basis. Banks will be paid a minimal fee for “labelling” and originating the new ECB debit cards.
At first glance, it looks like European retail repayment risk goes straight onto the ECB’s books – which would be “extraordinary” indeed. But, one of the cornerstones of the new CABAPP policy will be credit loss control.
While banks will be free to choose the rate they charge new card holders, the actual interest rate will be close to zero. The ECB will make it clear to banks they are expected to stimulate consumer spending through the lowest possible personal lending rates
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-01/who-needs-helicopters-draghi-plans-fool-proof-ecb-backed-debit-card
FE,
reminds me of the “low cost” process that happened in passenger flights in Europe during last
In the beginning very few companies (Ryanair, EasyJet,…) and a tiny market share,
today all the “majors” have -at least- a low-cost division, and the average price of the ticket has dropped a lot.
Besides, a tremendous increase in the number of flights ; I don’t know about the variation of the overall turnover, nor about the impact on the other types of transport.
Could something similar happen in banking?
I.e. sort of an end of the Golden Age?
I doubt it seriously, banking is not a regular industry (to put it lightly).
Helicopter drops for the masses I would think is the last ditch desperate effort in a series of fiscal follies to generate growth at ever increasing risk, led by Japan and now the EU. My guess is money policy gets looser and looser until a reenactment of Weimar.
What’s rather disingenuous is the current situation to the uninformed person seems placid enough. There’s no collapse yet, not even a deep depression as all these fiscal follies keep kicking the can down the road. As these people take out easy money low interest loans their perspective will be of a joyful expansion of their own assets, investments and a flowering of the greater economy. What many of them won’t realize is this is the last party.
April fool’s day joke?
Indeed!
“April fool’s day joke?”
Nothing in the linked article suggests it’s an April Fool’s joke.
Sorry, but this article was issued April 1, just a prankster joke..
In case something like this would materialize, it will be a tiered system with limits applied, so perhaps few hundred EUR per family per year, which solves nothing.
Let’s not kid ourselves, should you be able to charge larger amounts of money in some sort of “pass through” channel directly from ECB, therefore skipping the local “real breathing” authorities, that means no threat or a repo man. People would start buying all sorts of expensive crap. This is silly, won’t happen, perhaps only in some token way as mentioned above, i.e. few hundred buck per year..
Not as silly as it sounds FE. Since we are all on the same road to ruin, we might as well have fun in the meantime. Can you surf the breaking seneca cliff wave?
Dear Finite Worlders
Some references which intersect with the work of the Miraculous Abundance farmers.
John Thackara gives an interview on his recent book:
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-03-31/no-organism-is-truly-autonomous-including-us
You will find many thoughts in the interview which are central to the vision that the Miraculous Abundance farmers are implementing in a very specific way.
*No single project is the magic acorn that will grow into a mighty oak tree. We need to think more like a forest than a single tree! If you look at healthy forests, they are extremely diverse—and we’re seeing a healthy level of diversity in social innovation all over the world. Many people say we need to focus on solutions that scale, but to me that’s globalisation-thinking wearing a green coat. Every social and ecological context is unique, and the answers we seek will be based on an infinity of local needs.
*Robert told us we were learning “how to construct a bio-intensive planting mound”—but in my mind, I was making soil, rather than depleting it, for first time in my life. [The primary focus at the Bec farm is regenerating the soil]
* I’m totally not a fan of ‘degrowth’. I’ve learned through experience that calling for people to give things up, voluntarily or otherwise, doesn’t work. Most people simply turn off when confronted by lists of prohibitions. I try, instead, to talk about the kinds of growth we do need: land getting healthier, water getting fresher, air cleaner to breathe, communities more resilient. These kinds of growth add up to new kind of value. [The latter chapters of Miraculous Abundance talk about the ‘new kind of value’.]
*It’s not that our brains lack processing capacity—more, that they’re preoccupied by the wrong inputs. A combination of paved surfaces and pervasive media has shielded us from direct experience. Material progress itself has distracted us from the health of the natural living systems upon which we still depend—and, indeed, are a part. [The two French farmers recently had a two day vacation…but missed their farm.]
*The notion of a bioregion appeals to me for a specific reason: Telling city people to take better care of nature has been one of my many failures as a writer. Intellectually, city folk buy the argument that growth should mean soils, biodiversity and watersheds getting healthier, and communities more resilient. But in the absence of positive feedback from some distant place called Nature, people just don’t connect with my exhortations. I realised that a more compelling story, and a shared purpose, were needed. So I started asking people two questions: “Does your city know where its lunch is coming from? And is that place healthy—or not?” [my note….which connects diners in a Parisian restaurant to a farm in Normandy…or a researcher in a university to a place which is ‘rare and magical’]
* the sheer variety of work to be done in bringing a bioregion to life. [The Agrarian Solidarity discussion in Miraculous Abundance]
*Charles Eisenstein’s claim that, “the city of New York, with over one million people, met all its food needs from within seven miles prior to 1850.” If you look at the scale of most UK cities, such as Bristol or Manchester, it’s a very possible project.
JT: It is very doable. Urban farming started off as a minority fad, but it’s quickly going mainstream in many northern cities. A lot of smart innovation to support urban farming is happening—but it’s not much about high-tech control systems. [The Bec farmers understand how Bio-intensive intersects with urban and suburban food vastly better now than they did when they began their adventure]
*Something like 70% of all fruit and vegetables, and quite a big chunk of the dairy products, could be grown within Cleveland’s city limits. [my note…and they may not be achieving the yields of the Bec farm]
*move beyond the language of ‘do less harm’ to the idea of ‘leaving things better.’ [a recurring theme in Miraculous Abundance]
*. I’m like an amateur EM Forster: Howard’s End opens with the words, “Only connect.” [Permaculture is all about connections]
*the world is “far more animate than we ever dared suppose.” [Also the message of Andreas Weber and many others….the basis for the productivity increases at the Bec farm as well as the psychic and physical satisfactions]
Second, just a smidgen of content from Stuart Kauffman’s book, Humanity in a Creative Universe.
*But a main point of this book is that science is too much with us, our humanity vastly outstrips science, and it is our humanity and a potential transformation to a civilization that unleashes and serves that humanity as it is ever becomes in ever novelty that must be our foremost purpose. [the latter chapters in Miraculous Abundance…just not the old industrial abundance of things we don’t need]
*Life is more and different than merely dissipative structures. [Miraculous Abundance does NOT promise ever more industrial stuff. Instead, it offers a glimpse of a life which is better.]
Don Stewart
A good argument for living in pods of 150 strong. Scaling would not be needed for the basic provisions of life. Soil would eternally be being created. Minimum reliance on non local food. But there still is need for a global structure to deal with nuclear infrastructure and other remnants of industrial globalized society that cannot be left to their own devices.
“*No single project is the magic acorn that will grow into a mighty oak tree. We need to think more like a forest than a single tree! If you look at healthy forests, they are extremely diverse—and we’re seeing a healthy level of diversity in social innovation all over the world. Many people say we need to focus on solutions that scale, but to me that’s globalisation-thinking wearing a green coat. Every social and ecological context is unique, and the answers we seek will be based on an infinity of local needs.”
Don,
remarks in bulk, as I was reading your comment:
– desulforudis Audax Viator: the only species (afaik) that doesn’t need sunlight, nor any other species to thrive, thus making a single-species ecosytem (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desulforudis)
Of course the relationship is essential; I even think the network/exchange is more important than the node/individual it’s made of.
– “What do we eat, tomorrow?”
Anodine question, very convenient to start a conversation/debate about food (and water) issues of today and tomorrow. Everyone has an opinion about it, that you can demolish at once, or let develop until the inabordable cul-de-sac.
– “Life is more than mere dissipative structures”, and then we focus on the nice designs and organised constructions (of Nature, or manmade), thereby neglecting the disorder spreaded all around, aka the generated entropy.
I profoundly disagree, and consider it’s a huge mistake, in a finite world.
We marvel at beauties (which is a good thing!), but don’t notice we’re in same time burying ourselves in our own sh!t.
“*Charles Eisenstein’s claim that, “the city of New York, with over one million people, met all its food needs from within seven miles prior to 1850.” If you look at the scale of most UK cities, such as Bristol or Manchester, it’s a very possible project.”
NYC had a population of about 500,000, and all of New York State around 3 million, in 1850:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City
http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Demographics_of_New_York
And now, over 8 million in the City and 19 million in the State.
Is there enough clear, arable land within a 7 mile radius of Bristol or Manchester? Or would a lot of depopulation and land clearing be necessary to achieve that goal?
Matthew Kracjik
I do not know about Bristol or Manchester.
In the US, many sunbelt cities have land right around the suburban perimeter which is held by land speculators. The land is generally not farmed at all. It grows pine trees which are harvested before new subdivisions are built.
Don Stewart
Don, in an earlier post you requested a translation – here is your document (pdf) in english:
Case Study: Permacultural Organic Market Gardening and Economic Performance
http://www.fermedubec.com/inra/Permacultural%20Organic%20Market%20Gardening%20and%20Economic%20Performance_Final%20Report_Nov15_Bec%20Hellouin%20Farm_sylva_AgroParisTech.pdf
Stan.
Stan
Thank you very much!
Don Stewart
And here we are in the Toronto airport in the age of the robot…
Want a quick breakfast? No problem — just sit down at one of the tables with the ipad and touch the screen — and magically the food arrives in a few minutes…
Dog chewed your ear buds? No problem — just approach the kiosk — touch the screen — insert card — and watch the robot inside pick up your purchase and deliver it to a small opening — and off you go.
I was thinking as I picked up the buds how this machine could be used to replace the street corner drug dealer…. just reinforce it with heavier steel and anchor it to the ground ….
The Brave New World is a jobless one….
FE
The drug and drink addicts would still have to sit in the public parks when the sun is shining though, retaining that Old World feel……
Hi Gail. Thanks for the new article, I doubt I can add much.
I’m seeing suggestions that there has to be a deal soon to manage global oil production, or it will fall by itself toward more efficient production levels.
Regarding US shale:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-energy-bankruptcies-idUSKCN0WY3JU
“Ultimately, the number of bankruptcies may matter less than the lack of funding. The lending reviews now underway are likely to leave more companies without sufficient credit to finance new drilling, analysts say. “We could see a 150,000-200,000 bpd fall in oil production if financially challenged producers were to slow spending,” said Thumm.”
If seems like the flow of oil production will necessarily slow, thanks to less investment and less drilling. The article you link to talks about companies continuing to produce after bankruptcy. The situation is strange.
Today, I saw a WSJ article, “As corn glut hits prices, US farmers are planting even more.” It seems like a similar crazy mentality hits all commodities. If prices are too low, produce as much as you can, so that you will not be too adversely affected by the low prices. We end up seeing the overproduction problem many places at once.
