Before we start on another rant for today, there is a book you might enjoy. “The Ruins
” by Scott Smith. He is the one that wrote “A Simple Plan
” which was a very good book. They turned it into a very good movie. I got my copy for a dime at the discard book table and I thought it was worth way more. Perhaps even a quarter! OK, it was worth at least a buck for a used book. And that is high praise indeed. It is a horror novel, but done more in a Stephen King
kind of way where rather than being unbelievably supernatural it was more suspenseful. But what makers it noteworthy is the fact that it had a strong survival tone. Kind of a deserted island survival thing but in the ruins in a jungle. Very well written, anyway, but even better with some survivalist themed material.*
And yet another blogger drinks from the cup of Grape Kool-Aid
. Our buddy over at www.oftwominds.com is convinced that we will emulate the Roman Empire and have a nice slow collapse. We will shed the Evil Empires and its wage slave bondage and we will all live happily ever after in a village full of free love and righteous smoking bongs. Dave? Dave’s not here , man! ( Cheech and Chong
) Again, people, it is not the economy, it is the energy. I have no doubt the above author is an excellent economist, far better than me. But he seems to stop there, largely discounting energy. Economics are influenced by energy, not the other way around. The western capitalistic system has always been based on perpetual growth. If debt must be repaid by interest, then you always need more money to create that interest. And that can only be done by increasing the energy in to the system. But the energy inflow into our economy is declining. It has fallen and it can’t get up. We are on the other side of the global oil peak. Substituting other, less efficient forms for the oil decrease has only created a bumpy plateau at the top of the bell curve, it has not invalidated the end of the Oil Age
. It only bought us some time, nothing more. But the cost has still been a decrease in energy. Everything that gives us energy besides oil has far less energy contained in it, and all those forms of energy must have some oil or natural gas added to it for processing. There are plenty of alternate energy substitutes that work wonderfully for the household, but they do not scale up. They don’t replace oil or gas.*
Now, let’s talk about the Roman Empire
, since it is used as an example of long slow collapse. Yes, the empire took hundreds of years to decline. That was imperial overreach, corruption, inflation, etc. That was the long slow collapse of a political unit, of an economy. But once the weather took a turn for the worse, it collided with already depleted soil, which had not been husbanded correctly in a combination of greed and taxation, which coupled with colonized farm land being occupied all led to food supplies shrinking as the population had been growing and then the arrival of refugees from eastern land all led to famine, pestilence and warfare which quickly depopulated the former world power. That was the much faster collapse of a civilization. The entire area was depopulated and it took centuries to grow again ( one imagines that was about as long as it took the soil to build up its nutrients again ). You really think the area depopulated because everyone went searching for a better government, a chance to earn more money? No, they died off. There was no place to go. That was a 90% die off following a long slow collapse.*
The US has been in a long slow collapse for decades. That is the economic collapse
. We are almost there at the civilization collapse as overpopulation meets up with soil depletion ( the soil is already depleted and crop production is based on oil inputs-take that away and nothing can be grown- then add in the non locally grown aspect where mass quantities of transportation fuel must be added ). The problem with focusing too much on economics is that you think we can survive the monetary fall. We can. But we can’t survive the resource depletion/overpopulation combination. You can garden and barter during an economic meltdown. You can’t do much during a resource collapse except die. END
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10 comments:
Nice article, but 3 points should be clarified.
1. Stephen King is or at least was a shock not suspense writer. He said so in the book "Bare Bones."
2. The reason that people don't see that the decline in oil production will cause a decline in the economy is that until the last price spike, it had normally been that economics influenced energy prices more than energy prices influenced economics. They still do, but more and more energy prices will come to dominate.
3. Slow decline is the norm until the collapse starts, then it is like falling off a cliff. In 451 Aetius, the Romans and their allies crushed the Huns at Chalons. In 452 they could not muster enough legions defend Italy. The same thing happened to the housing market here. People often don't want to see danger coming, so they don't.
