Upslope

I didn't bother to watch the State of the Disunion address the other day. In an age increasingly detached from reality, to the point of wondering if most of the people live in some sort of virtual-reality matrix, most official announcements basically turn out to be meaningless. They become the equivalent of "duck and cover" drills from the 50s, with the intent of keeping people safe from a Soviet H-bomb dropped in the middle of town. If nothing else, I'm reminded of the scene from Fight Club where Brad Pitt is pointing out the logical flaws with airline safety pamphlets -- "Assume the position, calm as Hindu cows, and hit the water at 600 miles per hour." We're throwing trillions of dollars at a problem which can't be solved, an equation which can't be balanced, that being the dead economic model of overconsumption that we're living under.

Our society and culture as a whole need to start figuring out the transition. I don't know if it's that somehow we conflate changing the way we live with suggesting there's an end to our future. Do we believe that if we convert our worthless lawns to well-maintained small-scale gardens, that we hate America or something? Do we think that if we go back to how our ancestors did things, and live within walking distance of work or shopping, that we're the committing the socio-economic equivalent of "ultraviolence?" This sort of model was actually the norm before WW2, but the meme of "each person has their own suburban estate, well away from the horrible, horrible city" was carefully beaten into the collective consciousness of GIs returning home, and encouraged by a cabal of companies that had been engaged in defense work and wanted to keep things in the black.

Those of us who understand the issue keep looking for a sign that there is a "waking up" on the part of those who run things on a macro-level. Fantasies about new spending, or unproven technologies, or trying to maintain a broken model, are no more than a waste of time. These fantasies are coming at a time when the underlying linchpin, the price and availability of oil, is beginning to move into the "red zone" again. It's already been forgotten how much people freaked out when gas hit $3 a gallon -- any business that depended on moving things, which is to say every business, collectively freaked out at that point. when it hit $4 a gallon, things started to fail. The housing crisis got a lot of the blame, but no one seems to remember that 2008 was a year for record gas and oil prices, too.

Now, we're seeing an economy which really has not been moving forward, in spite of the official pronouncements on the subject. Gas prices are starting to rise again, and of course, "no one knows exactly why." In a day and age when we can communicate instantly, when we can send probes to distant planets, when we can store the Library of Congress on a single hard drive...no one knows why gas prices are rising? Could it just be that no one wants to admit the obvious, that the supply is starting to run out and nothing is taking its place? In the short term, it's like people in a town recovering from a hurricane getting the news that a new hurricane is on the way, and hoping that all of the trees and buildings which were likely to blow over have already fallen down. Unfortunately, it really doesn't work that way -- a better metaphor would be a sinkhole opening under a town, swallowing half of it, and everyone hoping that their house doesn't fall into it next.

I don't like to get into predictions, because complex systems play havoc with such things, but as a ballpark guess, I'd guess we're going to be seeing $5 a gallon average for gas for the first time in history this coming summer. What has been an already stumbling economy is going to trip and fall, big-time. And we will see another round or two of "stimulus spending" in an emergency effort to prop things up yet again. Each time this round happens, we seem to reset to a lower level of functioning, which makes sense. The key for us is to realize that, at some point, if we're not already there, we are going to be on the "wrong" side of that equation. Maybe this is the real tragedy for the "structurally unemployed," that they can't realize that their world has already changed permanently. And, if there's no hope for the individual, what hope is there for society as a whole to understand that the model built two generations ago is broken beyond repair?

Over the Cliff

I haven't written here for a while. Call it campaign season fatigue, maybe, or a desire to work on something else for a while. I seem to get burned out on writing about collapse from time to time, but even if we're not interested in collapse, it's still interested in us. Or, maybe I'm just like that little girl who was fatigued to the point of tears over "Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney."

I don't see a lot of point in commenting on the recent elections, so I'll just say this much -- this contest proved the sheer intellectual bankruptcy of pretty much anyone involved in the whole electoral and governing process of the Western world's largest and most powerful nation. This also includes the voters, who want to pretend that they can have a cornucopia of various kinds of benefits and spending as they see fit to vote for. This idea runs across most of the political spectrum, too -- spending is spending, no matter how you try to justify the "worthiness" of what you're spending on.

As sad an affair as the election was (this being the case no matter who won), the worst is yet to come. Consider now the economic literacy of the American public, who are the ultimate owners of this process. No one seems to really even understand the difference between debt and deficit, or much care. "Reducing the deficit" is a phrase which sounds nice, until you stop and put it in more sober terms -- the Titanic is taking on only 5000 gallons of water per minute, instead of 6000. Having a running surplus of $100 billion a year might actually do something to address the problem of debt, but it is a "pie-in-the-sky" type of fantasy to expect this to happen.

Not much is being done about the debt and deficit in Washington, which makes a sizeable portion of the population freak out on a regular basis, but even they are missing the context that this whole discussion is occurring in -- we have reached the point of "peak wealth," where the wealth of the world is not increasing, but is steadily diminishing as resources begin to get scarcer and more difficult to recover, energy supplies are not able to match the demand, and so on. People have the silly notion that we can "print out way out" of the fiscal mess, but printing money is independent of real wealth, which is not increasing, but decreasing as people use up resources, destroy parts of the environment, etc. Remember that money is just a reflection of wealth, and is not tied directly to it.

This makes the "fiscal cliff" discussion all the sillier. If taxes are raised to one hundred percent of income, all deductions were removed, and spending was slashed across the board, then there might be a chance to avoid the upcoming economic crash. However, that's not a political possibility, and would probably render the nation broken beyond any ability to recover. Likewise, if it's business as usual for the next few years, we're going to see the currency eventually collapse into nothingness. An alternative solution might be to try to figure out how to find a path through a future of receding growth would be most desirable, but is not going to happen in today's political climate.

So, at best, because the "fiscal cliff" is not recognized for what it is -- an obvious and clear symptom of our ongoing retraction of wealth -- then anyone proposing a solution to the problem is singing the wrong song. The immediate economic problems (real unemployment at least twenty percent, inflation, etc) are going to intensify as well, because the discussion does not match the reality. Worse, this is going to be a feedback cycle where the proposed solutions get increasingly more radical and draconian, even as the resulting problems intensify. At some point, the crisis will be indistinguishable from the solutions to the crisis, and we will have reached a state of full collapse (think of it as Kurzweil's Singularity, but in the inverse of outcome).

Okay, so I did lie a little bit -- I will talk a little more about the election. Part of the Leibowitz Society's mission is to preserve the practice of applying rational thought to the world. People can criticize rational thought in the abstract, but on a practical basis, it is all we as humans have to relate to and make sense of the world around us. Yet, for all of the progress made in the last couple of millenia, we sometimes slip back into "magical thinking," the idea that somehow our personal actions will affect an unrelated occurrence. Voting this time around seems to have been an excellent example of this -- people voting for Obama on one hand because of a perception that he would improve their lives, and people voting for Romney on the other hand, because of the perception that he would fix the economy. In neither case did anyone ever ask the most basic of questions -- is it within anyone's power anymore to stave off a complete collase of our economy and society? The secession petitions are a ludicrous, if logical, extension of this thinking, too.

I will end this post with that thought and suggest that this is a good time to evaluate where we stand in relation to the world. Are we looking at alternate means of making a living? Are we keeping a clear and attentive mind about where the world is headed? Are we collecting books and accumulating knowledge to pass on to future generations? Are we focusing our energies and resources on "dual use" things? (i.e. hobbies that will become a way of life after a collapse) Are we gently evangelizing our friends and neighbors that all is not well?

And, last, are we keeping a cheerful heart and focusing on the things in our lives which do matter?

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I have received a number of emails from people asking about my absence and what the status of the blog was, and regret not answering them, because I understand that the postings here resonated with many people. However, I am going to resume posting on this blog every Monday. I had not intended to restart where I had left off, but I do not think that, realistically, it is responsible to stop doing so, especially in the face of the path our worldwide civilization is taking. In spite of myself, I have spent the last few months studying and reflecting on collapse anyway, and look forward to continuing to share those insights with all of you.

Musings

Just a few quick tidbits, today.

