One of the factors that makes it difficult to think through the economic consequences of the end of the industrial age is that we’ve all grown up in a world where every form of economic activity has been channeled through certain familiar forms for so long that very few people remember that things could be any other way. Another of the factors that make the same effort of thinking difficult is that the conventional economic thought of our time has invested immense effort and oceans of verbiage into obscuring the fact that things could be any other way.
Those are formidable obstacles. We’re going to have to confront them, though, because one of the core features of the decline and fall of civilizations is that most of the habits of everyday life that are standard practice when civilizations are at zenith get chucked promptly into the recycle bin as decline picks up speed. That’s true across the whole spectrum of cultural phenomena, and it’s especially true of economics, for a reason discussed in last week’s post: the economic institutions and habits of a civilization in full flower are too complex for the same civilization to support once it’s gone to seed.
The institutions and habits that contemporary industrial civilization uses to structure its economic life comprise that tangled realm of supposedly voluntary exchanges we call “the market.” Back when the United States was still contending with the Soviet Union for global hegemony, that almost always got rephrased as “the free market;” the adjective still gets some use among ideologues, but by and large it’s dropped out of use elsewhere. This is a good thing, at least from the perspective of honest speaking, because the “free” market is of course nothing of the kind. It’s unfree in at least two crucial senses: first, in that it’s compulsory; second, in that it’s expensive.
“The law in its majestic equality,” Anatole France once noted drolly, “forbids rich and poor alike to urinate in public, sleep under bridges, or beg for bread.” In much the same sense, no one is actually forced to participate in the market economy in the modern industrial world. Those who want to abstain are perfectly free to go looking for some other way to keep themselves fed, clothed, housed, and supplied with the other necessities of life, and the fact that every option outside of the market has been hedged around with impenetrable legal prohibitions if it hasn’t simply been annihilated by legal fiat or brute force is just one of those minor details that make life so interesting.
Historically speaking, there are a vast number of ways to handle exchanges of goods and services between people. In modern industrial societies, on the other hand, outside of the occasional vestige of an older tradition here and there, there’s only one. Exchanging some form of labor for money, on whatever terms an employer chooses to offer, and then exchanging money for goods and services, on whatever terms the seller chooses to offer, is the only game in town. There’s nothing free about either exchange, other than the aforesaid freedom to starve in the gutter. The further up you go in the social hierarchy, to be sure, the less burdensome the conditions on the exchanges generally turn out to be—here as elsewhere, privilege has its advantages—but unless you happen to have inherited wealth or can find some other way to parasitize the market economy without having to sell your own labor, you’re going to participate if you like to eat.
Your participation in the market, furthermore, doesn’t come cheap. Every exchange you make, whether it’s selling your labor or buying goods and services with the proceeds, takes place within a system that has been subjected to the process of intermediation discussed in last week’s post. Thus, in most cases, you can’t simply sell your labor directly to individuals who want to buy it or its products; instead, you are expected to sell your labor to an employer, who then sells it or its product to others, gives you part of the proceeds, and pockets the rest. Plenty of other people are lined up for their share of the value of your labor: bankers, landlords, government officials, and the list goes on. When you go to exchange money for goods and services, the same principle applies; how much of the value of your labor you get to keep for your own purposes varies from case to case, but it’s always less than the whole sum, and sometimes a great deal less.
Karl Marx performed a valuable service to political economy by pointing out these facts and giving them the stress they deserve, in the teeth of savage opposition from the cheerleaders of the status quo who, then as now, dominated economic thought. His proposed solution to the pervasive problems of the (un)free market was another matter. Like most of his generation of European intellectuals, Marx was dazzled by the swamp-gas luminescence of Hegelian philosophy, and followed Hegel’s verbose and vaporous trail into a morass of circular reasoning and false prophecy from which few of his remaining followers have yet managed to extract themselves.
It’s from Hegel that Marx got the enticing but mistaken notion that history consists of a sequence of stages that move in a predetermined direction toward some as-perfect-as-possible state: the same idea, please note, that Francis Fukuyama used to justify his risible vision of the first Bush administration as the glorious fulfillment of human history. (To borrow a bit of old-fashioned European political jargon, there are right-Hegelians and left-Hegelians; Fukuyama was an example of the former, Marx of the latter.) I’ll leave such claims and the theories founded on them to the true believers, alongside such equally plausible claims as the Singularity, the Rapture, and the lemonade oceans of Charles Fourier; what history itself shows is something rather different.
What history shows, as already noted, is that the complex systems that emerge during the heyday of a civilization are inevitably scrapped on the way back down. Market economies are among those complex systems. Not all civilizations have market economies—some develop other ways to handle the complicated process of allocating goods and services in a society with many different social classes and occupational specialties—but those that do set up market economies inevitably load them with as many intermediaries as the overall complexity of their economies can support.
It’s when decline sets in and maintaining the existing level of complexity becomes a problem that the trouble begins. Under some conditions, intermediation can benefit the productive economy, but in a complex economy, more and more of the intermediation over time amounts to finding ways to game the system, profiting off economic activity without actually providing any benefit to anyone else. A complex society at or after its zenith thus typically ends up with a huge burden of unproductive economic activity supported by an increasingly fragile foundation of productive activity.
All the intermediaries, the parasitic as well as the productive, expect to be maintained in the style to which they’re accustomed, and since they typically have more wealth and influence than the producers and consumers who support them, they can usually stop moves to block their access to the feed trough. Economic contraction, however, makes it hard to support business as usual on the shrinking supply of real wealth. The intermediaries thus end up competing with the actual producers and consumers of goods and services, and since the intermediaries typically have the support of governments and institutional forms, more often than not it’s the intermediaries who win that competition.
It’s not at all hard to see that process at work; all it takes is a stroll down the main street of the old red brick mill town where I live, or any of thousands of other towns and cities in today’s America. Here in Cumberland, there are empty storefronts all through downtown, and empty buildings well suited to any other kind of economic activity you care to name there and elsewhere in town. There are plenty of people who want to work, wage and benefit expectations are modest, and there are plenty of goods and services that people would buy if they had the chance. Yet the storefronts stay empty, the workers stay unemployed, the goods and services remain unavailable. Why?
The reason is intermediation. Start a business in this town, or anywhere else in America, and the intermediaries all come running to line up in front of you with their hands out. Local, state, and federal bureaucrats all want their cut; so do the bankers, the landlords, the construction firms, and so on down the long list of businesses that feed on other businesses, and can’t be dispensed with because this or that law or regulation requires them to be paid their share. The resulting burden is far too large for most businesses to meet. Thus businesses don’t get started, and those that do start up generally go under in short order. It’s the same problem faced by every parasite that becomes too successful: it kills the host on which its own survival depends.
That’s the usual outcome when a heavily intermediated market economy slams face first into the hard realities of decline. Theoretically, it would be possible to respond to the resulting crisis by forcing disintermediation, and thus salvaging the market economy. Practically, that’s usually not an option, because the disintermediation requires dragging a great many influential economic and political sectors away from their accustomed feeding trough. Far more often than not, declining societies with heavily intermediated market economies respond to the crisis just described by trying to force the buyers and sellers of goods and services to participate in the market even at the cost of their own economic survival, so that some semblance of business as usual can proceed.
That’s why the late Roman Empire, for example, passed laws requiring that each male Roman citizen take up the same profession as his father, whether he could survive that way or not. That’s also why, as noted last week, so many American jurisdictions are cracking down on people who try to buy and sell food, medical care, and the like outside the corporate economy. In the Roman case, the attempt to keep the market economy fully intermediated ended up killing the market economy altogether, and in most of the post-Roman world—interestingly, this was as true across much of the Byzantine empire as it was in the barbarian west—the complex money-mediated market economy of the old Roman world went away, and centuries passed before anything of the kind reappeared.
What replaced it is what always replaces the complex economic systems of fallen civilizations: a system that systematically chucks the intermediaries out of economic activity and replaces them with personal commitments set up to block any attempt to game the system: that is to say, feudalism.
There’s enough confusion around that last word these days that a concrete example is probably needed here. I’ll borrow a minor character from a favorite book of my childhood, therefore, and introduce you to Higg son of Snell. His name could just as well be Michio, Chung-Wan, Devadatta, Hafiz, Diocles, Bel-Nasir-Apal, or Mentu-hetep, because the feudalisms that evolve in the wake of societal collapse are remarkably similar around the world and throughout time, but we’ll stick with Higg for now. On the off chance that the name hasn’t clued you in, Higg is a peasant—a free peasant, he’ll tell you with some pride, and not a mere serf; his father died a little while back of what people call “elf-stroke” in his time and we’ve shortened to “stroke” in ours, and he’s come in the best of his two woolen tunics to the court of the local baron to take part in the ceremony at the heart of the feudal system.
It’s a verbal contract performed in the presence of witnesses: in this case, the baron, the village priest, a couple of elderly knights who serve the baron as advisers, and a gaggle of village elders who remember every detail of the local customary law with the verbal exactness common to learned people among the illiterate. Higg places his hands between the baron’s and repeats the traditional pledge of loyalty, coached as needed by the priest; the baron replies in equally formal words, and the two of them are bound for life in the relationship of liegeman to liege lord.
What this means in practice is anything but vague. As the baron’s man, Higg has the lifelong right to dwell in his father’s house and make use of the garden and pigpen; to farm a certain specified portion of the village farmland; to pasture one milch cow and its calf, one ox, and twelve sheep on the village commons; to gather, on fourteen specified saint’s days, as much wood as he can carry on his back in a single trip from the forest north of the village, but only limbwood and fallen wood; to catch two dozen adult rabbits from the warren on the near side of the stream, being strictly forbidden to catch any from the warren on the far side of the millpond; and, as a reward for a service his great-grandfather once performed for the baron’s great-grandfather during a boar hunt, to take anything that washes up on the weir across the stream between the first sound of the matin bell and the last of the vespers bell on the day of St. Ethelfrith each year.
In exchange for these benefits, Higg is bound to an equally specific set of duties. He will labor in the baron’s fields, as well as his own and his neighbors, at seedtime and harvest; his son will help tend the baron’s cattle and sheep along with the rest of the village herd; he will give a tenth of his crop at harvest each year for the support of the village church; he will provide the baron with unpaid labor in the fields or on the great stone keep rising next to the old manorial hall for three weeks each year; if the baron goes to war, whether he’s staging a raid on the next barony over or answering the summons of that half-mythical being, the king, in the distant town of London, Higg will put on a leather jerkin and an old iron helmet, take a stout knife and the billhook he normally uses to harvest wood on those fourteen saint’s days, and follow the baron in the field for up to forty days. None of these benefits and duties are negotiable; all Higg’s paternal ancestors have held their land on these terms since time out of mind; each of his neighbors holds some equivalent set of feudal rights from the baron for some similar set of duties.
Higg has heard of markets. One is held annually every St. Audrey’s day at the king’s town of Norbury, twenty-seven miles away, but he’s never been there and may well never travel that far from home in his life. He also knows about money, and has even seen a silver penny once, but he will live out his entire life without ever buying or selling something for money, or engaging in any economic transaction governed by the law of supply and demand. Not until centuries later, when the feudal economy begins to break down and intermediaries once again begin to insert themselves between producer and consumer, will that change—and that’s precisely the point, because feudal economics is what emerges in a society that has learned about the dangers of intermediation the hard way and sets out to build an economy where that doesn’t happen.
There are good reasons, in other words, why medieval European economic theory focused on the concept of the just price, which is not set by supply and demand, and why medieval European economic practice included a galaxy of carefully designed measures meant to prevent supply and demand from influencing prices, wages, or anything else. There are equally good reasons why lending money at interest was considered a sufficiently heinous sin in the Middle Ages that Dante, in The Inferno, put lenders at the bottom of the seventh circle of hell, below mass murderers, heretics, and fallen angels. The only sinners who go further down than lenders were the practitioners of fraud, in the eighth circle, and traitors, in the ninth: here again, this was a straightforward literary reflection of everyday reality in a society that depended on the sanctity of verbal contracts and the mutual personal obligations that structure feudal relationships.
(It’s probably necessary at this point to note that yes, I’m quite aware that European feudalism had its downsides—that it was rigidly caste-bound, brutally violent, and generally unjust. So is the system under which you live, dear reader, and it’s worth noting that the average medieval peasant worked fewer hours and had more days off than you do. Medieval societies also valued stability or, as today’s economists like to call it, stagnation, rather than economic growth and technological progress; whether that’s a good thing or not probably ought to be left to be decided in the far future, when the long-term consequences of our system can be judged against the long-term consequences of Higg’s.)
A fully developed feudal system takes several centuries to emerge. The first stirrings of one, however, begin to take shape as soon as people in a declining civilization start to realize that the economic system under which they live is stacked against them, and benefits, at their expense, whatever class of parasitic intermediaries their society happens to have spawned. That’s when people begin looking for ways to meet their own economic needs outside the existing system, and certain things reliably follow. The replacement of temporary economic transactions with enduring personal relationships is one of these; so is the primacy of farmland and other productive property to the economic system—this is why land and the like are still referred to legally as “real property,” as though all other forms of property are somehow unreal; in a feudal economy, that’s more or less the case.
A third consequence of the shift of economic activity away from the institutions and forms of a failing civilization has already been mentioned: the abandonment of money as an abstract intermediary in economic activity. That’s a crucial element of the process, and it has even more crucial implications, but those are sweeping enough that the end of money will require a post of its own. We’ll discuss that next week.
******************
Finally, here's a note from the volunteer moderator of the Facebook page for my latest book, Twilight's Last Gleaming. By all means check it out.
"The Facebook Page for Twilight's Last Gleaming can be found at https://www.facebook.com/TwilightsLastGleaming. You are not required to have a Facebook account if you simply want to view the Page. To promote the book, the plan is for the Page to run a series of posts which will briefly describe interesting events in American history. Three posts (A.K.A. Status Updates) have already added, two on the Civil War and its aftermath and one about our earliest involvement with Russian Communists. The readership of this blog is invited to submit entries for these Status Updates. The entries should be less than 500 words, describe a specific event in American history that should have some relevance to the book, however tenuous, and end with a variant of the following tag line And to find out what happened XXX years later read Twilights Last Gleaming. The events described should hopefully crisscross all over the political and social spectrum and be written in a way that engages the reader.
"To submit an entry via Facebook, please use the Message button at the lower right of the Cover Photo on the Facebook Page. You can also add a photograph or picture file that has a horizontal orientation to the message. That will be become the new Cover Photo while your post is new. Please only send pictures or photos are not covered via copyright and can be considered in the public domain. If you want to submit an entry but do not have a Facebook Account, then send it as a comment to this blog with the header Twilights Last Gleaming Post. We look forward to seeing your entries!
"The Facebook Page also accepts Posts To Page, which should deal with any other thoughts or issues relating to Twilights Last Gleaming. Posts To Page entries will be moderated with guidelines similar to what JMG uses for comments to this blog.
"We would be delighted if Facebook users Liked the Page so they can get the Status Update posts. If you read one that you like, please Share it with your Facebook Friends, or even your non-Facebook friends. Enjoy the book!"
305 comments:
Just wondering if you've read 'the value of nothing' by Raj Patel? Granted most of what he covers has been covered in your blog. still though, he goes into real detail about the reforming of a market society to more simple economic arragements- whilst still preserving democracy. The example he uses is a really quite successful sounding experiment in democracy and simpler economic arrangements in the South of Mexico (I forget the province). Anyway, hopefully some societies around the world will manage the transition rather than reverting to plain feudalism.
You might be aware (or at least if you're in a British common law jurisdiction like New Zealand this is the case) that a small vestige of the feudal landholding system still lives on today. IN New Zealand and in other former British colonies all title to land is derived from the crown (in America is it just 'the people of the union or something?) an old feudal legacy of all title to land being granted by the king to the landlords and so on. Nowadays as a reflection of shifting social/economic circumstances property law reflects the desire to have land available to economic development. Here in New Zealand anyway, registration of title is everything, even in the case of fraud in a previous transfer of the land. Land law is entirely about abstract rights and security of title for economic development. you might as well think land were mere abstractions on a piece of paper, there for people to use with no reference to land being anything other than a plaything of humans.
Just a final thought, I wonder how much the advancement of the rights of indigenous persons will have on being able to break down the current economic and legal structures? again here in New Zealand (I think in Canada as well and in some other former British colonies) the common law doctrine of aboriginal title or customary law creates and instrument for indigenous persons to create and preserve community/ tribal based economic and legal relations, and at least up to a point, allows them to get round the intermediates. IN countries where indigenous populations are already setting up such simpler economic and legal arrangements i wonder if there might be some benefit to the non indigenous population? If they can in some way latch on to these indigenous community arrangements they might not have to completely start from scratch as the long descent gets underway. Anyway, just some of my musings.
Tom
11/5/14, 4:39 PM
MindfulEcologist said...
Or am I exaggerating the meanness of our day, lacking a proper appreciation of the general tenor of societies throughout history?
I wrote about the End of Homo Colossus this week as limits to growth bites. In your understanding do you see these sociological changes as also responding to limits? Unfairness pushed beyond what can be endured by a cohesive society?
11/5/14, 4:40 PM
Andy Brown said...
11/5/14, 4:59 PM
Greg Belvedere said...
At the risk of crossing too far into the territory of your other blog, this post has me thinking about how much the different ages (unicorn, phoenix, dragon) correspond with different economic/political systems. I see a strong connection between the late middle ages/early renaissance market economy and the phoenix age. In the same way that the phoenix age produced a balance between science and magic, it seems to have a market economy that is not excessively intermediated. Doug Rushkoff idealizes this period in his book Life Inc. as a time in between the tyranny of feudal and corporate power.
Our current dragon age system relies on abstract wealth as much as our worldview relies on abstract scientific thought. The direct connection of unicorn time seems to jive well with feudalism. Though I'm sure there are exceptions etc.
11/5/14, 5:07 PM
DeAnander said...
I am wondering whether you'd consider the high Mandarin era in China a classic example of Peak Intermediation in a slightly overripe empire? micromanagement, OTT regulation, obsessive credentialism were all present.
One thing I confidently expect to see is a growing "gray market" economy. As the rules and regs get more restrictive *and* more loony, people tend more and more to deal face2face with trusted community members under the radar, in cash, and just ignore the micromanagers. I'm thinking of the massive disconnect in the final years of the USSR between the notional official economy and the real, street economy; similar trends seem to be underway in N America now. I will name no names, but I know where I can buy some mutton :-)
11/5/14, 5:10 PM
David said...
Another thought-provoking post. The take-away that comes to me from my first read is that in this process of disintermediation (how I love that word!), one's focus should not only be on investments in primary goods (equipment, facilities for providing one's needs) or in primary skills (the abilities such as baking, weaving, etc for providing those needs), but also in *relationships*, which serve as the bedrock of the communities you describe this week...not only in the liegeman/liegelord axis, but also in the peasant village community (commoner) axis. This ideal we have inherited from the Enlightenment of the sovereign individual (and deified by such philosopher-writers as Ayn Rand) is not going to manage very well in a post-market future.
11/5/14, 5:28 PM
Tony said...
-Tony B
11/5/14, 5:29 PM
zach bender said...
i have spent about forty of my sixty-odd years working as an intermediary, writing words to create legal effects. a sort of dark magic, if you will. my only other formal education is in deconstructing narrative fiction.
i have often reflected out loud that the work i do produces nothing. until about twelve years ago i was living on borrowed money i could never realistically expect to repay, trying to maintain a suburban middle class lifestyle to which i did not subscribe. difficult to explain without going into extraneous detail.
i still so something resembling legal work for money, but on a much smaller scale. a largely voluntary simplifying that began not all that voluntarily.
i have learned to grow at least some of my own food, and i have learned to restore and repair bicycles. apart from walking, the bicycle has been my sole transportation for several years. maybe once or twice a year i will rent a car or even take a plane. unfortunately i do not at present live near an Amtrak rail line.
but i am several shifts away from being able to sustain myself without access to what is left of the market. if the crash comes sooner than later i will not be entirely ready, in terms of having the garden up and running within a community of like-minded people.
11/5/14, 5:30 PM
patriciaormsby said...
Thank you for the observations from Dante! I read a translation in high school, but was so put off with the cruelty of that age that I missed the finer points (I had a stuffy English teacher, who missed them herself). The Tokugawa government that ruled Japan from the 1600s to about 1865, as you know also, was explicit about preventing money from conferring political power, which would suggest that this had been a problem during the preceding warring period, but may be more rooted in Buddhism which the Tokugawas espoused. I have also come to see Buddhism, like other "missionary religions" that see this world as hopelessly corrupt, as a reaction to the excesses of early civilizations, with their accumulation of wealth and ultimately corruption, slavery and gross injustices.
Vladimir Putin appears to have taken a small but welcome step toward feudalism, too, according the same rights of political participation to small businesses as to large (I've forgotten where I read that, maybe Dmitry Orlov's blog). As someone who saw Russia during the Yeltsin years, and how the people suffered, and watched their lives improve when Putin came to power, I can understand his overwhelming popularity in that country.
11/5/14, 5:35 PM
Marinhomelander said...
As part of our daily and cheerful subversion of the system, my friends and I rarely buy new clothing, we go to thrift stores and get high quality items for about ten percent of what they cost new-if you could even still find them.
We also do not buy new building material, we go to a local salvage yard behind the lumberyard-hardware store in Fairfax, (California) that accepts donations of used material; everything from sinks, to bulk nails, doors, pipes, tools etc. Those that donate such things obtain storage space. Also they get a tax receipt for their donations, which equals money.
The donors preserve tremendous amounts of embodied energy which are contained in, for example, in an old American made cast iron enameled sink.
You can buy a new one of far lesser quality for 10 to 20 times as much at Home Depot, probably Chinese made junk, which sends the money out of town to Georgia. The Away Station at the lumberyard however keeps the money in the local economy where it circulates and re-circulates through the multiplier effect. If they don’t have it used, the hardware store right there, which is employee owned, also facilitates keeping money local.
Thus the debt-servicing mass retailer like Home Despot doesn’t get their cut. Nor does Wall Street, nor does the shopping center owner and the leasing agent, or the truckers, shipping companies, the debris box hustlers, nor the Peoples Liberation Army owned sweatshops in China where the new items would be made.
Buying used and going out of your way to donate unwanted things with value to those that resell them or give them away is a great way that people can participate today in what you are discussing to the betterment of society.
Of course eventually there will be no more used stuff, but that is far in the future.
p.s. It's tough to figure out who and what you are replying to. What I found works well is to copy the name you are replying to and pasting it into the Find box, then search "back" for it, which scrolls up to that which you are responding to, read their comment and then scroll "forward" down to return to your reply which contains their name.
11/5/14, 5:41 PM
Paul K. said...
It's eye opening, hearing stories of bureaucrats insist on (and fail to deliver) public safety. When really the end game, as this blog entry points out, is a turf war by the current system. Shed a tear for the bureaucrats.
11/5/14, 5:48 PM
barath said...
11/5/14, 6:00 PM
Kylie said...
My other experience outside money was with a LETS system - a community-issued currency. It was pretty good as far as it went, but suffered heavily from a shortage of marketable goods and mostly became a way to exchange services and second-hand objects. My theory was that our little economy lacked manufacturing and primary production sectors. Trying to sell hand-made goods for LETS was hard because the inputs themselves had to be purchased in cash. Bootstrapping an alternative economy is complicated!
11/5/14, 6:17 PM
latheChuck said...
And what happens when people reproduce beyond the carrying capacity of the land?
11/5/14, 6:25 PM
Janet D said...
@Mindful Ecologist....you should add to your list "endlessly dark, twisted, and depraved electronic entertainment".
We don't have cable in our house - haven't had for almost 10 years, and we only watch documentaries and cooking shows when the telly is on. Hubby & I were at a hotel last weekend (sans kids), and so we channel surfed for a couple hours. It was one of the most depressing things I think I've ever done. The vast majority of shows that we flicked through were: exceedingly dark, gratuitously violent, centered around demons, monsters, vampires, violent and hateful relationships (the human ones), and yet the characters were largely wholly uninteresting. Having grown up on The Waltons, Happy Days, Little House on the Prarie, and the Cosby Show I have to say that the change was more than a little shocking, and very telling.
11/5/14, 6:41 PM
EntropicDoom said...
The successor to the market economy will emphasize the language of the victor, but evolution will change it from what is spoken today. FIRST will be a stratification of language into dialects for each social class. The rich will affect a high status accent and add words that display their birthright and their education. SECOND will be the different accents for different parts of the country, amplified into regional dialects and perhaps into separate languages such as Spanglish in the Southwest. Farming areas that now have many Spanish speakers may find they have an influence on future regional linguistic differences. THIRD would be the influence of home grown accents as a marker for a withdrawal from the culture at large. Would cults and conservative Christian groups try to bring back the language of the King James Bible to denote their reverence? Think of the Amish in the East holding on to a form of old German. FOURTH is the gradual evolution of language that eliminates complexity and simplifies endings, word agreements and pronunciations. Common spelling would be dropped in favor of local spelling that follows local pronunciations. Writing would no longer be taken for granted as most people would be illiterate. This may not take centuries to happen. Language commonality and easy communication across vast distances may cease.