There are three separate issues:
The bankruptcies are the result of past mistakes in investment, and the recognition that recoverable oil resources, ie wealth, are an illusion at present oil prices. That is similar to other commodities and the loss will take a while to work through the economy.
The Central banks still have their thumb on the scales of finance, so to speak. That makes it certain that mistakes are still being made, with the result that falling company profits overvalue productive and other assets. That has to end badly.
And wage inequality is just totalitarianism writ small.
The overproduction is really a part of the pre-collapse situation:
The same was happening in the industry of Czechoslovakia before the fall of the Soviet bloc – the companies produced industrial products that were accumlating in their warehouses, as the demand was going down.
*Repost* Gail comment:
“The whole financial system is a only available because of the energy humans are able to appropriate. We could not build bank buildings, or make coins, or have enough extra time for people to learn how to set up bookkeeping accounts, if humans didn’t have supplemental energy of some sort–not necessarily fossil fuels, but enough to “win” over the contest with animals.
I would argue that “money” should be included in the list of things that are not sustainable over the long run. It is a function of the extra energy we have gained that have allowed us to grow bigger brains, have language, and set up a civilization that animals were not able to do.”
WOW!
Ok, say it is year 110 Post-BAU. Climate change is a -itch and everything sort of glows with radiation, but some troopers still remain. On a nice autumn day everybody gathers to a “market square”. One brings cherries, one apple cider, third jams and jellys, fourth brings a set of chairs and tables carved by hand, fifth have some hemp clothing for childen, sixth barrels of ethanol etc. etc. How do they trade with each other? Fur pelts are a bit cumbersome to carry around, so are goats and poultry, bags of potatoes etc. It would probably be easier if the people had some sort of silver coin system to ease the trades. And if you have silver coins, then you have medium distance trade. And then you have somebody issuing certified coins. And then you have a possibility of governance and even banks/ money traders or lenders.
Money not sustainable? I´m not quite sure I follow this track of thought??
If people are able to produce surpluses to trade, already you are going down the path of unsustainable that eventually leads to wipe out. The only societies that have proven to live within their environment without destroying it, for thousands, even tens of thousands of years, are very primitive, generally with no metal tools, using little or no fire, and having their populations controlled by disease and shortages.
Matthew,
Even hunter gatherers traded obsidian over medium or long distances. http://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/1-CompleteSet/MES-10-TradeEncyc.pdf
http://www.aurlaea.com/article-177-ancient_trade_and_civilization.html
As long as we are human, there is some trading involved. No?
As far as I can see, humans have not been living in a sustainable way for 100,000+ years, and trade is part of our unsustainable pattern.
The use of cooked food helped hunter gatherers to develop better brains at the same time teeth, jaws, and digestive apparatus became smaller, starting as much as 1 million years ago. With the bigger brains, humans could develop language. They could also develop better tools. The combination of there allowed humans to win in the contest of survival with other species. Humans were able to spread their populations around the world. Trade was facilitated by language, and tokens to be used as currency were an extension of human language.
One of the ways that population of other species is kept in balance with the populations of other species is through “territoriality.” A male dog or chimpanzee with choose a large territory for his family. The chosen territory is far larger than needed, just to provide food. Without language, humans would likely have been very territorial as well. (See Craig Dilworth’s book, “Too Smart for Our Own Good.”) Humans, with their language and trade were able to find a benefit to cooperation, rather than always fighting with those from neighboring tribes, thus greatly reducing the impact of the territoriality instinct. This was one of the major ways that humans could increase their population to a much greater extent than other animals.
The latest research seems solid that big whales and dolphins use language, names, social structures. If they don’t vanish (with their food chain) soon they might mount some “balanced civilization” in the future.
They don’t use language in a way that allows them to build up their population to unnatural levels, though. Bees have a way of communicating as well.
Humans have found a way around natural population limits with the combination of things they are doing. This seems to have happened way back in the hunter-gatherer era.
Exactly!
Money is neither sustainable nor not sustainable. It is just a token. As mentioned before any alternative is just barter, which is what you describe. Coins presuppose authority to administer them also needs a reasonable spread across the land and maybe several tribes.
We will rediscover tribal life and all the problems [and benefits] it entails. Tribes are the most durable human society but it does lead to a “them and us” separation across territory. A coin for one tribe might not be useful, but a token such as a shell might work. The whole idea is moot as we have no more low hanging fruit or any useful resources in quantity for a tribe to thrive, maybe even survive. Imagine the competition for the meagre resources available! Poisoned land and water will linger for many generations. New coasts will cover our existing infrastructure and flood the arable low lying lands.
And so on. What fun!
as i understand it, the origin of the dollar=buck was based on the value of a fur pelt—the buck.
in post bau, some kind of bargaining process would find its own level, but no one can know what that might be.
furs have a use in energy conservation–ie keeping warm–so therefore have a known value to those doing the trade. You can exchange furs for food, again—a form of energy trade. It would of course be a pointless trade in EROEI terms to exchange a ton of corn for one fur pelt, so a balance has to be arrived at.
Whatever that balance might be, you are still trading forms of energy. All trade is ultimately a means of survival.
the basis of stuff being traded for gold, was simply that gold is the only available metal that doesn’t deteriorate over time. gold also represented effort in getting hold of it, thus it was a token of energy invested.
you can bury gold for 000s of years and it’s still the same when it’s dug up.
Producing enough to have surpluses is not really sustainable. I expect the usual pattern if people do survive post crash is that the population group will again to follow the pattern of rising production and consumption, until overshoot and collapse is reached. Money and trading are part of this pattern of getting to overshoot and collapse.
If a population is to be sustainable, it must really operate at a very low level. I expect that having language is already too advanced. Having tokens for money makes the population even less sustainable. Being able to train dogs to help in finding food is another unsustainable type of activity. We gain too many advantages over other animals, leading to our overshoot and collapse problem.
Gail,
You don´t see any kind of way of producing “more” energy, habitat and resources? Your assumption rests on humans always replacing life. And on a intergenerational level that leads to overshoot and collapse. Did I understand that correctly?
Humans can build walipinis, fish tanks, ponds and gardens. Where a hard clay land previously did hinder plant growth, humans can make the land airated enough for trees and bushes to prosper. Marshes can be drained, streams, aqueducts, wells and irrigation chanels created. Herds of animals can be introduced to steppes that previously had none, and by the puncturing the hard surface with the hooves, make the arid stepps fertile and green.
Does that not mean humans can also create energy (more sunlight is turned in to biomass), habitat and resources?
With my logic if humans CAN create energy, habitat and resources, then it is a cultural matter to create more than is being consumed. If equilibrium or over production is the norm, then overshoot and collapse are not possible. No? What am I not getting here?
the Dutch were/are the masters of resource creation. They invested colossal amounts of energy over centuries to build dykes to reclaim land. They also developed the wind driven pump system alongside that.
skill in wind/wood/sail technology made them master mariners, so they were able to create a world ranging commercial empire by the 17thc.
What they lacked was coal and iron, If they had had those commodities, the global language would now be Dutch, not English.
But what they could not do was create energy, only convert one form of energy into another.
No society can create more than is consumed, because species evolve to consume at a maximum capacity.
Simple biology sees to that.
A starving female ceases to ovulate. If food does not materialise, she dies. If food becomes available, she will become available for reproduction. If there is sufficient food to see her offspring to maturity, they too will reproduce, thus consuming to the limit of food availability. Nature functions on very simplistic lines.
One might suggest that we have choices in reproduction. We don’t.
Post BAU, the reproductive urge will still be there, but remember that effective contraceptive methods are the product of an industrial infrastructure.
So post BAU, the reproductive cycle will kick in, and our species will still seek to consume to its limit, as it has always done. Humankind cannot voluntarily decide to refrain from having sex.
If an area is left with insufficient food, the birthrate will fall. If there is food, it will rise.
Even if the global population drops to 1 Bn, or even much less, the same biological laws will apply.
If humankind messes things up altogether, and there is no means of reproduction, then humanity will go extinct.
Our kind may just be one of many who never made it. We haven’t really been around that long anyway, in the grand scheme of things.
Overshoot and collapse, overshoot and collapse, overshoot and collapse. Until our species ceases to exist, or.. what? Are there any options? Norman you and Gail consider culture to be of any significance?
Norman you and Gail know your history, maths, figures, energy, Malthus and biology (among many other things). But there still are some examples of cultural ways of breaking those laws of biology you describe.
– If I remember correctly some islands in Indonesia had such lavish gift cultures, that the tribe suffered from resource depletion because of the gifts given. One way of not having too many kids. Give the chief of a neighbouring island such a gift, that your own resources are depleted. But then the chief at the neighbouring island must return an equal gift. Ingenious way of keeping the population in check on both islands.
– I also remember reading that the Australian Aboriginals had a culture of breast feeding for many years. Breast feeding also kept the womens body in a condition of malnutrition and hormonal overload, so that the natural cycle of having babies (before half was lost before the age of 10) was every four years so.
– Most highly educated women in the west are just barely making children, because they try to get at it at such an late age. The women body is best suited for baby labour (both mother and child survive) from ages 22-28. That is a pretty tight window our biology has made for us. If we can keep women too busy during those few years by cultural decision (monastery, maid at a household, learning a trade, mememer of an artisans guild etc. etc.) then either the mother or the child is less likely to survive.
– One reason the Russian population started to drop was very heavy drinking. When the only thing left was Vodka, it was used excessively (still is). Byproduct; men die early, become impotent, do stupid things and their macho culture makes the women choose only the winners of the macho game. More spinsters that way..
– And I think the Nepalese also had ways of reproduction control. I remember something about several brothers sharing a single wife because they couldn´t afford more wives.
And then there is a totally natural (within your laws of biology) way of reducing reproductive capabilities. Humans have a cranial size of what just barely squeezes through the hip. With just a small increase in cranial size would result in either the baby dying more often, or the mother dying from a cesarean section, or resulting in permanent damage to either, or both.
Just saying that I can´t see our species going without money. Trade is too important. And I can´t see our species, not capable of implementing a cultural change that would make a long lasting sustainable civilization possible.
Well, all of this is just academic. Our perspective will end in the epic collapse of THIS overshoot. It is uncertain we will have any possibility to go for other overshoots and collapses.
Thanks Norman for the reply.
Van Kent,
Keep in mind that many things are double-sided run simultaneously (r & K strategies, Yin/Yang, etc) that lead to profoundly different outcomes.
In the case you mention, I think the community size is very important, as things that are possible with a few individuals become impossible with larger numbers (Dunbar anybody?).
At the micro-level almost any setup is viable, steered by rational brain(s),
At the Macro-level we become merely statistical (and run by emotions, which are easily manipulated).
