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Guest Post: Returning to Simplicity (Whether We Want to or Not)
Submitted by ChrisMartenson.com contributor Gregor Macdonald
Returning to Simplicity (Whether We Want to or Not)
Eventually the point is reached when all the energy and resources available to a society are required just to maintain its existing level of complexity.
- Joseph Tainter
The modern world depends on economic growth to function properly. And throughout the living memory of every human on earth today, technology has continually developed to extract more and more raw material from the environment to power that growth.
This has produced a faithful belief among the public that has helped to blur the lines between human innovation and limited natural resources. Technology does not create resources, though it does embody our ability to access resources. When the two are operating smoothly in tandem, society mistakes one for the other. This has created a new and very modern problem -- a misplaced trust in technology to consistently fulfill our economic needs.
What happens once key resources become so dilute that technology, by itself, can no longer meet our growth needs?
We may be about to find out.
Recent History
The twin disasters, Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico and Fukushima in Japan, took place only nine months apart in 2010-2011, but together they have provided the world’s economy with a lesson in 21st Century un-priced risk. Our various energy systems, vastly arrayed across regions and hemispheres, have now reached a late phase of complexity. And societies, particularly in the West, have enjoyed technological progress for such a long, uninterrupted period of time that the delicate nature of this modern infrastructure has evolved to escape notice.
The BP disaster arose within the oil and gas sphere more than a century after the start of widespread oil extraction. The collective knowledge of the industry was, in one sense, a support to the operation that allowed the recovery of oil several miles below ocean and earth, using ultra deepwater drilling techniques. But a century of global oil production was also a constraint, as Deepwater Horizon illustrated the outer reaches to which a mature industry had been driven to obtain its next tranche of resources. The capital BP has set aside for cleanup stands at $40 billion. Additionally, government resources, from equipment to personnel, that were diverted to the Gulf and Gulf Coast that summer (see photo above) were reminiscent of a small military operation.
Deepwater Horizon also showed that modern energy extraction now occurs with the greatest-ever separation between human operators and their resource target(s). This physical distance is so great that, in the case of very deep offshore oil drilling, it’s no longer possible to reliably stop a blowout. Why? Because no equipment exists to easily take men and material to such depth to conduct repairs. Indeed, it was at least as much due to luck as skill that BP was able to halt the well flow several miles down. And the almost comical trial-and-error efforts (junk shots) proved what many have long asserted: In the past decade, the cost of the marginal barrel of oil has crossed a threshold to a completely new era. It now becomes possible to ask the question, Is it worth it? Is it even economic to obtain this new tranche of oil?
The Fukushima disaster, triggered by the an offshore earthquake, ripped the lid off Japan’s power grid and illustrated how the country has historically balanced its lack of domestic fossil fuel supply against its enormous manufacturing base. On a small level, the actual sequence of events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant revealed an amazing vulnerability. For it was not the passing of the tsunami that performed critical damage to the installation’s structure; rather, it was the auxiliary power that was knocked out, depriving the plant of its cooling functions. Hence the meltdown, and the subsequent issues with recriticality (resumption of fission).
Meanwhile, on a larger level, the world came to understand how dependent Japan had become on nuclear power, which provides 30% of the country’s electricity needs. Japan is also one of the largest importers of LNG (liquefied natural gas) and still has to import 80% of its overall energy mix, which includes oil and a very great quantity of coal. (Indeed, Japan is the fourth largest world consumer of coal, behind only China, the US, and India). Unsurprisingly, the country had to significantly boost imports of LNG and coal in the wake of the disaster.
What has been the cultural response to the Deepwater Horizon and Fukushima disasters? In the US, the oil spill in the Gulf, which exacted a great economic toll, echoes the aftermath of other post oil-spill environments: The moratorium on offshore drilling was quickly lifted, but in its place lies a new set of regulations and restrictions. Most of these have a single aim -- that similar blowouts in deepwater be preventable or fixable. The evidence seems to suggest that deepwater drilling in the Gulf has peaked. The rig count has recovered but is still down below the highs, with many of the largest and most expensive operators having left for other parts of the world.
Meanwhile, the global response to the Japanese catastrophe rippled through several economies, especially those, such as Germany, that rely heavily on nuclear power. German chancellor Angela Merkel announced that her country had to accelerate its transition to renewables, becoming less reliant on nuclear. Other countries have increased their inspection procedures, and for the first time in many years, it seemed possible that many aging plants in the US would not see their licenses renewed. In Japan, there have been protests. And given the long lifespan of the nuclear event, which will ripple outwards for decades upon the affected portions of the northeast Japanese coast, it is not surprising:

TOKYO (AP) -- Chanting "Sayonara nuclear power" and waving banners, tens of thousands of people marched in central Tokyo on Monday to call on Japan's government to abandon atomic energy in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident. (Source)
Western Faith in Progress
Education in the West has, as a core feature of its curriculum, a narrative of progress. This is especially true of US history offerings and of any discipline that addresses the post-Industrial Revolution (roughly the two centuries after 1800). The examples of technological progress most available to Western cultures, as we moved from the Age of Wood to the Age of Coal and finally the Oil Age, are highly confirming of the view that humanity always finds a way. And in particular, it finds a way to grow, and even thrive.
It is particularly worth noting the symbiotic relationship between the machines that were developed to extract resources (like the steam engine that pumped water from coal mines) and the life cycle of those machines as utilizers of those resources. Coal mining triggered development of machines that would run on coal, just as oil would eventually power the latest machines that would be used to extract oil. It is this awesome ratchet effect that’s so persuasive to Western culture, and it is the story it repeatedly tells itself.
One can hardly fault the highly educated person, with an advanced position in business, communications, technology, or academia, for generally believing that innovation (and the power of prices) will obtain all of the resources we require. I believe this bias is what Daniel Kahneman would call an availability heuristic. The risk to this bias is that at some point in human development innovation and technology may very well carry forward and confirm society’s faith, but at the same time start to offer increasingly diminishing returns to progress. In my opinion, that is the lesson of Deepwater Horizon and Fukushima. And I expect it also to be the lesson of the Alberta Tar Sands.
There is a lens through which we can view events like Deepwater Horizon and Fukushima. Charles Perrow, in his important work on Normal Accident Theory (NAT) examines these accidents by type and plots them according to their complexity. See, for example, where nuclear power is located on the following grid: (Source: Accidents, Normal -- opens to PDF).

What has begun to take place in global energy extraction is that the current tranche of resources obtained by more complex methods -- deepwater drilling, underground fracturing, in-situ mining, and other strip mining -- have begun to move towards the quadrant of Perrow’s chart that is occupied by nuclear power and chemical plants. Here, systems are both technically advanced and tightly coupled, which is to say that failures anywhere in their operations can spread easily and cause systemic failure.
