In the world, at the limits to growth

[Apogee]

A buddy sent me a link to the following over on The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability site:  

http://www.feasta.org/2011/05/14/in-the-world-at-the-limits-to-growth/

I thought it was good enough to re-post here as I figured folks would be interested and not be short of opinions.  Yes, it's long, but I do think what the author presents has merit and is worth consideration.

I've had to break it into three parts.

Enjoy,

Steve


In the world, at the limits to growth
May 14, 2011 3 Comments by admin

The worst is not,
So long as we can say, "This is the worst."- King Lear

We imagine Ireland is in crisis, yet crisis is relative. Most people in the world would envy our material austerity and be thankful for our endlessly 'collapsing' health service. But with our expectations thwarted and in the anxiety of uncertainty, we are focussed inward. Yet we remain as deluded as ever.

Our arguments about austerity, burning bondholders, default, NAMA, and a return to economic growth are framed within the context of a stable global economy. We frame our troubles as if they are largely our own, shared maybe with a few other peripheral Euro-zone countries and some errant German banks. Our argument assumes that within our national life, a path can be found, however hard and long, that must eventually lead to renewed growth and a return to something like we had before property speculation consumed us. And even were Ireland's economy to remain sunk in a mire, somewhere else out there, in Canada or China, the global economy will continue to roll on..

From the sidelines we hear that a UN Food and Agricultural Organisation index measuring the price of a basket of food commodities surpassed the 2008 record and oil prices remain well above $100 a barrel. This is in the context of a battered world economy and a global credit crisis that far from being resolved, has merely been displaced. The United States and Japan's credit rating is on negative watch, and the Euro hangs in balance. And while nobody will shout about it, there are many global banks who are only standing because governments and central banks are deploying all their declining powers to prevent the banks' bluff being called and all hell breaking lose. Food and energy prices are pushing popular revolutions in the Gulf, North Africa, and China which in turn are pushing up food and energy prices. All of this seems elliptical to our inward conversations.

Yet the real threats to our economy and society over the coming few years are from these things we have little control over. Even were our economy in the rudest of health, it could still face ruin. That is because we are dependent upon, and interwoven with, the globalised economy. And the globalised economy cannot stand the convergence in real time of constraints in its primary enabling energy resource-oil; its primary human constraint-food, and loss of trust in the credit that makes economic life possible. This convergence marks the end of economic growth, and initiates powerful destabilising shocks and stresses to the globalised economy.

Because of this, across the political spectrum, people are claiming solutions for a predicament that cannot be solved. They are claiming a level of insight and dominion over systems they can barely intuit and over which they have little and declining control. The electorate assumes there must be a solution to get us out of recession, a way to reverse what we have come to call 'austerity'. More than that, we demand the right to the realisation of their expectations- our pensions and purchasing power, jobs and savings, health and education services.

Through these assumptions we enter the collective delusion about where we've been, where we are, and where we're going. Part of the reason for this omission is a world-view maladapted to the conditions in which we now find ourselves. World-views comprise the meanings and assumptions through which our lives are understood; they embody the myths, stories and emotional attachments that frame our place in a complex world. They are social, and also define how we become socialised.

We share a common world-view formed in the context of our past experience, and in particular, that of economic growth and the profound influence it brought to the human experience. We have become accustomed to the reassuring thought that at the end of every recession, no matter how deep or long, growth and prosperity will again take off. There is a sense that economic growth, though sometimes wayward, is the natural order of things. It is a powerful idea both redemptive and optimistic.

Growth is part of the glue that holds together the social contract between the rich and poor, and between citizen and state. It stands behind our expectations of technology, the rise of China, population growth, and pensions. Growth shaped the specialisation of our occupational roles and the forms of social relations. It acclimatised us to increasing wealth, both personal and in the goods and services we expect from society and the state. We are now claiming as rights, services that only fifty years ago would have been considered miracles. It shaped our identity as the tormented consumer and the anxious lover.

Growth is very recent, two hundred years or so, and resilient, bouncing back from world wars and a great depression. It's been the driving dynamic of the integrated, de-localised system that has tied our welfare to trillions of transactions across the world. It has been so stable, and we have become so habituated to it that we barely notice what has transpired, the inherent complexity obscured by attenuation in simple things and services-my phone rings, I take a bus, my money works to buy my bread. Bread was once hard won from our local environs and required a large share of our time or income. Now it is of slight cost, accessible with trivial effort, but requires the integrated dance of complex transport, IT, banking, electric grid infrastructure; factories supplying factories, supplying factories; and the economies of scale and supply-chains that depend upon a globalised world.