Of course most of the time we soak in a mix of both.
It seems to me that expansion and collapse is one of the fundamental laws of nature—We expand to a level where there are sufficient resources available to allow spare energy for cultural pursuits—then collapse happens because we overdo it.
Thus culture seems to be a byproduct of affluence.
40000 years ago people were creating cave paintings of exquisite sophistication. My guess is they were hit by climate change of some kind—ice age maybe.
In any event, their culture ceased, otherwise there would be a direct and visible line from there to Leonardo da Vinci—there isn’t.
They did it without money, and it was possible because of affluence on their terms. They loved beauty as much as we do, and their environment provided excess energy, When their environmental balance stopped providing excess, they no longer had the energy available to paint caves. They were too busy hunting and keeping warm.
It was “Post BAU” (for them), but their genetic line persisted in a rougher form and led to us.
we will face the same problem.
Right now surplus energy allows us to do all kinds of nice things without worrying about eating and keeping warm. It has become our “normality” but it is the peculiar condition of only the last century or so.
It is also the reason for late baby making. We can enjoy sex without worrying about rearing 10 kids.
As I pointed out in a previous comment, only our sophisticated infrastructure allows choices about conception. This is a very recent phenomenon, and cannot exist post BAU. Contraception (and the falling birthrate) is a product of our industrial system. No one seems to have made the connection (with regard to our inevitably downsized future) between cheaply available contraception and the factory system that makes it possible. This is just as important in certain respects, as our oil refineries.
I doubt that the inclination to have sex has dropped off very much.
Our two driving forces will always be eating and sex—which is what nature intends all species to do, up to the limit of available resources.
Thus you have expansion-collapse. We invented gods, politicians and economists to pretend this is not so, and that we can expand ourselves forever.
But history shows collapse to be inevitable.
‘Humankind cannot voluntarily decide to refrain from having sex’
When men try to — this is what happens:
yup—create gods and that’s what you end up with
Humans can use fossil fuel energy to add water to a particular area, and thus obtain more biomass energy. Based on our experience with food, I would expect far more fossil fuel energy would be needed for this transformation than the amount of biomass energy we obtain in return.
Van Kent,
replying here is faster.
Just little remark: you don’t “produce” energy, never.
You just catch what you can from the energy that’s already there.
So the amount of energy you can use depends on the all-included efficiency of your converters.
Moreover, getting energy is less a problem than getting rid of the entropy (but that’s another story…).
Gail
You need to read the account of the Island Gardens in Miraculous Abundance. Page 55-8.
You will not find an energy accounting, but you will begin to understand how an investment in water can change an ecosystem from unproductive to productive.
Don Stewart
You didn’t enjoy the video?
Did you find it disturbing?
Try a handful of this:
http://www.sachtimes.com/en/images/14157922463291085.jpg..
Dear Fast Eddy;
Now you know why you should always use salutations. You cannot count on WordPress to put your comment anywhere one would expect. The result is comments that simply make no sense, like the one above.
Yours in Clarity,
Pintada
Meant to be in response to the person hurling insults…
Perhaps I should rephrase. When I say we don’t have a wage inequality problem or debt problem, all I mean is that these are long term changes that won’t be resolved in either direction. I’m not saying everything is fine and dandy. Just, let’s look at what we actually face right now, and how this is going to be resolved. If somebody is diabetic and is having a heart attack, sure, the diabetes contributed, but the problem here and now is the heart attack.
The problem here and now is that we have a declining resource base. The people themselves actually have to go, they have to exit the stage, and the resources need to be either conserved or put to more creative uses (such as war, which preemptively destroys another country’s long term resource use).
Do we face an immediate financial problem? Yes and no. All global currency is fiat and can be expanded to circulate as needed. If gold or anything else was currency, we would be having the problems described here. If we truly faced financial catastrophe, it would have already happened from 2008 to now. Because it did not, we have to rethink our understanding of collapse dynamics.
Everybody here is yelling, the world has diabetes! But the central banks just put the world on insulin.
“If we truly faced financial catastrophe, it would have already happened from 2008 to now. Because it did not, we have to rethink our understanding of collapse dynamics.”
Maybe, maybe not, dolph. Good rephrase though. Anyway, there were options in 2008 that according to the linked article below are no longer available to the same extent. Sure the Fed can even go to a QE4 but what assets are they going to target? What the article below is saying is we are at a point in which not much more debt can be added, that it’s time for a 2nd depression, massive deflation. Whether that’s right or not I don’t know, but if it is the end of a debt super cycle then there needs to a balancing of the books so to speak and it has to occur sooner or later. I get caught up too thinking collapse didn’t happen, therefore it won’t, but it’s probably a case of it just hasn’t happened yet.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-31/2016-end-global-debt-super-cycle
Let me do a rephrase of my own – I don’t think we’re quite ready for collapse even if it is the end of a debt super cycle, but it certainly won’t be a picnic – it will be bad, real bad. The world’s finances are reaching a point in which many are suggesting the solution will be war. But what if a different type of war was fought, like a planetary war against global warming. The Arctic is poised for what could be a huge melt this year even beating 2012’s September minima. If that comes to pass and this year is even hotter than last year’s record breaking year, then at some point it will occur to world leaders that we can either fight one another, or pull together as a planet for the first time ever to combat something on a massive scale. I’m not suggesting it’s feasible due to declining net energy, but it might be fun watching TPTB try.
Fossil fuel use will drop far more quickly than anyone has forecast in a collapse. Perhaps that will help climate change.
Finite Worlders
Someone asked me ‘how much food did the thousand square meters produce?’.
It’s important to understand that the family does not want to operate a self-sufficient homestead. They want to operate a commercial farm. Therefore, while they grow a wide variety of crops, they do not even try to grow everything. If they want potatoes (which they don’t grow), they probably buy them in the marketplace. Neither do they grow grains. They see grains as a challenge to sustainable agriculture, and hope that The Land Institute is successful in breeding perennial grains.
Don Stewart
“It’s important to understand that the family does not want to operate a self-sufficient homestead. They want to operate a commercial farm.”
So, if you live somewhere with lots of gourmet restaurants and rich people, you can make a living. Otherwise, probably not. Good to know.
They only grow fresh organic produce that they deliver directly to high end restaurants, nothing that keeps, and probably not a lot of calories. Then they charge over $1000 for a month of weekends of instruction, and sell books and stuff.
Not to say their ideas are terrible. Perhaps living in France, they have concluded that if BAU collapses, it probably is not worth trying to survive anyways.
Matthew Krajcik
If you are going to accuse people of bad behavior, you should have the courtesy of doing some research. In the book, they lament the amount of time that their celebrity takes away from their basic job…running their commercial farm. They turn away many opportunities to engage with media. As for selling to Paris restaurants, its all explained in the book.
As I said at the beginning, they made all the usual mistakes. One of them was thinking that they could open up a farm stand and stay in business. They explain it all.
Do your homework…or keep your opinions to yourself.
Don Stewart
Don, when I was a younger me I ventured out to a place named Central Rocky Permaculture as an internship with Jerome Ostentowski and others. The Permaculture concept was somewhat new to the United States and Peter Bane just took over the publication of the “Permaculture Activist” magazine from Guy Baldwin , who wanted to devote his energy as a full time garlic farmer in California.
Jerome indeed grow an organic salad mix to the upscale Aspen restaurants. He did not charge us monies as a student, but basically were given room and board. Jerome, a single guy, needed extra work hands to get the operation running and we had a low risk learning experience. Later, Jerome was more well known was able to charge a fee for internships.
Anyway, he no longer needs to grow the salad mix any longer.
There are many drawbacks to being a market gardener. As you pointed out, one will not become e rich doing it and have many concerns to deal with in a successful operation.
The simple life is far from that and more in line of being a vocation.
It can be an exhausting, I remember reading an article on such and like anything else can become a grind. It does become discouraging when there are dozens selling local chicken eggs. Like beekeeping….many are called….few are chosen…I recommend to those a fine book written by philosopher, Richard Taylor, “The Joys of Beekeeping”. It will provide those of us the intangibles that make this pursuit worthwhile.
Vince the Prince
I don’t live in France, so had never heard of the Miraculous Abundance couple. There are two different issues. The first is the scholarly study of what they are actually able to produce. So, for example, the scholars assign a value of their produce which is derived from average values in the market. It doesn’t matter if they are able to get a premium price from fancy Paris restaurants. So the study basically answers the question ‘can a farmer who is really good make money with a thousand square meters?’. The second issue is the couples management of the whole farm and how they are dealing with celebrity. Just like Geoff Lawton, they express some dissatisfaction with the celebrity business. Geoff says he is often tempted to just retire and be a ‘lazy farmer’…subsistence isn’t much of a challenge to Geoff. I think the Miraculous Abundance couple are now in about the same position. After making many mistakes early on, they have now got it pretty well figured out. Subsistence would be a walk in the park, but from the beginning they have had the goal of running a commercial farm. A commercial farm is complicated because they are in a rural area where chemical agriculture is king, the market for organic produce is small, and few people will come to them. So they market to the people they can find.
They tell urban and suburban people to ‘garden your yard’ because of the ease of marketing. They caution against buying rural property. Toby Hemenway came to the same conclusion.
I have always suspected that Jerome has high costs. What he doers is a tour de force, and he obviously has tremendous gifts. I just don’t know about profitability.
Don Stewart
“If you are going to accuse people of bad behavior, you should have the courtesy of doing some research. ”
What bad behaviour? what are you talking about? What am I missing? It sounds like they have a 1000 M^2 project that requires 43 hours of labour per week average to produce 60,000 euros of income by selling to gourmet restaurants, producing only fresh vegetables and fruits, using only hand tools and labour.
What I am saying is that this seems like a setup that is only viable under very specific circumstances – the goal is to make money and buy food from the profits, and is dependant on having a booming gourmet restaurant to provide to directly. Otherwise, you need a massive (relatively) farm with dozens of specialists to provide a year round balanced diet.
I apologize if somehow this sounded like a negative thing – I am simply trying to define the limits, benefits and downsides to such an approach compared to all the others.
Matthew Krajcik
As I have covered elsewhere. The revenue imputed to their output is the market price for what they produce. IF they are getting a premium price from fancy Paris restaurants, then the study which demonstrates financial feasibility does not give credit for the premium.
If you are going to express opinions about what they are doing, then you should actually read the book. Otherwise, you are just shooting in the dark.
Don Stewart
” IF they are getting a premium price from fancy Paris restaurants, then the study which demonstrates financial feasibility does not give credit for the premium.
If you are going to express opinions about what they are doing, then you should actually read the book. Otherwise, you are just shooting in the dark.”