I went to the mall yesterday to buy a couple of items. It's not a place I willingly spend time at, but when you need it, you need it. Inside, I was struck by the number of empty storefronts. Foot traffic was light, but given that it was the middle of the week in summer, not implausible. What I found funny was that there was a new mini-strip mall being put up right in front of the mall, on mall grounds. Wait a minute. Why not just use the existing space in the mall? But, really, this isn't much different from suburbanization. The city offers a greater diversity of social life and entertainment, yet people have been willing to abandon common sense to move to the suburbs into ticky-tacky houses, then trying to recreate the city living experience in the suburbs through all kinds of "shopping districts," parks, and whatnot. Even as the price of goods begins to shoot up as a logical consequence of energy scarcity, people are still holding onto these obsolete ideas.

Second is George Zimmerman. I don't know what branch of legal theory thinks that clients running off at the mouth is a good idea (Jerry Sandusky engaged in this particular sort of self-immolation at the beginning of the year, too), but I guess shooting Trayvon Martin is now part of "God's Plan." In truth, I hear this used more and more as an analytical tool. I'm not a particularly religious person, although I generally don't have a problem with religion as a worldview or ethical tool. However, I do have a problem with people who begin to ascribe things which are logically explainable as being the end result of some unseen divine process. This really points to nothing but mental laziness at a minimum, or delusion as a maximum. Either way, it points to a backsliding of people's willingness to use reason. And, I really have a problem with people who try to invoke God when they are on the hook for something. Look for this sort of thing more in the future, as people try to explain away events by suggesting they're part of "God's Plan" or optionally suggest that "God will save us." If anything, God gave us reason and memory, but people seem to have completely quit using those.

Next is the impending post office default. There are two ways of looking at this -- one is that the post office is a dinosaur and relic, in the face of email and package delivery services. The other is that this is an organization which is directly mandated by the Constitution to exist (I think the only other one is the Navy), yet is on life support. What does this really say about the stability of our government endeavors? If we can't salvage something that was one of the first things originally mandated by law, where does that leave the rest of the whole house of cards? Maybe this is the point where we can all feel a little like Simeon at the temple -- the sign that the prophecy of collapse is being fulfilled before our very eyes, whether we are ready for it or not, want it or not.

Last is the few news items that seem to be related to the acceleration of the collapse of the consumer class. Inflation is definitely here, one of the canaries in the coal mine. The price of meat, for example, is up around ten percent, and this was before the effects of the drought are really going to start to be felt. This is going to be part of the "death spiral" of consumerism -- people will start discarding the optionals and favor the essentials, something that has already shown up in the collapse of retail sales in June. I predict that you're going to start seeing a lot of things like "Five easy and delicious recipes using dried beans and rice" in the major media outlets. Of course, the feedback cycle of reduced consumer spending will hammer everything else in the economy, causing more people to be out of work, thus causing more businesses to go under and spending to go down, etc, etc. America has made a lifestyle and religion out of personal consumption, and built the entire social lifestyle around it. How readily are we going to go back to being satisfied with a game of checkers and wearing homespun?

Drachma Drama

Summer has always been the slow news time, as everyone vacates the various capitols and boardrooms, and heads for the Hamptons or the Riviera for a little R&R. Unfortunately, the global financial overreach (driven on by MBAs and financial hustlers who liked to talk about the "velocity of money," while pursuing One More Deal like it was the Great White Whale) isn't taking a vacation, and its unsavory cousin, Peak Oil, is threatening to show up on the doorstep at any day.

The idea of elections is a curious thing. Each person casts a vote for who and what they want to be ruled by. Often, it's a little like children being given a choice between brussel sprouts or cooked cabbage for dinner. Neither is all that appetizing, but the crucial point that is missed is that the child has their own mind, and would prefer ice cream over either vegetable. In their mind, if they're being given the authority to make a choice, they should also be given the authority to determine what choices they can make.

Likewise with voting. Greece was grappling with the ideas of voting, democracy, and civics in an age when most of the rest of Europe had yet to form any kind of national identity. These are not people who are giddy with the idea of electoral participation, but inevitably see it as either an obstacle or vehicle to where their vision of society needs to be, depending on which side of the vote they're on. People tend to forget that if fifty-one percent of the people vote a certain way on an issue, forty-nine percent are voting the other way and are not going to be happy about "losing." (witness the hard feelings over the 2000 American election for president, which is still brought up now and then by Democrats)

The forty-nine percent isn't going to go away in Greece any time soon. While it's all but gone from American memories, Greece was the scene of a nasty civil war between the left and the right in the wake of World War 2. Given that the hard left was busy reasserting itself during the electoral process, it's not all that hard to imagine that they're not going to quietly fade back into the woodwork, given that their recent rise was due in part to what was seen as unfavorable conditions being placed on Greece in the first place.

In truth, reading over the various post-election reports seems almost like talking to a person who has decided against divorce "for the sake of the children," or some other abstract reason. The antagonism is still there, Greeks are not happy, and it's going to be a matter of time before things get shaken up again and divorcing the rest of Europe begins to once more look like a good move. The only difference is that the next time around, the discussion probably isn't going to be as civilized, since the opinion of Europe is going to be that Greece has tacitly agreed to maintaining its position as part of Europe and will be expected to fulfill that agreement.

The elections still really don't address the looming problem, however, of financial overshoot by most governments. We seem to be moving from the idea that a government is sound if it takes in more than it spends to the idea that a government is sound if it can find someone to let it run up a tab. In America, the discussion is no longer about "reducing the debt," but "reducing the deficit," as if running up only 1.1 trillion a year of new debt is somehow vastly better than running up 1.3 trillion a year. There is only so much wealth to go around in the world, so much land to be developed and resources to be exploited.

At the end of the day, there's all kinds of financial structures which have been built up on the idea of unlimited growth, and a whole percentage of the population that has been carried forth on that idea, and now the limits are being felt. The decision to have Greece stay in the Eurozone is occurring in the context of a new global recession which is being darkly hinted at, but people are not noticing yet, still surrounded by their gadgets and illusions. Having Greece remain in Europe with another downturn may eventually become a moot point when another wave of financial disaster hits, like what housing did in 2008. What's next? Global currencies themselves? They may be pegged to each other for the most part, but if people quit accepting them in favor of hard goods, for example, then all bets are off.

Greece still seems to end up being a microcosm of what most people still seem to be thinking these days all over the globe. Keep the party going a little longer, keep pretending that there's even a party going on. The problem is that the food and booze ran out a long time ago and all people are left with now is a stomach full of greasy food and a pounding headache. The prospect of waking up to a newer, uglier day still has yet to cross their minds.

Hearth and Home

The Euro panic keeps going and going. If the end of the EU was a disaster flick, it would be shown as a multi-year series, maybe studded with the usual standby roster of not-quite A-listers, all desperate to keep their face on the screen, hoping for a mid-career boost back to Cannes. It would definitely not be a two-hour feature film, a back-room, caviar-laced version of Armageddon, featuring Bruce Willis managing the global financial crisis with a steely eye, while an Aerosmith ballad played in the background.

This is how collapse seems to go, a long, slow event, better imagined as the Galaxy of Unrestrained Hope and Cornucopian Optimism, colliding with the galaxy of Physical and Financial Reality, all while accompanied by a Strauss waltz. We know what the outcome is, where we're going at the end of it, but become self-improsed refuseniks, not wanting to leave the land of Plenty for the land of Adjustment. Adjustment itself is a nuanced word and implies a lot of things, most of them not so good. It is a word of acceptance, when reality runs over our dreams, and we reassemble the pieces into something that we make ourselves live with, even though it's a long way from Optimum.

This is where we are at the beginnings of the new Dark Age. This paradigm is well-played out in the situation of the twenty-five or so percent of the population that is unable to find work that matches their skills and expectation. Maybe colleges would be better off offering the "Bachelor of Barsita-ing" instead of Film, Philosophy, and all the other things a society in decline has little need of. That doesn't address the auto and factory workers who spent half their adult life at positions which are no more likely to return than a helium balloon released by accident in a moment of overexuberant play.