Not only have our dependencies become more and more de-localised and complex, they have also become more dependent on high speed flows of good and services. The real-time flow of deliveries is an integral part of modern production processes. If deliveries are halted, for example, by a large-scale systemic banking collapse, the flow can be arrested, and economic production halted. The longer production is halted, the deeper the supply-chain failure extends, and the greater the entropic decay, from rust, for example. And the longer the down time, the harder it would be to re-boot the economy, and the greater the risk of a terminal systemic collapse in the global economy. Indeed internationalised production flows are as important for the viability of our complex economy as energy flows, they are two of a number of co-dependent systems that integrate the globalised economy. If spare parts for our national grid could not be replaced due to some supply chain failure, having plenty of fuel may not matter, electricity might not be delivered. And electricity failure would compromise other critical infrastructure such as banking infrastructure, IT systems, sewage and water.

Our globalised economy is an emergent property of billions of people, businesses and institutions interacting through physical and mental worlds. Individuals, companies, and governments may have limited control in time and space, but the more our intentions and actions interact in the world, the greater the chance our intentions are lost. There has been no master controller. Like rafters down a white-water river, we do not set the route or the rate, we are tossed and buffeted. We can trim the craft, avoid an obstacle, and if wise ensure we do not tip it over. But the driving dynamic is riding down an energy gradient.

Our identification with national or inter-national political economy and the psycho-drama therein obscures our real dependencies. So while national economies may have an individual character, they have no autonomous existence in anything like their present form outside the globalised economy, just as an arm, lung or heart cannot declare independence from the human body. Continuing the analogy, our global economy's metabolism has become increasingly complex and high speed. The globalised economy is more than the sum of its parts, but without the contributions of each, the whole would be diminished or fatally compromised. Because of this we might say that our local welfare is embedded within a high-speed de-localised fabric of exchange.

Misreadings

In The Birth of Plenty: How the prosperity of the modern world was created , William Bernstein writes "prosperity is not about physical objects or natural resources. Rather, it is about institutions...." He lists four: secure property rights, the scientific method, capital markets, and communications. While his institutions are certainly important,essential even, they could not have developed without the energy and other resources that underpin the economy. It is like claiming I live by my wits, charm and intelligence, while assuming food and water are a trivial side-show. A reasonable assumption in an age of abundance when our basic needs are met without comment, and what counts in terms of social status are personal and contextual differentiation.

In such a way we privilege human culture, and its sense of ingenuity and control over its own destiny. Like the God of Genesis, we looked upon our civilisation, its extent and complexity, and saw that it was good and ingenious. We thought we did this! And if we did this, surely we can do anything we set our minds to. If there are challenges to our civilisation, from climate change or resource constraints, they can be surmounted, for we have faith in our abilities. Our self-reflection through economic growth provided the super-structure for the humanist idea of progress, which the political philosopher John Gray dubbed the "displaced religious impulse".

As our self-regard has grown, our real dependencies-on soil and bees, forests, natural gas, rivers and rain, worms and sticky hydro-carbons, beasts and ferrous oxides-have been largely framed as issues of managerial utility. Our welfare is assumed to depend upon politicians, entrepreneurs, competitiveness, the knowledge economy, our innate inventiveness, and so on. Outside of utility, the environment has been sentimentalised or used as a signifier of higher feeling.

Yet our feet of clay are that our economy and civilisation exist only by virtue of resource flows from our environment. The only laws in economics are the laws of physics, everything else is contingent, supposition or vanity. An economy, growing in size and complexity, is firstly a thermodynamic system requiring increasing energy flows to grow and avoid decay. Waste, be it greenhouse gasses or landfill is also a natural outcome of such a thermodynamic process.

News from Elsewhere

It's been part of the background noise for over half a century, warnings about resource scarcity, biodiversity loss, soil erosion or climate change. But impacts were always on the imaginative horizon. Sometime, far enough into the future to be re-assuring to a species that evolved with a clear preference for the short-term. Or on the hinterland between our safe European home and the barbarian other, where starvation, environmental disasters, angry mobs and crazy despots have always demanded our attention, at least while on TV.

Yes we can! Yes we can! - chanted the posse of teenagers following Al Gore through a pavilion in Poznan, Poland for the annual gathering of climate policy acronyms.