Pages 27 and 28 of the PDF “Etude «Maraîchage biologique permaculturel
et performance économique»” talks about getting higher prices from restaurants, being able to grow specialized vegetables, and even selling some edible flowers as additional income due to connecting directly with the restaurant(s). You can see from the chart on page 27 that the restaurant sales add about 20,000 euros in additional revenue.
Matthew Krajcik
From page 121 of the English language book:
‘Revenue was determined by assigning an economic value to market garden production. This value was determined by price lists from different sources, primarily one provided by the regional association of organic farmers of Haute-Normandie, giving average prices for the direct sale of organic vegetables in the region.
The working time, fourteen hunted hours in the gardens, comes out to twenty-nine hours per week. The time spent on site maintenance, sales, and administrative tasks was estimated to be 50 percent of the hours worked in the garden. So the annual workload added up to twenty-one hundred hours, an average of forty-four hours per week, with four weeks of vacation. This is ver reasonable for a farmer, who moreover does not waste time on transportation to get to work.’
The total farm definitely does sell products beside the veggies in the study plot. They sell fruit and berries and flowers and possibly animals. Where the apparent discrepancy between the PDF and the book comes from in terms of flower sales to restaurants, I don’t know. If they are counting the revenue from flower sales, then they must have designated some of the flower beds as ‘study beds’. The same intensive techniques would be applicable to flowers as to vegetables.
Here is a quote from Francois Legere, on page 122:
‘The study launched at La Ferme du Bec Hellouin, and this is undoubtedly one of its main successes, has been the starting point for a broader set of work that aims to define all the elements needed for a farming method that combines market-gardening and fruit production on very small surface areas. In these systems, the attention to crop layout maximizes biological interactions and allows a significant level of income, thanks to high productivity and very low consumption of inputs and fossil energy. These models, because they require more thought and work than capital, are candidates of the first order to revitalize agriculture in areas which have been excluded (cities and suburbs especially), contributing to the recomposition of food systems by bringing together producers and consumers, and the creation of jobs.’
Joel Salatin, in a different context, claimed that the US could feed itself on the land currently devoted to lawns and recreational horses. Joel produces, I believe, at a rate 6 times the average in his county. The main point, in my mind, is the last sentence above and Salatin’s claim. What the farm at Bec represents is an expansion of a garden, not the shrinking of a mechanized farm. Salatin was in St. Louis a couple of years ago and fell in love with a tiny little market garden located in an abandoned triangle of land. The fact that the Miraculous Abundance farmers have to go so far afield to sell their products results from several factors. One is the heavy European subsidies lavished on large farms. The fact that a small farm which has received essentially zero subsidies can survive is remarkable. The fact that permanent raised beds can produce an enormous amount of vegetables, whether they are located in rural, urban, or suburban settings is not exactly new, but the world needs periodic reminders of it. The fact that fossil fuel use to produce food can actually be quite small is important.
As I have said before, I think the real problem is not food production, it is logistics. The Bec farm has had to deal with logistics to get their products to market. The farmers DO NOT advise aspiring farmers to move to the country. They encourage wood-be market gardeners to start where they are. Jean-Martin Fortier, in Quebec, sells his products mostly in Montreal, which is sixty or seventy miles distant, I believe. Now the Miraculous Abundance farmers THINK that France is going to see a movement of millions of people to the countryside. If the visions they lay out in the latter chapters come true, then village people will be supplied by surrounding farms. But until that happens, farmers will do what they have to do to reach markets.
Don Stewart
” The fact that fossil fuel use to produce food can actually be quite small is important.”
Not really, if you need the whole system to operate to produce a small amount of fossil fuel. What you say is part of the mythology that we will always have fossil fuels, just less of them. The usual expectation is that prices will be higher to ration supply.
Gail
The scenarios that they discuss in the latter chapters of the book can be done with no fossil fuels, I believe. For example, they propose plastics made from wood (important for greenhouses). If there are no greenhouses, and they cannot get back to the Parisian market garden technologies, then older preservation technologies will be required.
Local transportation by animal traction, walking, bicycles, etc. Very much a localized, self-reliant economy. They hope that something like the internet can be preserved to help avoid a regression to narrow village thought patterns. But the Enlightenment happened without fossil fuels, so there is hope.
Don Stewart
Making plastics from wood sounds energy intensive to me. Do they propose cutting down forests instead of using fossil fuels? Don’t they need metals at any point in the process? How do they get the metals?
Preserving the Internet implies preserving a lot of other things – the electric grid, roads, the making of computers, international trade, banks.
Gail
Only essential plastics would be made, I assume. Plastic for greenhouses would be a very nice thing to have in the event of a crash. It would probably be less of an environmental load than the glass that the Parisian market gardeners used in the 19th century. Plastic tableware and plastic bags we could easily live without.
The Bec farmer built a forge, for working iron. He considers scrap iron to be a plentiful resource. He also calculates that France could double its forested area with his suggested rearrangements of agriculture. So burning some wood to be able to make agricultural and other hand tools would be a good expenditure of wood.
In the event that fossil fuels go away, everything is submitted to some sort of cost/ benefit analysis, including what humans labor to do.
Don Stewart
We know that the technology developed for mining in the Middle Ages included tools for ….. eventually lead to the same outcome as that in Europe: vast deforestation.
http://www.engr.psu.edu/mtah/articles/roots_colonial_iron_technology.htm
By the 11th century, there was a large amount of deforestation in China due to the iron industry’s demands for charcoal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrous_metallurgy
The Middle Ages in Europe cover the time span from the 5th century AD, …. was accomplished either by fire-setting, for massive ore bodies, or with iron tools, for … Years War (1337–1453), which amongst others caused severe deforestation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_and_metallurgy_in_medieval_Europe
Fast Eddy recommends that all blacksmiths be shot dead post BAU. They are a menace.
All farmers and engineers should also be put down.
We need a lot of things just to make a little of anything of today’s products. We need a functioning international trade system. We need a functioning banking system that allows a lot of debt. We need the ability to make metals, include advanced metals. We need an education system that continues to churn out people with advanced degrees. Talking about “just making a little” is simply wishful thinking in my view. The whole system has to work, to even make a little.
Gail
We’ve been here before. It’s not worth discussing any further. Change will happen whether you want it to or not.
Don Stewart
And here we go again — when confronted by facts — we get another petulant response.
That’s how people from Delusistan roll – right Don?
Gail – that may be the case in Realitystan — but in Delusistan all that is required is a vivid imagination …. anything can happen if you are willing to accept that facts do not matter…
I understand that Sarah Palin is the President of Delusistan. And Mickey Mouse is the mayor of the capital city Illogic-ville.
We seem to have a special Delusistan language used in all of our magazines and newspapers. Even the supposedly more logical political candidates seem to follow this illogic. The belief that we can somehow transition to a sustainable world, or that the world economy can somehow begin functioning like an ecosystem (“circular economy,” with everything recycled) follows the same lack of logic. But the scientific publishers want this kind of thing in their books.
What amazes me is that after countless articles on this subject — there are people in the audience who continue to believe this ‘BAU Lite’ nonsense.
No matter how well it is explained – they will simply never get it — because they do not want to get it — because if they were to get it they would collapse into deep clinical depression and require copious amounts of Abilify to get through the day.
Dear Don Stewart;
You say, “… they do not even try to grow everything. If they want potatoes (which they don’t grow), they probably buy them in the marketplace. Neither do they grow grains. They see grains as a challenge to sustainable agriculture, and hope …”
I see things like that and the paraphrase just comes unbidden:
The “miracle” doesn’t actually mean that they can grow food. They grow cash crops, write books, and sell a happy lie.
I know people that made $20,000 growing a crop in 50 sq ft.. They worked about 5 hours per week. They didn’t grow food either.
Not in Delusistan,
Pintada
Dear Finite Worlders
If you have followed what I wrote about the Bec farm in France, you may be interested in Richard Heinberg’s review of The Carbon Farming Solution by Eric Toensmeier:
http://www.postcarbon.org/two-important-new-books/
Toensmeier contributed a blurb to the Miraculous Abundance book. So there is much that the farm is doing that Toensmeier puts in the realm of ‘carbon farming’. If you are building carbon, you are likely doing a whole lot of things right. If you can build carbon and also make money, you are almost certainly doing a whole lot of things right.
Don Stewart
One more strategy for fixing the problem:
Think about this.
The tax code can change incentives. Tax codes are social engineering they encourage some things and discourage other things.
In many cases we raise taxes on things that we think are socially destructive (cigarettes and alcohol) and we remove taxes from things we think are good for society (churches and charitable organizations.) Jobs are good for society but we tax them heavily. We should try to remove all of the economic penalties (taxes) from labor.
If a person does work, they and their employer pay several taxes. If a machine/robot does the work it
pays none. When a machine/robot does the work of 10 people then it could be taxed at
the same amount that 10 people would be taxed. That would be fair . . . right?
With this system the tax rate could be much lower and I don’t think we would be lacking for jobs. If we have enough “people jobs” available, then the discrepancy in income should be less.
Workers were responsible for making these labor saving devices (robots/machines).
These devices will replace workers forever. Shouldn’t there be some compensation that the machines and their owners, pay back to the workers.
Wouldn’t it be reasonable for the machines to at least pay the taxes that would have been paid by the workers and employers?
Taxes indeed change incentives. Taxes change behaviour. They can do many things. But federal taxation is NOT used to provide funds for government spending. Not even 1 cent.
“But federal taxation is NOT used to provide funds for government spending. Not even 1 cent.”
Where in the world do you get this crazy idea? You keep quoting other people’s crazy ideas, and presenting them as “gospel truth.”
We have an overall system that works–sort of. Are you saying we could get rid of it?
Don’t forget Gail, it’s April Fools day. At least he/she did not try to sell us that money is a resource. 😛
– Can bytes save the future? The money value delusion: http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-12-11/can-bytes-save-the-future-the-money-value-delusion
It happens to be the truth, Gail. Ben Bernanke himself said it on national TV in 2009. When the GFC bailout was made he said they did not use tax dollars, The Fed just marks up reserve accounts of the commercial banks held in the Fed. Tax money gets “destroyed” as soon as its moved into ledgers in Treasury. It is accounted for, like you have your accounts at home. The accounts don’t pay for anything. The payments are a separate operation conducted by the Fed, on instructions from Treasury to buy the government’s debt.
I understand it seems counterintuitive but the government uses tax to reduce the money supply, to control inflation and for social purposes, like taxing cigarettes. Tax is a straight up cost. It reduces peoples’ spending power. It doesn’t provide revenue. It’s already done its job when it was first issued.
The government has to issue new money all the time. So called deficit spending is how money gets into the economy. It net credits the economy.It’s known as vertical money. Bank money is liability money, not the same thing.It is horizontal money.