Reality is slowing pushing us into making different choices and thinking in new ways. One place it still doesn't seem to have caught up is with the "prepping" movement. The notion seems to exist that everything will turn bad for a couple of years, then return to normal, and all that is needed is to have a basement full of MREs and a few guns to shoot the horde of starving people that show up to claim them. The fact is that 2001 was an "overshoot" and a warning sign that we were pushing against the limits of growth. 2008 was when the rubber band snapped and it became clear that the lights were starting to go out, for good.

How do people find their way back from a collapse, when there's nothing to find their way back to, anyway? We grow up with the expectation of always being able to run to the store to pick up something for dinner. At some point, the Wal-Mart is going to become "Home to Pigeons and Rats Mart." I've done a little urban exploration, traversing buildings that have outlived their usefulness. I think it's a good illustration for where we'll be at, after a few more years of the present upheavals. For anyone who thinks this isn't where we're headed, take a look around. How many business do you see that have closed up, or are on the verge? How many buildings stand empty now?

Prepping is, in some ways, an optimistic activity assumes we can find our way back at some point. Realism assumes that the door is closed behind us, for good. It's not enough to think anymore in terms of "a rainy day," but we need to think in terms now of a new era of human life. What happens when the palette of ramen noodles in our suburban McMansion runs out, and we have 1/4 acre of land to try farming on? Prepping can't be a matter of trying to replicate or maintain our present life, but needs to shift to the idea of trying to function in a time and place when the old ways of doing things are gone and the new ways are the same as the old old ways.

Medicine, food, transportation, entertainment, social interaction and organization, these are all things which are going to shift from the high-energy input, semi-anonymous methods of existence, and become slower, more effort-filled, and more personalized. Are we prepared for these shifts? Does the average office worker have any idea what a full day labor in the fields feels like? Or does the average modern suburbanite have any notion of what it's like to live in a house during winter that's only marginally warmer than being outside? Or when the idea of a big trip becomes walking a town or two over to catch an open-air play?

We probably don't like the idea of these kinds of adjustments, not having asked for it or considered it, but things are forced on us sometimes, like it or not. We've all benefitted from 180 or so years of massive expansion of human luxury, but never asked when, where, and how it would end. Now, like how the idea of pan-European culture died with a pair of gunshots in the Balkans, triggering the First World War, the collapse of a single nation in the Balkans is going to destroy the idea of globalism, and with it all the things built on top of it. The wise response now is to recognize reality and align our lives with what the future holds, not what the past brought.

Hot and Hazy

Summer seems to be getting an early start this week, with forecasted highs coming close to records that have stood for sixty or seventy years now. This on the heels of a winter-that-wasn't-a-winter, so the countryside was flush with vegetation a month or two ahead of schedule. I'll make an easy prediction now that we can look forward to lots of verbal battles between people who advance theories of global warmings, and those who argue against them. Leading the way on the anti-side will be the pundits like Rush Limbaugh, who have zero scientific training or knowledge, versus people on the pro-side who accuse people like him of wanting to destroy the earth and life on it.

That's a simplification, of course, but I think it illustrates at least the caricatures of where people stand on the issue. I don't really pay much attention to the debate on manmade global warming, as I think we're likely to do ourselves in as a civilization before it will ultimately become a serious issue. However, I do listen to Limbaugh from time to time while driving and caught a tidbit along the lines of "Folks, if we had to heat up the earth, we could never manage that. Only God could do something like that." That anyone could take him seriously after a tidbit like that goes to show that his audience is no more sensible than he is. Again, while I don't really pay a lot of attention to the theory, it seems that statements like that at least tip the credibility scale toward scientists who actually try to seriously study the issue.

In a lot of ways, the cultural crisis which is starting to shake up human society seems to be cut from the same cloth. Why the term "cultural crisis," anyway, and not "economic crisis?" Think about this, though -- an economic crisis implies problems with the economy, confined to the economy. The Great Depression generally fell into this category, where people had built an economic model that had some serious problems, but the overall culture was relatively sound. When the economy collapsed, people were able to still get by, and had some idea of where they were going as a nation and a people (in contrast, look at Nazi Germany, which was the product of a destroyed German culture in the wake of World War One). Now, the problem is so much greater and is no longer really confined to just one aspect of human society. America is stumbling, has no idea of what values it should be embracing (we have Jersery Shore on one hand, we have Joel Osteen on the other, with NASCAR and militarism in between).

The rest of the world is largely in the same boat, too, because the economy and consumption have become the end-game of all human effort everywhere. People measure who they are by what they have. When you have it, then what? Things rust and rot away, or we just get bored with them, like a middle aged salesman with his wife, and go chase something new. The ancient Greeks put stock in philosophy and learning, the Romans in tradition, the medieval European in religion, the Chinese in meditations on the nature of things, Enlightement thinkers in science and natural philosophy, early Americans in rights and law...and modern Americans in phantom things like Facebook stock.

A Dark Age is a combination of many things, part of it a time when there is no longer enough of an input of energy to sustain the socioeconomic models that people have built, but it's also a time when old ideas that have carried us forward die. With the Greeks, it came when the notion of pan-Hellenism died out during the Peloponnesian War, the Romans when perpetual conquest could not be sustained, and in the modern day when the idea of perpetual growth and consumption run into the reality of limited energy and markets.

In the end, it's not unlike the global warming debate -- we see what we want to see, put so much faith into an idea, that we conflate our existence with that idea and mindset. Now, we're facing the fact that our models are broken and we still cannot come to grips with that, preferring to deny that there is even a fundamental problem with things and that life as we know it can't go on forever. Traditionally, the summer has always been a slow news season, as people vacate Washington to go on vacation, but the Greek crisis hasn't resolved itself (the Greeks not even knowing who they want to lead them), the French are still pursuing their own broken model, and America is forced into an election that will change nothing, because reality itself has begun to catch up with the process.

We may be coming up on a very hot and hazy summer indeed.

Distractions

Apparently, last night was the Golden Globes, or tonight, or something. Some guy named Ricky Gervais talked about something. A cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, sank because the captain decided to go "showboating" (heh, heh) off the coast of a small island. Tim Tebow, who does something with prayer and parabolic trajectories, lost some sort of sports contest. Finally, almost as a footnote to the news, many countries in the Eurozone were downgraded.

I could go on and on about the seemingly endless ability of modern Americans (and people around the globe as a whole) to distract themselves from the systemic problems facing the world. Maybe it's a defense mechanism, leftover from the days when we lived in clammy stone huts and wore animal skins (who wouldn't want a distraction, then?). The problem is that we, collectively speaking, at the wheel of a car that is hurtling down the road at a hundred miles per hour, when the roads are icy and getting narrower and narrower. Oh, there's a canyon nicknamed "Peak Oil" just ahead.

The downgrade of the Eurozone countries is going to be waved off by a lot of people. It'll be called a political move, fearmongering, unwarranted hysteria, whatever label happens to fit the narrative that any given person sees the world through (and therefore pushes). The real way to interpret is that it is a collective judgement on the soundness of the European economy. If you look at credit ratings, the point is to determine the ability of a person or institution (or coutry) to repay a debt. By downgrading the rating of countries in Europe, the collective judgement is that these countries can no longer maintain themselves economically the way they have intended to (or have, to this point).

Essentially, this means that we're not expecting to patient which is modern industrial society to pull through. While this is, at first, a problem for the politicians and bankers who have created this system, it is going to quickly became a problem for the people who live in these nations as the wheels that have allowed modern populations to exist and thrive suddenly grind to a halt and we all find ourselves in strange new territory. We cannot even begin to address these issues, so late in the day that things have become, so we find ourselves looking for newer and better distractions until the clock finally winds down and we return to a world where real meaning is found when simple existence itself becomes a struggle.

What strikes me is the responses to the crisis at hand. Some people, who have not examined the situation, may ask "what crisis?" Simply put, the fact that we're at the end of the road and don't know where to go, because none of the answers are acceptable in mainstream society. We place quasi-religious faith in "alternative solutions" such as alternative fuels, we pretend that there's not a problem, we believe that we can find a political solution to overspending (which in nature would be too many deer eating too little forage). We want to dream our way out of reality and into a new golden age.