Growing up, a boy might get a tutor if their parents are rich enough. Limited home schooling will become the norm for all classes depending on the family's wealth. Poor children would be expected to work all the time and not be interested in bookwork. The separation of education into boys learning and girls learning will be influence language evolution. Higher class boys will be trained to lead and manage estates. They will be trained in fighting with the restricted martial weapons and in the way of the sword as noblemen. We will see the establishment of a proto-samurai class. The girls will be only partially educated and married off to cement the relationships between the landed families. They might be trained to run a household, but never to run an estate. The differences between raising boys and girls will be stark and will follow forgotten traditions. Equal rights will be a distant memory along with a common education. Childhood will not exist.
A tiny middle class of craftsmen and knowledge workers will be sustained by apprentice systems that will develop isolated local terms. The use of unique words will be secreted and hidden from outsiders. Breaking into the guilds will be very difficult for the lower class, even if very talented. The knowledge workers of future popular entertainment, who are writing the current verse and song, will first attempt to satisfy their patrons and then perhaps chronicle the plight of the common folk singing out in the fields. The poor dirt slaves will be the bulk of society, living well beneath the salt. They will evolve their own dialects and language to reflect their dismal lives. They will be the untrained soldiers who fight for their landed masters and who die under the sword of the warrior class that supports the tyranny of the landholders. The warriors will cement the classes in place. They will understand different dialects and what the slobs at the bottom are saying. They will be the enforcers drawn from all walks of life and relying on their physical prowess to retain their positions. They will have their own language like the police of today. A mix of crude language, first used by the early emergence of the war bands will add to the warrior's tongue. The lower classes and the warriors will communicate in taboo swear words that lend power to their crude pronouncements. Lastly the clerics of the future will be whatever the coming religious wars boil it down to. Be it a devolved version of Christian or Muslim or secular. Whatever survives will determine how people are allowed to talk to their All Mighty.
11/5/14, 6:45 PM
Ventriloquist said...
Inherited mistakes.
Huge debts
yield regrets
An horrific future quakes
-- David
11/5/14, 6:48 PM
pyrrhus said...
11/5/14, 6:49 PM
eskewis said...
11/5/14, 6:53 PM
karendetroit said...
Personally, I'd prefer take a chance on Women's Country, for myself and my daughters. Given the likelihood that the men will all be off killing each other, the society outlined by Sheri S, Tepper is not only better for the entirety of humanity and the ecosystem, it is sustainable. Some such social organization is the only thing that will keep us from the ensuing Dark Ages as the known world collapses about itself.
11/5/14, 7:01 PM
hapibeli said...
11/5/14, 7:02 PM
Kylie said...
The tax man has also tried to get his fingers in the alternative currency pot. Someone running a business in LETS or other alternative payment is required by the Australian Tax Office to estimate the cash value of their services provided, then pay tax on it as taxable income.
11/5/14, 7:06 PM
Pinku-Sensei said...
Also, your account of how the current economy is doomed to fall with the civilization that it is part of and how a new, more sustainable economic system will rise in its place fits with one of the key characteristics of ecological economists I pass along to my students: The current economic system is unreformable in order to make it more sustainable. It will have to be completely replaced, either by building a parallel system, which Joel Salatin advocates and government blocks, much to his frustration, hence his complaint that 'everything he wants to do is illegal,' or by waiting for the current system to collapse and having a new system grow organically. That contrasts with the ecological economists, who think reforming the system is worth doing. These are the same "bright green" people that you wish to make a bargain with. Got any takers on that?
Speaking of collapse and decline, last week was a bad one for the supporters of private spaceflight. First, an Antares supply rocket exploded during launch, then SpaceShipTwo crashed during a test. Fortunately, a Russian cargo ship arrived and the ISS is supplied through the end of the year. As for Justin Bieber's quarter-million dollar thrill ride to the edge of space, that will have to wait.
As for reform and protest against the current system, today was the Million Mask Mark to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day. I'm sure that resulted in some fireworks, pun intended.
11/5/14, 7:19 PM
YJV said...
What I'm interested in hearing is: what are the alternatives to feudalism in a collapsed society? Feudalism is still a system propped up by stark violence. I'm sure some collapsed societies have stumbled across some aspects of a better system.
@Tom: The last few NZ governments have succeeded in turning iwi into massive corporations, entangled in the intermediation rife-system as all other enterprises. I don't even know if there's any original indigenous tribes operating in non-market exchange left.
11/5/14, 7:30 PM
Mister Roboto said...
11/5/14, 7:49 PM
EnonZ said...
This is an intense level of intermediation, visually told. A world of technicians, grips and designers. Entirely man-made, dependent on intense flows of high quality energy, and central to the functioning of advertising supported networks.
I was going write that these intermediaries couldn't be parasitic as they were making something real, but then I caught myself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4rWEvPaZ8s
11/5/14, 7:54 PM
Yupped said...
Unfortunately, it does rather look like the grown-ups are going to do everything possible to keep all this so-called money flowing through the system, long after the quaint old notions of supply and demand have ceased to operate. So we're going to be living in a zombie money economy for a while, it seems. Fortunately we have Japan - which seems to be set up for the role of canary-in-the-market-economy - to provide a leading indicator of the economic madness to come.
I have about 20 years of productive activity left in me, plus maybe another 10 years after that. About the best I can do I think is to continue to produce as much of my own food and fuel as I can, reduce my need for money as much as possible, and try not to worry too much about those later years until I'm in them. I worry for my kids though. So if some 21st century equivalent of a feudal lord comes around to make me a deal, I might be sorely tempted.
And just to provide some optimistic relief, here's an encouraging link:
http://healthysustainableliving.blogspot.com/2014/11/food-gardening-in-us-at-highest-levels.html
11/5/14, 8:19 PM
Jeannette Sage said...
11/5/14, 8:43 PM
EnergyLens said...
Great thumbnail sketch of Marx! Last week’s post reminded me of the “Elimination” phase of capitalism referred to in David Blacker’s Falling Rate of Learning and how he derived his riff on education from Marx’s Falling Rate of Profit. I think this week's outlines what happens when the eliminated can no longer be ignored because the system of rents and derivatives breaks down.
~~~~
My copy of "Twilight's Last Gleaming" arrived in our little corner of Eastern Europe this week and is certainly cutting into my "productivity". About my only problem with you is that you produce too much high-quality content. But I suppose the number of chuckles I enjoy whilst reading more than compensates me!
In the name of saving time and reducing time spent in front of an LCD I invested in hacking together an Archdruid "News" Recipe for the wonderful Calibre e-book platform. Readers who wish to enjoy their weekly ADR and monthly WoG on an eReader (in the garden? in full sunlight!) will probably also be delighted to see that your Responses to Comments are automagically inserted below each Comment you Responded to, and that this works across multiple pages of comments.
Yes, there is a way benefit even if you don't have an eReader.
Anyone interested can download the 'Recipe' here: www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=249514
Please direct any questions you may have to me on the the mobileread site, or email my gmail account: EnergyLens at
11/5/14, 9:00 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Ecologist, no, I don't think you're exaggerating. Ours is a violent and profoundly troubled society, and that's unlikely to work out well as things get tighter.
Andy, certainly our institutional structures and systems will resist disintermediation to the last gasp. Individuals, families, and communities can make their own arrangements, though.
Greg, exactly. One of the things I've had to wrestle with in the process of writing my blog posts is that all of them unfold from a single structure of thought, but that structure isn't something that can be set out briefly -- it contradicts too many of the basic assumptions of our time, and so the explanation has to go a bit at a time.
DeAnander, every civilization in its latest and most complex phases goes in for as much intermediation as it can -- yes, late imperial China was a fine example. Gray markets are another universal in such times, and they become the only economy there is as things wind down.
David, good. Rand's "sovereign individual" has another and a more accurate name, which is "parasite" -- anyone who actually produces goods and services knows how much their work depends on everyone else.
Tony, it's absolutely standard in heavily intermediated societies for the people on the bottom of the pyramid to be forbidden to respond to supply and demand, so that they can't evade the demands of the intermediaries. What the medieval laws did was to block supply and demand straight up to the top of the social ladder.
Zach, don't worry about when the crash will come. It's already here. This is what collapse looks like in the real world -- not a sudden splat, but the ragged disintegration of business as usual, day by day, as the world changes into something else.
Patricia, nah, that's a common misconception. "Real" comes from Latin res, "thing."
Marin, I do that all the time! As for following the conversation, the best trick that's been mentioned to me consists of opening two browser windows for this comments page, using one to follow the commenters and the other to follow my responses. It seems to work.
Paul, yes, Salatin's talking about exactly the same thing I am. It's pervasive these days.
Barath, that's the gift economy in miniature -- a valid and very effective economic system, especially in small communities. I'll talk a little about that next week.
11/5/14, 9:30 PM
John Michael Greer said...
LatheChuck, the development of skilled trades is one of the ways in which feudal economics break down and are replaced by the cash economy. As for what happens when people overshoot their carrying capacity, why, they die, of course. What did you think would happen to them?
Janet, every form of human politics and economics, to me, are depressing to contemplate, because human beings are, well, human beings, and can be counted on to exploit other human beings in the usual ways. I don't see feudalism as being noticeably worse than the alternatives.
Doom, now apply the same sort of analysis, with the same negative bias, to the evolution of language in industrial society. You'll find that you can portray things just as grimly there, too.
Ventriloquist, I see our bardic circle is warming up... ;-)
Pyrrhus, of course. Did you think that any human system of political economy would remain stable forever?
Eskewis, my paternal family's from Grays Harbor -- my great-great-grandfather homesteaded near Elma, and my father went to Weatherwax High School in Aberdeen -- so I know the area tolerably well. There are old and deep-rooted reasons why things have gotten as nasty there as they have, and that's not necessarily shared with the rest of the country or the world. The town in which I live today is just as poor, and a great deal more civil. Which is to say, don't assume the worst everywhere just because that's what you're seeing where you are.
Karen, I enjoy Tepper's fiction, even though she does seem to be convinced that Y chromosomes are the root of all evil. Still, I'd encourage you to remember that fiction is, after all, fiction, and attempts to impose utopian fiction on the real world tend to have predictably ghastly consequences.
Hapibeli, that would make a good chant!
Kylie, that's why I don't tend to recommend alternative currencies. If any of those ever get big enough to matter, they'll either be squashed by the legal system or coopted.
Pinku-sensei, exactly. It's all very well to talk about reforming the system, but that would require the people who profit from the system as it is, and generally have a lot of control over it, to relinquish their profits and hand over control to the reformers. Will that happen? Not in a month of Sundays.
YJV, every political system is propped up by stark violence. Feudalism doesn't disguise its violence, is all.
11/5/14, 9:50 PM
John Michael Greer said...
EnonZ, a fine example of the species!
Yupped, exactly. As the decline proceeds, new possibilities will open up, and it's those who are attentive and unhindered by too much ideology who will be best prepared to make use of them.
Jeannette, I'm sorry to hear that, but it's a common story these days. As far as the intermediaries are concerned, your dreams are simply raw material to be strip-mined. Disintermediation is tough, but it can be done as long as you don't do the standard, expected, ordinary thing.
EnergyLens, the alternative medicine practitioner has caught the wave of the future. He knows that he'll always be able to count on help, because he's always been willing to help. Glad you enjoyed the novel!
11/5/14, 9:55 PM
Kutamun said...
Despite this , self sufficiency and the push to local food markets is growing steadily , spearheaded by many of the escaping urban green elite . Amidst a steadily deteriorating economy and climate , the local heavily corporatised shire council is attempting to extract as much wealth from the community as it can possibly can , by consistently revaluing property prices Northwards , openly attempting to precipitate a chinese speculative real estate "boom" . Let by its self proclaimed "CEO" , who seems to be representative of a fairly extensive underlying state wide business network of "service providers" , It does all this under under the aegis of "building infrastructure to accomodate inevitable growth " .
From building halls , sealing a vast network of back roads , undertaking extensive road side clearing and "management programs " ( chemical spraying) , it is effectively our first local feudal lord , increasing its effective land taxes by around 7 % each year with its drive by valuations . This against the backdrop of a geographically large but low income and elderly Shire ( as we quaintly call them here ) , high proportion of fixed incomes , being heavily eroded by rising energy and food prices , land taxes . The local liege lord whose fiefdom this has become uses a variety of local media and other thaumaturgic texhniques to cleverly the populace between new arrivals and the somewhat downtrodden and institutionalised " those who have always been here " ..
It will be fascinating to see how this plays out in terms of people either uniting to overthrow the ubiquitous cruel CEO Vortigern or wether his wielding of binary primate turf and territory wars will continue to keep any detractors who may presume to inculcate the growth of organic local community , household economy and self governance which would undoubtedly throw up its own power structures and hierarchy of leaders or Leader . Could take several decades to play out , or could happen quite quickly depending what transpires with the crumbling empire and it s seemingly distant half mythical king "Gubbermint "
I grew up in one of these one horse towns , and left ASAP to take advantage of some inherent brains and drive to get aboard the Gigantic Fossil Fuel One Off Social Mobility Train , which has served to increase my opportunities and expand my consciousness to the point where i can see all this stuff . When it ends , it will be like that dancing game where everyone takes a seat where they are at the time . What will this bring ? Will the local incumbents enforce their incumbency , will they be usurped by the cleverer of the Green Elite Saxons ?? , or some other group; whichever way it goes is sure to surprise us all .
Cheers
11/5/14, 10:17 PM
Raymond Duckling said...
This week at my hometown, Guadalajara, we are experiencing a clash between two different factions of intermediaries. On the one hand we have the established brick and mortar merchants - who pay taxes and invest heavily in conforming to the various codes and official rules - and on the other we have the street peddlers - who offer the same wares, but cheaper, out of improvised tarps on either the street or the walkside. The bounty seems to be the huge opportunity for profit on the Christmas season.
This peddlers are not small fry. They are highly organized, and there was a riot this weekend, full with a convenience store ransacked and burned police cars. The major has claimed success since "all protocols were followed to the letter" and declared that "law is un-enforzable since the area is over-commercialized" (don't worry, it makes as little sense in Spanish as it does in English).
Now, the merchant association is suing the city hall so that a federal judge forces it to actually do their jobs.
What this makes me think is that there is no absolute division between the market model and the feudal model. While I cannot know for sure, I assume individual peddlers are bind by informal word agreements to their leaders, who work to secure cooperation or at least tolerance from authorities. They still work in the market economy, which they treat as some sort of "commons" whose access to they control in a feudal way.
11/5/14, 10:38 PM
Spanish fly said...
However, what I see? Alba Aurea, the spanish guerrilla...
Holy crap, I will be in my fifties by 2025, a bit old to fight.
11/5/14, 11:41 PM
unirealist said...
I was trying to make a similar point last week when I wrote about how customs and rituals (such as usufruct and obligatory gifting and potlatch) were adopted in primitive societies. That is, feudal society resists what you call intermediation by the same means as tribal society does.
Growth, which sadly includes the parasitic behavior of "feeding at the trough" can be resisted that way, but we should recognize that seeking to capture available energies (profit, in economic terms)is not a bad thing per se.
It can't be. Our universe is a complex of systems (and is a system in itself), and that dynamic which sometimes manifests in ugly ways is what makes it possible for systems to survive and multiply.
Which is to say, I suppose, that greed and parasitism happen when healthy systemic functioning is not held in check by intellectual rigor or spiritual inclinations.
Perhaps the greatest challenge that we as a species face is to find a path between stagnation and runaway differentiation and intermediation. I don't know if such a path even exists, but I know that I don't want to live in a stultifying feudal world, yet I cringe at what we have now.
By the way, your analyses of historical change are so precise and exquisitely stated that they astonish me, and I feel safe in stating that we are all grateful for the effort you devote to these marvellous weekly essays.
11/6/14, 12:30 AM
KL Cooke said...
Come up with some characters and a quest plot and you've got a pretty good novel here.
11/6/14, 1:06 AM
Somewhatstunned said...
Not so sure it is a "common misconception"
Real=royal appeared in legal textbooks I studied many years ago, and I note that Chambers dictionary says "real (obs) royal ..Realty (obs) royalty ... OFr from Latin regalis"
You could be right of course, and of course you *ought* to be right ... on the other hand you once did repeat that canard about vomitoria :)
11/6/14, 1:18 AM
Rhisiart Gwilym said...
These days, it's not something that I bother with at all.
11/6/14, 1:36 AM
Rhisiart Gwilym said...
Payment doesn't come up, though for larger items such as a woodstove or a bike it might be offered sometimes; even so, seldom accepted; it's all in the pure gift category, not even barter needed.
The bonds of communal, mutual solidarity are strongly fortified by these habits, quite automatically. No intermediators, especially of the distant anonymous kind. And no hint of market economy.
We also grow increasing amounts of our own food, in guerrilla gardens on neglected pocket-handkerchiefs of land ('owned' by whom? probably the cement company, theoretically) on a haphazard but effective basis, and all surpluses are, without any apparent consideration, simply put straight into the gift category. No cash, or even barter, involved.
Also, several of us now heat and cook entirely, or nearly so in Winter, with sustainably-gathered wood or - for my J-tube rocket stove - sticks, from the local woodlands. My neighbour on the next mooring was remarking only yesterday that - as long as it's just a few of us in this slightly-outcast-from-orthodox-society boat-hamlet - he can't keep up with the amount of dead wood that comes available each year. And, these woodlands all theoretically 'belong' to a conglomerate corporation based in Mexico (we're in Britain), as part of it's cover-screen around 'its' clay quarry operation here, planted just to appease the local people.
So, naturally, since they don't actually contribute anything to the corporation's balance sheet, they are subjected to benign neglect, and thus regenerate themselves naturally, with masses of volunteer seedling trees jostling every year in any space that's opened in the canopy by previous deaths.
11/6/14, 1:40 AM
Rhisiart Gwilym said...
BTW, I too have masses more free time than the house-dwelling orthodox-livers hereabouts. And this would still be true even if I were working to get cash income, such little as I might need in this frugal, ultra-inexpensive, yet wholly satisfying and sufficient way of life.
But since I'm a retired elder living on a small, but for me entirely adequate state pension, as part of the post-WW2 very mild socialism that was created here, and still persists in remnants, until its inveterate enemies can complete their wrecking and privatisation programmes - well, you can imagine the low time pressure which I enjoy.
Still pretty physically fit too, what with the all the activity, and with having only a stable of bikes - one orthodox off-roader with heavy-duty home-made freight-carrier, plus various exotic home-builts - as my transportation. These are so convenient, once you're adequately pumped, that I don't even bother with elec-assist. Though, if I make it to next Summer, I shall hit seventy-five, so, you know, eventually, maybe, who knows...
(I even have, somewhere back down my priority-queue, a design for an all-weather ultra-lighweight velo like young Harald Winkler's marvellous home-built (search on YT); but who knows if I'll ever get that far down the queue?)
JM, can I make another plea for you to have a look at US physicist and mathematician Tom Campbell's Big TOE. (google My Big TOE). I know when I mentioned it before that you said you had scant faith in big theories of everything, of any kind (excepting Toynbee's though, I see :-). But Tom's is an exception, in my estimate. Such penetrating and original thinkers as you and he, who are temperamentally able to bridge the gap between the scientific and the spiritual-mystical, as you both do, need to know about each others insightful work...
Hwyl fawr i bawb! Rh
11/6/14, 1:42 AM
William Lucas said...
Hadashi
11/6/14, 2:06 AM
Bike Trog said...
11/6/14, 2:35 AM
Sleisz Ádám said...
The importance of personal commitments is something I find very intriguing in the decline process. Most of us can easily forget our dependence on whole complex systems but personal relationships set the crucial connections front and center.
The example I have in mind is justice. We fear the power of an individual judge - like the king or the landlord - because we feel the risk of abuse. Almost everything can depend on that one person, high level of trust is essential. On the other hand, if all aspects of legal process is buried into gigabytes of law and regulation systems, then we feel safer because the act of abuse is out of our radar range. Nevertheless, hijacked justice systems can be as inhumane and horrifying as one person probably never can...
11/6/14, 2:58 AM
Odin's Raven said...
Norbury
Croydon market
11/6/14, 3:41 AM
thecrowandsheep said...
What?!? How DARE you? I am disappointed in you JMG. Don't ya know that:
"Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher,..." -- Arthur Schopenhauer
Wait! There's more:
"...was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who thus joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to achieve the intellectual corruption of a whole generation." -- AS
Oh. Sorry. I spoke too soon. Carry on.
Could one call Hegelian philosophy, "philosophical intermediation"?
Ok, one more:
“...the height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been known only in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most barefaced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument to German stupidity.” -- AS
11/6/14, 3:42 AM
Marc L Bernstein said...
As you said in an old post, "collapse now and beat the rush".
Perhaps ecovillages and transition towns can be of assistance in this matter.
An old friend of mine wrote the following book on ecovillages after traveling to around 12 representative ones from around the world -
http://ecovillagebook.org/
11/6/14, 3:47 AM
M said...
I too live in a small old mill town. Mine is located on the Hudson River a little over an hour upriver from New York City. Our once boarded storefronts have seen an influx of activity, and rents are getting silly. But most of the businesses are restaurants, galleries, and knick-knack shops--(and of course, real estate offices.) Very few of the new businesses are involved in actually produces or even sells what might be called necessaries. Also, a decent number of developers have descended and at least 800 new "units" are planned around town.
The City is planning to hire an "economic consultant" (hello intermediary) to help further development.
I believe this to be a slightly different manifestation of what you are talking about, mostly found within the orbit of a center of finance and capital such as NYC. But to me, it's all just a temporary illusion, and in fact may be delaying real change.
11/6/14, 3:50 AM
Phil Harris said...
And then we discovered the Higgs boson, otherwise known as 'the god particle': smile
http://www.ibtimes.com/cern-names-first-female-director-who-also-discovered-god-particle-1719774
best
Phil
11/6/14, 4:04 AM
Kyoto Motors said...
http://www.postcarbon.org/how-to-shrink-the-economy-without-crashing-it-a-ten-point-plan/
Richard Heinberg is addressing the issue of perpetual progress here, and has outlined a plan... I can't disagree with him ideologically, but it just sounds like a more elaborate (thoughtful) version of "first we'll get rid of capitalism, then we can solve global warming"...As in, not going to happen!
Anyway, I don't think it's just a coincidence that his article is relevant to the current discussion, and it's still worth reading what he has to say.
11/6/14, 4:08 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Another benefit of direct relationships and obligations is that the powers that be are also directly answerable to the population for their stuff ups too!
Like keeping a knife constantly sharp, so too would it keep their leadership skills sharp too.
Galbraith was less than complimentary of the military leadership, political and aristocracy at the time of World War 1. Incidentally, he also cites that time as the first great crisis of the industrial era.
I had a really good point to discuss and it has completely slipped my mind now. I'll re-read tomorrow and it will surely pop back into my head. Dunno.
Meanwhile the state to the north of me and the one to the west of me have both just recorded the hottest October on record.
South Australia record breaking October
New South Wales record breaking October
I'd genuinely like to say that I'm making this stuff up because no one seems to be at all concerned...
Cheers
Chris
PS: There's a new blog post showing some cool photos of - well no rocks this week - but some stairs and part of the new shed under construction. The whole thing is made from recycled and/or downgrade materials using mostly hand or small power tools.
Plus just to get you readers from the Northern hemisphere really jealous, there's some photos of the ripening fruit: Access all areas
11/6/14, 4:10 AM
irishwildeye said...
"it was rigidly caste-bound, brutally violent, and generally unjust. So is the system under which you live, dear reader, and it’s worth noting that the average medieval peasant worked fewer hours and had more days off than you do."
Thank You JMG for this. That is a killer argument to deploy against advocates of the cult of progress. I intend to research this subject further and use it as a kind of rhetorical sucker punch, when the need arises. Many people I meet are still putting up a brave face but underneath their doubts are growing. This line of reasoning is perfectly pitched to feed those doubts.
On a change of subject the Irish people are at long last showing some signs of getting angry. You may remember about four years ago we were the victim of perhaps histories greatest financial swindle. We were made to carry half the cost of keeping the European zombie banks alive. Yet we the people did not borrow one single cent of that money. It was imposed upon us by people who spent 30 years claiming to be our friends, and who still demand that we pay back every cent.
The MSM are (as usual) missing the real point about the current Irish water protest. The anger about the great financial swindle has finally found a simple issue to focus on. It's hard to create good slogans about Credit Default Swaps, but "Our Water, Our Land, Our Forests" is rhetorical gold.
It appeals at so many levels to the Irish mind, it evokes 800 years of resistance against you know who, the 19th century struggle for the land, and ancient Celtic folk tales. Last Saturday 150,000 people protested in the rain (biggest demo in the history of the state) not to demand that someone else do something, but to state their intention to do something, by resisting.
We maybe about to find out if modern Irish people are still made of the same stuff as our ancestors. Ireland is a very small, intimate and civil society, the anger is now palpable but we are a conservative people, we produced Edmund Burke after all. Expect a major shakeup in the political landscape rather than sustained Greek style riots.
Interesting times all of a sudden in Ireland.