The big news. Gail for skeptics like you is that this is THE EXISTING SYSTEM. MMT describes the existing system. Its not an hypothesis. The Central Banks of monetary sovereign nations only spend new money. Apart from cash money they do NOT print money, they buy debt.
I don’t know how to get you to understand this. The whole political and mainstream establishment is just wrong, and probably wilfully so. It suits the 0.1% to keep cutting benefits while they get richer.
They want us to believe the government operates like a household and can run out of money. It can NEVER run out of money. It, the Government, created it as well as all its laws and regulations from thin air. The only backing money has today is the “Full faith and Credit ” in the government. The limits to money creation would be uncontrolled runaway inflation. AS most economies today are skirting recession runaway inflation is $Trillions off into the distance.
Can you imagine if the pollies and the public realised that there is no need to cut welfare, or pensions or make us pay for education? Yet they as well are that venal and counter the public interest.
Only the central government can work this way. The states are like households and can go bankrupt, so they have to rely on taxes. But even here the Fed can pay for state debts and help out with infrastructure or health costs so they can stop States from crashing.
So to answer your last line. We don’t have to change anything structural regarding macroeconomics. We just have to change the mindset, the awful ignorance about how money works. It is gradually changing tack, but slowly and commentators are now saying the government has to spend more into the economy. Governments cutting back spending is a direct line to recessions, and that is hardly helpful.
Look at this seminal book by Warren Mosler. It downloads easily and describes 7 frauds we have to address. The one about taxes is on page 13. If you are in a hurry, just read that.
http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf
There is a very big difference between a one time bail out and running your economy this way.
The world economy has not been doing well since the one-time bail out.
What the world financial system does is divide up available goods and services among many potential recipients. It would be very nice if simply printing money, and giving huge pensions to everyone were really possible. Unless one government can somehow use its method of printing money to steal finished goods and services from other countries, the plan doesn’t really work. The normal response is that the currency of the country doing the printing falls, so that the money doesn’t really buy the goods that people were hoping it would.
“The Central Banks of monetary sovereign nations only spend new money. Apart from cash money they do NOT print money, they buy debt.”
When a central bank buys up government bonds via QE, the central bank expands its balance sheet – thus creating new units of currency, just like when a commercial bank creates a mortgage. New money is created, as digits – not as printed bills.
“Can you imagine if the pollies and the public realised that there is no need to cut welfare, or pensions or make us pay for education? Yet they as well are that venal and counter the public interest.”
If there is $100 in existence, and then you go and create another $100 by expanding your balance sheet, there is now $200 in existence – well, $200 in assets and $200 in liabilities. It does not mean that the purchasing power of the $200 will be double the purchasing power of the $100. It does not create twice as much oil, or land.
You can nominally pay all your promises, but that does not create the energy to provide the goods and services that the obligations are supposed to provide.
Dear Ms Tverberg;
Here is his likely source. (I am not endorsing it, just providing the link.)
http://mythfighter.com
Yours in Amazement,
Pintada
Here is a particularly relevant article of his;
http://mythfighter.com/2016/02/04/how-the-rich-use-the-big-lie-to-cheat-you-chapter-i-the-dollar/
It’s part 1 of 5, all easy to follow.
Spend the time to read up.
The story you linked to is basically wrong. It is written by someone who doesn’t understand that a single country has limited impact on the world financial system; prices are determined by total debt not the amount of money that has been created; governments have limited ability to affect the total amount of debt created; and depletion has its own ongoing impact, affecting more than just the cost of extraction.
The world financial system is a way of allocating the goods and services produced worldwide. It is a self-organized system, not a system that central banks have a great deal of control over. Central banks can try to influence it in many ways, but without a huge amount of success.
An alternative to taxing machines would be to eliminate all the taxes based on wages. Give employers a credit for the FICA and Medicare taxes on the businesses income tax. Eliminate the deduction for health insurance premiums. This should lower the expense of employing people by about 25%.
Since you would still need to fund retirement and health care, have a 5% gross receipts tax on all goods and services and dedicate the money to social security and health care for all.
“An alternative to taxing machines would be to eliminate all the taxes based on wages.”
The robots are better at their jobs. A Chinese factory switched 90% of the humans to robots, and reduced defects by something like 80 percent, while increasing productivity 162.5%:
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/chinese-factory-replaces-90-of-humans-with-robots-production-soars/
It is better economically, better for the environment with less waste and pollution, better in nearly every way to use robots over humans when possible. This leaves “how do people make money?” and “How do governments operate?” in a world full of robots.
200 years since the Luddites, and no one has come up with a viable solution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
there is no solution
robots cannot buy what they produce, only (theoretically) reproduce themselves.
There’s never a terminator around when you need one
Dear Finite Worlders
I found this link in English which gives a few highlights from the scientific study of the Bec farm:
http://www.fermedubec.com/inra/poster_innohort_2015_A0.pdf
Don Stewart
The European Roundtable, a lobby group for European Multinationals, pushed for the Euro. They discussed the Euro, the Euro crisis and the austerity program forced upon nations and their governments… before the Euro was introduced.
A European finance minister once said that the Euro is a Darwinistic currency.
Today the economies of the European periphery is experiencing the Euro crisis and austerity. Some of the nations are in recession and some are in real depression. Depressed economies use less oil.
http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/piigs-per-capita-oil-consumption.png
The European periphery has less value for the global economy while the European core nations have more value for the global economy since they own the technology and the patents of our modern economy.
http://crudeoilpeak.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Germany_UK_France_oil_consumption_1965-2014.jpg
Since 2008 the global economy entered into a depression. The only thing that has hidden that fact is all the lies by the major economies with their fraud unemployment and GDP data. The US would be dealing with major civil unrest if not for EBT cards, food stamps, welfare, unemployment insurance and other government handouts.
There has been a decline in oil consumption in the U.S as well. At the same time there has been a dramatic increase in oil consumption in Asia Pacific.
http://www.thechinamoneyreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Oil-Consumption-1024x696_zps6c7e4d61.png
The TPP and TTIP is said to be an Economic NATO.
“The US would be dealing with major civil unrest if not for EBT cards, food stamps, welfare, unemployment insurance and other government handouts.”
Rodster, that’s what keeps the lid on and once things financially degrade to the point TPTB cut back on the social assistance (instead of raising taxes on the ‘job creators’), then things will get very rough. Ferguson on steroids.
My wife worked at a General merchandise store. One day the EBT system for the entire area went down. By the afternoon people where threatening to riot in the parking lot because they couldn’t use their cards anywhere. That was just EBT, credit cards still worked. Best to have several weeks or more of food stored at home so you don’t have to go out into that.
It seems to me that in the picture ‘changes to workers’ share’ author has omitted top 10% income increase which makes the worker’s share falling. But more, He has omitted the main cause of inequality – unrestricted greed, our genetic heritage. Imants Vilks
The rising income of the top 10% is intended to be included in my “Hierarchical behavior” category. Perhaps this segment should be larger than shown.
I was trying to find a graph comparison in an article a few months back, but couldn’t locate it via a Google search. But the gist of it was the middle class was shown as a large bell curve/bubble, with the wealthiest wages sloping downward to the highest income on the far right.
The change in wages since then in the 2nd graph showed the bubble gone – flat lined. To the right instead of a downward sloping line it was thicker above the hundred thousand a year range going up, then at the far right a line shot straight up for the top earners. Per a previous post in this thread, I found a graph showing the top .01% earn an average over 28 million a year. That amount is where the middle class money has gone. The top earners found ways through their lobbyists in DC to get them tax cuts and tax loopholes, and getting rid of certain labor unions to keep wages for most workers stagnant while inflation ate away at their incomes.
For anyone who has worked a regular job – if you work extra hours a week, or lots of overtime you get nailed when it comes to your final net earnings. You look at your wages and wonder why you worked so hard. You did, so the top cat guys can live a more lavish lifestyle.
There are many finite, tangible, natural resources and you analyze them brilliantly. It is delightful and absorbing to read your analyses and think about your insights. Thank you very much.
But money is not tangible. Money is an infinite resource. We have an inexhaustible supply of money. Debt is an agreement. It is a concept. It is not an actual thing. We could, if we wanted to, create an infinite amount of debt. But, as you warn, we can only go so far in that direction before we get into deep, catastrophic trouble. But that trouble is not due to the unit of measure, money in other words, it is due to the agreements that are measured, like debt, in monetary terms.
We are embedded in a system that insists that our agreements must be honored—if they are not, then there will be hell to pay, and the payments will be expressed in monetary terms. So, the problem we have in our system is not created by the supply of money, but with the system itself. The way we make and settle agreements is the problem. The system is to blame, not the money supply.
We are free to change the system. And if we do it wisely, we will solve our money problems. Of course, we will still have to deal with the truly finite natural, tangible resources that support and make possible our lives.
“Today’s Fundamental Problem: The World Economy Can No Longer Grow Quickly”
I think our fundamental problem is that we don’t know how to manage our unlimited, infinite supply of money.
You analyze existing systems, and your knowledge of how they work is impressive. I learn something every time I come to your blog. But I design systems to satisfy a set of requirements. In your section on strategies, you define a set of requirements which, if satisfied, would change our world.
In the first strategy, “Provide a basic income to all citizens,” you point out why it won’t work. But those shortcomings are due to the way the current system works. In a different system, it would work. By overcoming the deficiencies you identify, citizens would be able to have a basic income. BTW, the context of our population, our finite natural resources, and our future needs to deal with global warming, that basic income should be $36,000 per person, per year, from birth to death. I call it the Social Security Lifetime Stipend (SSLS).
In the new system there will be no interest charges. Interest on money is a sin, and it is a very bad idea.
In the new system the definition of profit will change.
In the new system, because the citizens will have the SSLS, they will be able to pay for college, or some other kind of training, or start their own business—so the resource of trained personnel will meet the demand of business. So, the wasted lives that our current system produces will be diminished.
On Medicare for all, it is painful to read your analysis. But, your fears, many of them at least, are products of the way we manage our current money supply. Under a new system things will be workable.
Finally, your fears about a collapse are on target—that is if we continue to keep the current system. We need to talk about an entirely new system, That is our only hope.
It seems to me that you are better prepared than most to design such a system.
‘Money is an infinite resource’
The thing is…
Money is not a resource. It is a representation of economically viable resources.
And those resources are disappearing.
You can print all the money you want — you can’t print cheap to extract resources
Fast Eddy, you deserve an applause for the above
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jKTzjEOqA3I
Sorry, that is the best we can do!