In none of this is the realization that we are on a downward slope and need to adjust to it, but we only do so when we are forced into it, kicking and sreaming.

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I would recommend that everyone who has already not done so follow Ed's recommendation and read John Michael Greer's latest post at The Archdruid Report. Quite a good read and is well worth it alone for the discussion about our modern narrative. 

Fracked Up

New Year's Eve this past year in Ohio came with a little bit of an extra "bang," thanks apparently to "fracking." (see here for the whole story) A quick search on Google turns up a few more articles on this happening in other places -- in England and Oklahoma as well. Obviously, a 5.0 (or even 6.0) magnitude quake is not a monster, apocalyptic-level event in any sense, this shows another serious problem with pushing for more and more oil production, now that all the "easy" oil is gone. And this doesn't even begin to take into other issues, including contamination of groundwater, and so on.

Hmm. Putting up with eathquakes so that we can milk the planet just a little bit longer, keep the machines going just a little bit longer, even while we experience potentially catastrophic environmental catastrophes. I mean, doesn't this come off a little bit like a bad science fiction movie? I expect the Klingons to do something like this, but....

The idea of fracking, whatever the soundness of it from a geological or environmental perspective, and whatever ultimately comes of it, is just another attempt to maintain the modern industrial lifestyle that the world has become dependent on. It is this idea -- overextending ourselves to maintain this lifestyle -- that is taking us down another parallel road, with this one based on the squandering of capital in the endless pursuit of trying to acquire more capital and goods.

It isn't really until we step back and look at all these things as a pattern, that we begin to see where we really are as a culture and a civilization. We have built an impressively interconnected society, where it's possible to travel far and wide in days, or even hours, can communicate almost instantly with anyone else around the globe, can access all the important data ever recorded by mankind, pick something. At the same time, we're generally not aware in our minds of what the cost of these advances truly is, nor do we understand that we cannot keep them going forever.

If we think of earthquakes as being the first warning sign that the process of fracking may not be what we thought it was, what is going to be the first warning sign that civilization itself is running on empty? Is it Greece? Europe as a whole? The fact that our politicians don't even bother to talk about reducing the debt, but only about reducing the deficit? When we consider that it's good news that unemployment has dropped down below nine percent, but ignore that the statistic is due to many people finally giving up the job hunt?

It's hard to say what the real takeaway from this is. People who protest fracking have legitimate concerns about the environment, but how do we address the billions of people who depend on fossil fuels to survive? People who protest the debt and spending are correct when they state that the party can't go on forever, but where does that leave the people who are invested in the system and have no means outside of it?

It is when we get down to this point -- where we know that we're going down a road that looks narrower, rougher, and more dangerous the longer we're on it, but a road we can't get off of -- that we know we are destined for a hard crash. The only realistic action at this point is to cover our own butts and make sure we're able to ride out what is sure to be a coming storm.

Stupor Committee

One of the signs, I think, of a civilization entering a Dark Age is the number of "WTF moments" that come up on a regular basis, when things happen that don't make sense, when you know the wheels are coming off. Step back some 1600 years and imagine yourself as an average person in the latter days of Imperial Rome: "Hey Sulla, did you hear that we're giving up Britain because we can't defend it any longer?" "WTF do you mean we can't defend something, Flavius? We're Romans!" Or, if you prefer, imagine being a Mayan during their collapse: "WTF do you mean we can't grow crops in the same soil we've been using for generations?" And so on.

We have quite a few of those ourselves on a regular basis now, but I think the cherry on top of the WTF sundae is the so-called "Deficit Reduction Super Committee" and the kabuki theatre surrounding it right now. Putting it in a little perspective, the DRSC is supposed to cut 1.2 trillion dollars over the next ten years. Doing the math, that's 120 billion dollars a year in cuts. Compared to a deficit which is at least 1.3 trillion dollars a year, it's essentially nothing. It's like being shot with 11 bullets instead of twelve. If this isn't a WTF? moment, I don't know what is.

Of course, there's the usual talk around deficit reduction, where everyone wants their turf guarded, when the special interests don't want to see their slice of the public pie cut. The problem here, of course, is that the pie itself is mostly air sandwiched between two crusts, the filling long ago having been removed and the lid of the pie carefully replaced so that no one would notice. It's now a system running on promises -- the promise of enough money coming into the treasury, the promise that people who have bought bad debt will get repaid, the promise that there is enough leadership and will to somehow patch a failing system that's running out of time. Everyone in the country wants their own benefits from it, but no one asks what it'll cost or if they should give up a little bit, along with everyone else.

So WTF? is anyone thinking that cutting out 120 billion a year in spending is going to make much of a difference in the ballooning debt and rapidly sinking dollar. And WTF? comes to mind when anyone thinks that it matters if these guys manage to agree to anything that will close that gap, while ignoring the rest of the monster deficit. It's like hiking 500 feet up the side of Mt. Everest and claiming that it's been conquered.

Speaking of Britain, we're a little like the Romans living there in 408 A.D. At some point, the nation is going to have to face bankruptcy and it's anyone's guess as to what happens then -- I think the conversation might be "WTF do they mean 'you're on your own'?"

The Jobs Picture

Ed left a good comment on my previous post, but it was unfortunately eaten by Blogger.  Since it is another insightful comment, I wanted to make sure it was posted:

"Off topic, but responding to the comment on my comment, I'm becoming interested in how peak oil will interact with what seems to be the increasing trend to eliminate jobs through automation (the mainstream bloggers I know alert to the latter are Stuart Sandiford (sp?) at Early Warning and Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, and I don't think they have digested the implications).

Labor saving devices at the beginning of the industrial revolution put craftsmen and agricultural smallholders out of work, but allowed households to improve their material quality of life through acquiring relatively cheap mass produced goods that they didn't have access to before.  Current labor solving technology does not really increase the goods and services available to a household, you still get one washing machine even if it now can be produced with two thirds fewer workers.  It makes these products cheaper, but there is no increase in production that will absorb the redundant workers.
Essentially the end result is the same number of goods produced with cheaper inputs, instead of more goods produced with cheaper inputs.  WIthout factoring in peak oil, in principle this should not be difficult for societies to adjust to, you just put most of the population on some form of welfare, which doesn't have to be that high because it now costs much less to have a middle class standard of living (but watch for population constraints).  In practice this takes a huge cultural adjustment.

Will rising resource costs halt or reverse the trend towards automation?  Or will have it have no effect on automation, but put the world in a Malthusian crisis where "surplus" members of society have to be eliminated?  I'm not sure, but again we are dealing with a wind down that will be difficult but tolerable as opposed to a nightmare."

This has been a line of inquiry that has interested me for a while, as well.  I think the key point is a lack of effective management of social trends in modern society.  We don't have the political will to identify the crisis and the need to plan for the coming transition is sorely absent from any kind of conversation on what direction society is taking. 

The ideas of "structural unemployment" and "jobs that are never coming back" are probably two early warning signs of what direction we can expect things to take.  By extension, the people who held these surplus jobs also seem to be surplus, themselves.  I think the first time this was really addressed was when Walter Reuther was shown a machine that could make some union auto workers' jobs obsolete.  Reuther responded by asking how many cars those machines would buy? 

I tend to think that the same factors which reverse automation (unpayable debt, rising resource costs, etc) will simaltaneously wipe out the ability of nation-states to maintain a working entitlements system.  In turn, this will sharply cut the effective cost of labor again (which is itself largely falling -- here is the BLS report).  At some point, it will become cost-effective for those who still have some measure of wealth to hire large number of menial workers, not unlike what was the case in 19th century England where urban populations ballooned with no attendant expansion in available work. 

Also, I wrote a post on this a while back, with what I thought were three trends that people might undertake in response to having no work and few options.  I should note that I don't mean to romanticize or idealize any of them, but that they seem to be likely once the welfare checks stop coming and people need to find some way to keep a roof over their heads.

Again, thanks for the good comment, and it is something to start looking for while sifting through the news.