11/6/14, 4:37 AM
Karim said...
Is it unreasonable to think that the end of the market economy also means the end of elected democracy?
If that is so, does it necessarily mean that we ought to expect a return to dictatorial forms of government with scant regard if any to due process in law and citizens' rights?
11/6/14, 4:56 AM
Odin's Raven said...
Charlton
11/6/14, 5:13 AM
Phil Harris said...
Is this correct abot Raj Patel's book? Quote from a review by John Gray in the Guardian:
"Patel fails to confront the most fundamental contemporary fact, which is that the majority of people in every country clearly want a type of economy – the sort that rich countries have enjoyed in the recent past – that the planet cannot sustain. A passionate activist, he believes problems of resource scarcity are man-made and can always be solved by fairer distribution. However, the growth-oriented lifestyle of rich countries is not unsustainable because it is unjust; it is unsustainable because the Earth's resources are unalterably finite."
best
Phil H
11/6/14, 5:29 AM
jonathan said...
11/6/14, 5:37 AM
William Knight said...
Could you possibly elaborate and generalize? I think this kind of information about one's local community would be *very* good to know when times get tough.
11/6/14, 5:48 AM
exiledbear said...
The feudal system isn't the only one out there. Communes come to mind, like The Farm in TN, for instance.
The Amish also come to mind. I bet most of them will keep truckin' no matter what happens in the outside world.
Looking at Russia, they're still using money, although I'm pretty sure that most of them avoid it whenever possible.
I do think that the future will involve the use of much less money overall, but I'm not certain that people will organize under a feudal system again.
In any case, if all you know how to do is play office politics and schmooze in a big city, you are in deep trouble. And there are a lot of people in deep trouble, as I see it.
11/6/14, 6:17 AM
Ben said...
I read this book a little while ago. A lot of legal obstacles have been put in the way of the basic task of feeding people in a way that doesn't involve big agribusiness. I'm sure this is all info you know about, but some other readers here might find the anecdotes instructive/amusing.
11/6/14, 6:31 AM
Rita Narayanan said...
Agrarian or even simple tribal ground is driven by *ethos* whether you have a caste system or not.....the funny thing is that it is educated/activist crowd that keeps selling some romantic/egalitarian world.
I have always found the old elite in India with all its flaws better than the elite now driven by corporate culture/political corruption and showbiz
11/6/14, 6:54 AM
onething said...
"...because the “free” market is of course nothing of the kind. It’s unfree in at least two crucial senses: first, in that it’s compulsory; second, in that it’s expensive."
and this sentence, for its nice, old-fashioned complexity:
"Like most of his generation of European intellectuals, Marx was dazzled by the swamp-gas luminescence of Hegelian philosophy, and followed Hegel’s verbose and vaporous trail into a morass of circular reasoning and false prophecy from which few of his remaining followers have yet managed to extract themselves."
My ears also perked up at the mention of the just price, rather than supply and demand. I'm not familiar with the concept, but this is something I have vaguely thought of, such as when you hear that quarantined Liberians are having a difficult time getting food, and that the available food is going up in price. The implications of that are quite morally repugnant.
11/6/14, 7:00 AM
Shane Wilson said...
Seems like there was discussion of law on last week's post, and while our Byzantine legal system will definitely be thrown out, I can definitely see a need to preserve the basics of the English common law system for future generations. Concepts such such as" stare decisis" (legal precedence of court decisions) and case law, whereby court cases carry the weight of law, and a jury of your peers to judge, should be preserved through the dark ages for the future, especially when you compare common law systems with their civil law alternatives (here I'm showing my English speaking biases :)
11/6/14, 7:02 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
You also didn't mention what I had always thought were two of the major benefits provided to the peasants by the lords, and among the main reasons the peasants happily accept the arrangement: military protection and law enforcement.
Finally, I'd think that this will be a very spotty development, and will arise first in more agriculturally productive and heavily populated areas. Won't there always be hinterlands populated by individual homesteads and lone-wolf resource extractors, where geography, climate, or pedology aren't conducive to more complex economies?
Funny how "economics," which etymologically means "the management of the house," has become almost synonymous with "money."
11/6/14, 7:30 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
Kylie -- that is why I prefer gift over barter. You have a surplus, you give it to those who can use it, with no concern about receiving anything in return. Just like the mangos. Your neighbors do likewise. There's no accounting beyond your own reputation as a generous or stingy person.
Eskewis -- drug addiction and poor health are universal symptoms of poverty and despair, but that does not make people "mean." Anger and bitterness make people "mean." I live in an area that has always been poor. To quote a line from an Alabama song: "Somebody told us Wall Street fell, but we were so poor that we couldn't tell." Poor people here are generous and kind, and they have even come a long way in overcoming the xenophobia that is pretty universal in cultures that have experienced a lot of isolation.
Rotten teeth may be a universal among the poor, but meanness is not.
11/6/14, 7:48 AM
Shining Hector said...
It's always a struggle to get away from the either-or binaries. I know that's not what you really intended, but it's the first thing that I thought. It's not that hard to imagine the farmer owning his land and being a voluntary member of an organized militia for mutual self-defense. The local lord still enforces the commons and leads the militia, it's just more a milder first among equals thing than him having absolute ownership of everything. Why can't we just skip all that feudal nonsense and get straight to that?
11/6/14, 8:32 AM
Kyoto Motors said...
11/6/14, 8:52 AM
Kendo Von Beerdrinker said...
In the US, I can more easily imagine a shift away from our current heavily intermediated “free” market-based economy to some type of feudal-type economy in rural or exurban areas; perhaps in some of the more sparsely-populated suburban areas with access to natural resources (mainly water and farmable land) as well. I see a modest shift in attitude in my suburban small-town in upstate NY, where more and more people frequent farmers’ markets for food and craft items, buy (relatively) local craft beers and ciders, get milk deliveries from a local farmer and have some interest in growing their own food. I could see those changed attitudes and behaviors laying the foundation for a future feudal-type, more locally-based, economy. But what about urban areas?
At first, some may point to the “sharing economy” – as evidenced by AirBnB, Uber, Zip Cars and Citi Bikes in NYC – as evidence that urbanites can also move away from our current economic system to something less traditional. But aren’t those examples of businesses (or in the case of Citi Bikes, government programs) that are all heavily intermediated as well? I suspect that large urban economies can sustain themselves to some degree for a while as hubs of trade and commerce (and thus finance) while the more rural areas become less and less intermediated and more and more feudal. But at some point in decline (perhaps relatively quickly), I expect the urban areas will not be able to sustain large-scale populations – i.e., they won’t generate enough economic activity to sufficiently feed, clothe and shelter millions of people (with all the high-rise residential buildings, shelter may not be the problem, though in the Northeast, warm shelter during winter months may be a different story. You can’t just light a fire in the vacant apartment on the 24th floor of the high-rise in which you’ve been squatting). A heavy concentration of population, coupled with an absence of arable land, makes traditional feudal arrangements seem impossible in urban areas. I see a few things that could spring up, but none of them seem to be good options - e.g., disease might eradicate a large portion of the population; warlord/gang-type violence could do the same thing; some form of urban sweatshop-type industrial near-slavery could evolve, with workers giving up any semblance of autonomy just to survive; charismatic leaders could recruit urban populations as warriors/raiders of other areas; or, simply, widespread flight from cities to rural areas where a feudal system has already taken root (which could then overwhelm the relatively fragile economies in those areas).
Thoughts?
Casey '14
11/6/14, 9:19 AM
Claudia Oney said...
During the wonderful turmoil of the sixties and seventies male/female and diversity issues jumped out and prevented some of the progress we were hoping for back then. Sophisticated and intelligent men stuck, just stuck. I am a volunteer firefighter here in my small town and accepted and respected by my fellow firefighters. I cannot pick up some things a twenty year old male can but neither can a 70-year old volunteer (he was a member of the team that sent the first humans to the moon). We do other things and those skills are acknowledged.
These changes in attitudes may easily survive into our dark future. I believe they will and that women won't be kicked to the curb just because money becomes superfluous and the market dies.
11/6/14, 9:35 AM
Shane Wilson said...
11/6/14, 10:04 AM
Gunnar Rundgren said...
11/6/14, 10:06 AM
daelach said...
Women's Country will never be - for a couple of reasons:
1) A man's social status is the dominant attractivity factor for women, that's true even today. In such rough times, high status men will not be the nice and peaceful ones.
2) Women have equal rights today, but rights are only worth something insofar as they can be enforced. So who enforces them today? The whole intermediary system that is going to be swept away!
3) Even if we assume a Women's Country: what inevitably will happen with this country is that women will find other things more important than to have children. That means also fewer sons to defend the country, which would make this country a welcome prey for others whose women don't oppose to producing sons that can be spent in war.
4) Women could not defend this country simply because they have much less physical power for carrying weapons and gear over distance, not to mention the actual fighting.
5) Even if they tried and succeeded, they would suffer losses. The other side also, of course, but while Women's Country would loose women, the other side would just loose men. Since women and not men are the bottleneck in producing offspring, the other side could put up as many attacking men in the next generation while Women's Country would not have compensated the loss of the generation before.
4) and 5) are the reasons why war has always the domain of men. Men are expendable, women are too precious to sacrifice them in war - they have to be protected so that they can bear children which are the future of the population in question.
Furthermore, 4) and 5) are the reason why a society can allow men fighting for power (and suffering losses), eventually leading to warlords, but not women. The result, of course, will be that the winners of those fights will be men.
Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that it OUGHT to be that way in a moral sense. I'm just saying that it WILL be that way, no matter whether I like it or not.
The world will be a men's world, but that doesn't imply that it will be nice to be a man in that world - because while it will be mostly men who will rule, it will also be mostly men who will die in fighting over that rule, and last but not least will die to protect their women. Any society that wouldn't do so would be swept away by others who would.
11/6/14, 10:11 AM
Bob Patterson said...
11/6/14, 10:12 AM
daelach said...
"As for what happens when people overshoot their carrying capacity, why, they die, of course. What did you think would happen to them?"
That's not correct. They can also leave the country and go elsewhere. Historic example: Norway in the viking era. The laws were that the farm would go only to the eldest son in order to prevent the farms from fracturing until they would not have been able feed their owners. The excess sons had to go, so they boarded some dragon boats and tried their luck elsewhere, like in Lindisfarne or the Normandy. Of course, that wasn't exactly comfortable to the inhabitants of these places.
"I sometimes think we'd get a fairer system if we went the dark ages route and had contenders for office fight to the death with swords or something."
In the age of the British Empire, the young aristocrats had to go to war as officers. Clueless aristocrats isolated from reality either learnt quickly or were likely to be dead officers in short time, and not always killed by the weapons of the other side. Effectively, the result was some purging of the elite.
11/6/14, 10:28 AM
willow said...
anyway, I decided then and there that if you can sell people a five gallon bucket of worm-glo, you can sell people anything. . . ..
Why aren't Americans voting? Why are they passive when polls show they believe the system is rigged for the rich, and that the future for their children will be worse than the present?
We are addicted to the need to buy, and have things no one could say they possibly need or even want. How do you turn an addict? Pretty hard when the drug is all they know. . . . .
11/6/14, 11:17 AM
Eric S. said...
11/6/14, 11:33 AM
Rita said...
11/6/14, 11:53 AM
aglehmer said...
- Aaron Lehmer-Chang, Oakland
11/6/14, 11:54 AM
beneaththesurface said...
There are many aspects of our co-op that are probably illegal, but they are the very features I love about it:
--We have an arrangement with a more established food co-op in the area to get all their good cheese that is past the sell-by date. They can't legally sell it, so they give it to us, and we sell it for less than 10% the original cost. I regularly buy blocks of cheese for only .15, that otherwise would have landed in the dumpster.
--Any produce that is starting to go bad we sell at reduced cost. This reduces food waste, and we can get some pretty good deals for produce that is mostly good.
--Food that has started to grow moldy we put out for free. Those of us who don't mind cutting off the mold get free food, plus reduce food waste.
--Sometimes individuals bake items to sell at the coop, like bread or granola bars. Since we're outside the radar of business inspections, even though the baked goods are made in unlicensed kitchens, we get away with it.
While they're laws that forbid these kind of business practices, if one is careful enough to keep a low profile, sometimes one can get away with it. I have no qualms with participating in illegal activity like this that I know is harmless and a saner choice.
11/6/14, 11:58 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
As for the Amish, around here there "Old Order" is a dying breed. Most use power tools, gasoline and diesel powered farm equipment, and are increasingly tied into and dependent on the outside market economy. As I say about one Amish friend of mine, he has a newer car, a better camera, a more expensive cell phone, and a shorter beard than I do...
The Old Ways mostly survive in books and among re-enactors. It will remain to be seen if these seeds are adequate.
Marc -- you mentioned "transition towns." I live in one of those, and there is next to nothing going on. They embraced some weird oxymoronic thing called "financial permaculture," slapped the word "green business" on everything, and then when the financial collapse came they seem to have sputtered away. It seems to now be reduced to quasi-survivalist "preppers." Not sure, but I think it may have been that old universal buggaboo of clashing personalities. I was never involved with them myself.
11/6/14, 12:05 PM
Laylah said...
@willow that's exactly WHY people aren't voting -- if the system is rigged in favor of the corporations, what does it matter which puppet they're currently buying off? To get engaged in voting, activism, or some other kind of movement for change, you have to believe that it's *possible* to change things for the better. That belief is at a serious ebb these days.
11/6/14, 1:00 PM
Jon from Virginia said...
11/6/14, 1:07 PM
Ed-M said...
Another fine article! I especially like your take-down of the so-called 'free market'. It really is unfree, in every sense of the word. One really must prostitute oneself in order to become some corporation's slave.
Re your reply to Ecologist: yes, I expect things to get even uglier and people even nastier as the market economy and market society continue to collapse, too.
Now on the elections front: yes, people did vote for the GOP, almost across the board, because of his failed presidency and Congress' inability to work together, plus Obamacare! But I really don't expect any change except what the GOPsters have been "threatening", ie, they'll try to push through draconian pieces of legislation that Obama will veto, they'll even gut Obamacare (the individual mandate they will leave in place, and give it some TEETH), but they won't get rid of it. And yes, they'll try to impeach the President as well. On that last bit, maybe they should ask Gingrich, Livingston and Hastert how well the previous attempt went over for them and their GOP majority house.
11/6/14, 1:24 PM
Mettrodome said...
11/6/14, 2:06 PM
exiledbear said...
Well, whether you want it or not, more money is what they're about to give you. Japan has gone full retard with monetization, they are funding all their deficit spending with money printing now.
This will eventually infect all the other paper systems out there, since they're all interlinked with each other.
It's just a question of when at this point.
Not to say that afterwards, when people stop taking their salary or showing up to their job seriously, then the use of money will probably fade away.
11/6/14, 2:09 PM
daelach said...
The political right to vote can't be separated from the economic question who can afford the agitation, just as the political right of press liberty can't be separated from the economic question who owns the press.
Besides, no matter for whom they vote and what he/she promised to do afterwards, the voters will be cheated anyway. Every little shop is liable that the products sold actually meet the promises of the ads, but politicians have made the laws so that this principle doesn't apply to them.
So if it doesn't matter who wins the elections because it will roughly be the same afterwards anyway, there is no point in voting.
Except of course some protest voting, which is basically how a fascist movement gets going. Because the so-called democratic parties have long since abandoned the voters and democracy alltogether.
11/6/14, 2:25 PM
Vicky K said...
The book Sex at Dawn makes a good case for a biological tendency for humans to be matrilineal rather than patriarchal. This is not a mirror image of patriarchy.
Bonobo's and humans are the only great ape with occult ovulation. That is, sexual activity is unlinked to only times of fertility. Females are more or less sexually available regardless of fertility status. In great contrast to the other apes which have clear signals for availability. Maybe as little as a couple weeks every few years. Plus some male sexual characteristics [gonad and penile size relative to body size] that put us squarely in the matrilinial camp versus the chimp or gorilla modes of mating and social organization. This is not trivial variation.
Obviously we have the capacity to be patriarchal as that is the norm for several thousand years. It seems to be tied to civilization itself. And may have to do with the institutionalized violence towards members of the group rather than the violence directed outward towards competing groups. In simpler societies there is solidarity within the group and the other groups are demonized. In a civilized society the hierarchical stratification allows for much more institutionalized in-group violence.
I am not arguing that simpler cultures are not violent. It does seem that egalitarian cultures are found in hunter gatherer cultures almost exclusively. In herding cultures it appears that whichever sex owns the animals is the dominant sex. The concept of property has arisen.
There are lingering cultures of more egalitarian and or matrilineal bent even now. Which certainly indicates that whatever human nature is, it isn't exclusively patriarchal by inclination. The biggest indicator to me that patriarchy as a social option is a kind of forced condition is the amount of policing and social conditioning it takes to keep it going. Reproductive rights of women are still being wrangled over in our congress. Jeez
It is funny to me that one of the reasons men think patriarchy is so swell is, like rock stars, it is about access to sex. At least for the alpha's and beta's. In matriarchy's it is far more common for there to be sex for everyone ad lib. I am not painting a sexual paradise, but something a lot closer to it than what we have now.
Isn't it telling that when the civilized conquer the tribal or H/G cultures they always say how lazy and overly sexual they are, justifying their taking of the land and destroying the culture?
11/6/14, 2:44 PM
roland said...
just finished star's reach.
what a great read.
the elwusses surely cracked me up.
that is once i got the joke.
Would it be too much to hope for another novel that explores the history of this fascinating world?
@kutamun
you are not talking about the clarence shire by any chance? if so we should get together for a beer some time.
11/6/14, 3:01 PM
Johnny said...
This is my first time posting but I've read many of your books and regularly read this site. This is fairly off topic, but this link really made me think of you and didn't know how else to send it to you:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/10/29/video-native-hawaiians-explain-why-goddess-pele-and-her-lava-are-welcome-guests-pahoa
11/6/14, 3:30 PM
YJV said...
@JMG: an update on the article I posted earlier, a 'less polemic source' indeed, in fact a central mouthpiece of American imperialism:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/11/04/how-an-american-prison-helped-ignite-the-islamic-state/
Also, as far as hare-brained ideas go this is the worst I've seen in a long while. Even advocates of progress are turned off: http://www.sciencealert.com/world-s-first-solar-road-opens-in-the-netherlands
11/6/14, 4:08 PM
Robert Mathiesen said...
But first of all, societies are not sentient organisms in and of themselves. The sort of logic you outline, though easy enough for most individual people to carry out, is beyond the capacity of people in the mass, or of any society. (That's the howling big error in popular sociobiology.)
But there's more to consider, and it is -- or it should be -- well worth highlighting here ...
Most men have hardly any idea of the things women talk about when there are no men around, or the determination with which certain kinds of information are kept from most men by most women -- and especially how much a few women, even in our days, know about certain things that men hardly ever pay much attention to. For the women, this is an effective means means of gaining and keeping power subtly when the other side (= men) has the preponderance of physical strength.
In the world that's coming, child mortality will be very much higher, and adult mortality significantly higher, than at present. Individual deaths will be much less likely to be investigated, for deaths will be mere everyday happenings, arousing less suspicion than they do now.
Remember that many subtle means of dealing death lie firmly in the hands of those who cook, and brew, and preserve food, and gather food in the wild.
When oppression becomes too great, oppressors often tend to die off in larger numbers than formerly ... That tendency can show up, for instance, in a greater number of male babies who do not survive the early weeks of their life, or a greater number of warriors who do not respond well to treatment of wounds that would not have killed their great-grandfathers if treated in ways that seem the same to an outsider.
The subtle ways to deal with any imbalance or any oppression too great to bear, are endless.
11/6/14, 5:02 PM
Cake the Small said...
http://m.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/is-bank-of-japan-governor-haruhiko-kuroda-a-genius-or-madman-20141105-11hdj6.html
11/6/14, 5:02 PM
Chris G said...
Anyway, here's an example of developing totally harmless black markets that the useless class wants to crush: it's a food market, that is technically not permitted, thus illegal, that spontaneously puts on a show of being a picnic whenever some bureaucrat arrives ...
http://www.splendidtable.org/story/when-authorities-arrive-this-illegal-street-food-market-turns-into-a-picnic
Captcha 1314
11/6/14, 5:05 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Raymond, actually, "the law is unenforceable because the area is overcommercialized" makes perfect sense in English, so long as you remember that "overcommercialized" means "good at bribing the police"... ;-)
Spanish Fly, well, it's a work of fiction, after all! The idea is that the Greek Golden Dawn party becomes a template for anti-EU agitation throughout southern Europe, and that sparks insurgencies in several places; still, that's only one of many things that could happen.
Unirealist, thank you. I don't offer feudalism as a utopia; it's simply what tends to emerge once a civilization finishes crashing, because it has a very high degree of resilience, which more complex social forms generally lack.
Stunned, hmm! Interesting. I could be wrong, of course.
Rhisiart, that's the sort of community around the edges of the existing order that, under the right circumstances, becomes the seed from which a new and less complex order can sprout. Of course it can be crushed as well if the circumstances are wrong, but that's the risk you run.
Hadashi, funny!
Trog, I've had similar experiences, and they reinforce my enthusiasm for a TV-free life.
Sleisz Ádám, I think it depends on what you're used to. In much of the rural US, people are much happier having decisions made locally, even if they're made by corrupt local politicians, than they would be having decisions made by faceless bureaucrats a thousand miles away.
Raven, fascinating. I borrowed the name from Tolkien, actually.
Crowandsheep, interestingly enough, I'm rereading The World as Will and Representation right now. Yes, Schopenhauer used to insist that Hegel was a deliberate fraud, who set out to make himself look like a deep philosopher by deliberately stringing together incomprehensible statements so that everybody would think he was too profound for them to understand. All things considered, I think the old grouch of Frankfurt was probably right.
11/6/14, 5:08 PM
John Michael Greer said...
M, your town is close enough to a big city to whore itself out to the machine. Mine is a good hour's drive from the nearest point where that's taking effect, thus the difference.
Phil, I tried to come up with some way to work in a boson joke with Higg son of Snell, but couldn't think of one!
Kyoto, Richard Heinberg's on the respectable end of the peak oil scene, and he and Post Carbon Institute need to be able to point to a coherent plan for getting through the approaching mess when people in power demand one -- even though I think they're aware that such a plan will never be adopted. One of the reasons I value my position on the lunatic fringe is that I don't have to divert energy into such exercises. (Besides, if I need to point to a plan, I can simply point to Richard's -- it's a good one.)
Cherokee, exactly. Local rule always involves some element of local responsibility, if only the fear that one of the locals will put an arrow or a bullet in your back the next time you go hunting.
Irishwildeye, I'm glad to hear it. The Irish people got screwed by that "bailout" scam -- if Ireland had gone ahead and done what Iceland did, you'd be out of recession by now, and I think a lot of people know it. As for the difference in working hours from the Middle Ages to now, I wonder if you could document how many hours a day, how many days a year peasants worked in Ireland under British rule, and compare it to current conditions -- that might be interesting to contemplate.
Karim, elected democracy and civil rights are not necessarily related to one another; in fact, elected democracies have routinely been guilty of extreme violations of human rights, just as nonelected governments have quite often granted extensive civil rights to their citizens. How leaders are chosen and what standards of conduct they obey are not necessarily related to one another!
Raven, thanks for the link.
Jonathan, yes, and that's also a good approach. The gift economy is a classic way of arranging the distribution of goods and services, after all.
William, that's a long and tangled tale. Talk to the local oldtimers sometime about how things unfolded as the lumber mills and fisheries shut down.
Bear, feudal systems pop up pretty consistently in the wake of a fallen civilization, so I suspect some variant of one is in our future, too.
Ben, thanks for the recommendation!
11/6/14, 5:25 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Onething, thank you. I don't know how easy it is these days to find details about the medieval economic theory of the just price -- modern economists have gone out of their way to snub it, of course -- but it might be worth looking into.
Shane, preserving the common law tradition strikes me as a very good thing, too. Any thoughts about how to do it?
Bill, good -- yes, the sort of mature feudalism I outlined comes after some centuries of less organized and more haphazard arrangements, and I'll make time to talk about those as we proceed.
Hector, the impromptu local militia of peasants headed by a local landowner on a horse is what eventually turns into feudalism, rather than the other way around -- so you're onto something. More on this as we proceed.
Kyoto, exactly.
Kendo, the large cities that are on the coasts are going to be underwater in the next couple of centuries. Those further inland will either be abandoned or, like Rome in the post-Roman dark ages, will be inhabited by a tiny fraction of their pre-decline population. A large city can only sustain itself if it can bring in very large amounts of resources from outside, and that capacity goes away in a dark age; there are also public health issues, which I'll be getting to as we proceed. Remember that the population at the bottom of the curve will be much smaller than it is now, and a disproportionate fraction of the dieoff will happen among the urban population. More on this later.
Claudia, I'm minded to agree. It's hard to say for sure, but my take is that something fundamental has shifted in gender relationships in North America, at least, and societies here in the future will not conform to the sort of stereotypes you get from the right these days. For that matter, the women of dark age Europe were not exactly a bunch of fainting wallflowers -- historical records and literature alike are full of women who were enthusiastic participants in the savagery of the time.