Additionally, the boundaries of those failures can also be rather broad. That nuclear contamination spreads over large geographical areas has been known for some time. But Deepwater Horizon warned that contemporary oil extraction has also crossed the threshold into very wide boundaries. Despite the current euphoria over North American shale natural gas and the continuing confidence that production can be lifted in the Alberta Tar Sands, there are already indications that groundwater supply is going to become a much, much bigger issue as we try to increase access to these resources.
As Joseph Tainter explains (see the quote in the header to this essay), resources in civilization are eventually marshaled not for further growth but simply to maintain current systems, usually in their most advanced iteration. This is the terminal phase of expansion that the large, OECD regions (Japan, Europe, US) have likely reached. This is a vexing and frustrating limit that just about everyone, no matter their political orientation or economic view, will struggle to digest. For example, in an analysis of Fukushima’s impact on future energy policy, I thought this reaction from the team at the BTI Institute, was somewhat correct but perhaps a bit hasty:
Yet lost in the hyperbolic claims of nuclear opponents, the defensive reactions of the nuclear industry, and the carefully calibrated repositioning of politicians and policymakers is the reality that Fukushima is unlikely to much change the basic political economy of nuclear power. Wealthy, developed economies, with relatively flat energy growth and mature energy infrastructure haven't built a lot of nuclear in decades and were unlikely to build much more anytime soon, even before the Fukushima accident. The nuclear renaissance, such as it is, has been occurring in the developing world, where fast growing, modernizing economies need as much new energy generation as possible and where China and India alone have constructed dozens of new plants, with many more on the drawing board.
While it’s true that the long-forecasted nuclear renaissance in the West never took place, with little prospect now that it ever will, it’s not exactly true that the developing world is choosing nuclear power in any meaningful way. Coal remains the dominant energy source in the developing world, for obvious reasons: it’s portable, it stores well, it remains cheap, and (most of all) it is not complex.
Given that the externalities of coal use are rather brutal, it also the case that human beings place steep discount rates on the future. Society is much more fearful of accidents which take place suddenly and with little warning, than of the long term negative effects of a different set of policies on their health. It may not be logical, but that is our preference.
Tilting Away from Complexity
An emerging theme out of Silicon Valley over the past few years has been the epiphany that venture capital experienced regarding the extraordinary difficulty of greentech. “No mas” has been the conclusion. Why build expensive prototype energy boxes or invest in large vats of algae, when little apps can populate quickly across Internet devices, with no heavy lifting or messy cleanup? The difference between the two worlds has been summed up like this: In Atoms vs. Bits, it’s undeniable that “atoms are simply too difficult.” Yes, and this, too, is the lesson of Deepwater Horizon and Fukushima. If investment in complex resource extraction has either tail risk that could overwhelm returns, or externalities that overwhelm the well being of society, why do it?
Recently I spotted an insightful remark that addresses the issue, from Alan Nogee on Twitter.

In Part II: Why We Must Embrace Simplicity Now, we explore how diminishing returns have now triggered in our various complex systems. Eventually it will become clear that the cost to repair damages from their destructiveness is simply too great. Technology is practically telling us (begging us?) to place less faith in its ability to solve all problems.
It's obvious that our elected leadership has no concept of a growth limit that could render the economy’s obligations insoluble. The Fed transcripts are yet one more piece of evidence that unless we get a better handle on the enormous, complex systems we are already operating, we will continue to suffer more frequent and painful "unexpected" economic accidents. Given our track record in this regard, the alternate route would be to step back from these complex systems and regain our footing in simplicity. Or else maintain the status quo approach until market forces pressure us to.
Click here to access Part II of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access).
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maybe less people will need a pill to get thru the day,,,,,,bearish for drug stocks
Maybe there will be less people.
Simple is Simple. I am only interested in The Simple.
i wonder where everyone thinks their power is gonna come from...turn off the nukes? LOL. asinine
i wonder who could possibly be behind a decades old push to discredit nuclear energy... or why? /s. not real hard to figure out.
PhotoVoltaics are good candidates for mass production economies of scale so
it's quite normal they got cheaper. Nuclear plants are certainly not mass produced,
and the imperatives of safety and research mean that every new iteration must
integrate new ideas and design, so you'd expect costs to stay relatively high.
There's also a bias towards creating weapons grade waste in the US, which is
responsible for suppressing other safer technologies like molten-salt reactors.
The question is will it be a trend to localise and decentralise, or rather the inverse
being a trend to monopolise and bring more efficiencies of scale to the system?
This depends on whether energy becomes the next bubble. If we find enrgy of higher
density, we could see simplification in process where there is wasteful competition.
Useful competition will be in research for digital power grid, pumped storage hydro,
Perhaps we can envisage intensive agriculture in a similiar vein, with central
monopoly entities running the infrastructure of wind/solar farms, grid, water,
and nutrient inputs, with competition amongst greenhouses plugged to the tap.
You forgot the cascading blackouts of 2003? The grid eventually turns itself off.
I'm fat unless they turn off the Sun - I've not been a power company sucker for over 3 decades now. "You gotta start early if you're gonna stick it out".
I'll even be able to drive my Volt without any gasoline. Have plenty food, ammo, land, tools. Bring it.
-28 degrees celsius today -44 with wind chill, keeps it simple and less people
Advocating less people? Because if you are, I know who to ignore. Instead of hate, how about spreading awareness?
Otherwise you are just as deplorable as the people at the top.
There is never been over-population of intelligent people, and there never will be. It's not the people; it's thwe grey matter that never gets lit up in an information-arbitrage society.
Bingo. Thank you government funded schooling.
Any one want to invest in my new buggy whip factory?
Just found a copper still no one was using, awesome. Well that covers my fuel and entertainment for the future.
just remember to use the first two shot glasses out of every batch as lighter fluid... Then, let the party begin...
Yeah, it's all fun & games - right up to the point where you realize you forgot the hookers.
The proper quote about "fun and games" is it's all fun & games until the cops show up. The hookers of whatever sex and style always show up for the money in whatever disguise that works for you.
We live in a finite world. Never ending growth is not possible unless we leave this rock. Even if we learn to harness the power of the sun to fully run our society will not be enough as that also is a finite resource. However this is discussion a future generations will be having. hmm wonder what my google shares will be worth in the year 6billion!
We live in a finite world. Never ending growth is not possible unless we leave this rock.
True enough, but look down from an airplane some time: The VAST majority of it is still empty.
True, but all that green stuff creates oxygen and food. Also, all of that emptiness just might be empty for a reason. Personally, I'd rather not live on planet in which humans live like ants and cover every inch of earth with no escape from them. But, then, I'm just not much of a dominionist. I gave up that kind of thinking when I outgrew Christianity in my late teens.