When not distracted by the ever-present, we've responded to these warnings with treaties and laws, technology and exhortation. Of course, every ecological indicator kept getting worse. And we kept on about treaties and laws, and break-through technologies. Our mythic world-views gave us the shared faith that we may not be there yet, but we could, once a brilliant scheme is in place, a climate law passed, technologies adopted, evil bankers restrained, or once people just realised our predicament. Yes We Can! Yes We Can! Indeed, we could transcend our grubby selfishness and short-termism so we tied together the belief that we could will ecological sustainability and global equity. Still, our resource and environmental sink demands keep increasing, ecological indicators decline and inequality rises.

The reality is that we are locked into an economy adapted to growth, and that means rising energy and resource flows and waste. By lock-in, we mean that our ability to change major systems we depend upon is limited by the complexity of interdependencies, and the risk that the change will undermine other systems upon which we depend. So we might wish to change the banking or monetary system, but if the real and dynamic consequences lead to a major bank freeze lasting more than a couple of days we will have major food security risks, massive drops in economic production, and risks to infrastructure. And if we want to make our food production and distribution more resilient to such shocks, production will fall and food prices will need to be higher, which will in the short-to-medium term drive up unemployment, lead to greater poverty, and pose even greater risks to the banking system.

It is an oxymoron to say we can do something unsustainable forever. How would you know if we were approaching a limit, the end of growth? By warnings? Listen. By the great and the good, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, saying "Ladies & gentleman we have a really big problem!"? Politicians and civil servants, the IMF and the OECD, all missed the credit crisis of 2007, despite having expertise in the area and an abundant historical literature about asset bubbles. They embody the dogmatism of the age, they are a pivot point about which are world-views are confirmed. They mirror the authority of the court of Pope Urban VIII, stuffed with astronomer-astrologers, the economists of their age, confirming the earth centric universe against Galileo and Copernicus before him.

What the Galileos of today are saying is that we are at or near the peak of global oil production now. That as affordable oil declines, the global economy must contract. That we do not have the time, nor resources to keep the economy growing by substituting for oil with efficiency measures, renewable or nuclear energy, or technology. That talk of an electric car future, advanced IT-renewable energy convergent infrastructure, and global super-grids is a fancy. The most obvious problem with focusing on this vision at the horizon is that you don't see that the ground is opening up beneath your feet. We will not get to that horizon because all the things you need to get there- monetary and financial systems, purchasing power and economies of scale, production systems, infrastructure and global trust networks-will be undermined by the convergence of a peak of global oil production, a peak of food production, and a giant credit bubble. The ground will open up, we will fall, and our visions will fall further and further from our grasp.

They are saying that global food production is hitting an array of ecological constraints, while population growth and changing diets are driving up demand. They note that current food production is massively subsidised through fossil fuel inputs, and that as those inputs become less available, and people become poorer due to economic contraction, food productivity and access will be undermined.

In totality, we are at the edge of an evolving systemic crisis. Peak oil and food constraints are likely to undermine the stability of our integrated globalised economy. The core pillars of that economy: critical infrastructure, production flows, economies of scale, the financial and monetary system, behavioural adaptation, resource access and energy flows-are likely to begin forcing contagious failure.

The driving force of this failure is likely to be the fastest and most unstable process-the impact of energy and food constrained economic growth, and an already vulnerable monetary and financial system dependent upon continuing growth.

[Apogee]

Tightening binds

Whatever of Ireland's economic woes, the real debt bubble is global. The debt relative to GDP is far greater now in the US, UK, and much of Europe, than it ever was leading up to the great depression. Like many countries we responded to our debt bubble with more debt, we just shifted it onto the sovereign or the printing press.

The indebted world, even without oil and food price rises is straining at the limits of debt servicing and credibility. Yet it is demanding even more credit, while its ability to service the debt is being undermined by debt deflation, austerity, rising job losses, and defaults. The bank lenders of that money can only lose so much before they are too are insolvent.

Rising food and energy prices are driving the deflationary forces even harder. And if central banks misinterpret the cause of food and oil price rises, and raise interest rates, the deflationary pressures risk becoming cyclonic. The cost of essentials and debt servicing rise, while income declines. Discretionary spending will collapse, job losses and defaults rise, income will declines further. This re-enforcing spiral of decline will increase, and spread to more and more countries.