Shane, a lot of my readers use social media, a friend volunteered to set up a Facebook page for my novel, and since book sales put food on my table, it seemed reasonable to post a discussion of that here. Do I use social media? Bright gods, no -- I'd sooner dine daily on live tarantulas. Still, I'm not in the business of telling other people what to do.
Gunnar, no question, the market economy has no shortage of fatal flaws when confronted with the limits to growth -- I simply focused on one of them. The two you've named are also in there, of course.
Bob, exactly. It's easy to feel optimistic about the future if every other industrial nation on the planet has been bombed halfway back to the dark ages.
Daelach, of course you're right that some can try to migrate. Under most circumstances, the death toll for would-be migrants under those conditions is extremely high, but it's an option.
11/6/14, 5:45 PM
Bill Pulliam said...
So I'm failing to see a huge difference here...
11/6/14, 5:54 PM
Kyoto Motors said...
As for Facebook, well, I was a little stunned, but as a (disciplined) user myself I will defend the practice simply by saying it is slightly uselful tool in some regards, and (given the discipline/ disinterest)a minor waste of time at worst...
What's more, one could possibly describe this comments forum as a type of social media, proving that the technology/medium is not inherently a bad thing...
11/6/14, 6:24 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Eric, you're missing the crucial point, which is that the bottom doesn't drop out; it just keeps leaking, and individuals fall out of it -- losing their jobs, their homes, etc. That's what makes the transition as gradual as it is; at any given point, there are some people who have already collapsed and are finding their feet in the new Third World economy of deindustrializing America, some who have just fallen and may or may not survive, and some who are insisting at the top of their lungs that it can't happen to them -- until it does.
Rita, for what it's worth, I don't think it's inevitable, either. The whiny tone I hear so often from men who insist that it is inevitable is one of the things that makes me think that.
Aglehmer, excellent -- that's really good news. I hope that sort of thinking catches on more broadly.
Beneath, that's also very good to hear. That sort of underground economic arrangement is probably the wave of the future, at least in large parts of the US.
Jon, thanks for the recommendation! I'll put it on the to-read list.
Ed-M, I don't expect any significant change until the wheels fall off the political system, however that happens. We may have two parties but we have only one set of policies, and they don't work. Gah.
Mettrodome, well, how much power do you have to influence the behavior of a bureaucrat or local politician who decides to put some additional financial burden on you? There really isn't that much difference.
Vicky, I didn't say that. I said that drawing your model for a gynocentric culture out of a science fiction novel probably wasn't a good idea. Of course there are variations in how egalitarian or hierarchically stratified human societies can be, and a galaxy of variables determines how that works out. Mind you, I'm far from certain that a matriarchal society would be by definition any less oppressive than a patriarchal one, but that's another matter.
11/6/14, 6:48 PM
Charles Blair said...
My question is whether anything argues against our society's (whether American, Chinese, Indian, or whichever is in a position to do it) reaching "escape velocity", by which I mean developing a source of energy that is not fossil-based. One hears of such things periodically in the science press.
I can think of several arguments against this. For example, the fossil-based energy it will take to perfect those technologies is more than is available, or society as we know it will collapse before we can do it. But is there any way we can demonstrate that it can't happen, other than that it didn't happen in the past?
Stoics, among others, had a cyclical view of history. Yours is an empirical point of view. Empirically, then, can we guarantee that this vision will come to pass in some way, shape, manner or form, or is it possible that our society (again, thinking of "our" very broadly) will achieve "escape velocity", i.e., escape from past patterns?
11/6/14, 6:56 PM
xde345 said...
11/6/14, 7:09 PM
Violet Cabra said...
Let's say that Higg broke his billhook. Would he arrange to get a new one by trading a sow with the smithy, promise a concrete fraction of his years crop or some other arrangement entirely?
Even a feudal system, as stripped of social complexity and efficiency as it is needs skilled laborers to function. Blacksmiths and thatchers come immediately to mind. I imagine that artisans are caste-bound to their profession, but am not sure. Could Higg become a smithy if he studied on his off days and weekends, or is the feudal system arranged to prevent most all social mobility?
11/6/14, 7:12 PM
patriciaormsby said...
i see you are very busy (=popular, you deserve it), so if I don't have a specific question, I may urge you not to respond if I'm just giving information of general interest. I note lots of people take time to read through the comments here. You moderate them well.
One thing that is different about the current collapse "this time" is its universality. I admit that is a trifling point, if the average person in the past couldn't just pick up and move to a better location. OTOH, my great grandparents left Germany when they saw where it was headed, and there are lots of ex-pats sitting around in various countries making bets on how our respective domiciles are going to fare.
Japan is heading toward the drain, and will soon start circling it. With a food self-sufficiency ratio of 39%, which will be less when fossil fuel inputs decline, things are not going to be pretty here. Intermediation has advanced in Japan possibly even more than in America, because the people are very patient and conservative, and they go along with it.
Thirteen years ago, my husband and I moved to a deeply rural part of Japan and began organic gardening. In order to buy farmland in Japan, one has to have farmer qualifications, which can be either inherited or obtained by renting a specified land area and cultivating it for three years, documenting this effort.
(It was a laudable attempt to keep farmland from falling to rampant speculation during the bubble years. Of course, there were loopholes, and a lot of farmland got lost to development anyway.)
My husband managed to obtain these qualifications this year, and started looking for suitable farmland. Six months later, the only land we've been shown was places we could have bought without the qualifications: highly taxed residential land and waste land with no farming potential. We received no written documentation of our qualification, just oral assurance. We are told we would not be eligible for subsidies anyway, without which it would be economically impossible to farm full time. The agricultural association refuses to tell us about land coming up for sale. We've learned that the mostly elderly farmers who receive subsidies have to toe the line with the ag association, or they lose their subsidy. That means they must buy all their seed, chemicals and equipment at exorbitant prices from thea ag association. This has bankrupted many of them, and they keep taking out loans through the ag association to keep going. Many are so deeply in debt that they have disowned their children to prevent them from having to inherit the debt. So after they die, the ag association takes over the farm. We see lots and lots of fallow land reverting to forest, from which it is very hard to recover. If there is an individual or corporate owner, they cannot let it go fallow, or severe taxation is applied retroactively. I suspect the ag association expects to sell these lands when it can be done profitably to non-farming interests.
Meanwhile, the ag association invests its wealth in semi-legal or sometimes illegal ventures that are profitable--much like the mafia.
I won't go on, but the government is simply riddled with such examples. My husband is totally against going outside the system to get by. He'll be furious if I defy him and buy marginal waste land, but it would be better than having nothing at all.
11/6/14, 8:01 PM
Matthew Casey Smallwood said...
11/6/14, 8:12 PM
wiseman said...
Amazing turn of events...here in India a number of educated Dalits (the fourth caste) feel that cities & capitalism/America can provide salvation. Infact, it is an international North-South thing where the industrial city saves the disempowered from the rural agrarian shackles.
Umm, it's not just a feeling, it's real. It feels good when someone doesn't want to take a bath after shaking hands with you or doesn't care if they you are sharing a meal with them.
11/6/14, 8:18 PM
LewisLucanBooks said...
I pay very little rent, but there are some (very informal) obligations. And benefits. I have to keep the place up. if the roof blows off, he'll replace it. If the hot water heater blows out, it's my responsibility. I can grow and forage quit a bit of my own food. I always make sure to gift some of it to my landlord. I use the main floor of the house, but the basement and second floor are reserved for his storage. I'd like to put in a wood stove, but he judges the chimney to be to "iffy", even with a new liner. Last week I took him to run errands in town (his vehicle, his gas) and today, a doctor trip the long distance up to our state Capitol.
The Lord of the Manor isn't in good physical shape, but, has promised to write into his will that I can stay here as long as I want. There is a Lady of the Manor (who I keep on the right side of), an evil step-son lurking about the place and two daughters who live at quit a distance. Things could get interesting when the Lord, passes.
My 11 hens are now laying about 5 dozen eggs a week. I gift most of them. Some to my landlord, some to two friends who have skills I don't. The Postal lady gets an occasional dozen. Anything left over goes to the ladies at the library. I like giving stuff away. I'm looking forward to producing more fruits and veg to gift. When I bother to think about the gifting, if I want to be calculating about it, I just think of it as "social currency."
11/6/14, 9:01 PM
Dandy said...
11/6/14, 9:05 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Johnny, the native Hawai'ians know what they're talking about, as usual. It's the haoles that are clueless about Pele, again as usual.
YJV, thanks for the links -- and yes, that last is way up there on the idiocy scale.
Cake, we do seem to be moving into the endgame, don't we? It promises to be entertaining, in a Grand Guignol sort of way, from here on in.
Chris, thank you -- and the picnic disguise is great! Many thanks for the link.
Bill, there's basically no difference. Why do you think the term is still "landlord"?
Kyoto, that's why I specified live tarantulas -- I'm fond of eating arthropods generally, with crab and lobster near the top of the list, so would be willing to try a well-cooked tarantula.
Charles, okay, let's start with the basics. Just coming up with a non-fossil energy source won't cut it; we'd need an energy source that was at least as abundant and concentrated as fossil fuels, and preferably much more so, which could be used without wrecking the biosphere. We'd also need replacements for all the other nonrenewable resources we're drawing down so rapidly, and these replacements would also have to have no negative impacts on the biosphere. Finally, we'd need some economically viable way to make all our pollutants permanently harmless. Lacking any one of those steps, all you've got is a brief delay in our civilization's face-first collision with the limits to growth.
Now, do we have any reason to think that any of these things can be supplied? No, we don't. More than a century of increasingly frantic research into alternative energy sources has failed to turn up anything that can substitute for fossil fuels on an economically viable basis, and the other two issues aren't looking very good either. Nor do we have any reason to think that such a thing as "escape velocity" in the sense in which you're using the term exists at all. I would describe it as a faith-based claim, more like the reasoning behind the cargo cults than anything else. While one can't prove its impossibility, proving a negative is notoriously hard -- I also can't prove that there isn't a teapot of solid gold in orbit around Pluto, but that doesn't mean that belief in such a teapot is justified.
XDE, that's an interesting project! I wonder if the funding could be gotten to carve those lessons on a stone monolith somewhere.
Violet, Higg and the blacksmith would barter for the billhook, of course. Two suckling pigs and a barrel of ale later, Higg is the owner of a nice new billhook, which will still be in use in his grandson's time.
Patricia, none of this surprises me. That's one of the reasons that seaborne refugees from Japan have featured in several of my stories about the deindustrial future.
Matthew, of course intellect had a very large share in it. C.S. Lewis comments in The Discarded Image that medieval Europe was a profoundly bookish society, with deep respect for the written knowledge that had survived from the classical past, and from the days of the early monastery schools onward, logic was a fundamental part of every literate person's education. I'll be talking about this in much more detail in the upcoming series of posts about education.
11/6/14, 9:48 PM
John Michael Greer said...
11/6/14, 9:52 PM
patriciaormsby said...
Japan, by contrast, was protected by treacherous seas, making the defense of its coast a simple deal until modern times. They had elements of a matriarchy as recently as a thousand years ago (and actually, they still do, if you look hard enough). One of those was the high priesthood at the highest shrine in the land, Ise, passing from mother to daughter. During the medieval warring period, however, women's position really declined (and Buddhism also brought in misogynistic baggage it had acquired on the continent), and women's priesthood was abolished about 400 years ago. Women's rights in Japan have taken a big step forward in the modern time of peace, but I'm still typically paid half what a man would be.
Here, let me get out my crystal ball (Sears & Roebuck)...I see a time when women will really suffer because they cannot or will not be allowed to fight like men, and be called inferior again, as violent males vie for whatever resources still exist anywhere on planet Earth. That will eventually pass, though, and if you can get yourself and your daughters established on an island in the meantime, there may be brighter days. Wherever you happen to be, though, a determined woman has always been able to do what she wants to do--or else die trying, which is the fate of men, when you come to think of it.
On gay rights, outside of the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic dominated regions, the outlook is much brighter. In fact, in Medieval Japan, homosexual love was considered superior to heterosexual, largely because they had come to despise women so much as "impure."
11/6/14, 10:13 PM
KL Cooke said...
As I understood it,antidisestablishmentarianism was the second longest non-thechnical word in English. The longest until now was floccinaucinihilipilification. However, with your coinage of antidisintermediationarianists we have a new champ. Congratulations.
11/6/14, 10:27 PM
Raymond Duckling said...
Without doubt knowing how to grease the wheels of law has something to do with what's going on over here... but there's a novel aspect to this scenario. Either the bane or the fulfillment of modern democracy: the smart phone.
If you have a vassal, and the vassal has a smartphone, on election day he and his adult relatives can produce hard evidence of having voted for whatever candidate you told them. And if you have a couple hundreds of such vassals, it gives you chips to deal in the corridors of power that no mere bribes can buy.
11/6/14, 10:30 PM
KL Cooke said...
I'm dealing with that issue now. I have twin granddaughters, age 9. I have been attempting to introduce them to the concepts associated with the decline of industrial civilization. Their mother, my daughter, ever an optimist, has chided me for this, on the grounds that it scares them.
Certainly I have no wish to scare them. On the other had I feel I would be remiss in permitting them to believe in a future similar to what they know now.
11/6/14, 10:43 PM
Donald Hargraves said...
First: for those thinking about the elections, here's some figures from the "great state" of Illinois, one that had recently gone from a Democratic Governor to a Republican Governor:
(info from Wikipedia, so treat with however much salt you feel you need)
Gubernatorial Election 2006: 3,487,989
Presidential Election 2008: 5,528,499
Gubernatorial Election 2010: 3,729,989
Presidential Election 2012: 5,242,014
Gubernatorial Election 2014: 3,508,302
Also, while the Rauner got 7/8ths of the votes that Romney got two years ago, Quinn only got slightly more than 1/2 of the votes that Obama got.
The implications are obvious: The leftists love talking about "popular vote," but they seem hell-bent on finding Magical Men (or Women, in the case of Ms. Clinton) to fight their battles, whereas the Conservatives, Tea Partiers and Religionists are willing to fight every day (and every election). Further, it shouldn't surprise when "leftist presidents" keep tacking to the right – they're the ones in the agora day-by-day. FDR himself pointed to that point when he told a bunch of people wanting the progressive programs of the 1930s: "Good ideas – now go out and make me do them."
Second: There are legal documents from pre-Norman England in which woman are referred to as "he." This is because, in the post-Roman collapse, the idea of using gender for pronouns got thrown by the wayside in the attempt to create a language the various Germanic peoples could communicate with. Along with this, of course, women came close to actual equality – without having to hide behind stealth activities, as some of our distaff commenters have fantasized about. The necessities of Feudal society (cooperation and all that) are enough to destroy all but the barest shadows of Patriarchal (i.e. Male rule to the oppression of the female) society, and the English language of 1000 both echoed and enforced that equality.
11/6/14, 11:08 PM
Rita Narayanan said...
note to JMG and @wiseman with due respect I live in India and it is much better to make a point rather than act as if someone is a fool or an inhuman dud.
many of the points raised about the future by futurists would also be *not accepted* by modernity.It is also easy to live in 24 hrs hot water, electricity and A class public toilet world and think one would act as Jesus did.:) Thanks!
11/7/14, 1:26 AM
averagejoe said...
Having read your articles for many years, I continue to ponder how the collapsing industrial empire will affect my, rather small country, compared to the US. I can see how such a large country as the US, can only continue to function in its current state thanks to oil. Virtually all food has to be transported over vast distances by truck to the customers. In the absence of oil, it will be impossible to maintain control as today. Adapting to a new normal is likely to be extremely disruptive and chaotic. But in a small country with a long history of civilisation such as mine, I can’t help but think it will be slightly different. Even Scotland’s ‘large’ capital city Edinburgh, is tiny compared to cities in the US. It existed without oil very successfully. I doubt the rural areas will become bandit lands like large parts of the US could. Old approaches to problems could well be re-invented. Local production of flour and paper, via watermills for example. Use of the existing canals for transporting goods, drawn by horse. New employment would be created as the farms surrounding the small towns and cities, de-mechanised and sought labour to replace machines. In essence a rural repopulation, counteracting the trend over the last 100 years of rural depopulation. I suspect political power will be devolved as well, mostly likely reluctantly. The recent failed attempt to get independence, was simply because the vote was too soon. As the economy continues to deteriorate, and crisis becomes the norm, rule by Edinburgh rather than distant London, will become an inevitable step. Power may well end up devolved more to local councils as well. Will this be sufficient to prevent the situation transforming (declining?) into some sort of neo-feudalism or even a new dark age? I’m not sure. It depends to how well society can adapt to its new circumstances. Some societies may cope better than others, depending on the types of values they have and there level of adaptability. Perhaps modern day Cuba a good proxy as to how a simplified Scotland could work, in terms of coping without technology and oil. What do you think?
11/7/14, 2:37 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Many thanks! A handshake and a promise doesn't sound like much, but it is enough for me. Yes, and I would hold them to it too, in the most honest and brutal way that I could.
The thought popped back into my head this morning! I'd only just finished the chapter written by Galbraith in his book "The Age of Uncertainty" on "The rise and fall of money" and I admit that he spelled out the system and its history in such unambiguous terms that I freely admit that previous concerns about currency have now evaporated completely. Both you and he are correct, they will think of something is actually an adequate response to my former fears of a currency collapse in or a sell off of the US dollar.
Truly, I had little idea about the mechanisms of the money system before reading that, but oh boy is that one scary bit of text. The mechanism's are now all too clear to me...
Anyway, moving on. I'm first and foremost a pragmatic sort of a guy and I started thinking about a meme surrounding the economy that has seriously annoyed me of recent months. The answer finally bubbled to the surface this afternoon.
Historically, printing money has always led to inflation. It is hard to get around, but that is what generally happens. Few can dispute this too as it is grounded in history. A simple rule is involved: The greater the supply of money, the less stuff that money will be able to purchase.
Yet, time and time again I keep reading comments here saying, such and such reckons that we're all headed for a deflationary period. Whoopee for us!
Such claims have always annoyed me as they seem quite unusual an unexpected compared to historical events.
Yet, those same commenters can point to official inflation figures saying that inflation is low and all is good with the world of economics.
I always knew something was a bit off about those comments but never really had enough of a chance to think the subject through completely.
There are plenty of sharper tools in the toolbox than I, but I'm not heavily invested in the status quo so I have a bit of freedom that most don't enjoy.
Housing has always troubled me. It is my opinion that the hyper inflation that would usually rear its ugly head during an expansionary and prolonged period in the money supply (i.e. rolling the printing presses) is being expressed here in the housing market. I can't speak for other countries, but I've go a good feel for here.
People point to official inflation figures and cry, "but inflation is low". It is my gut feel that housing costs increases are often offset by reductions in the costs of many goods which are now manufactured offshore in really low cost environments or are just of a much lower quality than previous times. Both situations reduce costs for goods and thus the official inflation rate.
How else do you explain house prices for a two bedroom house in the inner north of Melbourne for well over AU$900,000. How else do you explain an increase of 15% for two years in a row in the housing market whilst inflation remains low?
Honestly, the thing that annoys me the most about the situation is that people that are in the housing market and looking for a quick buck, can be guaranteed to predict a deflationary outcome and cheer on the market, because it suits their worldview.
Older people that have enjoyed the benefits of that increase in their asset base due to rising house costs are just hoping for a deflationary event so that they can comfortably cruise through retirement.
But if you're locked out of the housing market and wondering how you are ever going to buy in at those prices, mate you'd be angry. And I mean really angry.
Now, I will say from memory, the house price bubble kicked off in earnest here at about the same time that our major trading partner - Japan - started quantitative easing way back in 2001. Coincidence? Hardly.
We've been had. It is that simple.
Cheers,
From Mr very unhappy - Chris
11/7/14, 2:42 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Yeah, it has been warmer and drier here this year too, but not quite record breaking either.
Quite cold is a relative concept! If you moved from Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth or Darwin, it is no wonder you'd think that Canberra is cold. Elevated and well inland the summer days can be scorching hot and spent cooling off in the pool, whilst at night you may have to run the fire to keep warm. That's my memories of Canberra. I really enjoyed the botanical garden there, but I'm a self confessed plant and soil geek.
Mind you, Canberra is also officially in the ACT and not NSW to which the article referred to. I've actually been to quite a few of the towns mentioned in the article and they're hot and dry places.
Cheers
Chris
11/7/14, 3:03 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
The extensive road side clearing and "management programs " ( chemical spraying) which you discuss has another name: kindling. Honestly, I've never seen so much dry fine material left in one spot for some moron to stumble onto. Such programs will come back to legally bite them in time. It hasn't worked out so well for the electricity distributors (or their customers) since the class action regarding Black Saturday. Plus it's not as if the chemicals don't leach into the soil and from there into the nearest waterway..... Nature always has the last laugh though, because the blackberries simply regrow from the damaged root systems. It is not as if they haven't evolved to survive the occasional drought which is what the councils are currently in the process of selecting for.
Just dumb.
Cheers
Chris
11/7/14, 3:16 AM
Sleisz Ádám said...
A remark about the discussion on gender issues (though it may be interesting anyway): I think that the description of feudalism as a masculine world is not necessarily right. I agree that feudal politics is dominated by raw violence which is generally more fitting for males. Politics, on the other hand, plays a substantially smaller role in feudal life than we are used to. Most of the people is really only interested in the well-being of themselves, their family and local community regardless of the quarrels and wars of the lords or the "half-mythical" king. Such a life is mainly about adaptation to the environment and politics is mainly a part of that environment.
I think that true feminine nature can find fulfillment in those circumstances more easily than in our world of greed and pioneering. Of course, this is only advantageous for women with dominant feminine nature but perhaps it is still more common than the same quality in men.
11/7/14, 4:51 AM
thecrowandsheep said...
How about: 'Upon the death of his father, Higg had to follow Snell's law, which in contrast to more bosontine systems, meant merely pledging loyalty to the local baryon.'
...
Er, back to Schopenhauer...if anyone is interested, I can recommend Rüdiger Safranski's excellent "Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy" for, among many other things, a description of the exuberant climate around Hegel in Berlin in AS's younger days, from which he (that is AS) was rather alienated.
Most fascinating is the relationship between Goethe and a young Schopenhauer (Goethe and AS's mother were friends). From memory, I think Goethe said something like this of AS: 'With others I converse, with him I philosophize.'
11/7/14, 4:51 AM
Greg Belvedere said...
It also drives me crazy when I'm in a public place with a TV. I'm very conscious of my media intake and I feel like someone is trying to force-feed me the mental equivalent of the worst processed food. There is a small device you can put on your key chain called TV B Gone that will turn off any TV. I'm too frugal to buy one myself, but it is an option I consider whenever I'm in that situation.
11/7/14, 6:07 AM
Jon from Virginia said...
11/7/14, 6:14 AM
Kyoto Motors said...
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=27481991&postID=4012459111513842957
Just thought I'd mention what I overlooked for son time...
11/7/14, 6:19 AM
MawKernewek said...
Therefore various settlements got set up that made no sense other than for the fact of a load of gold or copper etc. underneath the ground.
11/7/14, 6:32 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
http://bbill.blogspot.com/2011/06/powering-happy-hippies.html
I've posted this here before several times, but the audience keeps changing. Jeff is adamantly opposed to the market economy in agriculture, thinks the commoditization of farming is one of the worst things humans have ever done. And, he actually walks his talk to the extent the law allows.
After having been negative on some of my Tennessee neighbors as to whether they were examples of real alternatives, I thought I should point out a counterexample.
And, the nickname I came up with for his theories and his practice is "happy hippie feudalism." Feudalism alive and well in the 21st Century in Tennessee, full of guitar strumming, good food, and happy scruffy people of all ages and genders. His 300 acre farm is not a commune, he owns everything, and he decides everything. And everyone else on the farm is perfectly fine with this arrangement. Of course it's not really feudal, since there are no sworn allegiances an the "serfs" can come and go as they please. But in a tighter economic situation, I expect that many would be perfectly willing to swear such an oath to Jeff in a heartbeat in exchange for protection, support, and stability. In spite of his firm rule, he is much beloved and respected.
11/7/14, 6:37 AM
rsuusa said...
While was in college I discovered that I could survive by hunting small game and foraging for wild foods with a lot less effort than was going to be required to finish college and grad school and get anything like a real job. I started hiking every weekend, and over holidays, and then combining holidays with weekends to create large blocks of time to experiment with living off the land. My experiment didn’t keep me much above subsistence and I also raided the occasional dumpster, thumbed a lot rides to get between public lands, and slept hidden on the flat roofs of strip malls when in towns. Your mention of the “…legal prohibitions…legal fiat or brute force” that keep people from finding other ways of meeting their needs reminds me of this experiment. During my experiment a series of hostile run-ins with police, sheriff’s deputies, rangers, and odd ball land owners, usually ranchers illegally on public lands, made it clear to me that the life of a modern hunter and gatherer was not going to be legal, safe, or easy. The areas where law enforcement, criminals, and angry agriculturalists were less of a problem were invariably remote, nearly inaccessible, picked over and polluted by a previous rounds of development, or left only pristine because the land was unsuitable for development and generally inhospitable to would be foragers and layabouts as well.