Yes, because there are hard limits to how fast biological cycles can be pushed and still sustain life (at least as we know it). Wake the fuck up, many of those "empty" patches once held vast diversity of life, long since extinct. Despite what you may have been told, there is a very real carrying capacity. Oil, coal and Natural gas have allowed us to play games with the oxidation states of certain essential elements, but the bottom line is that you can move the capacity around and have more life in one spot at the expense of life elsewhere. With or without fossil fuels, only certain types of organisms catalyze essential reactions in the biological cycles. kill the right organisms and it will be game over in a hurry, population back under a billion in a few years.
LOL... take a drive through southern France, or Northern Florida, or a hundred other places. Get a window seat on a cross-country flight. There are millions of acres of superb land just sitting.
My planting 40 acres of corn in Florida magically makes 40 acres in Germany useless? Yeah, sure, I believe.
I have been in agriculture for 30 years and know exactly how much energy it takes to produce several tons of food. No shit you can "make" land productive moron, that isn't the question now is it. The question is how much ENERGY do you have in order to do so. "Simple" things like delivering clean fresh water is expensive for christ sake. Troll harder fucknut.
Gee LawsofPhysics, don't you know that economic ideology ala Ayn Rand trumps the Laws of Thermodynamics?
^^^^This^^^^
we eat oil - and a boat load of it each and every 2000 calorie meal.
have a nice kill off
Mandatory reading: William Catton's "Overshoot" (1986)
e can't run out of food.
There's always more at the drive thru.
Luckily Americans were smart enought to become disgustingly obese...when the food stops coming, only fat, disgusting, bellowing land pigs will survive.
The corpulent shall inherit the Earth.
LOL.... I'm a moron and fucknut and troll if I disagree with you.
Right back atcha, slick.
And, while I'm basking in your arrogance and malice, I think I could find a few things on those extra 40 gazillion acres to generate some energy with.
But, please, continue, I'm sure, you have more hate to spill.
CH1
Show us the product, produce, production, plus transportation of energy to "fuel" all said in your magical 30,000 foot POV. Then add start-up cost. HHMMMM?
Afghanistan has immense natural resources, landlocked without water around. Even with transportation no mandatory water. No wonder they are forced to stick to demand of poppies.
But they DO seem to be able to grow the poppies ...
Wow, you guys are REALLY embedded in your doctrines.
Ever heard of wood? Burns real nice. Heats houses, can be traded. Can even be regrown!
Who woulda thought?
Is that your HS grad photo as your avatar?
It would go a long way in explaining your myopic world view....
Just curious...
Grow produce that does not require more fertilizer, than any other crop on the planet.
Corn is negative energy produce. More used in growing than derived from.
Won't feed seven billion.
and neither will your big 10 ac. organic farm...and modern agriculture is doing a piss-poor job of feeding 7B...but, that's not the point of this discussion.
So, for 30 years all you've know is how things don't work, right?...and never explored how things could work?
This guy does an excellent job feeding thousands with sustainable integrated aquaponics...and produces food across all four seasons...in Milwaukee, WI.
and oh yeah, before you start screaming energy inputs, he's figured out a method to heat many of his green houses with compost, costing less and placing less stress on his redundant back-up systems.
and oh yeah, before you start screaming nitrogen inputs, he's figured out the nitrogen cycle using the fish and beneficial bacteria to fertilize the greens he grows.
and oh yeah, before you wow us with your expertise, we know you have a PhD in "nitrogen" and somehow believe this is somehow impossible, yet anyone who keeps an aquarium could probably figure this out if they thought about it.
He devised a simple, elegant system...on a shoe-string.
He won a MacArthur genius award. Where's yours?
http://www.growingpower.org
He produces a million pounds of organic food on 3 ac. How much do you produce?
http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/will-allen-and-a-million-pou...
His operation is the largest year around food producers in the midwest. How much food have you put out this winter?
http://rendezvousyou.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/will-allen-%E2%80%93-plant...
Here's a guy doing something similar in his backyard for his family of four.
http://gardenpool.org
year round solar production in unheated greenhouses were common place in europe a hundred years ago. It is currenlty dropping six inches of snow outside my house in northern Washington and I just pulled kale, broccoli, onion, beets, carrots and collards out of my greenhouse for some stew. Year round localized food production and more important, a deemphasis on current crops and reemphasis of a wide variety of perennial, tree, bush and other sustainable systems require tremendously less work and "energy" to get the equivalent calorie out. On top of that, the variety also delivers superior nutrition. Mother nature has been working on her system for a few billion years. It is the most complex and sustainable "system." It provides it's own fertilizer and pest control. But if you notice, mother nature looks nothing like a corn field. Permaculture mimics these forest garden systems and other ecologies then applies our "intelligence" to increase the systems without destorying them. Working smarter not harder.
This is a decent introduction and a good comment on peak oil
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xShCEKL-mQ8
Good for you.
Thanks for the link. It looks like an interesting series. I'll make the time to watch it.
Expect Laws of idiocy to reply back how anythng other than the petro-based corporate ag system won't feed 7B (which it is not doing now by the way), how it's impossible to do what growingpower in Milwaukee is doing on any kind of scale (wrong, because it is happeneing) etc...therefore, it's all pointless, we're all gonna die, etc... (except for him on his 10 ac. "farm" and his neighbors.)
I've lived in a few rural communities and have known quite a number of green and dairy farmers. To a man and woman they are open, adaptable, innovative and optimistic...Laws of Idiocy is the exception.
He'd better be growing organic pot on that farm...maybe the "hordes" will see the "value of his labor" as he likes to tout and let him operate, otherwise he isn't going to make it with that attitude.
BWAHAHAHA!!!
Do like I do. Encourage the family to go out at night and make a big steaming night soil on top of the tomatoes.
Uh, I think what you are referring to there is the use of corn to produce ethanol. It is negative net energy on balance. Since the actual corn is grown from a lot of free natural energy ( sunlight ), it is not negative net energy in itself.
planting broad swaths and acres of one crop vulnerable to pest, disease and soil depletion and totally dependent on oil for nutrient and pesticide is definitely NOT how the future of food production will look.
Any idea on what my oxidation state would be after drinking a pint from your still?
I figure, in an inebriated state, I'm going to lose quite a few electrons!!!
There's a good explanation as to why so much territory is "empty*," most of the world is composed of oceans, arctic ice and desert.
* What is "empty" to a human man not be empty to another life form. "Empty" is the popular propaganda for what the continental US was before the white man came; that has long since been proven false (though they did do a pretty good job emptying it).
Arable land, it's all pretty much in use. Its paltry 4" (ave) layer of topsoil is what keeps us alive.