The thing is… that you are wrong. Money is a resource. Talking about economics is difficult enough without people assigning different meanings to ordinary, well-defined words. We have built dictionaries over centuries in order to avoid confusion. So, Webster’s Third International Dictionary shows the many ways and meanings of “resource.” In the definition that applies to our discussion here it defines resource as: “computable wealth: as in money, property, products.”
But I am glad to see that you do agree with me. Money is an agreed upon method for counting things such as the customary units of petroleum, steel, rolling freight, lumber, etc. Money is not an actual thing, it is a way of counting. It is a way we have of using the infinite numbers that are available to us for free. We just need to use them wisely.
I agree that physical, tangible resources are, unlike money, finite. But by using our infinite supply of money we can invest in finding and developing substitutes for those limited assets, and we can fund enterprises that will put our population to work doing worthwhile, non-inflationary things such as rebuilding our infrastructure. And we can invest in enterprises that will maintain that rebuilt infrastructure.
You can deny the facts all you want, but I made a long career out of designing and implementing systems that the status quo said could not be done. The defenders of old systems that do not work are left with only one thing to say about their failed way of thinking: “it is the way it is and therefore it cannot be changed.” I have heard those words or similar ones for decades and the speakers were usually proved to be wrong. So it will be with our money supply. If we do something like I propose then Gail is right, our civilization will collapse, we will decline, perhaps even become extinct.
But if we use our infinite supply of money to invest in our people and their futures, we will grow. We won’t have to worry about taxes because we will have all the money we will ever need. We won’t have to worry about debt because there will be no debt. We will not have to worry about interest rates because there will be no need for borrowing.
We will have to drain excess money from the system, but there is a simple way to do it. In effect we will lead tax-free, debt-free lives. Bubbles will disappear, but I don’t have the time or the interest to discuss just how right now. I am afraid I will grow weary because you will force me to look up the definitions of many more ordinary, well-defined words. I am just too old and weak to keep on doing that.
I am serious about our current dangerous predicament. I am not shooting from the lip.
Sounds like you’re saying we can be a little smarter in how we do industrial civilization. I certainly don’t believe this either can or should be done. The environmental impacts of global industrial society are already beyond catastrophic. How you correct that while maintaining some kind of industrial civilization needs to be explained.
Money is not a resource. (mote the period at the end of that sentence)
And what you are posting is gibberish. I suggest you reduce your dose of Abilify.
No, money is a token. If it’s not then it is a barter system. Simple as that!
Hestal
When you spend money you automatically trigger energy consumption. Money is simply a tokenization of energy.
You got the story exactly!
Quote from above:—— I think our fundamental problem is that we don’t know how to manage our unlimited, infinite supply of money.—–
i can offer you the perfect way of managing money as an infinite resource—guaranteed infallible in the production of infinite wealth for everybody
you print it on rolls and hang them in to public toilets. People then just come in and tear off as much as they want.
i am open to offers on the use of my invention—subject to royalty payments on every sheet torn off of course.
Paul Krugman has been ringing my damn phone off the hook to get a piece of the action, but I think I’m going to see what offers Donald Trump and Robert Mugabe come up with before i make any decision.
Or I might go bang my head against the wall instead
I don’t get the joke.
“I don’t get the joke.” Neither do I. So that’s two British comedians who have died in one day. R.I.P. Norman Pagett and Ronnie Corbett. 🙁
hey—I’m taller than him
especially now
You should be gentler with your head Norman.
Too much banging.
I am glad you think I am better prepared than most to design a system.
Our money system is indeed infinite, because it doesn’t match up with the resources we actually have available. For example, we can give a debt to a student, who may drop out of school, and never have a chance at repaying the loan. The government can promise Social Security and Medicare payments (not really debts, however). The bank can claim you have a certain balance in your account. The money supposedly represents claims on future resource. The catch is that the economy cannot really produce all of the goods and services that have been promised to everyone, because of limits of a finite system. At some point, we reach a Wile.E.Cayote moments, and discover a great deal more has been promised than can actually be repaid, given resources available. Then something will fall apart quickly.
Your statements about the inevitability of our doom are definite. You seem to be absolutely certain that there is no way forward. You seem to think that you because you cannot see a way forward then others cannot either. Maybe so.
I think your certainty is justified if you assume that we are going to stay with the current systems.
But I think that we can change our systems for the better. But that is not a bad thing. Even if we were not worried about global warming, I would still want to change our current rotten systems.
But if you cannot truly see a way forward then I was wrong to say that you are better prepared than most to design a new system. You clearly are not prepared at all to do it. So, I apologize. I hope that I did not put any pressure on you to save the world. I did not mean to do it.
This fish intends to grow forever. What do you think about its future?
http://media1.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/2085173997/1.3343941/width610x580/goldfisch-statt-goldhandel.jpg
The goldfish, through epigenetics and subconscious behaviour, limits its growth to the size of its environment. If you release the goldfish into a large pond, it will suddenly grow, when it stopped while confined, even with no constraints applied.
You are still stuck inside the current system. There is no need for debt if we have an unlimited supply of money. Let me repeat, debt, interest, and borrowing will disappear.
But I agree that we must match up goods and services with demand, and if everyone has a regular and adequate supply of money sufficient to pay for the goods and services they need to build long lives worth living, then it is up to us to devise a system by which those goods and services can be delivered. Some goods and services in demand will not be supplied because of shortages and because of the harm they might do. So, just as you said somewhere, we must supply the substitutes or the workarounds. But the place to begin is with the money supply. If we do not put everyone to work, then we will have no chance to supply the goods and services that everyone needs. But if everyone goes to work then we do have a chance to succeed in creating a new system.
The future will create itself whether or not we do anything. We can still have a great effect on that future if we want to do it. But between the wise guys and the doomsayers, this is not the place for talking about new systems.
But anyhow, I still appreciate the analytical work you do. As I told you somewhere you put to shame the superficial, silly analyses put out by our leading economists. So, thank you for that, and keep it coming.
Hestal,
An infinite money supply removes problems.. Interesting.
Ok, say you create state backed Green Investment Banks (New York City and London model), starting capital 1 billion each from the state. Loans made from that GIB to provincial banks that issue loans at minimum interest rates for extenden periods of time (swedish house loan model). All in all trillions of capital flowing in to the world markets at minimum interest rates. Essentially money for nothing. Nice plan.
That money needs to be paid back though. Some kind of profits needed. Some kind of rules what the Green Investment Banks backed bank loans make loans for. Infrastructure and complexity increased in society. Overhead increased though.
Ok, on second thoughts, profits not needed if investments in Co-ops. Such a model of Green Investment Banks combined with ordinary banks with rules to whom to lend to, lending to co-ops, would indeed create a full employment world economy. Very Good. Nice.
What to do? What to do? All those trillions and all those co-ops need business plans. Something to do.
Circular economy is never circular. It is only 90-99% circular. Resources run out nonetheless on a finite world.
Wind is nice. But wind is not always blowing. Solar panels use too much resources to be sustainable. So some other sustainable energy infrastrucure needed. Something we have not seen before..
Sustainable small communities, with sustainable practices and food production/ processing. Yes, well, good. But humans always replace other life, and their needs, when humans fulfill their own needs. Therefore such a plan has its limits nonetheless.
Granted. Making your plan would extend BAU for a decade, maybe even two. But it would mean our socio-economical-political system would collapse. Instead of a SHTF extinction level event, everything we recognize as our current “modern” world would need to change (socio-political structural collapse).
Anyone voting that it would be possible to change the core rules of our society. No “American Dream” but instead a new sustainable dream with co-ops. No high living standards, but a lifelong slow grind doing things small and sustainable. I think this society will resist truly sustainable practices with all its might. So, nice idea, but in real world political environments not possible to implement.
Nice idea though.
You are stuck in the current system. The process you describe is the problem. An unlimited supply of money enables us to do things that the current system would never allow. By applying this infinite supply of money we would need only one bank with many branches. There would not be any investment banks, no loans, no interest, no pay back. We would lead tax-free and debt-free lives.
Hestal,
Yup.
Such a system is already in place in most parts of the world. It is called Time Banking.
It has never really interested people that much..
Since all it takes is infinite money you should contact all 3rd world governments and offer to provide consultancy services that guarantee infinite prosperity for the poor.
You confuse money with currency.
All that matters is the ability of our civilization to increase primary energy consumption rate.
i don’t think he/she knows what money really is. Money is fungible, if money did not exist you would have to barter for goods or services and hope that both you and the bartering party came to an agreement on trade.
trying to explain the disparity between incomes on a broad level, rather than individual political or commercial/economic points, it would appear that our current situation has been brought about because we (western industrialised nations that is) built our living system on the promise of an infinite supply of cheap fuel.
The point is often made that the general mass of workers have not had a payrise in real terms for 40 years.
That is an interesting time period.
Roll back 40 years and you arrive at the 1970s/80s
So what happened back then?
In the mid 60s oil discovery peaked. After that it took a few years for the meaning of that to sink in, Somehow more oil was going to be discovered. That was the “denial period”
Since then, oil in real terms has risen in price, while the number of people (world population) wanting a share of it has increased.
We have come to “expect” more, because all we know of recent history has led us to expect more. We know nothing else. Before the 70s, the American Dream really did seem an established fact of living. Rapid growth was “normality”.
The truth of course is that the last 100 years or so has been an anomaly.
Reality is found in the millenia before then, when humankind had no rise in the standard of living at all, not only that, but the disparity in income was profound.
The vast majority of people simply worked at a subsistence level, in order to deliver the support structure (food etc) for the ultra wealthy
The elite held their position ultimately by historical right of conquest. Such conquest enabled them to sequester energy sources for their own use and profit. (castle building etc)
Bring this up to date, and you have the same growing disparity of income, because individuals have been able to sequester energy sources for their own use by right of (commercial) conquest.
This has been going on since hydrocarbon energy was introduced into the world energy/commercial system, thus you had Rockefeller, Carnegie, Peabody coal et al. The “owners” of energy resources commanded the labour of those who had to supply physical labour in return for a small share of it.
My own grandfather worked for a “coal owner” whose lands happened to have coal under it in vast quantities. He was wage slave in a literal sense.
The end result is the same, where the majority of poor people find themselves in servitude to the wealthy. They can pretend otherwise for a little while, but only by going into debt. Thus you have car finance, mortgages, student loans and so on. Right now, our “debt system” is on the verge of collapse, because the future of debt support depends on infinite energy supplies. 40 years ago, we believed it was. Now we know it isn’t.
When the collapse period is over, we will return to the serfdom of the middle ages. (sans oil)
We can hope we will return to the serfdom of the Middle Ages. We don’t really know where we end up. It could be lower than that.
