The Boundaries and Future of Solution Space – Part 5
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Gustave Doré Dante looks upon the negligent rulers 1868 In case you missed it, we’re doing something a little different. Nicole wrote a very lenghty a
[See the full post at: The Boundaries and Future of Solution Space – Part 5]@ Nicole,
Hi Nicole. I think I’ve asked a few times but never really got a response – curious if you’ve permanently relocated to New Zealand or if it is only temporary? I think when you first announced your decision to visit Atamai it was only temporary, but perhaps things have changed…
If the move is permanent, I’d like to know how that change was received/accepted by your family? Perhaps that’s too personal a question, but I’ve tried to sell the idea to my family of getting out of Canada with what little money we have and relocating to somewhere a bit more isolated a few times with little success. Looks like we’ll be stuck in Ontario for the Long Descent…
Looking forward to the full posting of this great article you’ve put together BTW.
Cheers,
VariableThanks Nicole, it was a wonderful read. Part 4 was my favorite; really well done.
question…
Don’t you think that parts of the technology will be considered “too big to fail” and will be prioritized accordingly? Cell phones, email, gps?
And what do you think will happens to all that military tech?Broadly speaking, I suspect the future will see a vast assortment of epic struggles between two conflicting paradigms: cooperation and compulsion. Current civilization is organized with compulsion from the top and cooperation from below. It’s safe to predict that increasingly compulsive measures will be implemented from the top attempting to manage the chaos and misery resulting from financial collapse, so “peak compulsion” will probably not arrive until well after most of the financial crash has played out, and that will take many years.
So those who rely on using compulsion are likely to increasingly abuse and prey upon those who rely on cooperation because that’s the methodology of survival they’re familiar with. Compulsion is by nature a parasitic strategy based on brute force, and being inimical to trust, is an impediment to cooperation (constructive cooperation, anyway).
What will cause the tide to turn from prevalent compulsion to prevalent cooperation? Again, it probably depends on which location we’re talking about because conditions will vary widely. Nonetheless, the sixty dollar question going forward will be, “how can we persuade the controllers to abandon compulsion and embrace cooperation?” If you don’t want the entire globe to become a galaxy of North Koreas going forward, you have to ask the question.
If you answer, “through rational argument and kindly persuasion,” you’re a nice person, but giddily optimistic, IMO. And if you no longer have sufficient debt-money to bribe your power mad overlords, then only one form of persuasion remains. It’s the same form of persuasion they’ll be using on you.
Of course, we can all just wait passively until the parasites have either completely enslaved or wiped out their hosts. But what would be the lesson at that point, and who would learn it?
I’m interested to get a handle on what you expect to happen at a slightly finer grain about issues such as debt. With a collapse of central authority that needs both money and energy to enforce laws, contracts etc, what will be the probable fate of those with debts like mortgages.
Do you expect banks to fail utterly and the debts be lost in the dust or will there be residual institutions with claims to property etc and in practice how might they try to enforce those claims given an absence of buyers? Or will they have some kind of rushed process, selling of their debts to whoever has cash and letting them settle it with the mortgagor?
I can see the 1% trying to buy up the debt but I can;t see them putting together their own armies to enforce the change of ownership, dependent as they are on the serfs paying for their own control through taxes.
As a debt-free holder it makes no direct difference to me but it would be good to know what my neighbours might face in the process, especially if we are also to share resources that might benefit them but might also be taken over by the new lord of the manor.
Diogenes. There are similar thoughts lurking in my mind but I am guessing that the compulsion phase would have to come earlier in the financial failure process because at the latter end, the ability to use money to buy compulsion services will be much more limited and by that stage, those with the compulsion powers will be the ones making the decisions, not their erstwhile employers.
It will be a case of use it or lose it and those who really get it will act earlier. For years I have said that I kind of hoped that TPTB were in fact cynical and corrupt assholes who actually got what the underlying reality was but were prepared to manipulate its public face for their own ends. My fear was that these people really do believe what they are saying, in which case they will pretty much go down in a heap when reality is undeniable any longer.
So, on balance, peak compulsion early-ish, or not at all with a possible landscape of random bands of ex-compellers preying on the producers. Even that will be hard to manage given that so much of the compulsion apparatus is also embedded in the failing system and fossil fuel dependent.
All in all, this seems a very western-centric outlook. Which, given the audience, is reasonable.
My POV is S.E. Asian; so I don’t see the same scenario going down. Third world and emerging economies are not subject to the same vulnerabilities, IMO. These represent important differences; food, fuel (vehicle, cooking gas, and electricity) are not import dependent, but rather regionally supplied.
Yes, collapse of the western/world economies will effect the planet, but regions will be affected in different ways, IMO. It’s important to understand the differences; again, my opinion is based on my 12+ years of self exile in S.E. Asia and learning how their cultures and economies work…
A major advantage is climate; no heating in winter (mostly, some exceptions), and if one is smart; no air-con in the summer.
In any event; the application of intelligence is most critical…Check it out for yourself : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources#Solar_energy
This should be enough for the steady state economy : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested#Low_carbon_power
Even if I agree on the necessity to abate the material complexities of the market with its needless countless products doing more or less the same thing you are not accounting for the rationalization of trade and the functioning of large scale organizations that can be achieved thorough information technology if set properly.
Also don’t forget that country like India has a space program and that racking up resources even from a poor or impoverished economy if put to good use can achieve breakthrough that eventually can circumvent bottlenecks.
I all for doubling down on nuclear fusion starting tomorrow morning.
Also ,after half a century of global media and 20 years of Internet with the exchange of ideas still going on at full speed I think calling in the Second Middle Age with donkeys at the treadmill and women back in the house mending clothes in a revival of the eco-friendly scattered peasant economy might be too early and pessimistic unless , of course , if you crave for it.This should be enough for the steady state economy : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested#Low_carbon_power
Even if I agree with the necessity to abate the material complexities of the market with its needless countless products doing more or less the same thing you are not accounting for the rationalization of trade and of the functioning of large scale organizations that can be achieved thorough information technology if set properly.
Also don’t forget that a country like India has a space program and that racking up resources even from a poor or impoverished economy if put to good use can achieve breakthrough that eventually can circumvent bottlenecks.
I am all for doubling down on nuclear fusion starting tomorrow morning.
Also , after half a century of global media and 20 years of Internet with the exchange of ideas still going on at full speed I think calling in the Second Middle Age with donkeys at the treadmill and women back in the house mending clothes in a revival of the eco-friendly scattered peasant economy might be too early and pessimistic unless , of course , if you crave for it.Engdahl may believe in abiotic oil but to believe in globull warming exceeds this in folly.
I automatically subtract points from any author that proposes globull warming to be anything besides a political scam and hoax. It is most definitely not science.
Para 2, last sentence — should read “It will be important to work with natural systems in accordance with permaculture principles, rather than in opposition to them as we currently do so comprehensively”?
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