The fear of contagion from peripheral Eurozone defaults are not merely that they could topple French, UK, and German banks, but that this could brink down US banks and effectively shut down the global financial system in very short shift. The destabilising force is not just that the banks are already in a precarious position, but a monstrous pile of derivative contracts worth ten to twenty times the global economy that hangs over the financial system. Some of those contracts are effectively insurance against default. If bank defaults start spreading, then other banks and the shadow financial system will be forced to cover obligations on default, or increase premiums on their insurance. This may cause a fire-sale of assets, whereby the banks bluff is called, and they are shown to have values far below what is required for solvency.

What everybody wants and needs is a sudden and explosive increase in the production of real goods and services (GDP) to make their continual debt requirements serviceable. But that, even were it remotely possible, would require a big increase in oil flows through the global economy, just as global oil production has peaked and begins its decline. It cannot happen. This means that the global financial system is essentially insolvent now.

The only choice is default or inflation on a global scale. It mean banks are insolvent, because their assets (loans) cannot be repaid; or they can be solvent (assuming appropriate action taken) but their depositors cannot redeem their deposits at anything like their real value. It means the vast overhang of stocks and bonds, including pensions, and insurance cannot be realised in real goods. It means our monetary systems, dependent on fiat money, fractional reserve banking, and interest can only collapse.

High oil and food prices are essentially probing the limits of the stability of the globalised economy. They will probe until there is a major collapse in global economic production. At which point our energy prices may fall, but our real income and purchasing power will fall faster.

And markets will discover this truth quicker than monetary authorities and governments. Its expression will be in deeper and deeper economic stresses and major systemic banking collapses. Official responses will become more and more impotent, as their fundamental economic and policy tools no longer work, and their patina of control becomes hollow. If and when banking system contagion spreads to supply-chain contagion we may face existential challenges.

Even were we to have the perfect monetary and financial system, without debt and well controlled, peak oil and food would present an unprecedented shock. As incomes shrunk while essentials such as food and energy become more expensive, non-discretionary spending would be squeezed out. In the developed world, non-discretionary goods and services are just about all we produce. So the result would still be mass unemployment. Our critical infrastructure would still be increasingly vulnerable for various reasons, and monetary instability would still destabilise supply-chains.

Facing Ourselves & Facing Our Future

We are at the beginning of a process in which our world-views crash against a fundamentally unstable financial system and ecological constraints. A time where we will learn that what was, will never return; and what was expected, can never be. We are facing a time of loss and uncertainty. A time of bank-runs, lost savings and pensions, of mass unemployment, electricity and mobile phone black-outs, of hunger and empty super-market shelves.

A localised economy will no longer be something environmentalists aspire to develop; rather it will be forced upon us as bank failures, monetary uncertainty, and lost purchasing power sever links in the web of the global economy. But we no longer have indigenous economies to fall back upon.

The gap between expectations and what can be realised is historically a major source of popular anger, and can ignite a cycle of fear, blame, violence, scape-goating, and authoritarian leadership from either left or right. It can give the avaricious the power and cover to appropriate wealth that might better be used for collective welfare.

Yet who gave us the right to our expectations? They were built on the semi-blind self-organisation of a complex human society over generations. They were built on deep threads of human behaviour-competition and cooperation, mating selection and status-that result from our evolution over the history of life on earth. They were built on the deposits of ancient sunlight hidden below the Earth's surface, the minerals in soil, and the global climate that provided the stability for our species to flourish. As a species there is no one to blame, unless we cling to the delusion that we are the displaced God who transcended our own ecology.

Yes, we can and will build a largely local economy out of the ruins of a collapsed globalised one. It will be a much poorer one and one where we will have lost much of what we take for granted. It can also provide a good life, where our basic needs are met, where meaningful lives can be lived, and a rich texture of experience found.

But in the interim we face a huge resilience gap between the basic welfare and social needs once provided by integration with the globalised growth economy and what is available without it. We need to prepare for sudden shocks such as freezes in the banking system, and its effect on food access say, and the more strategic changes we require in agriculture, monetary systems, employment, and governance.

The problem with such preparations is that in many cases they are likely to be too late. This is because the risk of severe financial shocks is rising all the time, and the issues are complex and often unclear. In addition real preparation would require a new and wide consensus on the nature of our predicament. But the emergence of such a consensus would lead to people and institutions taking rational action such as withdrawing deposits from banks, cashing in financial assets, or the refusing of credit. Such action would begin the re-enforcing process of supply-chain contagion and a systemic collapse in the globalised economy.