In response to the comment about there being a limited amount of solar energy, well, yes and no. What's limited is our capacity to capture it; problematic, however, would be in wide-scale alteration to solar absorption: intercepting solar energy for say energy would mean keeping that energy from being absorbed in the earth- who the heck knows how we'd affect local climate conditions as a result (or, if you're a poor neighbor, how we'd interfere with someone else's climate).
the injuns were here before the white man. Their nature management consisted of extincting all the really large mammals. They were like locusts.
That is only a theory.
Is not neither. The Arikara ate all the mastodons, which is why there aren't any more Arikara. Well, that, and the Pawnee genocide.
Once again, whenever you paint history, you lean so heavily on one pigment that your art resembles a truly "elementary" character.
So the dark skinned people regularly performed mass extermination of their mammals. What a pile of oversimplified crap. Who exactly mass executed the bison? Actually, the more these "scientists" take a look at many of the north american tribes and their food systems, they realize they integrated very sophisitaced permaculture methods that integrated the seven layers of plant food types and incorporated free ranging animals and their byproducts into crop production and pest control. It's just that whitey, being too arrogant and ignorant, didn't realize what he was looking at. Worse, whitey peformed mass extinciton of many of these food trees and others. Only now do wise folks like Mollison and Holmgren see this "primitive" method may be the only sustainable and healthy system. Not saying those injuns were perfect cause no one is but they weren't as stupid as your ignorance suggests.
Worldwide... all at around the same time... despite various strains of humans being at different technological levels...
You're a fucking idiot, 98% of the time Trav. This being one of them.
Truly large mammals were never like locusts - never could be - not enough food to go around. If you had one clue in your PR bachelor's degree-holding head you'd know that.
Yeah, Trav, I guess they just simply weren't white enough to make more of the continent.
Fucking collectivist, racist piece of shit.
What large animals did the locusts extinct? Musta been some B-movie sized giant locusts.
the american megafauna was eradicated in neolithic times,
way before cultures we recognize as "injuns", and such mass
extinctions occured in northern europe as well in that period.
You must be one of the children that multiple-choice exams didn't leave behind. The bad answers they made easier; you thought you were getting smarter, but you were getting done the entire time. Nature is the teacher for the survivors. What you know that ain't so is killing you off.
Complex societies always need a new energy source to reach a more complex stage. Our current one is exhausted and we will collapase back into simple societies. Which is why I studied pretty much everything except for plants and all the useful things that go into farming and plant hybridization etc.
Because basically those understandings will be in massive abundance.
"Because basically those understandings will be in massive abundance."
Now that is fucking funny. So you think that all those paper-pushing fucknuts that currently make up the vast majority of the GDP are going to have this kind of knowledge or the resources to act on it, post collapse? LOL, well our future is looking brighter every day. Definately won't be throwing out any seed stocks soon.
I will...because that other dude GOT this mfer
it's good to know that all these room temp IQ nitwits have totally come up with the ideas on how to solve this
No, but they make great fertilizer.
Modern economics has no conception of the reality that there is a point of stasis. Even in the boom times, there is a point of stasis. Growth cannot go on forever. At some point, supply equals demand. And this is the fallacy of modern economics ... believing that true economic growth is perpetual.
No, what we're really talking about is inflation. We all know that true perpetual economic growth is impossible. It is nothing more than a euphamism for inflation. So it would be more accurate to say that the modern world depends on inflation to function properly ... not economic growth.
I would also add that our modern economy was allow to operate with numerous externalities, wherein the public, or future generations, picked up the tab for today's privatized profits. Such discrepancies are usually ignored in most free-market religious tomes of the era.
Please, don't mix free market capitalism with what we have now around the world.
Market is a natural system, which adjusts to the present conditions and does not accept interventions, hence free market.
In a capitalistic construct by its very nature, as capital investment requires long pay out times, the human trend is to tilt the table to make sure you win in the end; if you be entrenched TBTF competitor with big stick. Marx said it first, all the while providing a solution worse than the original evil, but the world has learnt to its eternal regret that its a recurrent theme, this 'greed is good' atavism.
Its always been this way in society. Free markets are fine when you sell tulips; until the tulip becomes the symbol of capitalist speculation and then...all hell breaks loose. Tulipmania! (1637). It was the first recorded mega world-wide financial bubble in the dawning capitalist age, in the then capital of western world : Amsterdam, having become center piece after Cristopher's unique voyage.
It symbolised in its botanical journey the transfer of capitalistic power from Mediterranean world to Atlantic world; imported into United Provinces from original Constantinople to Amsterdam, via Augsburg and Antwerp in 1559!
A bit like today, the Atlantic world now bows to Indian Ocean and PAcific world.
Joan Robinson, UK economist, explained in the 60s how the perennial norm of all capital constructs is Dominant position. The current banker's cabal, its NEW iconic moment under Reaganomics, the NEW capitalistic norm, highlights this in all its raw destructive fury. So much for level playing fields and invisible hands, imaginary Holy Grails alike the now proverbial Snitch!
It wasn't all that long ago that people seriously mistrusted technology and feared science gone wild. Now in a world of diminishing resources it's gone the other way where technology is the new religion. Have we become too trusting? Time will tell.
I hope that someday my children will grow up to be as smart as their phones
Don't be too sure of that. The world is still full of Luddites who seek to protect "jobs."
You mean investment bankers?
A "Luddite" is someone who wishes/seeks to avoid technology, it's got NOTHING to do with "jobs." Technology pretty much relies on the unsustainable, in which case there's a very sane reasoning behind not being to dependent on it ; the Amish are semi-Luddites, and folks like these will be around far longer than the majority of us.
Well, maybe, but you'd never know it by looking at the Amish today. They're definitely NOT thriving.
The ones I know are doing just fine. Glad I'm not one of them for entirely other reasons.
The Amish (and Mennonites and Hutterites and so on) I know are the same as they ever was.
Thriving? Your mileage may be different....
http://www.cracked.com/article_19376_5-scientific-reasons-your-idea-happ...
I am Mennonite.
Which is more like quasi-Luddite;
So we don't mind some "simple" technology like buttons ...
(of the electric variety [and the ones on our shirts too]).
IMO, tech is the new religion because TPTB have reached the end of the line and insist upon something coming along to bail their asses out. Power must be retained!
Watch Frontline tonight on PBS.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/nuclear-aftershocks/
In Nuclear Aftershocks, airing Tuesday, January 17, 2012, at 10 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings), FRONTLINE correspondent Miles O’Brien travels to three continents to explore the revived debate about the safety of nuclear power, the options for alternative energy sources, and questions about whether a disaster like the one at Fukushima could happen in the United States.
flattrader
Fukushima
Was a MAN MADE disaster,and criminal charges should be brought against ANYONE still using these models of Reactors.