You forgot to mention the lead in the water pipes and it's effect on the Roman Empire collapse.
Our 'brain drain' is not due to lead, but television.
oftwominds - and Kunstler - apparently don't appreciate that our society has reached such a level of complexity and reliance on technology, which is in turn reliance on cheap oil, that it is now extremely fragile. Systems of systems are run via network, the internet, and it all requires power and transport nets for supports (e.g., parts and technicians). Those technicians require food, which requires fertilizer to grow and fuel to transport. It's all neatly tied together - in a knot. People get it or they don't (won't?).
Amazing. So Rome had a slow collapse, the one that Oftwominds and others like to talk about, but also a fast collapse in there too.
So the slow-collapse scenarios favored by many, including myself when I try to think "rationally" may be not only not true, but also an evasion of reality - we all like to think we have more time, that just give us more time, and we can work it out. Yeah, let the 90% dieoff take a couple of centuries, that way me and mine and those I favor have got a chance.
So, a serious researcher could look into whether Rome really had some fast crashes in population like meaty nuggets of Doom mixed in with the boring porridge of slow decline. Think of all the money Jared Diamond made on his book, a new look into Rome could be a New Depression best seller.
Cheech and Chong .... my older bro had all the RECORDS. The digital age has disappeared all that good raunchy humor. Remember the one where the guy's making out with his girlfriend and he doesn't want the parents or neighbors or something to hear, so he turns on the TV and it's a wrestling show? "Oh no, it's the piledriver" LOL! Way to make a 12 year old kid laff their ass off and get a stiffy at the same time.
Have you tried keeping a goat or some kind of animal that will get you learning the trade of a herder? A goat can drink your old bathwater if you switch to that hippy Dr Bronner's soap. Get a jenny or goat-ess or whatever they're called, and you should end up with an animal that's pleasant to have in the house with you when it's cold, and will give you milk as long as you get her knocked up by a billy once a year. If you're gonna be a herder, the time to start learning is now. There's no substitute for living with the animals and learning all the stuff you don't find in books.
I saw the movie "The Ruins" awhile back (not sure if it's the same story as your book), and it was a decent horror flick.
I agree with you that Rome isn't a good example of a collapse that will happen here (length of time wise). The true Roman empire tanked when the latifundus stopped sending men out to battle those off in the distant.
They battled flesh, we battle a system upon system that's balanced upon a table supported by a twig. As we sit on the table everything appears dandy, but if you remove yourself from the table and stand back far enough, you see how foolish the situation is.
I guess it's perspective.
Are you tired of the steady drip, drip, drip of gonnorea? Peter Rooter! Cheech and Chong, ladies and gentlemen!
Freedomstrikesback, I really like the table analogy. I think if more people would take two steps back they could see the whole picture. (Of course they would see even better if they took their head out of their ass before looking around).
I just had an idea!
Ca laddie could move in with Jim. It's a match.
By the by, The CA slime wants the mud from the disaster cleaned up, but now there winning because the dump trucks are on the road.....I cant figure those libs out?????? I would love to visit there socialist utopia just for an hour, to know how they think....Dizzie fuckers..
Jim if you want me to drop her off let me know. She doesn't have any problems a couple of back-hands wouldn't fix......If that doesn't work slip her low (back door) she will love it, they always do. It would be nice for the libs to get bent-over for a change.......
Lord Bison you have done it again.
A Quote worth your weight in pure gold. "The western capitalistic system has always been based on perpetual growth." AND THAT WAS THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM - FROM THE GET GO!!
Researchers all over the world are using super computers "modelling" the system to try and find why the capitalist system is going down the schitter. You Lord Bison blurt out the reason for free.
Keep it up.
Jack Schitte
Jack-of course, to be fair, I know I got that quote from somewhere else. Where escapes me, a problem with reading too much. I probably just reworded it. But it does sum up nicely, right?
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