David Korowicz

[Apogee]

3 Responses to "In the world, at the limits to growth"

1. Gillies says:
May 31, 2011 at 11:02 pm

David -

I have thought many of these ideas, independently, even though I might express them in different terms, and agree with the general picture you draw.

Let me invite you to see the same landscape as it appears to one who differs from you, perhaps, in education and general life experience.

Where you say that the laws of economics are a root the laws of physics, I see them as an extension of the less well known laws of ecology. I see the human race as a predator or parasite which has now become a danger to the health of its host organism, the living earth.

I also notice this about your essay : it makes a trenchant analysis which stops short at the threatened consequence of false beliefs – the false beliefs being belief in growth eternal. Why does the essay not go on ?

35 years or so ago I read 'The Limits to Growth.' Since then not much has happened to respond to that grim prospect. Why not ? There is an iron law of sustainability which is this: to survive in the long term, it is necessary to survive in the short term. We jostle at the front of the queue for material wealth, because at the back of the queue are those who are so close to the edge that they cannot afford to take the long term view. They have to eat the seed potatoes, or watch their children starve. We have paid lip service to the limits to growth, while only adopting reforms which are politically possible – that is to say, do not actually interfere with the general level of current consumption.

Economic wealth in the form of money can be created out of nothing, and that is how it should be. Does it matter that metres and litres are 'made out of nothing'? Money should be a measure. Money is in fact a measure – things like gold are only commodities used as money. You can use cigarettes the same way. People do not always accept this. Thus it is hard for them to see that money can vanish or cancel out into nothing, just as it can be created. Commodities do not do that . . .

For this reason I would replace your 'default or inflation' with 'default, money destruction, and deflation'. It may not be politically wise to shout about this – but the suggestion that we will have less of everything in future, may be failing to admit that some people may have much the same as before, provided they are among the few who still have jobs.

The reason why warnings – e g warnings of possible bank runs – are ineffective, may be that action to forestall a bank run (withdrawal) actually causes the dreaded event. Why do the politicians seem such impotent fools ? Because only an impotent fool would waste valuable effort running for office in a time like this. but a frightened society that holed up en masse with ammunition, gold bars, tinned food and bottled water, would just as surely create the very conditions that it sought to evade.

Of course it is a valid decision for the elderly or eminent to decide to go down with the ship. people who jumped ship from civilisation prematurely, decades ago often had to make an embarrassing climb back on board . . . timing is everything.

And the depth of the crisis is also relevant. lose the money and you have lost nothing but pixels. what happens to a society with no money ? it regenerates from below – like Germany 1946. Something gets used as money, even if it is only a tick on a slate.

Lose the electricity – to solar flare, oil embargo, or electro magnetic pulse device – and you are into a different level of crisis. Do you know how many cattle drink from the public water supply ? Bullocks, like people, are wired in to the electrical grid, however it may look from your passing car . . .

So what would i do ?

In ignorance of the timing or severity of the crisis, or crises, i would expect a world of contracting resources and expanding population to produce mass unemployment and underemployment. How could it not ?

These unemployed will often be educated and young. Some of them must take the decision to make a life that is outside of 'the system.' Even if they later find employment, this would be an education for austerity. It is from outside of the system that the new ideas must come.

I would pay unemployment benefit in local currency. who would accept it ? The unemployed themselves. Start up businesses which expanded would then migrate back into the system. Increased unemployment would expand the local currency and associated activities. Economic recovery would contract the local currency, so it would have a diminishing impact upon the national economy.

Second – I would ban all advertising that was not purely informative. If eternal growth is the false religion – the ads are the sermons. We live in a religion crazed age without realising it.

Thirdly, we need to abandon a fundamental and unquestioned idea – that the better you do, the more resources you consume. All pay that buys non renewable resources should be equalised, all differences in reward and remuneration should be in entitlement to renewable resources and non material benefits. This might require separate currencies, also or a currency and a system of tokens, as in times of rationing.

Finally, if none of this works, we are entering a new dark age. Economics will not be as much of a guide as, for example, the study of mediaeval history : a tiny elite – largely concerned with endless warfare and local security. Not much of a middle class. A religious minority who retire from the world. A recurring debasement of coinage. Barter. Thievery. And a peasant class who live in hard times and perish when times get even harder.