Balkanization

In spite of the best efforts to get Europe's economic crisis under control, it's looking more and more like we're approaching the latest act in Europe's long retreat from anything resembling prosperity, optimism, strength, purpose, progress, and order.  In other words, entropy can only be held at bay for so long, before it completely overtakes any given system.

The award for being most nakedly out of touch with reality has to go to Angela Merkel, who states that faith in the idea of European unity would be destroyed by a Greek default.  What faith do people have in the EU, anyway?  This is when you know a politician has to go, when they state things like this, which are about as accurate and relevant as production figures from the old Soviet "five year plans."  Even Baghdad Bob wouldn't have bothered with drivel like that.

The levers of power in Europe have always had the tinge of inbreeding and incest about them, from the heads of different royal families being related (World War One was indeed a very bloody squabble between cousins), to the confusing claims and counter-claims on the English and French crowns, going all the way back to Charlemagne splitting his empire between his three sons and giving historians no shortage of things to write about for a millenia.  The difference with the age of nobility and the modern age is that it's now the bankers who are in bed with each other, while not having enough legal degrees of separation.  The latest sign of this is the IMF requesting more money from member states to solve the European debt crsis.

If anything, this should be the largest red flag, the loudest siren, the biggest shot across the bow, for anyone who thinks that a united Europe still has a future -- or, indeed, that Europe has much of an future at all.  States which are bankrupt are having to give money to an organization which is also pretty much broke, to bail out other states which are bankrupt...this is the financial equivalent of stretching a rubber band to its limit, then trying again, but cutting it in half so that it goes twice as far. 

The increasingly shrill warnings coming out of the European leadership aren't without some merit, though, even if those warnings are coming far too late.  Europe has always been at odds with itself.  A unifying religion (Catholicism) kept it somewhat together until the Reformation did away with that model and the continent was wracked with centuries of war as the yoke of the church was thrown off and replaced with the yoke of ambition.  Unifying philosophies (the Enlightenment and Nationalism) kept Europe together for around a century until it bled itself white through the competition of nations in two World Wars.  Now, the idea of the Cornucopian welfare state is running up against the hard reality of the decline of resources, the end of European global economic dominance, the lack of a Soviet threat to keep people all looking over the same shoulder, and it's anyone's guess as to which way the dominos will start to topple.  The European leadership isn't so stupid as to not know that history readily wants to repeat itself, just blinded by their own ambitions.

It should be hard to say what the future holds for Europe when (not if) the EU breaks up and old ideas begin to reassert themselves, but it's really not.  How long is it going to be before radical heads of state (of both the right and the left) find themselves with newfound political vigor, supported by a base of people who will come to see that all the promises made by European politicians are as empty as the national treasury?  How long will it take for these new radicals to start looking for others outside of their borders (or within, for that matter) to blame?  How long will it be until one leader or another decides that the only path for national survival is to seize things that someone else has? 

Much has been made of the ominous possibilities that might follow an American collapse, but looking overseas probably demands as much attention.  In either case, the cause is still the same -- a population that assumes that the lights will never go off or the oil wells will run dry, led by people who realize that the person who speaks truth will be lucky to keep their head, much less their elected office.  When we think that somehow, even if our own nation and sphere of influence implodes, that there will still be pockets of learning and civilization elsewhere in the world, we should remember that when collapse comes, it is not going to be local and limited, but global and profound.

Somme Ideas

World War One has faded into distant memory as the last few survivors have passed into memory and their eternal rest, with the death of the last English veteran of the war.  The horror of the war, eclipsing any war before or since, is a footnote in the history books, perhaps as it should be.  Clearly, humanity didn't learn anything from it, as the men who saw it first hand were all too eager, perhaps even anxious, to fight another one only two decades later, to settle old scores and right old wrongs. 

In the mind of those who are at least somewhat familiar with the war, the Battle of the Somme is probably most representative of the conduct of the war.  Repeated bloody Allied assaults on fortified and well-prepared German positions, at with only moderate gains and massive casualities, became the model of the conflict in the public mind.  Tragically, the Somme was the only another link in a chain of bloody battles, where the same "over-the-top" and "hearts of oak" mentality prevailed again and again, until the French army mutinied in 1917 and refused to participate in futile attacks. 

It's hard to really fathom the mindset of the generals involved and why this repeat slaughter happened.  There are a number of theories, including the problem of military conservatism, unfamiliarity with the true lethality of weapons at the time, political pressure, and so on.  I think it was simply that the leadership could not even begin to grasp the size of the problem and had no way to deal with it outside of trying the same thing over and over in the hopes that somehow it would work.

Just as the tragedy of World War One was that the leadership could not learn from their mistakes, and could only think of repeating them in the hopes that somehow, somewhere, it would finally work, we see the same mindset and approach in modern America with the economy.  After multiple stimulus packages and massive government spending in the hopes of somehow creating jobs, of getting the economy rolling and avoiding another recession/depression, the next idea that is going to be tried is...more stimulus packages and massive government spending.  A $450 billion dollar jobs bill proposed by Obama is the stuff from which tragic jokes are made.  The only reason that it's not being laughed out of Washington is because the Republicans are made from the same cloth, only they believe that warfare, not welfare, is the key to economic health.

While it's tempting to say "Well, it's just money, and not lives," we have to remember that this kind of spending is going to lead to economic and social collapse, sooner or later.  There are around three hundred million people in modern America, most of whom are far removed from the land and any means of food production, not to mention that this population well exceeds what pre-industrial agriculture could functionally maintain.  What would happen in the case of a fast economic crash, with all the following chaos and inability of people to obtain food at any price, similar to Germany post-World War One? 

Like World War One, I think the problem is also that the political and economic leadership really has no idea of the size of the problem and how to address it.  On one hand, there is a restive public that threatens to vote out anyone who cannot deliver the sun, the moon, and stars at no cost.  On the other hand, there is a changing reality, where the excess reserves built up by over five hundred years of pre-industrial and industrial economic activity are finally exhausted, when land and resources are running scarce and the only answer seems to be to burn them faster.

What needs to happen?  What are the solutions?  Are there solutions?  Those are three questions I won't address, because the very first thing that needs to happen on the public stage -- that of admitting that there IS a problem, that the old models will no longer work -- hasn't even happened yet.  Just like generals marching soldiers into the maw of death at the Somme because their playbook has only one page, we citizens of the industrialized world are being marched straight into the maw of collapse, because our own "leaders" seem to have only one fix to these kinds of problems -- more of the same until there is no more left.

London's Burning

On September 7th, 1940, the German Luftwaffe bombed London after a smattering of RAF attacks on Berlin.  Particularly excited by this turn of events was Hermann Goering, who telegrammed his wife Emmy and bragged "I've sent my bombers to London!  London's burning!"  The irony, of course, was that the shift by the Luftwaffe to the bombing of London provided a respite to RAF Fighter Command that was essentially on the ropes by that point in time, running short on aircraft and especially short on pilots.  Now, 71 years later after Germany failed to destroy England's defenses, London is once more on fire, but this time her own people are doing the deed.

There may be a handful of surviving RAF pilots who are now asking themselves just why they flung their Hurricanes and Spitfires into the sky against the Messerschmidts and Heinkels, if the end result was going to be angry mobs burning down shops, houses, and businesses.  Did they suspect that the nation of England might well be destroyed by the barbarians from within? 

There doesn't seem to necessarily be an easy way to categorize the riots.  Nativists would try to point to immigration or race as being the source of the problem, but there were plenty of pictures of Anglo-Saxon looking folking swinging heavy objects at police cars or being dragged off by riot cops.  Marxists, on the other side of the fence, would try to blame lack of economic opportunity, but can a convincing case be made when a Sony distribution facility was targeted and looted?  (I tend to doubt that anyone is going to put "The Internationale" on their stolen iPods)

It goes without saying that there won't be any shortage of opinions on the cause of these riots (and other ones around the world).  I don't think it's unlikely that we'll begin seeing the same sort of thing start to occur in America, either.  However, one explanation lies in complexity theory, the branch of mathematics which deals with spontaneous organization of patterns.  In short, complexity theory notes that patterns can arise where they didn't previously exist, generally caused by energy entering a semi-closed system.  An example of this is a neon sign -- neon gas just sits in the tube until electricity is applied, when the molecules begin to glow.  An even better example is a spontaneous traffic jam -- for no real reason, cars begin slowing en masse, until traffic slows to a crawl.  Just as quickly, it can dissipate, the road becoming clear once more, without anyone really knowing the cause.  Yet another example is the action of acts defending their colony or digging a nest.