The tsunami was the actor that started the disaster, but it was just a matter of time before they did what they did.
They were outdated, and dangerous, a time bomb waiting for the slimmest of reasons to Melt Down.
We have a few still operational here I believe, they need to taken offline immediately.
They were outdated, old, and dangerous when NEW.I would dare say they had design flaws when GE built them.
Good thing there ain't any near the San Andreas or New Madrid fault lines.
Oopsy! Looks like there's a couple ironically named Dresden 2 and Dresden 3 in Illinois, a couple more in Cordova IL, and 3 in Decatur, Alabama, only 200 miles away.
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/gemk1reactorsinus.pdf
The modern world depends on economic growth to function properly...
No... the BANKERS do... & the world could get along just fine without them...
"modern" world = banksters
Martenson just didn't connect all of the dots.
Well, I don't know about you, but there are few bankers in my world. Fuck the banks.
In the end, they can only invade as far as any individual (or group of individuals) permits them...
Well,
I'd have no problem with them if that were the case, however, as we are all forced to use the currency for transactions and they are able to expand the money supply at will, it makes it pretty damn impossible for an individual not to give over some of their productivity.
As the top bankers ascend into top government positions, advise the government, and are highly involved in the financial affairs of governments, they are able to influence spending of taxpayers money, to borrow from central banks at base rates and to buy government bonds that yield high rates, to accept bailaouts when their industry fails, unlike any other industry I know.
This system fucking stinks. Until we take away these powers 99.9% of us are their slaves.
But I agree, the less interaction with 'their' scheme, the better. Anyone who puts their money into a pension scheme is asking to get arse-raped.
kill all bankers! oh and the lawyers while we are at it!
I think we should follow the Bard"s advice and "The first thing we do, let's kill all the laywers" plenty of time for bankers after that. You didn't see Corzine turn up with other bankers defending him did you?
Entropy, bitchez!
what this article touches on but does not state specifically is that the complexity of civilization impinges deeply on complexity of technological solutions. When civilization was linear technology could be complex. Now that in civilization itself, the social functions, are no longer linear, (man-woman marital/non marital-single parenthood etc., ethnic mix, religious mix, language mix, social class mix, urban population size and transit problems, natural resource constraints), all have become complex. So now technological solutions have to become simpler to cope with civilization's mulitple complexities and internal fracture lines.
Complex societies now need simple technological constructs. We cannot add more sophisticated mass technological complexity to a difficult, complex social, urban and environmental construct.
After studying "sunk-cost" theory and resulting probability, it's not unimaginable to believe we've outstayed our welcome.
Simplicity and decentralization will not suit the
PTB therefore it will be resisted until it is too late.
How can you be taxed, controlled and exploited if you live simply, off grid?
Make your own arrangements folks, the Government is not your friend.
And, "off-grid" means what?
The popular definition has to do with being unconnected to the power grid. This would imply that you have the ability to generate electricity. Which would also mean that you think you can continue to use your electrical/electronic contraptions. Well... perhaps for a while; because, if it really gets that bad then nearly all that eletrical/electronic stuff is going to fail, and it won't be replaced (unless you are ultra-wealthy and then that's not a certainty either).
I was watching "Contagion" and chuckled at how the iPhone, Internet, and the grid in general went on despite the world falling apart. Lousy movie, by the way.
Watch the "Book of Eli." The world's in worse shape than depicted in Mad Max, they even burned all the books. But the damn iPod is still working. Fucking He Larry Us!
Italians developed a grow your own, community based culture after the empire crumbled...
Many of these traditions remain to this day..
I imagine that type of society but with iPads and the net.
Just optimism getting the upper hand...
One major problem of credit expansion has been the creation of artificial resource-dependent needs, that no one really needs, I call it the plastic bag phenomenon. What it does, it offers two perspectives, a hedonic one, simply following anything offered to please onesself and the other one, displaying the extreme contrast of what is available and how fast it is consumed for nothing of real appreciation.
My concern is, we have as society so much followed the hedonic perspective that we now subordinate our evolution to the energy paradigm, devoting endless resources to the more efficient use of resources, completely diverting into hedonism, as we aim to achieve the same useless output with less resource input.
This however only leads us to expect more output from resource efficiency at best maintaining resource consumption levels. Unfortunately, this result is not the sustainable consequence of the extreme display of hedonism.
Our innovation aspiration should at least equally focus on other issues, diverting attention from the consumption of resources and making manking less prone to the hedonic pursuit of resource consumption.
On a meta-level, that is something picked up from a previous article, only non-conformist thinking will manage organic growth.
Any such development would require a different worldview, though. Economic concepts such as competition creates incentives not to share understanding and knowledge, eg on a scope from micro to macro, outperform other in school, in research, as a company (the Apple IP protection best practice), and as nation or hemisphere. For those in favour of extreme imaging, defer Africa from education and thereby create a future with a population size and resource demand not manageable by any by then developed technology leading to more fierce competition aka war.
Just a quick piece of evidence from the top of my head. WHy do you think the Bush family has become protagonists, dominating both the credit expansion cycle and the geo-strategic pursuit of safety of resource availability. It is the plain strategy to maintain the societal will to hedonistic resource consumption and the deafening of voices suggesting ideas for a different path.
the problem in the gulf was the evil indonesian president granting the rapacious murderous bp rights to drill at depths and conditions which had no safety or precedent....bp has had a callous disregard for nature and life - it is a psychopathic organization which should be obliterated....
fukushima suffered from the exact same foul greed and psychopathy where highly flawed steel drums or speres were approved which were ticking time bombs.....and building the plants so close to the ocean was another frat boy stunt to rape the people....
www.obamacrimes.com
good lord you are dumb
Re-writing history aren't we? O'Bummer had nothing to do with Horizon. That well was in process years before. O'Bummer was a state rep. when that spot was leased to BP. O'Bummer is to blame for so much, you don't need to re-write history. Stick to the truth it's bad enough.
Excellent article, let's see more like this on ZH!
Here is the flaw with most resource constraint analyses:
There is always a presumption that people will tolerate the steady grind down. They won't. Simply that. They won't. They doesn't have to be everyone. They can be a small number. But if that number is not 0, then it all fails. This happens individually and nationally.
China will not long tolerate the US having 4% of the world's population and burning 24% of global oil production.
If the pie gets smaller and you are an ambitious, aggressive someone, you will want a bigger piece, and if anyone obstructs your path towards that bigger piece, you will eliminate him.
It is not mankind's nature to look around and say that everyone should have a fair share. It is mankind's nature to look around and seek to have more than everyone else.