Countries or regions which weather these crises best, might be those which now straddle the pre industrial and industrial ages. Countries for example where half the traffic is motorised, and half is horse drawn. Countries where there is a continuity between the girl who works in the office in town and her brother who still lives back on the farm.

We now understand that no investor should have committed their entire resources to the property boom. Industrial civilisation is also a boom or bubble. Think of your life as a portfolio of investments. How many of your needs are catered for outside of the system ? Bon Voyage if the answer is none. Do you think it is wise to invest everything in the system ?

How about trying to spend 20 per cent of your time and your physical energy outside of the system ? You will quickly see that it is not so easy. But you will begin to build a new (spare time) paradigm that is not system dependent.

Contrary to initial appearances – dire warnings of collapse should be classified as 'system dependent.' In a post collapse world they will only have interest as curiosities if remembered at all. One of the characteristics of a dark age is that people are too busy surviving to do much analysing or recording of their situation.
 

2. Runningthings says:
June 3, 2011 at 9:09 am

Is it possible that what we are seeing in Yemen, Syria and Libya will be played out again and again across the world? Big food and fuel price rises always lead to civil unrest. In Europe a communist approach might be the only way to cater for the masses from this point on. Instead we may well see a lurch to the political far right as immigration spirals out of control, coinciding with the rising unemployment.
Could political parties, of all views, and in all countries, now come together and declare a European State of emergency? After all they got us into this mess.
 

3. Skintnick says:
June 13, 2011 at 9:52 am

Thanks David – an important expression of concepts which have become clear in my mind also, these last 2 years.

And interesting response by gillies too (where he points out the crucial role of advertising as the arm of corporate consumerism which has done so much to embed the dangerous myths which pervade modern western culture).

What fascinates me is how best to respond to the proximity of the precipice. Corporate-owned media has no interest in acknowledging these arguments. State-owned media, on the surface of it, would have a responsibility to address these issues. But the counter-argument of not 'stampeding the horses' or creating a self-fulfilling prophecy (as David points out) must temper making the facts public. Yet how can a "democratic" society decide what measures are to be taken when so few are initiated in the facts of the matter?

[cognos]

We live, and have lived in, a golden age. Some have skipped lightly through it without notice or interest, some have worked tirelessly to create and preserve it - but hardly anyone has any real understanding or appreciation of it's true fragility.

I'll be one of those on the deck of the ship as it sinks at sundown, with a drink in my hand, and no regrets. I hope there's a band playing, and I hope it's Peter Gabriel, I've never been able to afford good seats at a Peter Gabriel concert...  I have no desire to live in a world where only the guys with the most ammunition get to eat (although, a cynic may say that I currently do...). They are welcome to my leftover resources, may it assist them in their quest to eke out one more horror-filled day in a brutal world, and may that be their only reward for being so forward-thinking...

Peak oil is real. If humanity continues to consume it, as I'm certain is the case, then, at some point, "No Oil" will be real, too. How can it be otherwise?

Natural disasters, whatever the cause, will shift populations and economies in unimaginable, and possibly uncorrectable ways.

In the whole treatise, I like two of the premises the best - that it's impossible to do something quite obviously unsustainable forever, and not expect dire consequences.
And from one of the responses, "If eternal growth is the false religion – the ads are the sermons." Apparently, keeping up with "the Joneses'" is the cause of all our problems... who knew?  

[LowGear]

So this is intellectual thought.

Wow!

But hey, I've got a sugar pea patch that needs weeding.

Cheers,

LowGear

[mobile_bob]

a rather deep and weighty subject to say the least

as a boy that thought he was middle class, (found out later that assumption might have been optimistic) and having had to sit out
for about 5 years of my youth because of medical issues, i had lots of time to observe. and observe i did, nature, man, and all my little world had
to offer.

i remember having a real epiphany back in about 2001 when i first took a flight into LAX, arriving there just as the sun was going down i was presented with the expansive layout of the city from above, mile after mile of grid work streets and lights forever it would seem.  i remember looking down to see the myriad little neighborhoods with their associated shopping centers, places of work, schools, fire stations etc.  what occurred to me was how fragile this little system below me must really be!  this is one major city below me, and it is unfathomable how anyone can manage the economy of this one ecosystem,, sure there are a plethora of those politicians that claim they can, but can they really?  i think not!

the next thing came to mind was what of the whole state?  the whole country? the planet?