While we see the effect of destabilizing industrial society in the riots, complex systems also seem to exist at a higher level in places like Washington.  A poster commented here a couple of weeks ago about the debt crisis solving itself, if the government would simply quit spending.  We look at the "debt ceiling deal," and ask just how each party can support something so meaningless, claim some victory, blame the other side, and kick the can down the road.  On top of that, we ask how someone like Alan Greenspan can just say that the printing presses can keep running, or Bernake can just float a trial balloon about QE3?  The answer is that our system of leadership has taken on a particularly rigid and chaotic pattern after years of energy inputs in the form of lobbying, power grabs over budgeting, and everything else that goes with fighting over the spoils in a late-state empire. 

The pattern which has emerged is very much like that traffic jam -- nothing is going anywhere and no one really knows why, even though there's no wreck on the road, no construction to channel the traffic down to one lane.  Nothing moves, nothing changes, it just keeps plodding on to the inevitable point where it collapses into chaos, once there is no more energy to feed into the system.

The New Tets

In early 1968, the Vietnamese communists launched a surprise offensive against the American and South Vietnamese forces, which aimed at seizing control of various strategically important areas, as well as triggering an uprising against a politically dubious South Vietnamese government.  The offensive, from a military standpoint, was a failure, being soundly defeated by the American and South Vietnamese militaries and badly weakening the North Vietnamese/Vietcong forces for a period of time.  However, from a political standpoint, it was a rousing success, for the perception in America was that, in spite of the power of the American military, and demonstrating success in terms of controlling the battlefield, the communist forces were resilient enough to withstand everything that had been thrown against them and continue the fight, despite predictions from government representatives that the war was being won.  Ultimately, the view began to shift that victory in the war was not possible.

Like the Tet Offensive, two events happened toward the end of last week which have the power to permanently alter the public perception of the American empire and cost it the lifeblood which sustains it -- the confidence of the American people.

The first is the death 30 Americans (and 8 Afghans), in a "rocket attack" on a CH-47 transport helicopter during a raid in a Taliban-controlled area in Afghanistan.  In many ways, this attack is a symbolic throwback to the Tet Offensive in 1968.  While only involving one chopper and a small number of deaths, it very much echoes the events in Vietnam where the public had been confident about the strategy of the American military and there was a perception that the communist forces had suffered so many defeats that it was only a matter of time before they were rendered useless as a military force.  Likewise, with Afghanistan, the American public has been told for years that the Taliban was effectively defeated as a functioning military force, that the death of bin Laden was a major turning point, and it's only a matter of time before things are wrapped up and the troops could come home. 

The loss of these lives is another reminder that the war is far from over, that the Taliban can still continue to fight.  In both Vietnam, and in Afghanistan, the nature of the wars themselves is that victory is almost impossible to achieve -- it would come only when there was no one willing to pick up a rifle and go fight the Americans.  And, like McNamara after Tet, Leon Panetta has come under pressure to explain the "credibility gap" between what the public has been told and the reality of the war.

The other earthshaking event for the American empire is the downgrading of the credit rating of the United States, or how confident people can be they'll get their money back if they lend it to America.  Like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the struggle to turn the recession/depression around and get back to something like the boom years of the late 90s, or at least contain the damage, has been an ongoing effort, one in which the American public was told that we have turned the corner, that there is light at the end of the tunnel.  However, all the economic reports and anecdotes have been pointing in the other direction and Moody's has finally just said what everyone who has been paying attention already knew -- that the staggering American debt was beginning to endanger the economy to the point where investment in the nation was beginning to become risky.

The United States has had a AAA rating for almost a hundred years, since 1917.  Now, it is AA+ and will likely drop to AA once it is seen that the government is still unable to make singificant progress on tackling the debt and deficit problem.  Likewise, the Chinese bond rating agency has re-rated America from A+ to A.  The response to these has ranged from the tepid (Greenspan saying "we can print more money") to the profound (China saying "the dollar is finished).  Nowhere in this is anything which can even begin to be calming to the average person in America who is now wondering if they will have anything of worth at all in the bank when they retire, or even when they go to the grocery next week. 

Nations are allowed a catastrophe or two from time to time, as the citizens have a shared common culture and outlook, but empires like American aren't afforded these luxuries.  People support an empire only as long as it is "winning," and look to desert it when it isn't.  The Soviet Empire appeared to begin down the path of disintegration in earnest when its military might was questioned after not being able to win Afghanistan, and the incompetence of the Soviet management of domestic affairs took another shot after Chernobyl.  A few years later, the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist as a political entity.  Have the "New Tets" created the momentum to push America down the same path?

Crash, Bang, Boom

I didn't check the news between about 7 in the morning and just a little while ago...and was reminded of exactly how fast the economy can start to implode again, much along the lines of what happened back in fall 2008, when I went to lunch and came back to see a five hundred point drop.  The stock market is down around five percent, oil is down below 90 dollars a barrel (signaling that people believe that demand is going to drop off shortly, due to the failing economy), etc. 

The big difference between then and now is that I think there's a sea change in attitudes toward the economy and recovery, and not for the better.  In 2008, Barack Obama was elected partly because people saw some sign of hope with a change in party at the White House.  This followed on the heels of a massive bailout package which started triggered the deficits north of a trillion dollars.  People believed for much of 2009 and 2010 that recovery was still possible, that all the measures taken by the Fed and the government would bear some sort of fruit, that green shoots were coming up all over the place.

Oops.

The debt discussion and the tacit admission that there is no political will in Washington to even begin to take any serious steps to address seem to have been the last straw, the American version of the Argentinian government admitting at the end of 2001 that there was no way to deal with the debt, that the problem had gone too far and there was nothing to do but watch the barn burn down. 

People are still going to raise the rallying cry that the crisis can be overcome, that we can come to terms with the debt and deal effectively with it, save the economy, and so on.  Hope is a good thing and we can't live without it, but there's also a time to be realistic and understand that a storm is coming.  Whether or not this is going to be the last high point on the roller coaster before the big 200 foot drop, or we're going to see more ups and downs, it has to be clear that we're not going to return to "normal" again, maybe not in our lifetimes or our children's lifetimes, that the figurative lights are going out across America, and the industrial world, maybe for good. 

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While people make think it's getting too late in the game to prepare for what's going to happen down the road, especially folks who are coming to the realization that things are getting ugly, the truth is that anything in the way of preparation may be helpful.  The position of the Leibowitz Society has generally been that the most likely collapse scenario is one of the relatively gradual decline (in other words, you'll definitely see it coming and not have to run from a horde of zombies), but that the decline isn't going to be linear.  In other words, there are going to be peaks and valleys of stability and instability on the way down.  Instabilities might well cause situations, for example, where electrical power is lost for a time or store shelves get emptied in a buying panic.  In times like this, it will be absolutely critical to be as self-reliant as possible, where "conventional" prepping will be invaluable.  I picked up a book recently, called "The Prepper's Pocket Guide" with an eye toward reviewing it for people who were new to the idea of prepping and long-term survival.  While it's not as comprehensive as a lot of other works, it's a very good entry-level work and has a lot of useful information for people who are new to the subject or just looking for a one-stop information source to flip through on a regular basis.  Recommended.

Ghost Town Blues

I saw a very interesting piece (here) on the shift of population from America's rural areas to the cities, especially the northeast.  This really isn't news to anyone who has spent any time in a rural town in recent years.  If you go to "main street," you'll see most of the beautiful old brick buildings have fallen into disrepair, with cracked or boarded up windows, peeling paint, water damage.  They no longer serve any use, no more than a castle in the countryside in Europe.  Yeah, sure, you might find something like a photo studio in one, a pizza parlor in another, maybe even a government office, but mostly, the occupants are like pigeons living in the loft of an abandoned mansion -- they're there, but just because it's there and have no real tie to the place.