Decades later I find myself trying a more moderate approach, keeping my day job and living as simply as possible but, alas, this has also proven to be difficult. The intermediation that you discuss is very real; land use regulations, ostensibly environmental in nature, require me to overbuild and then limit how I can use the land to essentially commercial farming or development as a single family living area. Either way lots of unnecessary and environmentally damaging overbuilding are required by the codes. The state and municipal codes clearly get more restrictive over time such that right next door to my modest spread, of new growth woods and wet meadow, are hundreds of non-conforming uses. The list of things I cannot do on my own land, or for the most part on anyone else’s land, is too extensive to mention and I won’t even start to address the ridiculous the insurances that you are supposed to have but not quite legally required to have for all housing, roadways, and agricultural land uses.
On a positive note, I will put in a plug for Maine’s laws on liability for uninvited use of land. Basically, unless you intentionally or recklessly create a danger you don’t have any liability which means I don’t have to chase people off my property and, indeed, odd types come and go all the time. May they pass in peace.
11/7/14, 6:42 AM
anioush said...
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Twilights-Last-Gleaming/108197785874390
11/7/14, 6:44 AM
Eric S. said...
And then at some point those individuals begin to puddle and condense into communities that interact, conflict, and mingle with older street communities in their own unique ways. And that sets the backdrop for the landscape of the future. And a history of late Rome won’t show that process because the people still writing at the time have yet to fall through the cracks. What will that look like for us though? Perhaps a good book on daily life in the shanty towns of the great depression, and a good study of life among the homeless and jobless in East Harlem might be a good starting point… But also, since the process is going on now, it’s not something that can be picked up in a book. I think instead of the aquarium my volunteer hours may be better spent a little closer to the real world where I can see this unfolding.
Another thought: I’m beginning to notice the conversation about gender roles in feudal systems. It reminds me a bit of the conversations in your “steampunk future” essays when people assumed that the return of the steam engine would lead to Victorian social hierarchies. There are plenty of examples of civilizations that have collapsed into a feudal economy or something resembling one without gender oppression being a part of the process. The one that floats to the top of my mind right now is the Massachusets culture that rose out of the collapse of the Hopewell civilization and ascribed most of their spiritual and political power to women (much to the frustration of the English), the Vikings had female warriors (and balanced a feudal economy with a democratic government), and the Welsh were matrilineal. The most dangerous thing about the myth of progress is the sense of complacency that comes with the belief that goals are achieved with the mere passage of time. The equal rights we’ve gained can be salvaged if we work for it like science or democracy or anything else worth keeping, but it may be an uphill battle much of the way.
11/7/14, 6:47 AM
Kyoto Motors said...
11/7/14, 6:56 AM
escapefromwisconsin said...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4048529.stm
11/7/14, 7:13 AM
onething said...
The above type of commentary is why I have rejected that which passes for feminism for most of my lifetime. Somehow it got veered into a kind of desperate and angry denial of gender differences, in such a way as to reinforce (in my mind) the very thing which motivates feminism in the first place - the feeling that women are fundamentally inferior and less than men. If men go to war, we will join the army also. If women are prized for being the life link of the race, we will denigrate our own most holy function and say we are not brood mares, that sort of thing. If Daelech points out certain physical realities we will call it a belief system.
There is a better way, and I am intrigued by the poster who says matrilineal societies are in our nature. I suspect she is right and indeed the entire world seems to have become more male dominated a few thousand years back. What little I know of those ancient societies tells me that the reason women were held in esteem was that the people had certain understandings of women's value and it was not about being just as strong as men which they aren't, or not needing men which is balderdash. What we have lost is the proper reverence for women AS women.
Is it really to be entertained that Nature/God produced two genders as a waste of time?
Ah, I think I'll do a part two.
11/7/14, 8:08 AM
Ed-M said...
Yes, exactly. The only differences between the two are in the sideshow "social issues." And even then they don't deliver unless they are pushed, and their actions don't cost them political capital with the real rulers -- those that brung 'em.
Re: your reply to Willow (Americans don't have a choice between the two): 100% correct. Worse, we aren't even *allowed* a choice other than D's and R's due to the high hurdles presented to any would-be third, fourth and fifth parties not only by State election legal requirements, but also the /de facto/ requirements presented by the media: I'm talking about the high cost of running for public office and the manner the media handicap candidates when they, the media, state the candidates who don't raise immense amounts of money aren't "serious." See, it's a closed loop.
Which is why the only reason I vote these days is because of the ballot questions.
11/7/14, 8:23 AM
onething said...
The first thing that is needed is to stop reacting to Genesis, which was an obvious attempt to reverse the reality which human beings had lived with time out of mind. Nonetheless, the Genesis story contained covert hints - such as Adam saying he would call the woman Eve (life) because she would be the mother of the living. Genesis attempts to make Life secondary, a servant to the actual servant. Genesis has the creation of woman a kind of afterthought. But here's how I see things:
In the beginning, before manifestation, and eternally at the root (innermost dimension) of reality is unity, The One, the Buddhistic Void of pure potential, out of which all things arise. The first distortion of one is two. (The Tao gives birth to One, the One becomes Two..) Upon this two the machine of the universe runs. It generates the energy, it causes your heart to beat, it is everywhere, the genders are just one of its many manifestations.
In the beginning was one, and it was a bacterium, and it reproduced by dividing its genome into two, and those are called mother and daughter cells. Why mother and daughter? Because reproducing is the function, the primary function, of the female, and it is Life itself. It is the primal function of all existence. To deny that one's reproductive ability is one's highest function is like denying that the thing you most need to do right now is take another breath.
In order to better serve life a second gender was created, a holder of DNA and the reason for the existence of this second gender was just that - to help life by creating reserves and diversity and more change and development. The reason the male gender exists is *because* of the female. The reason the male gender exists is contingent upon the prior existence of the female. Therefore the fundamental existential drive and desire and need of the male is toward the female. We can talk about testosterone and all that, but testosterone is just a mechanism.
Everyone serves life because life is the fundamental attribute. The female serves life directly and the male serves life indirectly. The female exists in her own right because she is Life itself. God ought therefore to be represented as a Mother and not a Father because that would be more accurate if God is the source of existence.
Everywhere we see the glorified male. The larger and more powerful male, with his glorious mane, his elaborate antlers, huge tusks, leading the pride or the herd, often keeping a harem. Surely the male birds, though, have taken male beauty to its highest development. We have a pair of Chinese red-golden pheasants. Try googling that one. She's really a pretty little thing, but compared to her husband she might as well be a sparrow. And what does he do all day but court her? Constantly watch her? Parade up and down, flicking his cape at her? Who is it that does not need to elaborate herself beyond her basic nature which is female and who is it that gets to enjoy male beauty?
In the social mammals,(lions, elephants) who is the family ? The family is the females, and their daughters and granddaughters, and it is to this family that males want desperately to be admitted, risk and waste themselves to be admitted. Yes, they throw their weight around and have their rewards, but it's all about the females who are IT.
Let's do a part three.
11/7/14, 8:53 AM
onething said...
So-yes the stallion enjoys his harem, but it is because he is utterly driven not to be a failure as a being, the purpose of which is to function as a male, without the harem which he leads and serves. If the male, who has a brief contribution in time reproductively, wants to hang around, he must make himself useful. He does this in various ways in various species by serving the community, the basis of which is female. The female holds the life card, always.
It is all of a piece, this reality. The universe uses patterns over and over, like fractals.
As I see it, women have been bewitched by the reactionary but very clever ploy of the males these past millenia, thus the human world is out of balance psychologically. No wonder women have an anger - because in our deepest being we know things are askew, that our worth is denigrated, surely not least in our culture by a 3-personed God of whom all three are male! But I see modern feminist ideas fighting the problem while remaining bewitched. The wound is deep and no one is happy when women lose their natural power, one of which is to reign in the males. I hold women accountable for letting them run amok.
What women need to understand is that men really have no choice. We are the purpose of their existence, they are hardwired to serve us and even keep us happy. You can see these things if you look a little deeper into circumstances that may seem otherwise on the surface. To be sure, a boy will insult another one for things like lack of courage by calling him a girl. But it is not because a girl is a bad thing to be - indeed girls are often oblivious to the existence of boys while boys are never really so oblivious because the first order of business for the male is "Where is the female"? The reason for the insult is that the purpose of the existence of a boy is to perform, to DO as a male. To fail at that makes him seem more like a female because she is the default gender. The male gender might be described as "he who is not female." The difference is subtle, but profound, rippling down through deep time and the dimensions. This is why I say the wound is deep. Women's power is in the realm of the psyche, which again might seem "less" to one bewitched, but Kastrup in his book does a good job of showing that the fundament of reality is probably consciousness and not matter, which means that women's power is *stronger*, the strongest, not the weaker. Why did the laws change, and relations between the genders change and women gain the rights of adult humans? Because they complained!
11/7/14, 9:27 AM
Wolfgang Brinck said...
11/7/14, 10:12 AM
Ray Wharton said...
Also, in the last week I have been digging into Spengler in earnest. Been browsing Decline on and off for about a year now, but last week his style started to click deep down, now I can't get enough of it! I can see how deeply personal the work is for him, a sustained meditation on his own Faustian soul, which in turn has helped me reconnect with certain aspects of that geriatric soul as it lives on in me.
Feudalism replacing a sophisticated economy (a former teacher of my described sophisticated as meaning 'screwed up by a sophistry') is also a process not an event. The sophisticated economy has to wither away, which is a drawn out process. I figure that since there is such a diversity of kinds of parasite that as their “environment” breaks down the will face an intense game of Darwinian musical chairs. This is a bitter pill in practice, because entire geneses of parasite will go extinct with each phase of decline, and become part of the moving masses faced with an intensely personal journey of finding another niche or dying in short order. These displaced parasite refugees will suffer deeply and even those who are part of the host will find themselves stressed by these displaced people. The real kick is that the parasite burden on the host will stay intense after each displacement, the surviving kinds of parasites expanding after each crisis trying to find any sustenance they can to persist. Putting that more explicitly, I expect some economic activities to be freed from intermediation at each stage of decline, leading to other areas facing a fearsome intensification leading to the next stage of decline.
Meanwhile the long slow process of developing trust and eventually traditions strong enough to maintain a semblance of order proceeds along thriving in vacuums left by the market economy's retreat. I wonder about the many marriages (maybe literal) between war bands and agriculture, lots of horror show stuff, but also some sporadically sound and humane arrangements for seasoning. That's the tricky thing about talking of feudalism. It isn't good or bad inherently, feudal arrangements have surely covered some very good arrangements, some horrific tragedies, and a healthy share of the middle ground, kind of like many other ways of arranging society. The character of the people involved in that kind of society, or any kind of society, goes a long way to determining the character of the society itself.
11/7/14, 10:18 AM
James Mishler said...
As mentioned by JMG: Michael Grant, The Fall of the Roman Empire.
Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks; a bit later in the era, but gives a good idea of the struggles and relations between different surviving power groups.
Ferdinand Lot, The End of the Ancient World and the Beginnings of the Middle Ages; a meatier version of Grant's work.
Patrick Geary, Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World; this one picks up where Grant left off and gives an excellent overview of how warlord bands evolve into the feudal society.
11/7/14, 10:31 AM
Varun Bhaskar said...
Several months ago there was an article about a small town in Illinois that set up a seed bank to support community garden. The USDA found out about it and promptly shut it down because the seeds weren't going through proper testing. Now keep in mind that all the seeds were from local farms and gardens.
Here in Madison we've had a constant assault on our localization efforts. Our last big composting area just shut down, and I hear there are new ordinances planned to "organize" the community gardens. Some of us are starting to do things more covertly. No digital trails, no written records, no discussion with outsiders.
Personally, I look forward to the death of intermediation.
In other news View on the Ground is now mobile. So anyone can access it on whatever doodad or geegaw they find most convenient.
@Wiseman
Ah, now your comment about farmers always being on the bottom of the social ladder in India makes sense. It was certainly true for low-cast communities but not so for high-cast.
Regards,
Varun Bhaskar
11/7/14, 10:36 AM
Ares Olympus said...
The most interesting slow disaster right now isn't climate change but "Labor force participation rate", now apparently back down to 1978 levels, but its the men that have continually fallen, from 86% in the 1950's to under 70% now, while women peaked in 2000 and down to 53%.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-07/participation-rate-rebounds-36-year-low-only-924-million-americans-not-labor-force
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 All
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11300001 Men
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11300002 Women
It takes more work to tease out the baby boomers bump, but they're actually holding onto their jobs tighter than in the past, so things are actually worse than they look, IF maximum employment is the goal.
Myself, I'm open to the perspective that two-income families was regressive, and if people can learn how to live on a single income, or a single fulltime job, that enables more options for community-building, and learning the art of "Home Economics" as Wendell Berry suggests that create strong households that don't need to pay for everything they need.
And I think if I was a 20-something, I'd gladly accept a parental home, and stay even into marriage, if there was space available, and I'd find a sensible bride who wasn't so high on herself that she'd choose lifelong debt for a fading American dream.
In reality I won't have kids, but I do own a 3-bedroom house, sharing now only with my girlfriend, so a spare bedroom (or 2) on the cheap, at least the incremental utilities on a debt free house are low.
So I can picture a world of lower income, and lower affluence, but I can't picture what the job market might be and when. I work 6 miles from where I was born, but engineers here are from around the world, and that reminds me of one of the ways the modern world controls us - most professionals must leave family and friends to find their dream job.
I can see money allows every place to be interchangable, while a future of less wealth, there's more to be gained in staying closer to home, and finding work that's needed as the art of life. And back to the labor force participation rate, for those who want to see what work is needed, being "happily unemployed" if someone else in your household can earn the majority of the money, there's a good chance for discovery.
Maybe feudalism is our future, and maybe some will be better than others, because a few people in each community made different decisions on what to do with their spare time.
11/7/14, 11:20 AM
Unknown said...
On the English noun front:
Is there a difference in meaning between antidisintermediationarians and antidisintermediationarianists? If not, the "ist" is redundant.
A smithy is a building where the smith works.
11/7/14, 11:52 AM
Unknown said...
Regarding women as warriors, women dressed as men and passed as ordinary soldiers in the American Revolutionary and Civil wars and in the Napoleonic wars. Some were discovered after they died in battle or were severely wounded and got medical treatment. Some were not discovered and wrote memoirs. Some put in for pensions. They seem to have been as successful in the army as their male counterparts.
It seems to me that there are two kinds of fighters, ones who rely mainly on brute force and ones who rely on skill. Women are as inherently capable of acquiring fighting skills as men, if given the opportunity. Marching in ranks and firing muskets and rifles in good order on command are skills that can be taught en masse through drilling, which is probably why women did well in eighteenth and nineteenth century armies.
Swordmanship and fighting from horseback require long practice under the guidance of a teacher. (Archery requires both practice and upper body strength.) Most women have not been spared from childrearing and productive activities long enough to acquire highly skilled martial arts. I think the demand for women as child bearers has more to do with their exclusion from fighting than their lesser upper body strength.
11/7/14, 12:10 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
Yes. Sources: The Sagas of the Icelanders (history), The VOlsungasaga (13th C fiction), Hild (contemporary, fictionalized bio of a real and formidable Abbess), etc ...
I never realized when I first signed up for Medieval History 201 and parlayed it into a Minor, with an emphasis on Anglo-Saxon studies, how valuable it would be!
OK - more - the Old English rewrite (by Aelfric the Grammarian) of the Bible story of Judith. Acclaimed as a heroine and held up as an example and role model to Englishwomen of his day.
Oh, yes, indeed! It's only when civilization set in that the "delicate fair ladies" were not supposed to do such things. (Contrast the Nibelungenlied with the Volsungasaga. Gaaah.)
As for whether they did or not, check out Christine de Pisan's CITY OF LADIES, all 3 volumes. I was once tempted to rewrite one of them for modern times and issue it as "BOSS LADY: A medieval success manual for the female executive." Which the average great lady actually was!
(Giggle, giggle ... one of the Captchas was 'fwords.'
11/7/14, 12:25 PM
Random Man said...
A rising cost structure forces upon people the very disintermediation that is mentioned here, and that process fuels further inflation as the powers that be create money to keep the structures going.
Deflation is a myth. Always has been, always will be. Human organization is inherently inflationary, it's inbuilt in our genes and our relation to monetary exchange. We always demand more, and for currency prices on assets to go up, never down. Now it is global.
A "deflation" is simply the natural process that occurs during the collapse phase, and it is always fought with monetary inflation.
Costs will never, ever go down independently of collapse. I cannot stress this enough!
11/7/14, 1:24 PM
team10tim said...
You might be interested in this:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9903E0D8103FF933A05757C0A9609C8B63
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/world/asia/25iht-japan.html?_r=0
Villages in Japan that are being abandoned because there are no young people to live in them. The one in the article sold itself to a landfill.
Thanks,
Tim
11/7/14, 1:45 PM
bicosse said...
11/7/14, 2:27 PM
bicosse said...
I suggest that you persist in talking to your grandchildren about the decline of industrial society (though try not to alienate their mother in the process). They are likely to be aware of it at some level, and far from finding discussion depressing may welcome talking to an adult who actually acknowledges our predicament. I remember as a child in the 70s shocking my mother by drawing a picture of a mushroom cloud, and also discussing nuclear war with my older brother, who was rarely a source of accurate information... I clearly remember the news of the oil crisis in '73 (I was eight at the time), though I didn't really understand what it was about, except that people were blaming Arab sheikhs for the price of petrol...
The children's literature and TV I grew up with in 70s Britain made me well aware of overpopulation, resource depletion and pollution. Much of what young people in the western world are growing up with now seems pretty bleak, too - think of the Hunger Games.
11/7/14, 2:55 PM
daelach said...
@ Robert Mathiesen: Of course women can have influence, e.g. from the position beside the throne. It isn't uncommon that there's a powerful woman behind a powerful man. But that power is quite conditional.
The whole point is that men and women have different duties in a warlord society. Women are being protected and cared not because they are women (no cherry-picking here), but because they are the bottleneck to births. Especially with the much higher children and adult mortality which will need to be made up for.
In a society much more down to the roots, biological matters will be more important. That's not a matter of preferences, but of facts. Societies whose values are more compatible with the facts will fare better than others. That will also mean that for such a society, a woman who isn't primarily into having children will generally be a waste of scarce resources, and wasting scarce resources will not be a recipe for success. Especially not when competing with other societies, which is the basic reason why late civilisations are being swept away by warlords in the first place.
Life will be harder for men and women alike, but in different ways. I'd like to point one more time to my remark that I'm not talking about what I personally like or not, but what I see as realistic or not.
So you may well uphold the values of a late civilisations (in this case: ours), but that won't change history. Quite the other way round, that will just push history forward, exactly as with other late civilisations who did the same. It isn't different this time.
However, by the time things get that far, feminism and stuff will have been forgotten anyway because there will be much more urgent things. I doubt that today's people used to women's equal rights will live to see those times.
11/7/14, 3:39 PM
whomever said...
The gold standard during the Great Depression or the modern southern European effects of the Euro (especially Greece), or Japan for the last 20 years are also interesting to look at and look a lot like deflation, though those do look a lot more like collapse.
Monetary policy has a long history of ups and downs, not just ups. Bear in mind that deflation helps people with assets, hence it's often subtly popular with the rich. No argument that desperate societies often switch over to inflation though.
11/7/14, 3:44 PM
YJV said...
Definitely! I'm an Aucklander so Octobers for me are just a slightly warmer continuation of dampness and rain back home. The temperatures this October in Canberra had a far wider range than usual though - and as you said, the ACT is not part of NSW. I'm wondering how the climate is going to change, especially in the altitude regions such as where you and I live. Auckland is already getting drier every summer.
11/7/14, 4:05 PM
Thomas Daulton said...
Time May Be Disappearing From Our Universe
Apparently some physicists have proposed a model of redshift based on the concept that time itself is gradually winding down and becoming slower, rather than taking it as a given that the universe is expanding and accelerating.
11/7/14, 6:11 PM
Rita Narayanan said...
coming from a *not first world* nation I want to make a few points to give people perspective when they write about egalitarian ideas.
Capitalism (as also the pillages of colonialism) has made it possible for national leaders to provide people in small towns and villages the luxury of public libraries and other public services that only the very rich ever had. So personal development where ones intellect and other faculties can engage with ideas, culture and other factors is available to a significant portion of the populace.
It was easier for me to be romantic about the idea of India in the libraries & museums of the West than live amidst the reality...and that is not just material growth but social sensibility. Thanks for the lovely essay.
11/7/14, 6:28 PM
Iuval Clejan said...
Elinor Ostrom has figured out some general principles for sharing commons such as land, by studying groups that are successful and avoid the tragedy of the commons. Do you think this is worth trying? Along with such things as democracy?
11/7/14, 6:48 PM
JML said...
11/7/14, 6:57 PM
Merle Langlois said...
Hmmf, usually when people parade their pet theories on here I get a bit uncomfortable, but not all pet theories are embarrassingly bad I suppose.
11/7/14, 7:16 PM
Doctor Westchester said...
11/7/14, 7:28 PM
Brad K. said...
I wonder -- do you foresee organized crime figures ascending to warlord/overlord status, or civil figures taking on overlord roles, or a combination? You alluded to feudalism as an economic model. But would feudalism arise if armed conflict were not a driving political motivator? I had understood feudalism to be a political system set up primarily to sustain a capacity for military defense and exploitation.
11/7/14, 8:06 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Donald, the American left talks about the popular vote purely because it learned its political jargon from Europe. On this continent, the left is serenely detached from the people for whom it claims to speak, and heaven help the member of the working classes who tries to get a word in edgewise!
Rita, it didn't seem to me that Wiseman was doing anything of the kind -- simply pointing out that the Dalits do have actual reasons to want to leave India. The same was true of a great many people who fled Europe a century or more ago to come here: they were as much fleeing maltreatment at home as they were seeking a better life here in the US.
Averagejoe, how does the current population of Scotland compare to the number of people who could be supported sustainably on its farmland? Britain as a whole is hopelessly overcrowded, almost as bad as Japan, but I don't happen to know how that breaks out regionally.
Cherokee, of course we've been had. Still, I expect something a little different from either inflation or deflation. Do you remember the stagflation of the 1970s, when the economy contracted but prices rose and rose? That's my model for the near future, but more so: hyperstagflation. More on this in a future post.
Sleisz Ádám, I'm not at all sure there's any such thing as "true feminine nature," or for that matter the masculine equivalent; different cultures assign such radically different roles and qualities to the very general framework given us by biology. That said, you're right that a lot of people tend to be happier when they're less pestered by politics.
Crowandsheep, thanks for the reference -- I haven't read Safranski, and obviously have to. As for the joke, yes, that'll do!
Jon, thanks for the summary! I may hunt up the book anyway.
MawKernewek, I simply didn't know the same phrase had caught on on both sides of the Pacific.
Bill, my guess is that Poppin's beloved and respected because of his firm rule, not in spite of it. For all our habitual protestations, we're social primates who respond promptly and enthusiastically to a well-defined hierarchy that gets the job done. It's only because the current hierarchy is as inept as it is that so many people are upset at it.
Rsuusa, the amount of effort that goes into shutting off alternatives to wage labor and participation in the money economy is impressive, no question. It's a good measure of just how badly people want out of it...
Anioush, nope. It's an obvious title, thus several books and movies have used it.
11/7/14, 8:22 PM
onething said...
That is a very good point and I'd say it's because it's the same class behind both. Those who push for deregulation are the owners of industries who want to pollute. They're not talking about all the rules and certificates I need to sell cookies at my farmer's market in the absolute middle of Nowhere, with 6 vendors and 30 customers all day.
Daelech,
I agree with much of what you say but I think you are assuming that our future will be a simple time- flowing-backwards retreat into the past. It is not a given that a simple and poor society must oppress its women. Also, I find it odd the way people suddenly think that every single female will need to reproduce with all her might. Actually, nonreproducing adults add greatly to a family or society. They are so important among wolves that they keep non mating aunts and uncles around. Even though life may be tougher and death rates higher, people in general have had more trouble with excess population than an insufficient one. The raising of children is intensely draining of resources, and the grandparents can barely hold their own contribution-wise. It is the young and middle aged adults who are able to produce more than they consume. Having a single aunt or uncle around would be a great boon.
Furthermore, if we are going to hold on to anything, I think basic sanitation and knowledge of women's fertile cycle can go a long way toward reducing mortality and general misery. We don't really have to go back to the 17th century.
11/7/14, 8:31 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Kyoto, it'll be interesting to see whether handbuilt offroad bikes can compete with horses and shoe leather in the deindustrial future. I'm not betting either way.
Escape, no doubt!
Onething, and that's also one way to think about it.
Ed-M, some local elections can be important, or at least entertaining. Of course I have the advantage of living in a purple town -- red or blue, that is, depending on circumstances -- and so the rascals do get thrown out tolerably often.
Wolfgang, well, yes. I'm glad I'm not in a position where I have to come up with schemes of that sort; I don't think I'd be able to stomach it.
Ray, exactly! You get tonight's gold star for paying close attention to history, not to mention for catching Spengler's point.