Make no mistake here, though. It won't be the gun toting preparers who come out on top. The shrinking pie won't care if you have a gun. There will always be someone commanding more hands with more guns. They will come to your house and kill you. You'll kill some of them. They will kill you.
Then their extra hands holding guns will run out of calories and winter will kill them.
I marked you down. I think there are some things you don't know about what is possible for mankind. I do think it is kind of hopeless, in the shortrun here, but as ugly as we can be, there is also beauty possible. We may not be able to dwell in the space that is necessary for my particular vision of things to work out, I grant you that, but it is not impossible.
I will get junked to hell for this. There is something called love. Call it "attachment" "bonding" "sublime inner peace and acceptance" whatever you like. But it exists in us all if we make a space to nurture it. We don't need gizmos or tech to do it either.
Boo me off the stage, go ahead.
And not only that, I have a hard time living it myself, I can be very negative.
I have spent some time in meditation retreats. When you slow down, spend time with your head, get out of the past and the future, something else opens up that is amazing. I remember how close I felt with the other participants. I remember afterwards getting off the plane, being in the airport, and seeing all the stress and anxiety on everyone's face, and I knew, knew, it was not necessary. It would be of no use to tell them this naturally, I'd just sound like a freak. And then gradually, you speed up and join them and become them. But every now and again I can find that space. I don't need religion, or more to the point I have come to a private understanding that when religion is done well, most of them are about cultivating this inner space. I am too much of a fuck up to find this space very often but because I have experienced it every now and again, I know what is possible for all of us.
Love really is the mother fuckin' answer-- Bitchez.
Love is trumped by the same thing that trumps everything else.
Math.
A human loving someone or something requires 2000ish calories per day to live. A human not loving anything requires 2000ish calories per day to live.
The human that starves so that his or her children might have food in the world of the shrinking pie dies feeling fulfilled, requiring 2000ish calories/day that were not available. The children for whom the sacrifice was made die the next winter, lacking the 2000ish calories/day they needed.
Math doesn't care about love. What I care about doesn't matter. Math, physics and geology decide all this. Not our preference. Not our feelings.
A no oil world can feed about 900 million people. If those 900 million are filled with love or too tired from plowing to worry about such things will not change how many calories can be grown within oxen transport distance of their mouths.
If everyone would just carry energy bars, the problem would probably go away.
nice bumper sticker
I do not know where you get it that a no oil world can only feed a population of 900,000,000. If you are right about all this then yeah, die off is eventually comin' and comin' hard.
I get angry at our leaders, but in one frame of reference they are trauma survivors who are doing the best they can with the fucked up circumstances they were born into. Their world's hammered the capcity for love out of them. They did not receive it when they needed it, their capacity to bond and attach are severely impaired. We need to get them OUT of positions of responsibility and get people capeable of compassion into leadership roles.
If you can find this space I am talking about, honest to fucking God (or whoever) you don't need all the "stuff." Everyone "de-stuffing" would do a lot to help conserve the resources we have. The reason folks want "stuff" is to medicate away pain. I can talk too long on this, trauma is one of my areas.
Again, if your numbers are correct, fuck, I can't argue with you. But do they take into consideration everyone downsizing and being happy to be alive, to care for each other, and sharing? I think we can do radically better (on energy expenditures and mental health) if we were not living in sped up worlds with sped up expectaions of performance.
Funny, I actually see your motif that you do there (crash is optimistic) as kind of loving. If you really believe that, why bother? Just take care of your own and call it a day, what does it matter, you are looking for 5 out of 6 of everyone you know to die off any way, right? Not wise to invest too much ego or effort on their behalf.
Happy Days Ms.C. Both activites are occuring. We are killing each other to preserve the current systems but we are also downsizing, urban gardening and revolting. I wish to hell I could completely agree but we have waited a very long time to start these transitions. We are also throwing good money and oil after bad. At least that's what the scientists say. No one really knows how bad it will be because mankind has never ever been in this position and the position is indeed a global one. Couldn't agree with you more that love and human compassion will be infintely more valuable than gold or oil. It always has, for those qualities tend to bear truth and cooperation. And that is the only real path out.
To both you and Ms. C. Nicely written. And agree fully.
And on the same topic. My guess is our need for each other is what prompted the growth of society (as well as what we know as the family unit) in the first place.
Thanks. It does seem to be the evolutionary cross roads, survival of the individual vs. survival of the group. We need to see group choices as the self interested ones. That means deferred gratification and that is hard to sell.
The destruction of my house has made my yard a blank slate, almost. You can see my lot from google, it is a clay crater with NO green on it at all right now. I still have a pine tree, two apples, a fig that got mowed down bad (it may come back), and three of my eight blueberry bushes. My veggie beds are all gone. Friends and neighbors took clippings that are growing at their places now which is nice. I hope my strawberry bed comes back but it is not looking good. I am really sad about it, it is probably the most depressing thing about what happened, but I am trying to see it as an opportunity to go in whole hog and do it right. But damn Davey, my back yard is a cracked caving, baked pile of clay. There is no form to it at all, I feel so overwhelmed, I don't know how to begin planning it. Everytime it rains, it changes shape. Add to that I had to pull a small loan to get it built, and the bankers will want to see lawn and mainstream styled landscaping before they sign off on things. So I have to "stage" something for them to sign off, then undo the staging and put in what I really want.
The house is geothermally heated and cooled. My bills should be pretty low, that makes me feel good. The house is built like a fort, concrete, rebar, and lots of insulation. We are really trying do it right.
Are you planning your garden yet? Time for seedlings if you do your own.
Staging is a brilliant idea. You are smart enough to con them. My garden is now 365. My property sits on some of the worst glacial till and clay and it rains constantly in the puget sound area. Raised beds are the only answer, two feet is best. Also use a lot of five gallon pots in the greenhouse. It doesn't have to and shouldn't be all expensive soil, you can use composted organic waste material - leaves, straw bales etc. It is generally not the cold that will kill all your tough winter crops it is the rain. Greenhouse is a must or much cheaper hoop houses built with PVC, rebar in the ground, and plastic 6 mil. Those are currently keeping my guys alive in twenty five degrees and snow as we speak. Can't go into to work, boo hoo. THis is the first year I have grown food and eaten from my garden every single day. It feels very satisfying after a long day at ZH and the GMO sites. After your hoop houses, you can then lay a second layer of remay on top of the plants when it gets colder. I just bought new material that adds another 10 degrees but lets in 65% of the light! Eliot Coleman is the man, check him out if you haven't. I have started a gardening blog for my 200 home development and will be rewriting the bylaws to allow for food production in our back and front yards and starting a huge community garden in a football field space. Did some legal research on the easement of the clear space that sits over a natural gas line and it turns out the farmer who first gave the easement was promised the developer would not only allow for food production but not interfere with it. We stepped into those rights. Fuckem. Would love to advise and plan for you.