I agree—I just didn’t want to frighten myself that much
Agricultural serfdom is arguably lower than hunter-gathering, perhaps the lowest level of existence: serfs can be pushed ever lower in standard of living just so long as the ploughing, reaping, etc, get done – see the peasants neglected by absentee landlords well into the 20th century, it’s how the poorest peasants of Northern Italy ended up eating ‘ditch-water and maize’, the British ‘weak tea and potatoes’, and so on.
Hunter-gatherer’s have to be strong and intelligent, or No Dinner. So, if certain groups of humans became not serfs but hunters (unlikely in most places due to climate change and horrendous depletion of bio-diversity) then that is a future I could well wish on mankind, without larger agglomerations of humans in which poisoned social hierarchies can develop. Of course, then the new exploiter might be….the Shaman!
Of course, such societies of hunters existing in relative equality would – if they had any sense – embrace infanticide and the abandonment or murder of the useless elderly and sick, nor should we forget genocide against neighbouring groups once population levels rise beyond a comfortable level.
Being partial to kinder and gentler, I’ll settle on infanticide–nip the burdensome weight in the bud. As to the rest, not if I could help it. Use all the available knowledge (but not energy you can’t afford) to make life as decent as possible internally for the group and externally between groups. There are a whole host of things I like about civilization. Why we have to throw out the baby with the bathwater (no pun intended) has never been clear to me. Gail linked to an abortion pill. I hope its use gets easier and more widespread, although we haven’t discussed the unintended consequences of that happening. Will poor women be able to afford it?
“Being partial to kinder and gentler, I’ll settle on infanticide–nip the burdensome weight in the bud.”
How is that kinder and gentler? Infanticide refers to killing a child between birth and one year of age. I think it would be more just to euthanize old people, then to kill babies.
“Gail linked to an abortion pill. I hope its use gets easier and more widespread, although we haven’t discussed the unintended consequences of that happening. Will poor women be able to afford it?”
This seems like an odd path to be considering. The mostly poor women of Bangladesh were able to get their birth rates down starting in the mid-70s. I think the issue is more cultural and psychological, rather than a matter of cost or accessibility.
Artleads, you say:
“There are a whole host of things I like about civilization. Why we have to throw out the baby with the bathwater”?
Make the list, sort out the things that can exist without BAU, or for which you can find some workaround.
One by one, you should find some.
All together, you’ll find none.
Stepheun:
“Make the list, sort out the things that can exist without BAU, or for which you can find some workaround.
One by one, you should find some.
All together, you’ll find none.”
– Libraries
– Stored knowledge of global scope
– Technology–like heating water–for which workarounds are possible
– Systems technologies
– The embedded energy in buildings and machines that can be used and preserved
– Innovations in health care–setting bones, chiropractic, acupuncture, etc,, herbology
– Fossil fuel technology that can be employed on a voluntary basis at small scale
This is a small list, but it should be enough to stand or fall upon examination. If it stands, it’s a big deal. It presupposes that people can be rational if they choose.
Matthew K:
“Infanticide refers to killing a child between birth and one year of age. I think it would be more just to euthanize old people, then to kill babies.”
I recall your suggesting the castration of male babies. Might as well kill them, is what I say. Old people know useful things and mean a lot to their communities. There should not be excessive means to keep them alive, but killing them is more cruel and impractical than infanticide, IMO. More human babies, to the contrary, mean fewer other species, and less able and mobile human bands. But our culture mythologizes the human baby while caring nothing about any other life. Which, ultimately, is suicidal. But if abortion were kept legal, why would we ever need infanticide?
“More human babies, to the contrary, mean fewer other species, and less able and mobile human bands. But our culture mythologizes the human baby while caring nothing about any other life. Which, ultimately, is suicidal. But if abortion were kept legal, why would we ever need infanticide?”
My thoughts exactly Artleads.
To say these sorts of things in this culture is like treason to the human sense of superiority.
Artleads,
Your list comprises many things related to scavenging ; why not, but it wasn’t exactly my point.
I was rather in the scope of starting from scratch, and very generally speaking (which is maybe not a good point of view, in such case, as everything will be very local and people will have to use what is at hand).
For example, chopping a tree without a chainsaw, one can do it, but it takes a lot of time. Same
visit a friend a few kms away without a car.
Without functional tool and proper energy to fuel them, you can still do some things, but not in same day, due to lack of time.
And tools, technology, suppose a whole BAU running behind, unless they’re short-lived.
“But if abortion were kept legal, why would we ever need infanticide?”
It depends on whether you are relying on people to make choices that result in population control, or having it forced upon people.
There are a lot of babies that have major disabilities, but these disabilities are not evident until after birth. Caring for these disabled children is a luxury of countries that use a lot of supplemental energy.
“It depends on whether you are relying on people to make choices that result in population control, or having it forced upon people.”
I have no opinion on population control. I support legal abortion for the sake of having a healthier, more able society, and women who are not shackled with children they can’t afford and don’t want. If that controls population, that might serve some useful purpose.
Norman,
We still keep insisting Kings, the royal family and Nobility are.. well, noble. If you are rich, that makes you a better person, no matter how you got your wealth. Being better off makes you “Noble”. But indeed, kings and nobility were the -astards that came in and robbed everybody.
Caesar became Caesar by enslaving a million people. Becoming a king or a noble ususally involved being really good at killing people. Nothing else required really.
Today we are “modern”, “civilized”, we are better then our ancestors who were mere brutes. It has nothing to do with coal or oil, all of our “progess” is due to our ability to be, well, noble. We just happen to be better people than our ancestors. When I look at people today, and compare these people with hunter gatherers, the “brutes” would be smarter, gentler, emotionally more stable, more social, more fit then these iPhone selfie addicts I see around.
“Serfdom”?
That would require for somebody to know how to keep these selfie addicts fed and cared for, while the world has let these noble, entitled people down.. I´m not sure who will bother with all the rage, angst and depression involved?
Below are segments from the linked article. I think it’s a pretty good wake up call:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-30/were-not-going-make-it-without-real-sacrifice
“Humanity is not going to painlessly wean itself off of fossil fuels. Instead, we’ll hit some sort of a wall: be it a food/population crisis, a climate crisis, or a debt/fiscal/economic crisis. Each of those candidates has it roots in our global society’s addiction to fossil fuels.
Now, we won’t suddenly run out of fossil fuels. But we are going to find it increasingly difficult to extract more and more of them. And other limits like oceanic acidification and climate change may force us to move away from fossil fuels for a totally different set of reasons.
Each hour of every day 3.7 million barrels of oil are pumped from wells; 932,000 tons of coal are dug; 395 million cubic meters of natural gas are piped from the ground; and 4.1 million tons of CO2 is released into the atmosphere. In that same hour, another 9,300 people are added to the global population. As fast as renewable energy sources have grown, fossil fuels have grown, too.
While people excitedly point out the growth rates in energy renewables, they often fail to note either/both the scale involved and/or the fact that a tiny percentage growth in fossil fuels will utterly dwarf a large percentage gain in renewables.
It’s just math. But it’s going to get very personal over the next years and decades as the world is finally forced to confront the idiocy of attempting infinite growth on a (quite) finite planet.
The restructuring of our energy economy, if taken under our own terms and on our own timelines, will utterly crush traditional economic growth.”
This is a repost of Chris Martenson’s article. I thought there were a lot of good points in it–also my chart.
Of course, as he pretty much points out, the sacrifice needed is so great, there is no way we are really going to make it with real sacrifice either. The title gives the reader the possibility that there really is a way we can make it.
“The title gives the reader the possibility that there really is a way we can make it.”
True, and I noticed that too, but thought he pretty much nixed the idea of a transition as valid via points made that it’s almost inconceivable there is a way forward to a solution. One thing he mentions is fusion, and I am also of the opinion that a cheap source of energy with little or no associated detrimental pollution would juice the world economy and maybe we’d hit some other limit later. However, presuming fusion is too far from being developed and deployed, all bets are off for a transition. Our cake is baked.
“While people excitedly point out the growth rates in energy renewables, they often fail to note either/both the scale involved and/or the fact that a tiny percentage growth in fossil fuels will utterly dwarf a large percentage gain in renewables.”
Sounds like the author has trouble with math and exponentials. If renewable energy grows at 10 percent per year, it doubles every 7 years or so. In 49 years, that is 7 doublings. If we have 233 GW of photovoltaics now, and we are able to sustain the 10 percent growth rate, by 2065 we would have about 30 TW of solar power.
If the world currently consumes an average of 18 TW, and it increases by 2 percent per year, then in 50 years we would need 54 TW of power, so solar alone would provide 56 percent.
I guess that would be if it was space solar or something. Otherwise, we would need 54 * 24 = 1296 TWh per day, and if the PVC only gets an average of 6 hours of sunlight, only produce 30 * 6 = 180 TWh. Wow that’s quite disheartening.
Replacement of oil by alternative sources
While oil has many other important uses (lubrication, plastics, roadways, roofing) this section considers only its use as an energy source. The CMO is a powerful means of understanding the difficulty of replacing oil energy by other sources. SRI International chemist Ripudaman Malhotra, working with Crane and colleague Ed Kinderman, used it to describe the looming energy crisis in sobering terms.[13] Malhotra illustrates the problem of producing one CMO energy that we currently derive from oil each year from five different alternative sources. Installing capacity to produce 1 CMO per year requires long and significant development.
Allowing fifty years to develop the requisite capacity, 1 CMO of energy per year could be produced by any one of these developments:
4 Three Gorges Dams,[14] developed each year for 50 years, or
52 nuclear power plants,[15] developed each year for 50 years, or
104 coal-fired power plants,[16] developed each year for 50 years, or
32,850 wind turbines,[17][18] developed each year for 50 years, or
91,250,000 rooftop solar photovoltaic panels[19] developed each year for 50 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil
https://i0.wp.com/www.theoildrum.com/files/ncmo01_0.gif
The CMO is not a big deal. Solar PVC has actually been increasing installed nameplate capacity by a factor of 10 every 7 years, so in 21 years there should be 1000 times as much – 250 TW of nameplate capacity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics
It is interesting that all the statistics on solar do not take into account how many hours of operation and the cost of dispatchability and load balancing, distribution. I think that 250 TW of nameplate capacity would be maybe 50 TW average output.
If that other (French?) guy is right, all that matters is total energy consumed, not price. So, we just shove aerosols in the atmosphere to dim inbound sunlight, keep ramping PVC, leaving us with just the problems of drought, unemployment, and the financial system to solve.