James, thanks for the references!
Varun, if you want to keep it covert, keep it off the internet and off social media. It amazes me how many people think that anything is private once it's online.
Ares, good. Very good. Those are points I've been trying to make here for years.
Unknown Deborah, I'd suggest "antidisintermediationarianism" as a non-redundant label for the ideology of antidisintermediationarians. I think that still takes the cake.
As for war and women, that's one of the things the introduction of firearm technology has changed dramatically. Upper body strength isn't anything like as important for most soldiers in a firearm-based army as it was when swords, spears, and bows were the killing instruments du jour. Raw endurance is far more important, and that's something at which many women excel. This is one of the reasons why I think patterns of gender relationship have changed decisively in recent centuries and will not be changing back.
11/7/14, 8:36 PM
wiseman said...
No disrespect was intended, however living in India I was surprised to see that statement come from you. I guess this is the right time to quote Ambedkar.
“The love of the intellectual Indian for the village community is of course infinite, if not pathetic….What is a village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow mindedness and communalism?”
And you can't seriously be comparing running hot water with what happens to the untouchables in villages. One can live without hot water, but can't without basic human dignity. Caste exists in all societies in one form or the other but what happens in India is one of the most vile and disgusting representations of it.
That's why a lower cast man would give an arm and a leg to send his kids to the city, being a janitor in McDonalds is much more respectable than cleaning toilets for the upper caste village head.
11/7/14, 8:51 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Random Man, deflation is a myth? Tell that to Americans in the late 19th century, who were hammered by it in the Long Depression.
Thomas, fascinating. It's a source of some amusement to me how many of the current round of theories in physics look remarkably like all those epicycles they tacked onto Ptolemaic astronomy to try to make the cosmos work with the earth at the center...
Rita, the partisans of the market economy love to take credit for that. I'd argue that it was the working of White's Law instead: given an unprecedented temporary influx of cheap abundant energy, the phenomena you've noted are among the forms of economic complexity that resulted.
Iuval, sometimes your employer or your government is unfair, too, and doesn't provide much in return for his services. Are other options worth trying? Of course, provided that you're willing to lay down your life for them -- because it does sometimes come to that, you know.
JML, you're welcome!
Doctor W., of course -- because the people talking about deregulation are intermediaries, just as much as the regulators they claim to despise, and the regulations they want removed are those that keep them from squeezing the productive economy dry.
Brad, neither one. First we get warband formation, which is well under way; then, over the next century or so, the collapse of public order in larger and larger portions of what's now the United States, until all or most of it has reverted to chaos; then, as the chaos begins to settle down, charismatic local leaders emerge and assemble local militias to fend off the remaining raiders; their descendants or supplanters become the proto-barons, the militias the proto-knights, and the ordinary people they protect the proto-peasantry. Three or four centuries later you have a fully developed feudalism -- and as you see, there's no shortage of violence involved.
11/7/14, 8:53 PM
Myosotis said...
Clearly they don't know their history very well, beyond the popular story we've sketched out about medieval times. Medieval women weren't generally chattel without agency. For many of the guilds, women couldn't join but neither could unmarried men become guild masters. The work was expected to take two skilled workers to manage the business, apprentices and household.
11/7/14, 8:58 PM
Bill Pulliam said...
And a typo note -- I misspelled Jeff Poppen's last name in my previous comment.
11/7/14, 10:38 PM
Rita Narayanan said...
you must be well aware of the number of South Asians who are working as labourers and *help* in the domestic sector in the Middle east....they are subjected to the worst sort of working conditions and have hardly any recourse, do such people leave home and country for dignity.
Many of these countries are allies of the US and many alliances of Western leaders exist in these nations...since I was questioned about my thoughts I would like to ask Americans too "how do lecture others on human dignity when the Mcdonalds(global cheap oil) that you talk about owes everything to such cheap labour".
wiseman quoted Ambedkar “The love of the intellectual Indian for the village community is of course infinite, if not pathetic….What is a village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow mindedness and communalism?”
for the record I live in *Mumbai* not rural India and am not an intellectual...also it was Gandhi who romanticized the indian village, he also influenced Martin Luther King :)
Thanks JMG and @wiseman for a lively debate!
11/7/14, 11:39 PM
Sleisz Ádám said...
What I can not contemplate is the aspiration to extirpate any differences in gender roles. Women may rule and even fight, but anyway, men have to find their own way to stand out. This is something firmly in the core, and both genders need it, as I see things.
11/8/14, 12:14 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Yeah, we've only delayed that process through utilising every tool at our societies disposal, but the root causes of that particular scenario in the 1970's are both alive and well and also kicking hard right now. It's happening already, it's just that people don't really want to think about the implications of that scenario as it involves personal pain.
Honestly, it is weird to me that housing is considered an investment with anticipated returns. The only return that should be expected from a house is that it keeps the rain off your head! Mind you, I expect a few more stacked functions (a funky terminology for additional uses) from my house than just that one function, but the house here is not quite your ordinary house.
I never suggested inflation or deflation either, but simply took umbrage at people constantly suggesting that the future will be a deflationary period. Such an event truly fits in nicely with the world view.
Your suggestion makes lots of sense too as the causes of the Oil price shocks never really went away, they just sort of got worked around for a bit of time.
I look forward to your analysis and assume that you are drawing heavily on historical examples? i assume that that happened with the Paperiermark? I should probably read up on that history, but hopefully Galbraith will cover it later in the book. I'd appreciate a recommendation for a book on that history?
Cheers
Chris
11/8/14, 3:09 AM
Phil Harris said...
Most of Scotland cannot be cropped; much of it not even for trees. (At this latitude in the Atlantic an elevation of 100 metres and E/W rainfall geography makes all the difference.)
However, the E Coast has areas very favourable for cereals and oil seed – and held world record for wheat yield per acre for many years under modern production.
At population of 5.3M then persons per productive hectare (looked at as calories per hectare per year; see below for crops being 10% of agricultural area) works out at roughly 10 persons per hectare or 4 per acre, which is about the same as England and UK as a whole.
That could be ‘doable’ on a mostly vegetarian calories diet, (for example porridge for breakfast; barley bannocks; potatoes and kale and some milk and a little home-grown meat), provided there was still modern input into farming – N fertiliser especially – and we did not need too many horses.
Over long term even assuming still some trading overseas, population will reduce - but there will be ecotechnic choices.
best
Phil
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Agriculture-Fisheries/agritopics/LandUseAll The total area of agricultural holdings in Scotland was 5.6 million hectares, equating to 73 per cent of Scotland's total land area. Just over half of this comprised rough grazing, with about a quarter taken up by grass, and about ten per cent used for crops or left fallow. The rest consisted of woodland, ponds, yards or other uses.
Additionally, almost 0.6 million hectares of land is used for the common grazing of livestock.
Amongst the crops grown in Scotland, excluding grass, cereals accounted for 80 per cent of the land area, with nearly three-quarters of that being barley (340,000 hectares). There were also considerable area growing wheat (87,000 hectares), oilseed rape (34,000 hectares) and potatoes (29,000 hectares). Amongst fruit and vegetables, a total of 911 hectares of strawberries were grown, mainly under cover, and was the largest source of income in horticulture.
11/8/14, 3:29 AM
Marcello said...
MindfulEcologist, at the interpersonal day to day level western societies are actually pretty peaceful by historical standards.
The USA for instance might seem currently a violent place: that is only until you look at crime stats or to accounts of mob violence in the 19th century. Even just making a passing reference to slavery not being the best thing since sliced bread would put you on the receiving end of a lynching mob in much of antebellum south. And at the same time New York had a gang population estimated in the tens of thousands. You get the idea.
11/8/14, 5:27 AM
Marcello said...
Thank You JMG for this. That is a killer argument to deploy against advocates of the cult of progress. I intend to research this subject further and use it as a kind of rhetorical sucker punch, when the need arises.
Well, one might compare the aftermath of 2008 in Ireland to that of the famines of the 1840s, 1740s, 1650s and so on all the way back to the 10th century. I know which period I would pick to live in.
I suspect that despite standard disclaimers people are falling in the common trap of idealizing the past. It may well be that people in the pre-industrial past worked fewer hours but estimates depend a lot on what gets counted either way and in any case it was often harder/unpleasant compared to what most people are currently called to in the privileged western societies. Try rice transplanting under the sun in a rice paddy fertilized with human excrement, which is what fed much of the pre-industrial world population. And if you think that modern police are arrogant remember that a samurai was actually legally entitled to execute on the spot a peasant for the slightest perceived disrespect, nor were his western counterparts actually nicer, chivalry mythology notwithstanding. For all the (increasing) failings of industrialized life most people in places like the West still enjoy standards of life in terms of nutrition, sanitation, healthcare, security etc. that could only be dreamed of in the past.
11/8/14, 6:57 AM
daelach said...
At the moment, however, anything that gets down the number of humans without too much suffering would be reasonable. 7 bio people cannot be fed once the oil gets scarce. So for the present, getting women world-wide interested in anything else than bearing children looks like a good idea. Women more than men because they are the limiting party in producing offspring. If one of two women renounces to children, that helps - if one of two men renounces, the other one could make up for it (biologically, I mean).
Concerning turning back time - no, quite the other way round. Just look at what happens with late civilisations, that's the point. It's just that I have a hard time believing that warlords not even adhering to human rights will somehow stick to gender equality. You know, conquering lands, slaying any resistance there doesn't really blend in with being nice exclusively to the women there. Rape and war have always gone together, even in modern times and with armies from countries where human rights are worth something.
@ JMG: No, the endurance factor is much less with women, especially with gear. The standards women have to pass for being recognised as fit are lower (already at school), but that doesn't help in the battlefield. On average, women have 55% of the muscle power and 67% of the endurance of men. The best 20% of the women are on a par with the worst 20% of the men.
See http://books.google.de/books?id=i42vPG_iXRgC&pg=PA9-27&hl=de#v=onepage&q&f=false .
That blends well in with civil sport: the top-class female teams don't stand a chance even against a youth male team. E.g. the German national female team lost 0:3 against the U17 male team from VfB Stuttgart. The U16 male team of Eintracht Frankfurt defeated the female national team 2:0. The 3rd senior male team of Fortuna Seppenrade (Kreisliga - really far down) defeated the female team of 1st FC Cologne (national league) 3:0. So basically, the top female football teams perform worse that U16 male teams. That's why women play football separately; the game would be boring otherwise. There are no women in the "tour de France" bicycle races, either - because they wouldn't have a chance, anyway.
The reasons are hard-wired into the biochemistry of the body: women have less musclemass and more fat, less testosterone, less oxygen capacity. Of course, a trained and slim woman might outperform an overweight, untrained man, but that's choosing a skewed comparison basis. However, strength training for women is a good idea. While they will never reach the level of a male training the same way, it is still better than being untrained, and in reality, there are many untrained men.
The main reason why people have lost track of this is that we are a heavily mechanised society. When a man wants to transport e.g. 20 liters of water from A to B, he'll load it into the car and drive. Obviously, a woman can do it in exactly the same way. But with the mechanisation gone, things will change.
You are right, though, that personal defense with small firearms is a great equaliser. However, with the industrial base gone, our modern firearms will come to be a memory of the past, at least in the long run. Producing cartridges with ignition will not be sustainable, and the old-style powder guns which are likely to have a future are useless for personal defense because of the long time to reload, not to mention their weight.
11/8/14, 7:03 AM
Robert Mathiesen said...
11/8/14, 7:15 AM
Ed-M said...
11/8/14, 7:55 AM
patriciaormsby said...
The heirs all move off to the cities--there are virtually no economic opportunities for them here in the countryside, but that will change one day, and I suspect they know that, and that's why they keep hanging on to grandma's house.
11/8/14, 8:06 AM
Varun Bhaskar said...
I am aware. I only post things I am confident in posting. Plenty of things I want to discuss on this forum that I don't because it isn't secure.
@wiseman
Agriculture will quickly become the dominant form of economics in the near future. What happens when the Dalits suddenly realize that the urban-industrial economy is no longer available to liberate them?
11/8/14, 8:30 AM
Marcello said...
As a librarian I get something in the order of one month and half of paid vacation per year, plus sundays and the odd holiday; naturally I earn less than my American counterpart but I would say I am still better off than my medieval equivalent.
I suppose that this might well have been well been doable for pre peak industrial population at large if the suitable trade offs had been made.
11/8/14, 9:07 AM
Claudia Oney said...
The very traditional men there treated me with deep respect. More so than many of the male world savers in our college educated group. Of course we were buying things, but the relationships in this old fashioned place were not founded on our buying power, but on our ability to fit in. Favors were huge. Parking spaces were the coin of the realm.
Education and sophistication do not create refined conduct or mutual respect for other humans. One of the real gentlemen at South Water, always willing to help, was illiterate and rumored to have been jailed in Tennessee for killing someone. Poor people and pockets of people hidebound by culture can be as gentle, thoughtful and accepting of change as more 'privileged' souls.
Finally, feminists are not angry, we do not want to erase the differences between the sexes and we, for the most part, love men dearly. That we want education and financial security and respect should not surprise anyone. That predictions of having baby after baby until we die upset us should not surprise anyone either. And I guarantee that my friend the Tennessee convict could pop a pallet weighing thousands of pounds into our food truck in seconds; his strength exceeded that of any male friend or relative by more multiples than any of us could imagine. So musings by the males of male strength makes me smile since many are likely not that much stronger than me. My point is that our future needs all of us. I think, if we are to successfully engage in a non market world, our dealing have to be based on honor and integrity, not just brute force. 4410
11/8/14, 9:12 AM
Marcello said...
I tend to doubt that the women who did the fighting in the 18-19th century armies and navies could be considered "typical".
Also while physical contact was rare the threat of it was still a potent force in that type of combat: masses of men coming forward with the bayonet would often cause opposing formations to break. Would a battalion of well drilled women hold up against a battalion of tall grenadiers marching forward with fixed bayonets, at least some of the time? Who knows? Would anybody make that experiment?
11/8/14, 9:35 AM
Iuval Clejan said...
When I was working with the self fertilizing nematode C. elegans I noticed that the males are much more adventurous. They are usually produced at a rate of 1 in 200, but when conditions get harsh, more males are produced. They can help reduce inbreeding in this highly inbred organism. Also sperm can only do quick and dirty repair of DNA double strand breaks, or none at all, whereas eggs only do slow and accurate repair of such DNA lesions. So sperm have more mutations than at least young eggs.
11/8/14, 9:46 AM
daelach said...
On a general note, gender inequality doesn't necessarily imply treating women bad. A historic example are the Germanic tribes where men and women had different roles, but that didn't mean that women didn't have rights or nothing to say. The example is useful here because the Germanics were the warlords of the falling Rome.
@ Myosotis: The usual derailing of a discussion by misunderstanding descriptive statements (it will be..) as normative ones (it should be..). It doesn't matter who's thrilled or not. Just as it doesn't matter whether or not we're thrilled by peakoil.
Btw-, Spengler ("Decline of the West") wrote some quite interesting paragraphs concerning women and children. To sum it up, the stance that having children is somehow belittling women is typical for late civilisations and is part of the process of their fall. It was the same in late Greece and Rome, and as we can see, it isn't any different this time.
Especially because not all women renounce to having children. The upper and middle class is affected, but the underclass is not and thus multiplies until those who are capable of bearing the culture are not there anymore. That is what Spengler calls the "fellah phase" after the collaps, alluding to what was left of Egypt when the modern West colonised it.
The interesting thing is that in a materialistic viewpoint, the upper/middle classes' renouncing to children looks like a cause for the collapse; but with the concept of the culture soul already dying, it may as well be a consequence instead. Or maybe a self-amplifying process.
11/8/14, 10:00 AM
Marinhomelander said...
You get a phone call from some serf in India who can barely speak English representing some local cleaning outfit. They stumble through the script, cannot answer any questions and try and sell you on some useless service like cleaning your air ducts or whatever. They make an appointment for "their" truck to come out and do the work.
After dozens of these calls, I finally made an appointment just to see who would show up.
The guy was actually an American. I quizzed him on the reasons for using the cold callers. "No one reads their mail anymore" he says.
"Yeah, but you're pissing people off with these calls at night and on weekends."
"Why don't you advertise in some local small newspapers or just get more business through referrals?"
He left mad.
Now whenever I get a call like this, either from a live human or a recording, I go through the steps to make an appointment--usually you push 1 as soon as you hear the recording start, and you send them to the address of a vacant lot.
I encourage everyone to do the same. Let's make the cold callers useless to any real local purveyor of services. If you don't your telephone will soon become a nuisance you pay for rather than a tool.
11/8/14, 10:43 AM
Tony Rantala said...
http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-technology-of-violence-and-its-effect-on-prosperity-and-freedom/
I believe the kind of feudalism seen in medieval times is not viable, since firearms favour general population against the elites. Feudal organization worked as long as mounted elites ruled the battlefield.
Women can fight, but the real question is are they willing to kill and die to be equal to men. I suppose there would different answers in different societies.
11/8/14, 10:43 AM
Nastarana said...
Very few institutions in the western world reject modern feminism more thoroughly than the Catholic Church. Therefore, allow me to refer you to a statement made by Pope John Paul II in which he said (I paraphrase) that for women there are two vocations, motherhood and consecrated life. For that remark he received a lot of criticism as you can imagine. I invite you to look carefully at what the statement does not say. It does not say women have a vocation to nurture, pamper, protect the vanity of, men. It says we must care for our children. Period. Catholics have been criticized for not allowing divorce, until recently, but doctrine does allow separation, even if priests have discouraged it.
BTW, anyone who entertains the notion that nuns are sexually frustrated spinsters incapable of functioning in adult life has never met one. These are some very formidable women.
I tend to agree with the Archdruid that this genie is well and truly out of its bottle, and not going back in any century soon. If trends among the already collapsed are any indication, we may be moving towards a society in which children are raised in woman dominated, extended families, with boys at some age around maybe 10 leaving to join the men's house.
11/8/14, 12:43 PM
JML said...
http://condor.depaul.edu/mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm
11/8/14, 12:44 PM
onething said...
Again, I agree with much of what you say but not all. I am familiar with the strength stats you mention. I find it intriguing the mentions that have been made here of women disguising themselves (or not) and going into battle. Obviously it has happened from time to time. I do wonder what those women looked like. There is a subset of women who are built stronger and with bigger upper bodies. Perhaps the strongest women elected themselves. I doubt if it was ever more than a handful here and there.
I'm not in any way against women pushing themselves to find their highest potential in any department. But it does bother me, or perhaps I should just say that I "note" that such discussions still seem to me worrisome if at root they are motivated by a desire to prove that women can be just as strong as men. No way, no how, aint' gonna happen. And it is so sad and unfair to use such a standard at all, no more fair than it would be to order a man to produce the holy blood or nurse his newborn.
Let us honor one another. Brute strength is an attribute, a very useful one, but not the only one.
Me anyway, rather than being jealous of mens' strength or denying their general tendency to tinker with the outside world, resulting in them doing most of the inventing, I exult and say what marvelous, intelligent, and useful servants we have! I know someone might read that as silly or insulting, but I do really mean that in a sincere and complimentary way. It's just the way things are, resulting from the structure of the universe.
One reason, however, that I might applaud a woman going into battle is that I am very partial to not forcing people into much of anything. Let the one who marches to a different drummer do so. Let the outliers be outliers without persecution.
I defended myself once. I was about 18, got off the bus in Los Angeles on a fine summer evening near dusk, and began walking carelessly homeward, not paying attention or walking near the street as I ought to have done but in front of the buildings which had an alley behind them. All of a sudden I felt myself jerked into the alley by a cloth over my mouth. I was not carrying a purse and I assume the motive was rape. I whirled, screamed, and kneed him in the groin. He crumpled, I ran.
To be continued...
11/8/14, 2:06 PM
onething said...
Still, Daelach, I think you focus too much on the violence and the warlords and all that. Violence and skirmishes will be here and there, but most times and places will be relatively stable most of the time. Yes, rape often happens in times of battle, but again it is forgotten and not the norm. In my opinion rape is inexcusable, and if I had a son who had raped anyone or a brother or husband returning from war who had done so, I would remove my affections from them permanently. And I might indeed warn them of that before they depart.
I am not sure that a warlord and his society would have to oppress women. The native Americans varied, I believe, in their treatment of women, but at least some of them had women voting, and we could consider them as permanent war bands.
I guess, too, that it depends on what you consider oppressive. In the kind of survivalist societies you seem to be envisioning, there will of course be a division of labor according to gender. What is oppressive is laws that give all rights to a man in divorce, allow him to automatically keep the children, laws that mandate severe punishment for infidelity by a woman but not a man, laws that allow fathers to decide who their daughters will marry, or denying literacy to women.
On top of that, there is much psychological oppression by the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious axis and this I believe is the crux of the problem in the west. Although, is it better in the east?
The presentation of God or the godhead as all male is horrifying in that on a philosophical level it denies that the female has true existence. This is quite shocking and is probably the root of the deep wound that I mention. The feminism that I rail against is a shallow assessment of male attributes as a source of the problem and desire to have those attributes.
11/8/14, 2:07 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
I thought that your Higgs Boson joke was quite amusing!
I'm an avid fan of Grand Designs UK which has been going for 14 years now and is better and much quirkier and enjoyable than when it started all those years ago.
I got some bad news for you. As a self confessed soil geek I always take note of the soils when they are breaking ground for a new building in that show. The observations are reasonably consistent in that they're not much better than the worst soils here and there are many instances where they're not even as good as that.
Sure, the climate is not as extreme, so there is plenty of green around - so they could recover within a few years with a bit of hard graft and sacrifice - but it all gets down to the soils as to whether a population can feed itself. And, what do you feed the population in the meantime?
I'd also have to point out that it is probably not a bad idea to consider the aspects surrounding closing the nutrient loss cycle and slowing the flow of water across your landscape. All the nutrients from your imported food are now currently flowing into your waterways and the ocean and this is probably a bad idea and a lost opportunity.
I've noted that floods seem to be an increasing problem in your country and this often a result of poor management of the watershed - i.e. deforestation and running sheep (a really bad idea - here too) in the high country.
Also it may be worth pointing out that cereal crops require a reasonably consistent climate and also rainfall at the appropriate times i.e. during the growing times and not during the harvest (which causes the crops to ferment). Extreme weather events seem to be just sort of getting well, more extreme.
Yesterday here it was 32'C in the shade at lunchtime, but by 6pm it had dropped to 12'C as a cool change hit. Such changes put strain on farm animals - and it can get more extreme than that here.
Cheers
Chris
11/8/14, 2:26 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
People can have as many children as they want, but if you can't provide them with sustenance and shelter, well nature steps in and sorts it out.
The lower birth rates during those times were probably a sign of decline in available resources more than anything else. Just sayin...
Cheers
Chris
11/8/14, 2:29 PM
Redneck Girl said...
@ karendetroit:
Women's Country will never be - for a couple of reasons:
Oh daelach, you are so wrong for more than a few reasons! Some of my ancestry is tribal and in that tribe, the Tsalagi/Cherokee had two tribal councils. One was the men's council and the other was the women's council. The men's council allotted to the women the farmland each needed to feed her family. Might not sound fair until you know what the women's council handled. War. It was their husbands, sons and brothers that would go to war, they would risk the loss of the main hunters for their hearths so it was they who decided if a war was worth that risk. That custom almost balanced power evenly but to make sure it was even, one more custom was observed. If a woman had lost all of her masculine familial support due to war, she could petition the men's council to go, to revenge her family's honor. The men would consider the woman's capabilities and if she could keep up on the war trail she was allowed to make war as well. Cherokee Women don't sit down, shut up and let the men make all the decisions.
For that matter recall the Hopi mother in the Iraq War who died with a dry rifle beside her when her convoy was ambushed. Of course everyone focused on another driver, a cute blond girl who never fired a shot.
In fact I think you believe the propaganda many European nations formulated that women are incapable of making war. Most of the uprisings in French Polynesia were lead by WOMEN. The French weren't pleased as you can imagine. Neither were they pleased at one African People's resistance to their colonization. They reserved particular vitriol for the army of women who served their King in battle riding trained war Bulls as steeds.
There are recorded instances in Japan's history of women Samurai, carrying all three swords, just like the men.
Finally there's the family history of a g'g'grandmother who had enough of drunken beatings and hungry children. Saving a few pennies here and there she prepared for the pay day festivities by putting a new muslin sheet on the bed, getting a brand new broom, setting stout string and a heavy needle under the bed and having her and her children's clothes packed and set behind the front door.
Her husband came through the door and worked off his drunken temper beating her before he fell on the bed in a sodden stupor. She quickly sewed him up tightly in the NEW sheet, grabbed her broom and beat the holy Hades out of him.
War isn't JUST men beating their chests and declaring their abilities, its also planning, strategy and courage. Why do you think women have none of these things?
Wadulisi
11/8/14, 4:34 PM
DeAnander said...