I'd love the help. We have budgeted a couple thousand for it but that may be too low. I have thought of buying an old truck so that I could go around the neighborhood and raid the neighbors' leaves on garbage day. Also raid wood to chop for the wood stove. One of my challenges is that my back yard (the clay pile) is higher up than my house. The entire yard was dug up 12 feet to put in the geothermal. That tilling was a little too deep if you know what I am saying. There is no structure to the soil, there is no top soil now.
Not sure how to proceed, also don't want to exploit you too bad! I have only been gardening a few years, kind of haphazardly. I have books about what grows in my state. I have a book on permaculture but when I wade in it does overwhelm me. I mean geeze, when every peak and trough on your land is it's own environment with its own needs, that is very mindful, but it is also a whole lot to try and know now, anticipate, and plan for. This is why I have been haphazard somewhat. The blue berries are under the pine tree (for the pine needles).
I am bad at setting stuff up to keep my identity secret. I have blown it by accident twice (both situations turned out good). We could ask Tyler to hook us up. I don't want to depend on that though, they are not a social service. Ideas? I feel okay to blow my cover, but not here.
they're not Facebook but they're slowly gaining on hits. I was wondering the same thing. How do we do this without blowing cover. CogDis where are you? Didn't you pull this off? Don't worry about following all the permaculture methods. It's the principles that count. Many plants can be grown in many environments especially with winter asistance. Perennials, by their nature can handle a lot of settings too. They main thing is to broaden your scope of edible plants and gain access to them. I was thinking you could just join my garden blog then I could advise as I do other neighbors but how do I get you that?
You could email to Tyler and ask him to forward it to MsCreant. I did this with Chindit (and yes, blew my cover, but he is very safe). Tyler forwarded me his contact. I'd love to see your blog.
Rock and Roll Ms. :-)
Thanks sweetness.
Namastee.
i'm gonna go fill my car up with love and drive down the street on it. Can't?
How about power that fuckin plane u got off of? Did you love it into flight?
Love doesn't turn the lights on
"Love" is the motive force of the fuckin Universe Trav. The very reason that matter exists at all, let alone self organizes and develops complexity. So, yeah, it does kinda turn the lights on.
geez all my textbooks must be out of date. Here was I thinking it was gravity. I wondering if all the people who died when shit fell on them were feeling the love.
With love maybe we would do so much less because we would need so much less and have less to prove.
I'd go to a local retreat because there would be more of them. Or it would simply be the way of life in some communities. No need to fly.
I don't drive much now. I can "not drive" at all if I understand that this choice is best for everyone (I am working towards that choice, as we speak, I bike, but I need to support myself as a cyclist more).
Maybe I need less light (or can do with none at all) because that too is part of a new way of being that I accept because I am in a new paradigm.
Hey Trav, I leave you messages from time to time and don't get a response. They are usually race related. I know keeping up with posts is hard, I fuck it up too. I have gone back and found you have left me stuff I did not see for weeks. I hope you see this one.
My post looks like bullshit, I get that. I respect the hell out of you, there is a lot that is pragmatic and useful about your perspective. You are consistent. "Conspiracy is usually too complicated and the simplest answer is best.""Don't panic." A Level head is strength and a good thing. In 2004, I freaked out when I learned about peak oil. I became obsessed. That led me to a bunch of peak oil sites and Kunstler's site which I frequented a great deal. Kuntsler turned me on to the economy as an issue, and I branched out from there. I did not appreciate the economy like I should have. I'm glad to be catching up.
Love is not a lie. Love is not bullshit. I hope you get a moment somewhere in your life that you can open up and experience some of what I am talking about. Not manipulation, not someone using you for their ego, just love. For me, I couldn't get it from anyone until I found it inside myself. It is an altered consciousness. Better than drugs or booze. When things are going well, I am not living in the past or the future, just in the present. The other two are constructs anyway. All we ever had is the now. The rest is distraction.
Peace.
c'mon trav, didn't your dad love your mom?
Let me guess, you grew up in the 70's !?
Just funnin you MsC, nice post...
;-)
Good one, Missy. The comments needed some tempering and you managed to do it nicely.
Thanks for that. They may be right about the math and I am too "optimistic" (gotta laugh at that one). But there is no hope if there is no hope, yes? And I don't mean it in a rose colored glasses kind of way. Maybe there is a big die off. But then, what is left? Fascists? Or maybe the meek really do inherit the earth because they dwell in a space where they don't demand much in the first place.
I bet we can live with less and still be rich. I tell my son, the real currency is time.
I love that you are posting more. Thanks again.
Time really is the only currency that matters. We get caught up in the day to day/week to week and it's funny how the speed of life increases as the years pass. I know that money matters, and I'll likely get junked for this but it doesn't matter anywhere near as much as the years that we have left. And we have so much less control over that than we do money.
Can't run a printer to buy us time (of course the ability to pay for good food and health care does factor in there some).
I thought I was going to get junked to hell on the love post. I was really wrong. Makes me happy.
Concerning nuclear fueled electric power generation:
Fukushima: http://www.jimstonefreelance.com/ (read all of these articles, but particularly "Nuclear Blackmail" and "Fukushima Report").
BP, GOM: In the Jimmy Carter administration the USGS concluded (after drilling test wells into the geopressured zone here in Terrebonne Parish, LA) that there was at least 3,000 years worth of natural gas in this zone.
I believe that BP was a planned event to shut down the development of this potential.
When the Macondo well was spewing it was estimated that 80,000-100,000 barrels of oil and an equivalent amount of nat gas per day were being liberated. If this were true, this one well by itself could supply a medium sized refinery.
To return to the pre-"fossil" fuel era would require a 90% reduction in world population. Who will make those decisions? I know, The Squid!
couple things:
1, you're an idiot
2, why in the HELL would the squid want to destroy the system that had made them astoundingly rich?
You're an idiot.
Parasites destroy their hosts all the time...it's what they do.
I may be an idiot but I think you are confusing me with the reflection in your monitor.
Uh...I wasn't replying to you. I was replying to trav...who was criticizing you.
Follow the thread.
But, if the shoe fits...as apparently it does...since you can't seem to follow the thread...wear it.
BWAHAHAHA!!!
"there was at least 3,000 years worth of natural gas in this zone."
Whenever anyone gives such an incomplete measure- RUN!
I suppose that at one time there was 10 billion years of oil on earth. But what happened? We fucking burned it! Yeah, if it's barely used you can make something last 3,000 years, but when you've got hyper-exploitative capitalism sucking this shit out of the planet it AIN'T gonna last that long!
I hate getting new gadgets. They waste all my time. It takes me all day to get them out of the packaging and by the time I figure out how they really work they are obsolete.
