luxury kills

LUXURY KILLS
Before we start today, a few words from me. They won't be from our sponsor, since there are none. I can't imagine why companies aren't clamoring to advertise on a blog that advocates an immediate world economic collapse rather than business as usual. Hey, I'm helping to push product faster. Buy it before it is all smoldering ashes. Ah, well. My reader numbers have climbed back up to a thousand a day from a bit under 900. I would like to think that is because of my renewed brilliance in my articles, but that might be too optimistic. Also, my www.dirtcheapdirt.blogspot.com is really showing signs of life. Those numbers have tripled. I like to think people are waking up. One loyal minion wrote to thank me and tell me where he had bought a piece of junk land. It is nice to be loved. And, finally, Creekmore did a survey on readers food storage. Basically, people still suck. So here is just a reminder to get off your butt. A months supply of corn is under ten bucks. Even if you won't buy about the best tool bargain in all of prepdom, a $25 cast iron grain grinder, you can still buy a months supply of white flour for $9. You don't want to eat that exclusively, but it really bulks up your food on hand. I don't care if the old lady popped out triplets three times and you adopted an entire Cambodian village, anyone can afford $9 per person per month for food insurance.
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I usually read one book at a time but lately I have a dozen going on. So I keep going from empire building to El Nino to human evolution to Steven Hunter and back again. I think I've mentioned the Arab dude back over a thousand years that questioned the role of luxury in the fall of an empire. If I didn't, I apologize. It is mentioned in "War & Peace & War" ( I might be reading too many different books and they are all muddling together ). Basically, tribal cohesiveness and a challenging life that built aggressiveness helped to build an empire, and then after conquest luxury and the pursuit of wealth undid all that and empire fell. To simplify. Anyway, the author of the above mentioned book didn't totally agree with that theory. My problem with it is that even if people become soft and weak, you would think that enough of them could change their ways before a total collapse of their power happened. Humans can adapt. If they can't except over multiple generations that really spells trouble for us, now doesn't it? If only your son or grandson can fundamentally change how they live that means all of us SUV driving, air conditioning living softies will die off.
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I like to think that anyone can change if sufficiently motivated. Yes, prior training helps. If you are fat and winded from walking from the garage to the sofa then you will end up in the stew pot pretty quick. But surely a sufficient number of us can go from luxury to a Super Ninja if our lives depended on it? I don't know if I could, honestly. I'm introspective, not aggressive. Of course, there is also the suppressed anger. Perhaps modern living has forced us to bury enough anger that when the time comes we could go postal with a fury. It is a comforting thought, even if it is a delusion. Anyway, I lean toward the view that it isn't humans who are incapable of change but their environment. Let's say that tomorrow Obammy was overthrown in a violent coup by Hillary and she invaded Saudi Arabia and the Chinese nuked us and the whole world entered a dark age ( other than the radioactive cities glowing in the dark ). I'm sure most of us could adjust to no meat or cars or oil or three bedroom tract houses. But what happens when a empire nears its end from resource depletion? It isn't that people can't change but that there is nothing left to keep them alive.
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The normal picture of the end of the Roman Empire is that of the masses on welfare eating free bread at the coliseum and watching gladiators fighting lions. All those fat and lazy welfare bitches couldn't make it on their own. They were worthless and weak. True, but I think a likelier picture is that of unproductive farmland failing to feed them, regardless if they worked the fields or not. The available resources to sustain the population had been used up by over planting. There are many factors involved in empire decline, but I don't think living in luxury prevents change. Rather, more and more people trying to live in luxury strips the available resources much faster than normal. It is not people refusing to work, but the workers wanting a higher standard of living.
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It isn't necessary for the bulk of the population to live on the edge of starvation for a society to survive. Despite what The Powers That Be want to believe. They think they are a higher class of intellectual and are smarter and are thus worthy whereas we are not. If population is kept in check and the resource base is husbanded rather than mined, a society can live comfortably. The problems start when those in power want more wealth than necessary or a growing number of people are bribed from revolting with extra resources. As life becomes easier and a food supply seems more certain, more children come along to help deplete the resource base even faster. Another factor is inflation and taxation. As resources reach their plateau and start to decline, the government grows in order to centralize the infrastructure in a last ditch effort to squeeze more resources out of production. In example, the centralized reservoir and irrigation replacing individual ponds. Once grown, when resources diminish, they turn to taxation excesses to survive. When that fails inflation pays the bills for a time. It was no accident that the later days of the Roman or American empire see more inflation. It is the only way left to pay the bills in the face of declining acreage back then and declining oil now. When you work harder to keep up with inflation but keep falling further behind, you are a mirror to society and available resources.
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We are past the point of using up all the resources. We are seeing 6% total less energy use a year. That number is increasing. With all the pain experienced so far, that only reflects a 15% energy cut. It gets worse geometrically. Our generation and others before it lived in the lap of luxury and used up all the cheap and abundant energy. Luxury is ending, but more importantly the resources that supported it on a reduced population level have been used up. Welcome to the end of the oil age, you will live to see PODA ( Post Oil Dark Ages ). How's that food supply?
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