One interesting side note is that one of the problems faced by early Anglo colonists on the E Coast of N America (a vengefully patriarchal bunch, for the most part) was that women and children would run away to join the indigenes. The so-called "savages" offered more of a life than the home team, and often those who had been "kidnapped by Indians" and then "rescued" (i.e. hunted down and returned to their "rightful owners") ran away again, persistently. This was seen at the time as proof of the diabolical power of the savage to corrupt the European mind; to me, a couple of centuries later, it seems pretty obvious that the colonist men were complete jerks and the "savages" were a lot more fun to live among. So much for the idea that "backwards" cultures can only be worse for women or kids...
So it is sometimes the case that the good ol' patriarchal culture loses some of its reproductive potential if the guys next door are offering a better deal. Same is true among baboon troops, as Sapolsky observed in the field: the Big Boss Baboon certainly does get away with beating everybody up and raping any female who doesn't run fast enough -- but the females sneak around behind his back to mate voluntarily with non-dominant baboons who are much nicer and often form lifelong friendships with females. So much for alpha-hood enforcing genetic monopoly :-) Also it turns out the alpha male baboon suffers from stress-related illnesses and may not live as long as the nice guys...
Of course, in the long run the indigenes lost that conflict :-( (and patriarchal human cultures may yet wipe out baboons as well, the nice along with the nasty). But then in the longer run, the colonial civilisation that decimated them is losing a larger game. Who knows whether N America may one day again see cultures similar to those First forest and plains Nations... and maybe women and kids from the warlord cultures will run away into the forest to join the savages :-)
11/8/14, 4:39 PM
Shane Wilson said...
Out of curiosity, I visited the Farm's website. Ugh. A quote from Steve Wozniak, a link to a TED talk, even a link to" financial permaculture", and a very commercialized, promotional feel...
@ JMG,
Sorry I'm just now responding, but one thing I like about your blogs is their neat, clean, focused literary quality. If you're going to have a blog online, this is how you should have it. I'd hate to see you go the route of other peak oil bloggers, and go all in on ads, links, photos, social media links, etc. I like the plain, straightforward, literary approach
11/8/14, 4:44 PM
bicosse said...
The "serf in India who can barely speak English" who is phoning you from a call centre is probably a graduate who speaks excellent Indian English, though with a strong accent that you find hard to understand.
I used to buy organic, fairtrade cotton clothes from a co-operative in Bristol, England, that had built a long-term, highly-successful relationship with a village in South India. That co-op has now closed down, in part because it was so successful in raising living standards in the village that many workers there were able to send their children to university so that they would not need to become tailors or embroiderers in their turn.
I mentioned this to a friend who is an academic with a deep knowledge and experience of India and she said, "Oh, they'll probably go to work in call centres. That's what lots of graduates in India do."
I fear intermediation has some way to go yet...
11/8/14, 6:16 PM
Robert Mathiesen said...
11/8/14, 6:35 PM
onething said...
I wonder how you are doing? I did not say that the sole purpose of males is to serve females. I said that it is their most primal purpose. The rest of what you said I more or less stated in a different way.
Daelach, Claudia and Nastarana,
There's a big difference between renouncing motherhood, and having 16 babies. I stated here and have so stated before, that my interest is to preserve knowledge of basic health, sanitation, and birth control as a way NOT to go back to 50% dead babies. And I think that not getting pregnant back to back is a big part of that. As a woman who has always had a strongish drive, I would have been destroyed by having to choose between my marriage and unwanted, excess pregnancy. Certainly in this I feel some anger at the Roman church. In my opinion this is perhaps the most common cause of human misery and ill health, and so easily rectified. To continue this stance in the face of the world population crisis is myopic and suicidally rigid. As to the pope's statement, I am confused. Surely he did not mean that every unmarried woman must become a nun?
That other declining civilizations had low births among the upper classes, and with an attitude that childbearing was belittling - well I never heard that and would like to know more.
11/8/14, 6:37 PM
wiseman said...
Of course there is always an outlier, there are a lot of rich farmers in India today but they are a minority. I was talking about the vast majority who own a few acres and do all the labor themselves. It's backbreaking work and not worth it, hence the spate of farmer suicides.
Might I remind you that agriculture is still the dominant form of economy in this country if not in size then in terms of participation rate, as far as as the future is concerned I don't know what's going to happen to dalits or any other group. One thing I know for sure is that there are a lot of under historically oppressed groups who have tasted success since India became independent and they are not going to give away those gains without a fight, so there will be violence.
On a selfish note I am more concerned with my immediate future and not in what's going to happen 100 years down the line. There is still too much energy and too much wastage in this world for it to return to full scale agriculture in the next 30-40 years and that's what I am interested in.
11/8/14, 6:47 PM
Steven Szydlowski said...
I thought you might find this little snippet indicative of another example of catabolic collapse and a return to a lower level of complexity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9XVMcUUWtI Best regards, Steve Szydlowski
11/8/14, 7:32 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Bill, I hadn't heard about Stephen Gaskin's death. I read a number of his early books back in the day.
Cherokee, I'll have to go look up what's available on the history of money. What I'll be talking about is actually more specialized: what happens to monetary systems in dark ages, and, ahem, what happens to the people who try to rely on monetary systems in dark ages.
Phil, okay, given the absence of modern inputs, it's going to be tough but potentially doable. I hope the government has the common sense to encourage a return to crofting as things get tight.
Marcello, no question, we enjoy huge advantages as a result of the reckless consumption of half a billion years of fossil sunlight. The point I was trying to make is simply that idealizing the past isn't the only possible mistake -- it's also very common for people to use the past as a dumping ground for fantasies on the other end of the scale, which are just as inaccurate.
Daelach, I'm not sure if you're aware that flintlocks have had a major revival in the US and are readily available. I'm far from sure that percussion caps won't be an option -- this is early 19th century technology, after all, and the revolvers that were standard personal weapons in the old West were made using handpowered equipment. Thus the use of firearms for personal defense and, more important, the defense of communities is pretty much a given in the deindustrial era, and musket battles don't have much in common with a soccer game, you know.
Ed-M, oh, granted. The town where I live is too small to have a really entrenched urban political machine, so there's more flexibility here.
Varun, glad to hear it.
Marcello, peasants in the Middle Ages got about one day off in every three -- every significant saint's day was a holiday from work. So you're not quite doing as well as your medieval equivalent in that department!
Claudia, the label "angry feminists" doesn't imply that all feminists are angry; it implies a distinction between those who spend a lot of their time expressing anger from those who don't. If you haven't encountered those who do, be glad.
Marin, funny. I hope they don't slap you with a lawsuit for misdirecting them.
Tony, the political implications of firearms in the deindustrial dark age is a fascinating question. Will firearms prevent a feudal system from forming? Will they lead to some kind of modified feudalism? Will the standard sort of post-dark age feudalism evolve anyway? None of us know for sure, nor will we have the chance to find out -- but it's an interesting question.
11/8/14, 8:39 PM
John Michael Greer said...
DeAnander, the First Nations lost that conflict mostly because of sheer demographics, combined with the huge gap in military technologies. I don't anticipate any such gap opening up in the future, not least because (a) the fossil fuel reserves that made the 19th century US so powerful are gone forever, and (b) firearms are a relatively simple technology and sufficiently advantageous in war that I don't imagine anyone will let it become a lost technology. Thus a future conflict between warlord societies and indigenes will likely take place on much more equal terms.
Shane, don't worry, I'm not going to chatter on about social media or start bringing in irrelevant ads and the like. I thought long and hard before posting links to my books alongside the blog, and that's about as far as I feel like taking things. One of the advantages of the way I've set up this whole project is that I have some control over such issues!
Steven, thanks for the link!
11/8/14, 8:44 PM
Charles Blair said...
I was thinking specifically of aricles like this, http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/moon-power-chinas-pursuit-of-lunar-helium-3/, which is not the only article to mention it. The biosphere that would be wrecked would not be our own; we would simply be repeating a pattern of wreckage elsewhere (putting to one side the consideration of whether the moon has a biosphere, strictly speaking). Speaking for myself, a Riddley Walker kind of future is probable, if not inevitable. But Aristotle defined rhetoric (more or less, and paraphrasing from memory), as finding the available means of persuasion in any given case. Preaching to the choir is one thing. Preaching to those among my friends and acquaintances who could use persuasion is another. They will be impervious to what appear to them to be "faith-based" arguments, that the past is a predictor of the future. Most people believe in a linear, not a circular, view of history. To break them of that habit, some strong empirical arguments would help, such as, as I suggested, to do what you envision will exhaust the available supply of conventional energy to make that happen, or X, Y, or Z will occur to make it impossible (e.g., a climate or biological or whatever catastrophe). If arguments like these are not forthcoming, fine; one will simply have to rely on less quantifiable, more impressionistic (for the impressionable mind) means of persuasion.
11/8/14, 8:59 PM
Rhisiart Gwilym said...
They're much better as permanent mixed, complex forests, and can certainly thrive all over Scotland as such; with, naturally, the full complement of all the other species who would be there, given the chance. And that needs to include the essential big predators, of course, to grow the whole ecosystem to maximum health and energy/matter productivity.
I look forward to the time, probably after I've quit this particular lifetime, when the citizens of an independent Scotland lead the way for the whole of Britain, in wisely assisting the Ents in their greatly-to-be-hoped-for regeneration of An Choile Mhor Dara/Yr Ail Coed Mawr/The Second Great Wood, which should by sound ecological rights be re-covering nearly the whole of the islands of Britain and Eire PDQ, ASAP. As long, that is, as climate shift doesn't make The Isles inhospitable to trees altogether.
But that's surely not true at the moment of any part of Scotland. Right now, there's no reason why even such mountains as Glamaig and Marsco - and all the rest - shouldn't be re-forested almost to their summits; progressively, given time and a little human help. Just restrain the sheep and the deer a little with the help of re-introduced wolves, bears, wolverines, and lynxes and - perhaps surprisingly - beavers.
And to balance the mix perfectly, to make still possible at least a reduced amount of domestic sheep and cattle keeping, add in Old-World shepherd-dog breeds, such as Anatolians, Caucasian Ovcharki, and all the rest of that stirling ilk...
11/8/14, 9:28 PM
Rhisiart Gwilym said...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1rKDXuZ8C0
But there are many others, in quite other climates, soils and terrains, too. I've had a hand in some of them myself. Nil desperandum, Phil! Scotland can do lots with what it's got; probably even better than Cuba in the Special Period... :))
11/8/14, 9:44 PM
EntropicDoom said...
In a scary future with a drastic reduction in manufacturing capability we could see no power to run our giant milling machines and no way to use local mechanical power to convert them. The sources of steel and other materials would be lacking. Steel for cutting tools must be harder in order to cut the softer steel of the barrels. Finding adequate supplies of special steel may be difficult. Our American steel mills have been reduced in number and in capabilities. Files and drills must be a different steel and making them is a complex operation. We would lack machines, raw materials, tools, skilled workers and knowledge.
Gun powder is difficult to manufacture and must be done in an isolated location. The base materials may be difficult to find in nature. I had a friend whose father made gun powder in the sand dunes of northern Scotland, in winter, with wooden bowls and carts and froze his butt off with nothing to warm himself, but occasional cups of tepid tea. It was all done outside, in bunkers cut into the dunes. Duplicating that simple operation may not be possible, today. Primitive manufacture still takes expert information and transmitting it across generations in perilous times may be impossible. Remember there is no Internet in most envisioned futures. Written information is quickly disappearing and knowledge of simple tasks is not passed on.
A slowed, controlled descent may save some firearms manufacturing skills and practices with a concentrated effort. It would take an effort by knowledgeable people who can control the chain vertically from sources to sales. But in our paranoid culture any project involving firearms will run headlong into intense government scrutiny and regulation at a time of economic descent. Whatever is saved would be a ripe plum for the authorities or emerging war bands to pick for their own uses.
11/8/14, 9:52 PM
Marinhomelander said...
"Marinhomelander,
The "serf in India who can barely speak English" who is phoning you from a call centre is probably a graduate who speaks excellent Indian English, though with a strong accent that you find hard to understand."
Your humanistic and egalitarian fantasies aside,
it's strange that they can't understand a simple question like "what is your address in Los Angeles?"Or what is the name of the company you work for? They are poor country girls that speak with a thick accent and it's probably the best job they'll ever have. However, that doesn't exculpate the financial parasites that hire them and the bottom-fishing junk service providers that show up.
JMG, As to being sued for "misdirecting them", we are on the National Do Not Call List. It's against federal law for any telemarketer to cold call us and anyone else who puts their number on the DNC List.
Do you think they would actually show up in court?
11/8/14, 10:27 PM
Bogatyr said...
Tom Bannister's comment about Maori and indigenous communities, and DeAnander's comment about settlers running off to join the 'savages' strike a chord. In many past societies there has been an 'other' alternative, taking many forms depending on the age. I'm coming around to the view that studying this, and identifying common or useful characteristics, is going to be useful in preparing for the coming decline. I've written some initial thoughts on this: Renegade Welsh. As always, feedback and suggestions would be great, especially from those of you whose thoughts are going in a similar direction.
11/9/14, 12:28 AM
Bogatyr said...
11/9/14, 12:50 AM
KL Cooke said...
Re: Scotland
(Disclaimer--I'm ad American, but my grandfather was born in Aberdeen)
"I doubt the rural areas will become bandit lands like large parts of the US could."
Weren't the Borderlands kind of a bad neighborhood back in the good old days?
11/9/14, 12:58 AM
Bogatyr said...
Of course, the smith and other artisans have some bargaining power by virtue of their skills, depending on its complexity and rarity - but that can play either way. I've read in the past of villages which hamstrung their smith, to prevent him from leaving...
@beneaththesurface That's a very interesting story. I wonder whether any members of the co-op are actually members of the 'powers-that-be', officially supposed to shut down that kind of thing but actually participating...
@Shane Wilson Interesting to read about "wwoofers and others living off grid in Appalachia". I've read a few books about off-grid living and intentional communities. There are a lot of people trying it in the UK, even given our population density, and a good friend is preparing to join a group in Cornwall. Sadly, the reality is that most require a fairly substantial amount of capital, which I don't have...
11/9/14, 1:10 AM
Marcello said...
For the records, that particular comparison with the American and medieval counterpart was about income/standards of living.
In general I would be vary of estimates comparing a modern economy to an household feudal one. Farm animals will need to be cared for regardless of the day being an official holiday and a number of domestic tasks were a lot more labor intensive, while on the other hand commute and such might not be included into work. They had more time off, particularly in some periods of the year but there are many things to consider.
"I believe the kind of feudalism seen in medieval times is not viable, since firearms favour general population against the elites. Feudal organization worked as long as mounted elites ruled the battlefield."
People will still probably default to following some local leader who will tend to form a hereditary rule even if the rationale for it is less strong than was in medieval times when the skill to use a sword or a mounted, armor clad lancer were trump cards. I suspect hierarchies might be more fluid and local democracy might be possible here and there.
"I do wonder what those women looked like."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franziska_Scanagatta
11/9/14, 1:26 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
Redneck -- You GO Girl! I've been staying out of this kinda horrifying gender discussion, with its layers of biological determinism and Men=War Women=Babies theme -- yech. Hey, y'all, ya know why "history" seems to think that History = War and War = Men? Because it's been written by men from the privileged classes of warmongering empires!
11/9/14, 5:16 AM
Mister Roboto said...
We were able to do that in this country because in those heady years, we had pretty much no postwar rebuilding to do, unlike the rest of the industrialized world including the USSR. The world was our oyster, as it were. But when our domestic oil production entered terminal decline in the late eighties and we had to start competing in the newly globalized market more on its terms and less on our own terms, we had to be more practical. That meant, as one poignant chapter in Susan Faludi's book Stiffed illustrated as an example, that the McDonald-Douglas aerospace manufacturing company had to eliminate the positions of many "engineers" who had never even been to engineering school. Little did those down-sized white-collar workers appreciate that this was only a logical extension of the policy that began about a decade earlier of outsourcing our manufacturing jobs to cheap third-world labor.
In the stair-step pattern of catabolic collapse, of course, that was just the first round of readjustment by way of disintermediation following a significant decline in available energy. It made possible the continuation of business as usual, though the elites and their hangers-on benefited rather more from the readjustment than the actual producers of goods and services, as you noted in this post. If that past round of disintermediation brought out some pretty dysfunctional aspects of the national character, I shudder to imagine what will happen when a subsequent round of disintermediation means no more business as usual.
11/9/14, 6:23 AM
Shane Wilson said...
Idk, it seemed like the main site, it mentions the midwife program: http://www.thefarm.org
@ bogatyr
I don't think these farms/programs require a lot of money. Susana operates Salamander Springs on a shoestring budget, she salvages a lot of her materials. She claims to get by on $10,000 a year, and models her operation on her time spent farming in Guatemala. It seemed like voluntary poverty to me. What also amazed me was how many other like minded families were also homesteading in the same holler. She mentions E F Schumacher in her handouts. You might ask JMG, who also lives in Appalachia, but I think that it is uniquely situated for monastic preservation for the coming dark ages. The unforgiving terrain should keep out the riff raff, and the dogged autonomy of the people/culture should be a buffer to allow disintermediation. (Most of the people in this holler were free to pursue what they wanted without outside interference/harassment). Only if we do get a fascist dictator with a egomaniacal bent do I see Appalachia being at risk, and even then, it'd be a hard area to subdue. If I remember correctly from reading it in high school, according to Night Comes to the Cumberlands, the original inhabitants of Appalachia were indentured servants fleeing their servitude- -that should tell you something about the nature of the terrain. :)
Regarding gender, I too, am sceptical about shrill claims that we must revert to an oppressive past once the dark ages commences. It's certainly possible that sexism, homophobia, and a repressive form of Judeo-Christian morality particularly concerning sex sees a resurgence, but it's not a given, and, even if it did, there's no reason to think it wouldn't be temporary. I think the shrill insistence says more about those insisting on its guaranteed return than anything. Certainly the diversity of experience regarding gender norms (I'm including the acceptance of the atypical/queer here as well) among not only humans, but social primates as well simply doesn't mean a guaranteed return to the norms of the recent Western past.
11/9/14, 8:04 AM
Shane Wilson said...
11/9/14, 8:11 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
Noteworthy that this wholesale conversion of forest to moorland happened during the Neolithic, without benefit of metallurgy or fossil fuels. Personally, I blame the sheep.
11/9/14, 8:28 AM
W. David Work said...
Not relevant to this *specific* post (probably more in the vein of "Twilight of the Space Age") but I've just seen the new Christopher Nolan film Interstellar and I think it's a must-see for you. Not to convert you to the cause of Progress and the accompanying narrative that Humankind Was Meant To Colonize The Stars, but rather as a cultural benchmark for the reactionary persistence of those memes. I won't spoil anything for you by revealing details, just trust me when I say it's worth your time for the sake of the cultural critique that it's practically begging for from a writer such as yourself. Looking forward to reading that whenever you get around to it; keep up the great work here!
WDW
11/9/14, 8:49 AM
Bruno Bolzon said...
11/9/14, 8:54 AM
Crow Hill said...
News on the business as usual front: Two programmes I heard on BBC Radio 4, this week and last week.
The first about the summit of the Arctic Circle Nations who are organising for a resources rush in their region and the second one about one to the moon. There was very little critical analysis during the programmes.
We seem to be living on different planets.
11/9/14, 8:59 AM
Varun Bhaskar said...
What do you mean there's plenty of energy? There are 7 billion people on the planet all trying to live the life-styles of the west. 1.4 billion in India alone. How long is India going to be able to maintain current growth rates at our current rate of resource depletion? From my experience the environmental stress in India is considerably worse than most people realize.
11/9/14, 9:04 AM
Crow Hill said...
Hey JMG, here's another off-topic link that relates to something you've discussed in the past... your doubts about the validity of certain astronomical origin theories.
Time May Be Disappearing From Our Universe"
So the scientific theories will have to be readjusted to this new evidence if confirmed, as they have been over time. Just from memory, not so long ago it was thought there was only one galaxy in the universe and so forth. Science is something I hope will survive the fall of our civilisation.
Last week there was a comment of a scientific paradigm shift. Would like to know what it is.
11/9/14, 10:01 AM
Robert Mathiesen said...
"Arming America" is an unreliable piece of pseudo-scholarship, maybe the single most egregious example of that in recent American historical scholarship. Its author made up some of his sources out of whole cloth (e.g. pre-1906 San Francisco probate records), and tendentiously misread many other sources. See the competent summary in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America
11/9/14, 10:40 AM
jyankowsky said...
I REALLY LOOK FORWARD TO IT EVERY WEEK.
11/9/14, 10:41 AM
jyankowsky said...
I can assure you that you're not exaggerating. I've been a policeman in the NYC metro area for 27 yrs. and the decline in civility during the latter half of that timeline has been precipitous- as much, if not more so, amongst the well-heeled of my upper middle class suburbs as the less privileged. Everyone seems to be elbowing each other out of the way in a battle over the remaining table scraps.1512
11/9/14, 11:01 AM
barath said...
See the comments in this thread that explain (and show in photographs) how the project actually relied upon a well to stay green, and after they stopped irrigating it the project dried up and died:
http://smallfarmfuture.org.uk/?p=491#comment-10649
11/9/14, 1:27 PM
jonathan said...
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
11/9/14, 2:42 PM
Marcello said...
Existing gun designs might be difficult/impossible to make a very long time after the end of the industrial age. But as long as industrial machinery lasts it will be likely earmarked for gun production.
Even once it becomes unavailable early 19th century weapons can be made by a skilled smith if necessary. Powder can be likewise made by processing such basic ingredients as animal waste, wood and sulphur.
11/9/14, 2:43 PM
David MacLeod said...
Your last two posts have paralleled much of what I've been reading lately in Peter Pogany's 2006 book "Rethinking The World." Are you familiar with Pogany?
One difference is that in this book he is acknowledging an allegiance to a form of Hegelian/Marxian "NEW" Historical Materialism. The "new" is, I suppose, his bringing in an emphasis on finite resources and a respect for the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (he's very aware of peak oil, etc.), and that chaotic interludes occur between stages.
After publication of this book it appears that he adopted more of a Gebsarian approach, which is also a stage conception of history, but emphasizes them more as cycles of mutation rather than evolutionary development (progress). I'm wondering if you have an opinion on Jean Gebser and his book "The Ever Present Origin"? Pogany presented on "Gebser's Relevance to the Global Crisis" here: http://ppogany.svrpress.com/GebserConferencePaper2011.pdf
11/9/14, 3:54 PM
magicalthyme said...
If you're doing any farming or living any place where you need to harvest wood, I'll put my money on horses. Bikes are fine for individual travel, with or without a small load. And oxen can compete with horses for plowing. But nothing can beat horses for twitching logs or ride/drive/plow, etc. versatility.
Mary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt1_ShhUx_U
11/9/14, 4:50 PM
DeAnander said...
To the best of my recollection the wave of farmer suicides in rural India is not so much due to the inherently depressing nature of farming, but to the inescapable debt trap foisted on third world famers by the Green Revolution sales team.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/UK-researchers-unravel-reasons-behind-Indias-farmer-suicides/articleshow/33878275.cms
As with farm debt elsewhere in the world, it can often be traced back to pressure to mechanise and to switch to chemical agriculture and expensive patented seeds in order to compete with corporate-scale farming, and parallel pressure to specialise in cash crops for export, chasing distant and volatile (high risk) markets. Switching to monocropping and cash cropping is recommended as a path to prosperity but often ends up leading instead to overcapitalisation, debt, and land loss.
The rise in the number of farmer suicides corresponds quite strongly with "liberalisation" policy shifts in Indian government and trade regulation. The region has been agricultural for several millennia. without being famous for its suicidal farmers until the last couple of decades. I really don't think we can blame the tragedy on the inherent awfulness of farming per se.
Ironically, or appropriately, many of these suicidal farmers have ended their lives by drinking the same pesticides they went into debt to purchase. It is an ugly chapter in the "mission civilisatrice" if you ask me, and a return to polyculture and relocalisation of food markets (with export markets receiving surpluses only) is long overdue worldwide.
11/9/14, 4:52 PM
DeAnander said...
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/2012/05/15/out_of_the_mouth_of_babes/
The average weaning age in many traditional, low-tech societies is 3 years.
Lots of things would be different in a different world. We look at the future as clueless, bewildered anthropologists peering at a tribe whose lifeway is so different from our own that we have difficulty parsing even the most routine of daily behaviours.
11/9/14, 5:05 PM
wiseman said...
By plenty of energy I mean there's still a lot of oil to go around if economy isn't cruising at 3-4%. During 2009 how much did the price of oil fell down to ? How much does the average American drive ? What happens if everyone drives a scooter instead of a truck ? Stuff like that.
Of course it won't look nice and there will be an economic depression but people will adjust, there will be violence and war but I don't see a feudal style agriculture in the near future, that's way way out in future. That's what I meant.
11/9/14, 6:04 PM
dltrammel said...
"Inside San Francisco's Housing Boom"
And not just low income, also many we would consider middle class.
11/9/14, 8:42 PM
Val said...
11/9/14, 11:47 PM
Rhisiart Gwilym said...
I'm a pragmatist in my own growing work, always. What works, works. Try to improve it all the time. That's about the extent of my rule. Still do no-till and much-mulch, though. Works well in Britain's climate. I have slugs, but no particular slug problem. And that's after I had to rehome my Muscovy ducks, because the neighbours found them too messy.