This is not in line with the trends:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3516186/Trump-says-abortion-illegal-form-punishment-women-them.html
During the parliamentary elections campaign in Slovakia, in the end of 2015, the members of the pro-life political party KDH (Christian Democratic Movement) voted for punishment of women who undergo abortion:
http://195.46.72.16/free/jsp/search/view/ViewerPure_en.jsp?Document=..%2F..%2FInput_text%2Fonline%2F15%2F12%2Ftbazcai554919.dat.1%40Fondy&QueryText=
KDH did not get into the new parliament, as it gained less than 5 % votes. This was after about 25 years of the existence of this party in the parliament and a very stable share of votes during all these years,
Based on this, there is a higher probability that Donald Trump will not be the president than he will be the president. The world is changing. The topic of punishing abortion is not the topic that can attract votes anymore. The consequences of the implosion surprise everyone…
We hope punishing women for abortion is going away.
The story in the news in the US is that the Food and Drug Administration is making the abortion pill easier to get. Also, it is allowing a lower dose, and says it can be used three weeks later in pregnancy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fda-updates-recommendations-for-abortion-pill/2016/03/30/426407de-f681-11e5-8b23-538270a1ca31_story.html
If only the other rights listed in the Constitution were not being infringed upon.
What is interesting, that before the collapse of the Soviet block in the end of the 80s, there was a spike in artificial abortion in Slovakia:
https://www.postoj.sk/vendor/laravel-filemanager/images/graf1.jpg
Source: https://www.postoj.sk/6696/aky-kraj-tolko-potratov
This spike was present in the whole Soviet block:
http://akarlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/russia-abortions.png
Source: http://akarlin.com/2009/10/russia-abortion-apocalypse/
In my opinion, this signalled the peak of the energy consumption and population growth.
As the energy and population are closely connected, the authors of the Limits to Growth maybe underestimated the role of the energy in keeping the population growth. Also the role of artificial abortion, pills and sexual abstinence was underestimated. Their prediction of steep rise of births and deaths did not correspond with the post-collapse reality of the Soviet block. And, as the example of Japan shows, this is also true in other parts of the world that are dependent on energy imports.
What is a nonartificial abortion? A miscarriage?
LTG predicts that birth rate will skyrocket post peak. On the other hand, as has been pointed out here, they don’t really take responsibility for what happens post peak.
Isn’t fertility rate below replacement for the workers in all industrialized countries? They’re squeezed for money, time, space, so decides to have 0-1 kids.
Another interesting fact is, that the spike in the US abortions also started when the energy limits were reached in the beginning of the 70s. And started to decline in the beginning of the 90s, at the same time as the collapsed Soviet bloc.
http://www.mccl.org/image/resources/Stats-US-2014-lo-res4-web.jpg
Source: http://www.mccl.org/us-abortion-statistics.html
In the following article, we can see that first comes spike in abortions, then the rise of briths to unmarried mothers:
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/adoptionstats.html
In the abovementioned article, we can see, that the births by ART (assisted reproductive technology) started to rise at the time when the abortions started to go down.
All this indicates that the ENERGY (i.e. HEALTH) of the population is going down.
“In the abovementioned article, we can see, that the births by ART (assisted reproductive technology) started to rise at the time when the abortions started to go down.”
Could it be instead that it simply became safer and easier for people who didn’t want (more) children to not have those children, and for people who did want children but could not, were better able to get medical assistance?
“All this indicates that the ENERGY (i.e. HEALTH) of the population is going down.”
Or that poor people stopped having so many children and wealthier people who could afford fertility treatment could have children, instead of adopting or not having any.
Would be interesting to cross-reference abortions, adoptions, and fertility treatment to see which pushes which, or if they are unrelated.
Dear Mathew Krajcik,
those who have money have better access to healthcare, including ART.
The poor can not have children not only because of the lack of funds, but also because they can not afford ART.
I would say that healthacare and ART are a part of the same category, which becomes less affordable for the poor.
Those, who need ART ofthen have stressful jobs etc., i.e. they can experience energy defficiency despite their higher wages, besides the degeneration of the genome. Having money today often means living stressful lives that curtail reproduction abilities.
The abovementioned article (http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/adoptionstats.html) shows that US adoptions experienced their peak right at the beginning of the energy crisis of the 70s.
It is interesting that US intercountry adoptions started to fall around 2005:
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/adoptionstatsintl.html
http://poundpuplegacy.org/posts?cid=19226&tid=blog
Their models were built on a theory, but not necessarily the right theory, regarding what would happen to births and death. The authors of LTG have been pretty clear in saying that their forecasts for what happens after collapse begins are pretty speculative–they really don’t know. They were primarily trying to figure out when the problem might arrive, not how it would play out.
Ever since I used the word ‘Jew’ my posts have been subject to moderation and deletion. Beware!
Maybe, next time use the correct word “Heb”…LOL
“Ever since I used the word ‘####’ my posts have been subject to m*deration and d*letion. Beware!”
Ever noticed that Ga-il’s surname ends in “berg”, o paranoid one? 😉
“The catch is that the Crisis period is likely to be shorter and steeper than illustrated on Figure 3, because we live in a much more interconnected world, with more dependence on debt and world trade than in the past. ”
This empire of debt/civilisation has filled the entire earth. Past civilisations only had limited geographical influence. There’s no ‘outside space’ that can absorb the escaping chaos.
Yes the entire planet is engaged in the same level of financial stupidity while the vast majority of the population has been neutered and domesticated to the benefit of the ruling class. Add the degrading environment and biosphere makes for a bad mix.
Yes, Tainter’s main point and the source of his pessimism: previously civilised empires could rise and fall and lea vast ares unaffected beyond their boundaries. Not so today.
Gail you say:
“Wage inequality is really a sign of a deeper problem” and you explain why, if overall growth is unsufficient, the little added wealth -and more- is preferably funneled towards the rich (ie the owners of the tools and other assets), the only available “adjustment variable” being the workers’ wages, unfortunately. IMHO we could/should have had a different setup, but that’s not my point here.
So, you say that inequality is a consequence. That doesn’t seem obvious to everybody, some appearently see it the other way round, ie the inequalities would be the (root?) (only?) cause of our problems, leading to civilisation collapse:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/nasa-funded-study-industrial-civilization-headed-irreversible-collapse-due-inequality
In a complex system, it’s often difficult to identify which is the cause and which is the consequence, moreover if they’re feeding each other in a positive feed-back loop.
What’s more, to identify one cause doesn’t mean it’s the only possible one. You can have an effect that’s produced by the conjunction of several parameters, each one having is own “degree of responsibility” in the event.
Same for the consequence side: one single cause can have multiple effects.
In our example here I’d say that both Gail and the study are right, but Gail is MUCH more, because:
– she put the causal chain in correct order (which is not always easy, it’s a matter of degrees),
– she didn’t close the door to additional causes or consequences,
– she went one more step (at least) further, by trying to identify the main cause of the cause.
At that point, surprisingly, we often find that energy, or lack thereof, has some role in the story.
Actually, there is a physics reason associated with the shift that takes place. When there is a shortfall, the Pareto Principle tends to distribute resources so that the few get a disproportionate share. Prof. Roddier has written on this subject.
I am reading The Oracle of Oil by Mason Inman. It is well researched and well written. I rank it with the all time best books on energy. I say energy because King Hubbert also developed expertise on nuclear power and solar energy. Hubbert discovered how fracking worked about six decades ago. He first contemplated resource limits as a college student during the 1920’s. He became involved with Technocracy during the depression years. He first did oil field work while going to college. After joining the Columbia Geology Department, he attempted to bridge the gap between geology and physics. Later he worked for the US Government and Shell. Hubbert was awarded the Vetlesen Prize, the closest equivalent of a Nobel Prize for petroleum scientists.
The book seems to be doing pretty well, as far as I can tell, for sales. It is billed as the first comprehensive biography of Marion King Hubbert, the “father of peak oil.”
http://www.amazon.com/The-Oracle-Oil-Geologists-Sustainable-ebook/dp/B00ZAT8WWO
It is published by WW Norton, which calls itself an independent, employee-owned publisher, founded in 1923.
Wage Inequality is at all time highs under Obama, especially among minorities. Why any minority would vote (D) is just crazy. Illegal immigration, and offshoring of our manufacturing jobs that primarily started in Clinton administration has contributed hugely to wage inequality. Millions of blue collar jobs are being given to illegal or green card workers that make minimum wage. The NAFTA and China trade deals started under Bill and Hillary have cost us over 7 Million manufacturing jobs that would pay an average of $28+ per hour. Both of these issues are being hammered by Donald Trump and I’m very happy that a major politician is finally standing up for American sovereignty and American jobs. A vote for a Democrat is a vote for more wage inequality. It’s about time !!
Sanders, as well as Trump, is standing up for more wage equality and bringing back jobs from overseas. If one has trouble with Trump, for whatever reasons, a vote fr Sanders could accomplish similar goals.
The Democrats are as much in need of renewal as the Republicans. Both parties are seriously toxic.
Hope and Change…sometime in the future.
Fortunately for both parties the iSheep.have not figured out that both political parties are one and the same or two sides of the same coin. And even worse that voting doesn’t really matter because the ruling class will appoint who THEY want.
In this sense the Dems are worse than the GOP. It is that the GOP has not betrayed its core believers to anything like the same betrayal perpetrated by the Democrats on their supporters.
The Clintons illustrate it to perfection.
Rodster.
I love the term iSheep, I’ve never heard that one before.
I guess it’s the final empires latest version of sheeple?
I live in Australia where voting is compulsory or you get fined but you only need to get your name crossed off the electoral roll then walk off or draw obscenities on the voting paper………………….
I long ago refused to vote for anyone as they are as you say two sides the same of the same coin. I’m not putting my tick on anything that keeps this screwed up freak show going any longer……………………….Even the Greens, who I was a member of many years ago are pushing the cultural line.
I won’t give my consent to a culture that thrives on a toxic indoctrination & couldn’t give a toss about anything other than the immediate gratification & self entitlement of themselves.
A book author and I can’t remember who it was had the best saying: “DON’T VOTE, IT ONLY ENCOURAGES THE BASTARDS”.
I not only agree, but go beyond that to say that neither party has any legitimacy to begin with. However, they are what we have. Because power in high places is so secret, and so entrenched, it is unlikely that whoever is voted in as president can make any really significant change. But they can be catalysts for a movement along the way to the post, and the movement is what (IMO) counts. As far as I can see, the frontrunners in both parties are softening up the ground for a movement. But widespread cynicism and inaction will make sure that such a movement fizzles. Then we will richly deserve what we get.
I totally agree that the establishment of both parties act similarly. The Dems have moved hard left and the Repubs talk about protecting American jobs and stopping illegal immigration, but then vote with Dems on a lot of these issues. Hopefully we’ll get a president that will get us better trade deals and bring back our manufacturing, deport all the illegals and massively cut federal spending. Wash DC has become a black hole for tax money, sovereignty and morality.
Anddddd…. they both take their marching orders from the owners of the Fed….
I see you like Trump. I like him too. But you have too much faith in what politics can accomplish.