Interestingly, the piece even talks about post offices closing up.  This is in addition to sheriff's departments who are increasingly unable to provide patrol services to rural areas as their own budgets evaporate.  So, not only are rural areas losing population, they are also losing any kind of political organization.  Roads, also, are going back to gravel and bridges that are in need of maintenance or are damaged are often simply closed until the necessary funding can be found (good luck).  Of course, some roads aren't all that passable to begin with. 
Part of the problem is the loss of jobs in the rural areas.  Farming is increasingly done on a very large scale, requiring lots of energy input and expensive machinery, putting it out of the reach of most people as a practical way of making a living.  A number of the plants which were opened in rural areas (due to low land costs and lower living costs) are closing or relocating because of the economy and rising shipping costs.  Of course, as population shifts, all the service-based businesses close as well, as there's no one left to patronize those businesses.

This seems to be a trend with most empires, at any rate.  Rome, for example, was relatively decentralized for quite a long time, with the bulk of the population being composed of small-scale farmers.  As slavery increased, and landowners grew and consolidated their holdings, the population tended to move to the cities and seek handouts, leaving the rural areas relatively deserted.  In turn, this put considerable pressure on the administration and stability of the Imperial cities, that of trying to make sure the populace was fed and didn't riot or revolt.  While arguably not a factor which directly contributed to the fall of Rome, it isn't hard to imagine that it made the Empire somewhat less flexible and able to respond to other problems.

There are some obvious implications for modern America here.  One is that the loss of smaller-scale farming, distributed populations, and close ties to rural areas, means that agriculture and food distribution is going to wind up being even more "brittle" than it has been in the past, and dependent on effective transportation.  Another is that the population which moves to the cities is probably not any more likely to find work than it would have in the countryside -- the continuing Depression, combined with the fact that many people are going to be competing with an established labor force that already has existing social connections, means that opportunities will be limited, even on a generational basis.  Politicians are going to face the dilemma of trying to fund social programs to appease an increasingly restless urban population and further ruining the budgets, or are going to face a situation like the Paris communues -- modern "ghettos" which erupt in violence from time to time (I'm reminded of "Mega-City One" from Judge Dredd, too).

As it gets harder and harder to maintain a workable economy, too, the cities are obviously going to see a serious degregdation in living standards.  While people have advocated staying in urban areas during periods of collapse, it may get to the point where they are not worth occupying any longer, by any rational measure.  The larger the population, the worse these problems will be. 

On the other hand, this does present some opportunities for people who are interested in transitioning to a post-oil, post-industrial lifestyle.  Entire towns are up for sale now, apparently, and more and more land is going to simply be abandoned and allowed to become overgrown again.  One aspect of the Leibowitz Society's philosophy has been the exploration of forming communities around the preservation of knowledge, similar to Dark Ages monasteries, meaning that these efforts would find plenty of open and unused space.  It is obviously up to the individual to decide what their best course is, but this is still some food for thought.  The key idea to remember is that what a person who has grown up in the information age is looking in terms of dwelling space or lifestyle is going to be vastly different from a person who is contemplating the transition to post-collapse life. 

Tectonics

This summer is shaping up to be one for the history books, and not in a good way.  Another drug-addled musician joined the "27 Club," some headcase with a vaguely racist-nativist agenda kills nearly 100 people in Norway, record heat is cooking crops and tempers in most of the lower 48.  While nothing is on the radar at the moment, I wouldn't be surprised if we wake up one morning and hear about a Category 5 killstorm barreling its way toward the Eastern Seaboard.

However, all of the topical bad news of the day is still overshadowed -- in spite of the media's best efforts -- by the impending economic financial implosion in America and the Hobson's choice it poses for people in political office.  The choices have boiled down to extending the debt ceiling and seeing the dollar slowly sink, or not raising the debt ceiling and seeing the dollar melt down overnight.  This is what the media and politicians are not presenting to people -- that there is no way out with the two "options" being floated right now for people.

The logical choice would be to simply stop spending money that the nation doesn't have.  This is what most people do when they're faced with bills they can't pay.  If they're smart, they don't go get another credit card.  For the American government, it would mean drastically cutting defense and social spending, pushing it down to levels where it would be possible to stop adding to an already massive debt and maybe even start cutting that debt a little, here and there.

There is of course a small problem with this.  Objectively speaking, the United States is an empire, not a nation.  It maintains military bases in many different parts of the world, something that is almost unique at this point in time, and exercises a great deal of influence over many governments through economic incentives.  In addition to maintaining external control, America itself is not really a nation in the sense of a shared culture and values, with the Civil War being an obvious example of this heterogeneity and the problems it can cause.  The "War on Poverty" itself was simply a massive attempt to soothe the pain of and address the injustices directed at the African-American segment of the American population before it tried again to assert itself politically, and so on. 

Ultimately, America cannot disengage from where it already is, without first dealing with the issue that the definition of America itself would change, and this is what the real heart of this political battle is all about.  The right wants to support military spending, the left wants to support social spending, and neither type of spending can be sustained in the long run.  This is the fate of empires...extending themselves to the point where they can't be maintained and destroy themselves in the process of trying to make it just a little longer, like the person who can't stop spending.  For people who have studied ecology, this is referred to as "carrying capacity" -- the population we have now (both literally and in terms of ideas and institutions) has been built around something which could not be sustained.

While people have mentioned that a default might be a good thing, to reign in spending, the issue here is that doing so is going to very quickly expose the fault lines in American public life.  Far too many people have their fortunes and fates tied to the American government, to the dollar, and to the systems that have been created around these two entities.  Could the pieces of lives and institutions be picked back up quickly enough once the dust of the economic chaos settled?  Or would we see a confusion with no clear way forward?  I think it would take only a very short time before people start mentally and emotionally, if not physically, heading for the exits.  It won't be longer after that all the systems which have been put in place and maintained by those same people will cease to exists.

It's never easy to know how to act in times like these, but I think one piece of advice makes sense -- disengage as much as possible.  Look to minding your own life and realize that the thunder you're hearing is the long-forecast storm finally arriving.  Get away from anything which requires a sound dollar and make sure you have plans in place for the day when there is nothing on the store shelves and what you need must be obtained through barter or local labor.  Understand that you are going to do with a much simpler lifestyle if you are not living simply.  If you already are, then be content in knowing that you're likely going to be okay in the long run.  Last, understand that all things come to an end, sooner or later, including nations and empires, and that what is really most important is likely in front of you anyway.

Consumer Confidence Game

Well, so we're in the middle of the vacation season.  As James Kunstler has put it, "The time of the year when we turn Lake George upside down with cigarette boat Cuinsiarts."  Or something like that.  I'll defer to his ability to turn a phrase, but you get the idea.  When the highways are even more choked with people going places they can't afford to go to, so they can start counting down the time until they can go home.

In the daily games of "How do we keep their eye off the ball?" at the alphabet soup networks, the Casey Anthony ordeal has come to a close for the moment, to be replaced by the aftershock of of talking heads all clamoring to make the most outrageous statements about how the process of law should work.  Some people have called for an end to the jury system, and I expect we'll eventually have someone stumble across the Code of Napoleon and decide to apply the bastard child of criminal law in post-Revolution France.  Maybe we'll just skip to the world of Death Race and be done with it (good flick if you enjoyed Running Man...haven't seen the original Death Race, so I can't comment).  

Unemployment is edging back up again, or at least hovering around like a buzzard who wants a snack.  It looks like the steam has run out from the stimulation, the census lift, and the Golden Age of Hiring at the Golden Arches.  Almost ten years of war and a busted economy which is falling off the cliff, slow-motion, like Homer Simpson, are leaving people wondering where we're going next. 

Consumer Confidence, that weathervane of how willing we are to spend money we don't have on crap we don't have, is sinking yet again, two straight months in a row now.  Some people will say that it's a sign we're not recovering, economically, but I think it's a sign that people are coming to their senses and realizing that no promises or debt-based government lottery/stimulus packages are going to make a damn bit of difference in what is a steadily declining nation.