no frigging way could anyone convince me at the time that there was any real control over anything, any more so that trying to herd cats or cockroaches.  those that claim to be in control can do precious little more than nudge the ship a bit one way or another, which is fine if you are out in a calm sea, but quite another when  faced with trying to get the monster ship through a port entry during a hurricane, which i feel we find ourselves in currently.

at the end of 2005 i forcasted a collapse at the beginning of 2008, missed that by only a couple months prior. this time last year i forcast a double dip hitting us in the second quarter of this year, the end of which we are in now, and things look a bit shakey lately in my opinion.  am i some sort of financial guru? no!  which only makes matters worse in my opinion, because if someone like me can see the handwriting on the way, i wonder why more folks haven't come to the realization that things are hanging in  very precocious way.

i too worry that we as a county, and perhaps a world will look back and one day realize we did live through a golden age, and it may be several generations before such standards of living are attainable again.

no matter what your politics are, whether liberal or conservative, dem or republican, whoever is at the helm is going to be going gray headed in a hurry, and i don't see anyway that there is going to be a quick fix. i can see this recession dragging on for at least another 8 years perhaps as many as 10 or more is possible depending on what decisions are made.

i have no idea why anyone would want to run for president at this time in our history!  it certainly can't be the money!  it certainly can't be because you will be forever loved!  it may well be you will be vilified and go down in history as the one to blame for all the ills of mankind.

bob g

[cognos]

So this is intellectual thought.

Wow!

But hey, I've got a sugar pea patch that needs weeding.

Cheers,

LowGear

I've got genetically engineered sugar peas, and they don't need weeding. They've got goat genes, and they eat the weeds themselves. Don't need to fertilize 'em, either. So I've got that goin' for me, and deep thought is what I do with my spare time.

I have to admit, I do feel a twinge of regret every now and then, putting all those people who used to earn a living hoeing peas out of work. You know, the bands of itinerant pea hoers that used to travel from town to town, hoeing peas.. ah, the good old days.

<sigh.> Technology will save us all.

[bschwartz]

Deep Thought only gave us 42.............

[cognos]

42. This is true. Life is a search for the answer. The problem is, most people ask really stupid questions.
I do have my towel ready, just in case. I figure I'll get more use out of a towel that I would out of a handgun. My Ford does indeed have a "dent" in it. And I'm Not Panicking.

(Apologies for the Hitchhiker's Guider to the Galaxy references. If you haven't read it, you may be missing something. If you have read it, you are definitely be missing something...)

[cgwymp]

42. This is true. Life is a search for the answer. The problem is, most people ask really stupid questions.
I do have my towel ready, just in case. I figure I'll get more use out of a towel that I would out of a handgun. My Ford does indeed have a "dent" in it. And I'm Not Panicking.

(Apologies for the Hitchhiker's Guider to the Galaxy references. If you haven't read it, you may be missing something. If you have read it, you are definitely be missing something...)

Hey Cognos, I always thought you were a hoopy frood!

[rcavictim]

When I was a teenager I had a job pumping gas.  That made me a fillofficer.  With those eminent qualifications and my observations to now I have to say that those people that ask "What shall we do when the shit hits the fan", need to wake up and realize that it has already hit.  The United States in particular is a trainwreck in progress.  This train has already left the track and there will be no putting it back on.  We are experiencing the fall of a great empire and we are all living the event in real time.  It isn't helping that the ponzi scheme which is the US dollar system has finally imploded after stealing the efforts of hard working people globally for the past 90 or so years.  The US has never had to produce anything, it just prints the paper fiat which has been the global currency until now.  This is in the last gasp phase of ending. In the past month China, one of the US' major creditors is now accusing the US of defalting on it's loans.  This is the direct result of "Helicopter Ben Bernackie" printing so much money in QE-1 and QE-2, with nothing of value backing it that it is dropping the value of the US buck like a stone dropped in a deep lake.  That's pretty serious people!!!  Not long ago I watched a televised speech from the POTUS. George Bush Jr. said, "The US standard of living is non-negotiable". As I see it the US will not go away quietly.  This will end very badly for the whole planet.