Soylent Green
Does anyone know if ZeroHedge is going dark tomorrow as part of the SOPA protest? Does anyone know if enough websites and services are participating such that the stock market will be disrupted?
Isn't that the point of SOPA... Making it all go away? Isn't that playing into their hands?
Some people think self-mutilation is fun.
Guest Post: Returning to Simplicity (Whether We Want to or Not) Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/17/2012 17:47 -0500Submitted by ChrisMartenson.com contributor Gregor Macdonald
Question, with three levels of submission, is this post rehypothecated?
LOL there seems to be a2nd and 3rd mortgage over this post.
LOL. Thank you.
Information should be rehypothecated.
CHS is running out of thngs to write about.
Mercifully, his self-authored posts are getting shorter and shorter.
We don't have a technology problem.
We have a Human problem -- a pesky little issue with the Human Personality.
The outliers in humanity who, given time, invariably rise to the top, carried along by self-absorption, entitlement, reckless disregard for others, lust for power/control...
The Narcissists and their brothers the Sociopaths...
all enabled by emotionally vacuous and misguided sycophants.
Same as it ever was.
They just have bigger tools, this time around. Technology, you might say.
the unwashed masses would rather die than give up there cell phones, reality tv, and pampered lifestyles
Give up my cell phone? I want my cancer causing vices! Cell phones, Cigarettes, Junk Food, Energy Drinks!
Question on gold. I thought that we where going up in smoke last year and they would print more QE by the end of the year. I bought Gold when it hit 1800 oz. thinking it was going to 2000. For me this is an learning exersize, So tell me if I'm wrong in thinking that when SHTF gold will drop more than it is now for a while, until the presses start rolling. I believe euro money will prop up the dollar and be short lived, cause the contagen from euro banks defaulting will also arrive on the shore and from there we wont find anyone buying our TBond.....
So tell me if I'm wrong in thinking that when SHTF gold will drop more than it is now for a while, until the presses start rolling. I believe euro money will prop up the dollar and be short lived, cause the contagen from euro banks defaulting will also arrive on the shore and from there we wont find anyone buying our TBond.....
*****************
I don't know if you're wrong-gold might drop or it might not-
Not sure what event will be called the SHTF moment or if there ever will be a moment-perhaps just a 10 year grind lower or a flash crash-
I think too many people put too much of an emphasis on dollar/gold action-
Both can be weak or strong together or totally inverse and they have traded that way many times-
http://bit.ly/xdModk
Gold is a currency and nothing else-it floats and competes with all currency and so far it's showing everyone that it is the king currency-
It's simply based on sentiment-in spite of the manipulation that can only work temporarily-which is obvious by looking at the gold price chart of the last 10 years-
Also I think too many are looking at the USD as an indicator of future or near term gold price moves-
All currencies are linked together (except gold) gold stands alone in the fact that it cannot be created from thin air-
It does not matter one bit-where a currency crises erupts-when a loss of faith in "any" major currency occurs-a contagion will unfold-just like the PIIGS--first one then the other and the first one to start to die will guarantee the collapse of all of them-
This contagion can only be avoided one way and it will be be avoided and it will start with the first currency that starts collapsing and that will be the kiss of death for all currencies-because that event will force a gold weighting to stop the slide and then all eyes will turn to the next one on the chopping block to be dumped and immediately the process will begin as flight to safety seekers will head for the most gold weighted currency and it will become an open market bidding competition done in desperation and panic-
I could be wrong but I'm not taking any chances on being out of gold when/if it happens and you're right-it will likely be triggered by the bond market-if you want to watch a currency--look at the JPY because i think it might be the first-
This article is so much neo-Malthusian drivel which is gaining popularity once again, the last time being in the 1970s. The fact is that technological progress advances, it does not retreat. Excepting for a lengthy but failed experiment at going back, The Dark Ages, mankind builds on his technological achievements and his rate of build is one that also accelerates. That is fact and it flies in the face of 200+ years of Malthusian fallacy. Face it, Luddites such as Jim Kunstler and, apparently now, Chris Martenson (via his associate Gregor Macdonald who wrote the above article) are living in a world of fantasy.
They live in the world of fantasy denying relentless technological advance where men walked on the moon about five times and then 40 years so far passed with it not happening again. Maybe it never will again.
They live in the world of fantasy denying relentless technological advance where commercial airliners that fly faster than sound have not flown for 8 years with no funded production program in place to resume any such thing.
They live in the world of fantasy denying relentless technological advance where science fiction novels picked dates for events so far in the future that it was impossible for the scenarios portrayed to be beyond mankind at that time. Like manned trips to Jupiter in Clarke's 2010.
And they live in the world of fantasy denying relentless technological advance where Pearl Harbor was bombed because of localized oil scarcity with no substitute in hand by Japan a full 30 years after oil began driving civilization.
There are 7 billion people walking around consuming calories. That has never been true before. There is no history from which to learn. This is a world that has never previously existed. Only when oil scarcity starves 6 billion of them will history teach any lessons.
the civil rights era demanded a tribute. We can no longer afford to go to the moon. black people are more important to house and feed
Yet here you are criticizing collectivism with collectivist rationale. That black group is holding your group down because they get a few more crumbs than you? You hold yourself down and your victim complex is pathetic.
he also criticizes many conspiracy theories, but the pigment conspiracy takes the cake (white chocolate of course)
If higher levels of melanin lead to decreased cerebral capacity, as Trav is endlessly asserting, I wonder what his excuse is.
Perhaps all those delightfully sweet, 1940s-era paint chips that he habitually ate as a child had something to do with it.
gives new meaning to the term whitewashed. The most self defeating part of his vision as MsC's beautiful posts suggest is that this divide and conquer and blame hatred is spot on exactly what the real bad guys (who come in all colors) want, need, coax and nurture
We can no longer afford to go to the moon. black people are more important to house and feed
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Ah, the space program.
Very relevant.
Because it underlines the struggle US citizens have victoriously waged to impose their false belief of overcoming the environment.
Space was supposed to be the next frontier to pionneer, the new indian land to settle.
US citizens had to offer that escape route because of the pressure of people trying to dismiss the propaganda brought by US citizens.
US citizens not going to the Moon has nothing to do with negroes.
Geological analysis made of moon samples yields results showing a circular situation (US citizens are revolutionaries, after all, they love that kind of situation)
moon environment is so dispersed that if(when) US citizens have the technology to exploit it, theEarth will appear so rich to them they will have nolonger incentives to go on the moon.
And taking into account US citizens nature, well, their attitude to space and their forced self limitation show how screwed the idea to expand into space was.
EXACTLY CORRECT! You must have watched "Beyond The Peak" at 2:23:43 of Zeitgeist... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w