Ultimately, people are going to start seeing they have to learn how to fend for themselves, or at least help each other out.  While I'm pretty jaded a lot of the time about collapse, having maintained this blog for most of a year, having kept something jumped out at me today that made even me sit up.  I was looking through a bookseller's items and noticed the little bar at the bottom which showed what other people were looking at:  Self-Sufficient Life Homesteading, Home Canning, Wilderness Survival Guide Books CD, Survival CD Self-Reliance, Raising Chickens Permaculture...

So much for books about World War Two, the Ford Mustang or vacation homes...

Snake Oil

Barack Obama's recent decision to release reserve petroleum was one of those head-scratching moments in modern history.  Reaction to it is almost as puzzling, since it seems to mostly depend on one's political viewpoint -- on one hand, those who support Obama politically are applauding the decision, saying it will put pressure on Iran and stabilize oil prices.  Those who don't support him have mocked the decision, pointing out that it was around one day's worth of consumption for the United States, and are chanting "drill, baby, drill!"

Unfortunately, regardless of the fantasy world of most commentators, prices are predictably starting to climb again and the reality of four-dollar-a- gallon gasoline is going to be here before much longer, maybe even before the 4th of July "travel holiday" again (it's up around 25 cents here over the last day or so).  In neither political case, either, does the reality of Peak Oil come up in any of the discussions, so we're still -- as a nation and a civilization -- living in what is looking to be a permanent state of denial.  Even if we opened up previously off-limits in America to drilling (who doesn't want to go to the beach and see oil rigs lining the horizon? -- much nicer than dolphins, waves and seabirds to look at), it would still not make up for where would need to be at to make prices drop significantly.

Apparently, that same permanent state of denial is also extending to the economy and money.  America, politically speaking, is becoming a superpower-sized version of a gambling addict who has already sold most of his worldly possessions to keep playing, and is now borrowing money from one loan shark to pay back to another, so bad are his debts.  All it would take is for one of our creditors to decide to eat their debt and put cement overshoes on us, and the game is over.  Talk of "across the board cuts" makes for good sound bites and lively political discussions among the vapidorati in the old and new media, but has as much chance of happening as I do of flapping my arms and flying.

So, just between Peak Oil and Megadebt, our future in America doesn't look so hot.  As oil grows scarcer and more expensive, it will go to nations who can offer oil exporting nations something of value in return.  Fiat currency is destined to crash, leaving only currencies which are backed by mineral wealth (or some other commodity) as means of exchange.  Since our own currency is built on a smile and a handshake, and is no longer built on anything with at least some physical presence (gold), America is going to sooner or later be turned away at the door when try to buy oil, and $4 a gallon on that day is going to seem like twenty-five cents a gallon does to us now.  We can try to take it by force, but I tend to think that the spectre of scorched earth in the form of burning oil wells would probably throw cold water on that with immediacy and there will be a token trickle released to at least allow Air Force One to fly around to whatever few airfields are left open by then.

I imagine that Barack Obama did what he thought he could at this point -- try to deflate prices a little, hope for the best, that maybe the various oil producing nations would do a little soul-searching and decide to act charitably in the interest of good will and love, or something along those lines.  However, like the larger economy, this is just where reality meets the road.  We have hit the iceberg and are taking on water too fast to stay afloat, we've gone off the cliff and are like the coyote in those brief seconds before gravity catches up to him, we're like the person with terminal cancer who gets coffee enemas because they think they can beat it, pick your own metaphor. 

The haunting scene, early in the Road Warrior, where Max is collecting gasoline from a wrecked car into a pan comes to mind.  It's only a little bit, maybe half a gallon or a gallon, but it's enough to get by another day.  That is where we are now, on a national scale, with releasing reserves in the hopes of driving prices down enough to let the economy creak along a little longer.

Gold and the Means of Production

I want to shift gears away from current events for a little back and back to thinking about the future.  Where we all are in life right now is, with some exceptions, probably our greatest potential in terms of what we can do with our personal futures, and also true of the future of society as a whole.  The surpluses of wealth are steadily being eaten up, easily accessible resources are basically gone, the population is well above what the pre-industrial carrying capacity of the world is, and so on.  In other words, we're not at the top of the mountain any longer, as we've slipped down it a bit, but we've caught ourselves at least for a little while and have time to think about it before the next shoe drops.

Reactions to this, of course, are mixed.  Some people choose to basically deny the reality of the situation and continue living as they always have, by spending small fortunes on trivial things and not worrying about their future.  Others take a more long-term view and invest in gold or other things which have traditionally had intrinsic value to them.  Still others prepare by buying things which they think they'll need to survive in a post-collapse world (guns and ammo, preserved food, medical supplies, etc). 

Obviously, spending like there will never be a collapse is probably not a wise decision.  However, I think there are some assumptions in the other two strategies which need to be questioned.  While gold and silver have historically been valuable, until recent years, they have not had any real utility for industrial purposes.  Sure, people could make jewelry from them, but there was always a lingering expectation that said jewelry could be turned back into a means of exchange at some point (supposedly, sailors wore gold earrings for this reason -- something that could not easily be lost if they were washed overboard or shipwrecked).  However, if you're starving and have a bag of gold, but nowhere to spend it for food, then it's worthless.  On the other hand, supplies can be used up or lose their functionality over a period of time.  Ammunition has a shelf life of somewhere between 20 to 40 years, producing ammunition for modern firearms will be difficult in the future, medicines also expire, the food will be eaten sooner or later, etc.

What is lacking here is any sense of having a means of building wealth post-collapse.  A lot of the time, I see people writing about the subject of post-crash life who assume that we're all be living as simple farmers or we'll be rapidly rebuilding as soon as the last of the lights go out.  Both cases seem to be an extreme which isn't practical -- if we just suffered a collapse (in other words, the system that sustain our society have completely failed), then what is going to be left to rebuild with?  Likewise, the assumption that specialist occupations won't quickly re-emerge in a purely agricultural society is also questionable. 

So, I'm still puzzled that people don't put more time/thought into post-collapse professions and businesses and preparing to do something besides simply try to get by.  Consider a person who has some home brewing or wine making skills.  While people often do this as a hobby, and may envision making a little wine after a collapse for trade, why do they not think of scaling it up to be a larger enterprise, maybe employing several people?  The knowledge is already there, but the idea may occur to them too late and they may not have the equipment to do much beyond small batches of production.  However, buying the equipment to make more wine would not be expensive at the current time -- a garage or storage barn full of carboys, airlocks, corks and discarded bottles would be enough to sustain a relatively large-scale operation for some time, taking fruit in trade and trading wine in turn.  Other people that have other hobbies or skills may think about expanding them to be larger-scale operations.  Printing, papermaking, candlemaking, distilling, smithing, weaving, etc, all come to mind.

Ultimately, having some means of production may allow a community to be built around the industry, much like most villages in the middle ages had at least one "cottage indsutry" to produce wealth for storage, improvements or trade.  Likewise for monasteries that relied on production of everything from cheese to wood products to sustain themselves.  People might say "Well, why can't we just use what's out there now for this?"  The issue is that modern production is very process-oriented and relies on decentralized production of materials and processing on a scale too large to be practical for most people.  What do you do with a brewing plant when the electricity doesn't come on any longer?

While I realize that the subject of wealth building is probably a strange one to tackle, when discussing economic collapse, and may be distasteful to some, I think it would be a good idea to define it in broader terms, too.  Adam Smith postulated that when one person can benefit from the fruits of their labors, it's likely that all will benefit as well.  Consider a person who builds a mill in a village that didn't have one.  Yes, they might charge a nominal fee for processing the grain into flour, but people will be able to more effectively use their grain harvest at that point.  Or, another person might build a brewery to let people turn grain into alcohol for long-term storage.  Over time, this will tend to build stronger communities with deeper resources which are more able to weather various problems as they arise.

Lastly, I would point out that one part of the philosophy of the Leibowitz Society is the creation and maintenance of strong communities to serve as centers of information storage and dissemination.  This means that the idea of creating centers of production to help sustain that community makes perfect sense, as well as how it would benefit the individual who maintained that means of production.