On top of this we have been very poor stewards of our rare and precious planet earth.  In only 100 years we have allowed our run amuk corporations to gain control of, then mismanage and ruin every single natural thing that humankind needs from the once bountiful earth.  Fresh water is being poluted, the oceans are dying, the polar ice is disappearing, our food is being poisoned on purpose, all in the pursuit of corporate profits.  Between the nuclear power plant disasters and the deliberate use of DU (Depleted Uranium), and also spent nuclear fuel in bullets in modern warfare the planet ecosphere is becoming very unfriendly to all higher forms of life.  Commercial jetliners have been spraying aluminum and other hazardous materials as aerosols in chemtrail spraying around the world in an evil scheme to poison the ecosystem and kill off the human population for something like the past twenty years or so.  The evil people behind this cannot be brought to justice.  The Constitution of the United States is now just worthless paper.  It is no longer recognized by those in control in Washington as the Rule of the Land.  The President now makes up his own rules.

A US Congressman recently went public advising that anyone living in a city now ought to leave if they can ASAP.

Better get ready.

I'd better stop now.  For me none of this is news.

[Lloyd]

The world has been on the edge of an so called Apocalyptic Change many times in the last 500 years...according to some.

It has never happened.

There are 2 kinds of Apocalyptics.  1. the TALKERS...whom really are just herders, so that they can take advantage of the movement of the heard...(much like wolves to sheep)

And   2. the THINKERS, they are swayed by the talkers, but become so consumed with their own thoughts, that they become demobilized.

Since I can remember...I have heard those talk of the good old years. During the 70's oil crisis, was one of the first times it really dawned on me  s I heard many bemoan the problems of the day, only to speak of the good old days...Least they forgot the Vietnam, Korean war, WWII, the famines of the 30's (which was by the way not only happening in America).

I'm sure by the end of the Black Plague the European Apocalyptics, were in fact bemoaning the loss Golden Age, of their time.

Just remember it's not the destination, it's the ride....that goes for life as well...

Now it seems that globalization is the root of all troubles...but it isn't it just the vehicle of change that makes us all long for the good old days(the golden era)

BUT be sure...with globalization comes organization...as much as out of anarchy comes organization...that's because an ecosystems(econ-system) tends to operate in a balance....when it goes out of balance because of something missing....like a ship left to its own devices(most ship disasters are a result of human interaction) it will right it's self(find a new balance) and ride out the storm.

Now for an eye opener...I know many whom have lost faith in our rulers dems/repubs....But remember the globalized economy is not just globalized trade....there are 2 other legs to the stool.

Global Governmental Co-operation.

and

Global Philanthropist.           These groups alone are pouring billions of dollars into third world countries as the Apocalyptics, are calling for the end of the GOLDEN ERA.

Take a slow ride...don't worry about being there...enjoy getting there.


with my eyes in the stars..

lloyd

[Tom Reed]

Uh, Lloyd the 3rd type are the preppers, quietly accumulating supplies and skills to get us through the coming dark ages. (Oh yea and diesels to run pumps and generators)

[cognos]

42. This is true. Life is a search for the answer. The problem is, most people ask really stupid questions.
I do have my towel ready, just in case. I figure I'll get more use out of a towel that I would out of a handgun. My Ford does indeed have a "dent" in it. And I'm Not Panicking.

(Apologies for the Hitchhiker's Guider to the Galaxy references. If you haven't read it, you may be missing something. If you have read it, you are definitely be missing something...)

Hey Cognos, I always thought you were a hoopy frood!

I consider that to be one of the best compliments I've received. Thanks!

And I'm really Not Panicking. I'm not a doomsayer, or an inward-looking survivalist. I have an abundance of faith in humans to work together toward a common goal that wil serve the common good, when it's really required. I am, however, an hard-core realist, and I never owned a pair of rose-coloured viewers. There is a change a-comin' - but it has always been that way, things always change. It's the rate that changes. Things have never changed as fast as they do now. But you could say the same thing 50 - or even 100 years ago. It wil go well for some, not so good for others. To quote David Byrne of the Talking Heads, "Same as it ever was."

Relax. Have a Jelly Baby...

[Lloyd]

Uh, Lloyd the 3rd type are the preppers, quietly accumulating supplies and skills to get us through the coming dark ages. (Oh yea and diesels to run pumps and generators)

The problems is that when you become a prepper, you either grow into the Thinker, or the same end result is, you're so busy prepping for the eventual...that you forget to think about the trip...in the end it's the same results... you miss the real enjoyment ...of the ride.

Now I'm not saying don't be a boyscout...just recognize some balance....remember in the end there is always balance by nature...it just happens. Don't be the ship's captain that drives her into the reef trying to save her.

lloyd