Bill Pulliam, I sort of blame the sheep too. But in the end it comes down to human practices, really. If sheep are not used as a destructive monoculture, and if their numbers are kept restrained; and if you never so overstock that they destroy forest regrowth, then they can co-exist.
One important key, I suspect, apart from intelligent restraint by the human shepherds, together with a diversified food-getting way of life, not just pastoralism exclusively, is that all the wild species need to be present too, alongside the restrained pastoral practices. Let them live in the woods as welcome, respected neighbours (who also contribute their share to your food-budget, obviously). The big predators are an essential part of this, once you see the ecological necessity for them. And - as indicated above - the key to keeping small, vulnerable flocks of prey species in predator country is shepherd dogs. See Robert Denlinger's hands-on experiences stock-farming in Kentucky for an illustration of this:
http://www.denstarfarm.us/Index.htm
The Old World shepherd dogs have made a quiet but big hit in NAmerica since their methodical introduction by USDA-sponsored breeding and placing programmes started in the 1970s. Ray and Lorna Coppinger's Livestock Guardian Dog unit at Hampshire College was a famous pioneer of this development:
http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/companimals/guarddogs/guarddogs.htm
To my great regret, I no longer keep Anatolians, wonderful dogs that they are. Age and circumstances now prohibit it.
11/10/14, 1:34 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
It may well be that the history provides an early glimpse into the downfall and pitfalls of those systems? Of course what happens to monetary systems during a Dark Age is well after that time. Dante's inferno is probably as good a guide as any! I look forward to reading your forthcoming essay.
Yeah, deflation occurred after the Civil war as well as during the Great Depression.
However, I believe that you are correct and stagflation is the most likely outcome this time around. It is already happening anyway. The reason behind my thinking is because the printing presses are being spun quite hard this time around, whereas historically there was a modicum of restraint with central banks at least - at least the ones with a long history that didn't go under. Monetary policy can only go so far before it become ineffective and/or worsening the situation.
Interestingly too, for only a very short while the money supply traditionally used to be gold backed - which I have to agree with Galbraith is a bad thing for society. Gold backed means that money is redeemable in gold at a bank (good luck with that one!). It is unrealistic to suggest that money may be redeemable for gold, because how could the banks lend that gold from deposits? Little wonder there were runs and other shenanigans.
However, nowadays I would have to say that money is secured on real property, which appears at face value to be great because no one really knows what property is actually worth.
It should be remembered that loans are also secured against the estimated value of real property.
But in a globalised world if various Industrial economies spin their money printing presses, house and land prices go up in Australia as well as in other countries where those funds eventually end up.
Raising real property prices appears to me to be the one game left in town for the powers that be to grow the money supply. Goodness knows that it is being defended here with everything they have to throw at it. Take that away and we may just see behind the curtains and note that the reality is that the returns from business and investment aren't that great.
Scary stuff.
Cheers
Chris
PS: There is a new blog entry Children of the corn, where I discuss demons and gardening. Truly, it was a tough thing working those two usually unrelated topics together - coherently too. Plus some cool photos, more steps, a bit of shed and lots of fruit and flowers. Good stuff!
PS: Forgot to mention how much I enjoyed the Darth Vader joke from last weeks comments. It still brings a smile to my face.
11/10/14, 3:28 AM
patriciaormsby said...
I've become aware this week that much of our difficulty finding land has more to do with my husband's hesitance to make a commitment than with any serious lack of options. Just yesterday I was offered a house with land for roughly $35,000, and I would be thrilled with it, it has springs on the property which lead to the waterfall where I practice misogi...but my husband wouldn't like it.
Rice Farmer (still posting news on Collapse Net as well as his Blogspot site, collapse savvy) tells me he's bought a house and will soon have adjacent farmland as he gets his farming qualifications.
11/10/14, 5:26 AM
J. Raven Star said...
Re: this post, I currently live in the not-quite-rebuilt Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. It's an er... interesting place. I would advise not to listen much to any of the occasional news articles that come out about it by these people who come in for a few hours, take a few pictures, and leave. I'm assuming (maybe too much) but from the tenor and scope of what you have written here that you are probably familiar with such terms and concepts as secondary succession and (of course) rural life. Things are very - strange out here now, and still evolving.
What you say about the State demanding people go to certain markets and channels to earn their living and such is very true - but (if you've read Heinlein) when I first got back here in 2010 I began to quickly realize the neighborhood had become a sort of Abandoned Area; where regulation, police presence, and people are almost nil. Something less than a ghost town, but not quite a neighborhood or city. People do what they want. It isn't post-money yet, but there's a certain level at which money has become very slightly less important and you can see how it could become so in time. People keep goats and chickens and there are a number of community gardens and fruit trees. Some people fish for food. There's a fair number of "squatters". Wild animals have been slowly creeping back in as well.
A lot of the newer houses that have been built are "green" - rainwater collecting, solar panels, etc. Rain and water are something we get plenty of down here, of course.
There's a hodgepodge of laws that make any of these things difficult, expensive, or illegal but people do some of them anyway, Putting them together would make some of these homes essentially small, self-sustaining farms.
11/10/14, 6:20 AM
Tony Rantala said...
No doubt there will be societies that centralize power to an armed elite and societies that lose the ability to manufacture proper firearms. However, something like an AK or a bolt lock rifle is not that hard to make and lasts for a long time. The point is that those societies can not compete with more egalitarian amd technological societies.
if you don't have firearms and you can't get them, eventually you, or your land at least, is likely to be assimilated by a neighbour who does have them.
Efficient armies consist of disciplined, group oriented men with good health, meaning good diet, and motivation. For this reason free peasants have often been considered prime requiting material. Feudal organization might field fifty such people against 500 fielded by a democratic society where everyone fights. And that's generous.
Then there are the roving gangs of murderers that Greer has mentioned. Such a group can realistically kill feudal elites and take their place, and the peasantry should accept the new arrangement pretty easily. Do that to a democracy and you need to kill half the men there, or maybe even every adult.
Also, the differences in population and technology are likely to grow over time. Authoritarian, inequal societies focus on extracting wealth and prevent the development and spread of new tehnologies. See Why Nations Fail for details on that.
Equal societies tend to improve tehnologies and make productive investments since it is the only way to enrich the majoity. Due to better diet, since people produce mostly for themselves and with better technology, democratic societies would have more population growth. Eventually, they might not settle for tribute, since they would need farmland for their people.
Lastly, feudal society could be easily destabilized. Simply providing them a steady stream of bullets and firearms could keep the rebels going.
There is likely to be a wide variety of social organizations, but some of those that can field large numbers of competent, well-armed soldiers might just go Rome on societies that consist of a few thugs robbing broken peasants.
11/10/14, 7:40 AM
Slow Moe said...
Do you know skilled smiths? Because i dont, because there are very very few of them still around.
11/10/14, 7:51 AM
Karl said...
Mr. Greer you mentioned in a reply looking up the way the early colonists lived.
Dover books puts out a lot of inexpensive books on different subjects. Here are some of the ones about the colonial period:
Home Life in Colonial Days
Herbs and Herb Lore of Colonial America
The Colonial Craftsman
Biddle's Young Carpenter's Assistant
lastly for all the doomers:
Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties: The Classic Guide to Building Wilderness Shelters
11/10/14, 8:21 AM
Slow Moe said...
11/10/14, 8:43 AM
jean-vivien said...
I found this opionion piece on the Reuters page today :
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/11/10/why-obama-falls-short-were-spoiled-by-the-movies/
Kind of stating the obvious, and an oversimplification of quite a complex question... Still I expect some sort of common sense to make a timid comeback in your collective consciousness from now on, just that it will be hard for mainstream journalism to take the leap over the mental gaps which this blog is trying to cross.
11/10/14, 8:59 AM
Janet D said...
- An indigenous spiritual leader was there for part of the weekend, representing the main local tribe. Amazing man. I asked him how he avoided frustration given the ongoing struggles of his people & the fact that the world continues to race for the edge of the cliff as fast as it can. He looked me dead in the eye and calmly (and strongly) said, "I and every other tribal holy man I know are all on the 300-year plan." Meaning they are focusing on preserving their people's cultural teachings and values for success during and after the long descent. The good news is that a number of tribes are experiencing cultural and spiritual revival today. God speed, I say.
I'm not going to wade into the whole gender thing other than to say that when someone is trying to write a specific prescription for the future, it has more to do with the internal state of the author than the actual likelihood of it coming to pass. Yes, many past cultures had relatively strict gender-based roles, but in many of them, women had a lot of power and widely varied roles. Just because we're going into a long descent does not mean we wake up a few decades from now in ISIS-like conditions.
I have more to add on birth control, but since that will involve me attempting links here for the first time (thanks, Chris), I will create a separate post.
11/10/14, 9:26 AM
MindfulEcologist said...
I will be contemplating each of the comments carefully. I am most interested in how we might relieve a bit of the frustrations, disappointments and sufferings our collapse is spreading around without making things worse. The way I see it this is not an easy task, not at all. ‘We will open no mind before its time’, yet ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’ and all that.
Thank you all.
11/10/14, 9:52 AM
Janet D said...
Best resources for herbal birth control that I've discovered so far:
Sister Zeus web site
Great info at this site. The woman who writes Sister Zeus actually did an experiment with women using wild carrot (I believe that is Queen Anne's Lace), either the seeds, or a tincture, or both. The results were pretty amazing in terms of their success rate (I believe it was over 90% over the space of a year, although the sample size was small, and most of the women who did get PG had either other issues or inconsistent usage of the herb).
The bookshelf at this site also has a # of books on herbs and methods traditionally used for contraception (note: the site & book list also contain info on herbs used for herbal abortions, so if that has you reaching for your couch/smelling salts - or the soapbox - just skip this link).
6-Step Herbal Contraceptive Program
This link will take you to the Astro-Herbalist site. It's a bit more "out there", but she has some great information as well as links.
Toni Weschler's "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" book should be on every GW's shelf. It pretty much takes the romance right on out of conception given it's detailed descriptions and photos of every stage of cervical life for a woman, but no woman (or man) can read this book without getting the conception process and signs down pat.
Finally, there's also always the Sympto-Thermal Method (people take classes). Supposedly it is much more effective than the Rhythm Method.
Stockpile this info for future generations! I will also get this up at GW later today.
Hope the links worked. If not, well, "advanced computer skills" are not on the short list for Green Wizards, so I don't spend much time practicing!
11/10/14, 9:56 AM
Varun Bhaskar said...
Ah, apologies I misunderstood you.
There's plenty of oil, sure, but if the economy isn't growing at that speed how do the rural poor liberate themselves through economic advancement?
I've seen at least three posters on this particular discussion point out that Indian's with craft skills are ending up in the cities, where their skills aren't put to use. If that doesn't change soon, we're going to have a major crisis in the next few decades.
As has been pointed out. China came to the party when the oil was already half gone, India joined a decade later. My worry is the liberation through economic growth promise is going to come back and bite us all in the rear.
Your thoughts on that problem?
Regards,
Varun
11/10/14, 10:03 AM
Shane Wilson said...
11/10/14, 10:03 AM
Phil Harris said...
Yes of course - trees in Scotland.
I was thinking about trees as a crop to be cut and used to support "carrying capacity".
I have been a supporter of Trees for Life since the beginning, except for a recent glitch with our Bank. http://treesforlife.org.uk/
PS I agree about growing in inhospitable places, but there are limits. And it rather depends on the type of limits.
but very best
Phil
11/10/14, 10:23 AM
nuku said...
11/10/14, 11:13 AM
Slow Moe said...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/07/entropy-and-empire/
11/10/14, 1:36 PM
onething said...
I followed your links and very much enjoyed the stuff on Poppin, and was intrigued by the idea that we can interfere with earth's energy system if we engage in too much diversion of wind and waves and such. I have wondered about that.
DeAnander,
I breastfed my children on demand and slept with them. It did not seem to help much with the return of fertility. With one it did delay it for 8 months.
11/10/14, 2:28 PM
Phil Harris said...
Trees in Scotland - I mentioned the subject originally.
Perhaps you have read my reply to Rhisiart. I did not make it clear originally, but I was thinking mostly of trees as a potential crop where conditions are not suitable for arable cropping or where, very extensively, pastoral activity is very low-yielding (which is true for a very large part of Scotland).
There have been as you suggest significant impacts from human activity since about 6000 years ago and there is evidence of cereal growing even in some areas where it is not attmepted these days. (The climate optimum for vegetation was in the early to mid-Holocene.)
But climate changes, particularly wetter and drier periods since the mid-Holocene also made a difference to tree cover and to the spread of peat and mires in the Highlands. Fossil trees are abundant in the peat hags, and I quote: "throughout many parts of the Highlands". Other evidence suggests rapid migrations of the northern tree line thought to be the result of climatic control (Sutherland). The explosion of Hekla in Iceland looks as though it also had something to do with the southward shift of pine about 4000 years ago (Caithness).
I think it can be concluded that climate in Scotland has been unstable in the Holocene due to the extreme oceanic position, and that tree cover at higher elevation especially in the wetter west and further north, altered accordingly.
I am looking just now at a book of conference proceedings from 1993 (I attended) Scotland since pre-history, Ed TC Smout.
best
Phil
11/10/14, 2:30 PM
dltrammel said...
dtrammel at green wizards dot info
I'd like to talk to you about a guest post to the GW site.
11/10/14, 2:31 PM
Marcello said...
Bar a fast catastrophic collapse I would expect that whatever skill will be necessary to make weapons will be nurtured and protected. After Rome fell people may have forgotten how to make good concrete, they did not forget how to make swords.
11/10/14, 3:03 PM
Nastarana said...
I can only speculate as the the reason for changes I have noticed. Increasing intrusiveness of social service agencies may be one. It only takes one run in with CPS to cure any young women with a grain of sense of I Just Want Someone To Love Me syndrome. Rising prices of basic necessities may be another. Very few households can afford the pretensions of persons who are violent, obstreperous, spendthrift, abusive etc. etc. And, when female relatives are frequently called on for financial and other support, they do tend to lay down conditions.
As for weapons, it seems to me that the world is awash in firearms right now. Furthermore, most are engineered to last quite some time. Bullets may become scarce before the weapons themselves wear out.
11/10/14, 3:16 PM
troy said...
When an empire is in its early, healthy days the creative minority can redirect men who are disposed to hyper-masculine passions toward productive ends (productive from the standpoint of empire-building, that is, e.g. conquest of new lands). Later on, the dominant minority can still keep them in check with force. An empire in the terminal stages of decline though gradually loses the ability to keep the warbands from forming and going on the rampage, like a sickly old person's immune system gradually losing the ability to fight off infections. Eventually the warbands win and the cycle starts again.
So, perhaps it's true that gender relations have shifted fundamentally in North America, but that won't mean a whole lot when some "genial duffer" a few years down the road gets the bright idea to hire some South American cartel-linked "security consultants" to settle a disputed national election or to quell a popular uprising. When the "Hour of the Knife" comes and the old order is swept away, the rights and concessions that have been won from that old order at great effort might not stand.
11/10/14, 3:48 PM
Unknown said...
This past weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal contains a long, detailed article that is pertinent to our discussion about the capabilities of women in ground combat. Unfortunately, the online version is paywalled.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/marine-corps-puts-a-few-good-women-to-the-test-1415394846?KEYWORD
Those who have a particular interest in this subject may find it worth their while to seek out the dead tree edition in a library. It starts on the front page below the fold. Since most of you are not going to do that, I'm going to take the liberty of posting an extended summary.
Last year, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta ordered that all ground combat jobs be open to women, with the loophole that each service has until 1/1/16 to prove that women can't perform a particular job. "If members of our military can meet the qualifications for a job, then they should have the right to serve, regardless of creed, color, gender or sexual orientation," Panetta said.
Most of the article is about the Marine Corp's response to the DOD directive. The Corps has set up a unit of volunteers (105 women, 295 men)from the enlisted ranks to settle the question of whether women can fight alongside men in ground combat. It's called the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force. They are training together and then will be observed by researchers during a series of live-fire attacks. High tech sensors are being used during training and later on tests to assess how troops of different sizes and sexes perform together in combat.
"[The unit includes] some of the first female graduates of the Corps' ground-combat schools . . . [as well as] men and women who were working as clerks, cargo loaders or in other support jobs." The top artilleryman in the howitzer class was an artillerywoman, and women were the best performers in Corps schools for tank, amphibious-assault vehicle and light-armored reconnaissance crews." Readers of this blog will note that these are highly mechanized crews.
"Four of nine women in the tank school failed out, however, largely because of difficulties lifting the heavy shells in to the main gun. And just 40% of the women in the recent infantry school class graduated, compared with 95% of the men."
" 'We want to collect the data and do the research before we open the positions," said Capt. Maureen Krebs, a Marine Corps spokeswoman, " because we don't want to set female Marines up for failure.' " " 'We're not going to lower standards, period,' said Lt. Col. Mike Sandarov, who developed the Marine' approach to the gender-integration order."
(to be continued in my next post)
11/10/14, 4:04 PM
Unknown said...
Concluding my summary of the WSJ article about Marine Corps research on the fitness of female Marines for ground combat.
"The debate over women in combat--similar to arguments about gays in the military--used to focus on so-called unit cohesion: Would the presence of women, or gays, hinder a squad's ability to fight as a team? The combat experiences of women in Iraq and Afghanistan--like those of openly gay troops--have mostly sidelined that objection. "This isn't about women in combat," Lt. Col. Samarov said. "We consider that a settled issue."
"Female Marines have previously tried to complete the training required of infantry officers. None of the 24 women who attempted the grueling 10-week course over the past year have lasted more than two weeks. Most dropped out the first day."
"When the volunteers arrive, they undergo a battery of physical tests run by researchers from the University of Pittsburg." (Body fat measurement, balance, aerobic capacity, muscle strength, etc.)
"The rest of the unit's five-month training . . . will involve the constant practice of actions Marines perform in combat. The 12-person artillery crews set up and dismantle heavy guns over and over."
"next year . . .the task force begins 90 days of trial runs, likely in . . . the Mojave Desert. Paul Johnson, a scientist . . . designed an experiment he said would take the bias out of the decision about women in ground combat jobs. In the case of the infantry Marines, each 13-person squad--which will have random mixes of men and women--will perform repeated live-ammunition tasks such as rushing an enemy position. Electronic monitors on the weapons and human-silhouette targets that sense the crack of a passing bullet will record who fires which shots from where, and whether they hit. Heart-rate monitors will measure stress and report who is working to their potential."
Mr Johnson expects to present recommendations to the Marine Corps Commandant by late summer.
11/10/14, 4:25 PM
Bill Pulliam said...
11/10/14, 4:50 PM
Unknown said...
@Marcello--You wrote, "I tend to doubt that the women who did the fighting in the 18-19th century armies and navies could be considered "typical".
Obviously these women were more willing than most to defy social convention. The ones who left information about their reasons for joining up gave similar reasons to the men: for the pay, for adventure, to get away from a bad home situation, belief in a cause, following a sweetheart. (In the case of men, the motive of following a sweetheart must be inferred, but it surely motivated some homosexual soldiers.)
You asked, "Would a battalion of well drilled women hold up against a battalion of tall grenadiers marching forward with fixed bayonets, at least some of the time? Who knows? Would anybody make that experiment?"
A line of short, slight North Vietnamese regulars would not cut and run when charged by a bunch of six foot beefy Americans (unless by doing so, they could retreat into the jungle and pick off the Yanks one at a time). If you really think that a battalion of well drilled women in the front lines would perform as badly or worse than a bunch of male raw recruits, you are saying that no amount of drill will compensate for the innate physical cowardice of women.
From the 1850s to the 1950s, when President Harry Truman integrated the armed services, the prevailing view in the US officer corps about the courage of African Americans was exactly that.
As to who would make the women's experiment, the U. S. Department of Defense. Right now.
11/10/14, 5:03 PM
Marinhomelander said...
Blogger dltrammel said...
"here's a sobering look at the plight of lower income people in San Francisco being priced out of basic housing...
And not just low income, also many we would consider middle class."
http://www.vox.com/a/homeless-san-francisco-tech-boom
I was priced out of San Francisco a long time ago after growing up there. You can thank LBJ's great Society Program in 1965 for allowing Hong Kong Chinese with bags of money to immigrate and buy up most of the town and kick out the old Irish, German and Italian Working Class people from their rental properties.
Check the names of property owners for yourself at the assessor's office if you don't believe me: sfassessor.org
That plus the inability of anyone other than favored minorities to get any kind of public employment or most non profit jobs. Plus it's a magnet for Latin American immigration thanks to free medical, free city i.d., free translators, free cell phones, free legal services, free translators, etc.
There are only so many homes, apartments and garages to live in. They are all full. The city is now grandfathering them in since they are an important element of housing and are chock a block with families from somewhere else.
If you are homeless, you have to compete with thousands of recent arrivals who come to take advantage of a very generous safety net, (to and including JMG's friend that took a "crazy money" vacation there).
Billions of dollars having been spent by the city on homeless services -but so many come, it's still ineffective.
All very humane and encompassing and diverse but for a middle aged White Male like the guys portrayed in the link above? Forget it.
I moved to the environmental Whitetopia of Marin and have never looked back nor regretted it, nor have any of my childhood friends who do regret why it took them so long to make the move for the better. You can always visit San Francisco if you want. Just don't try and live or work there.
It's impossible unless you own property.
11/10/14, 5:28 PM
rabtter said...
I'm curious, if there is a surge in demand for their skills, will the number of skilled smiths remain fixed, or will it increase?
11/10/14, 6:32 PM
wiseman said...
It's too late in the day to post a reply but here it is.
Well I think both of us are talking about the same thing just in different ways, I am coming here with a survivor's perspective while you are coming here as a system planner, you are asking what's going to happen when economic growth does not pan out as promised and what I am saying is that it doesn't matter. I am more interested in personal and community based coping strategies.
I was not a believer in economic growth in the first place, it's just that it provided benefits to some sections of the society while taking it away from others (tribes and aborigines). I was just pointing out whatever the facts are.
The whole argument came out of Rita's comments about Dalits faring no better in the cities than what they endure in the villages which is obviously not true. I personally don't like to paint everyone participating in economic growth as an idiot as is the fashion in PO community. For a community which talks about man's hubris it's basically indulging in the same thing. Look we are smart and everyone else is an idiot.
Everyone is trying to chase comfort and security and you can't blame them for that, it's just human nature. If you were in the same position you'd have done the same.
Coming to your question about what's going to happen, history is your guide. I don't expect the Indian union to remain intact through the coming transition but then I'd love to be wrong. There will be violence, migration and all sorts of things but there will also be incredible opportunities for making money and getting out of the trap if one is smart enough, I am just trying to focus on those things. After all evolution isn't kind to people who have no will to live.
11/10/14, 8:01 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Thus debating the helium-3 business is a little like discussing the health effects of unicorn horns, when nobody has one to test or knows if unicorns actually exist; the partisans of unicorn-based health care can make whatever claims they want, and the only answer is "you don't know that." Based on what we know about fusion power and space travel, the whole thing will be stunningly uneconomical -- but of course the helium-3 brigade can insist that unspecified technological advances that haven't been made yet will solve that problem too, and so on rabbiting on endlessly into the night. That's why such claims are popular -- they can't be disproved, and so allow true believers in the myth of progress to cling to the fantasy.
Doom, among the many problems with the book Arming America is the far from minor fact that firearms were made in the colonies from a very early time -- the claim that all firearms used in the colonies and early US were imports is quite simply false. Have you heard of the Kentucky long rifle? Here's a page of good info about these classical, handmade American firearms, which are still being made and used today, by the way.
Marin, good question. It depends on how big of a corporation is involved -- many corporations have taken to using harassment lawsuits as an ordinary business tactic.
Marcello, oh, granted -- it's difficult to compare the two. The point I wanted to make is simply that the comparison doesn't automatically privilege the current way of doing things.
Mister R., good. Yes, that's part of what's been driving the collapse in labor force participation rates for the last few decades, and yes, it's likely to get much uglier as we proceed.
WDW, I'll consider it, but three hours of rah-rah for the Great God Progress sounds rather like an ordeal to me.
Bruno, yes, it is that bad here. In some areas it's worse.
Crow Hill, I think the believers in progress have, er, progressed from living in La-La Land to living on La-La Planet. As for paradigm shifts, it's not usually a matter of theories being readjusted, but of theories being thrown out and new ones having to be invented from scratch. Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is worth reading on this subject.
Jyankowski, thank you.
Jonathan, or you could take a look at the women of ancient Sparta and see how well they fit the current stereotype of women as "naturally" peacable, kind, non-hierarchical, etc.
Marcello, exactly. A lot of 18th and 19th century designs are still in use today, and not just by reenactment groups; there are plenty of gunsmiths who know how to make and maintain them, and there are many readily available formulations for gunpowder.
11/10/14, 9:30 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Magicalthyme, my guess is that you're right, but I've seen some impressive things done with cargo bikes, so it'll be up to the future to figure that one out.
Dltrammel, Seattle's much the same way -- that's one of the reasons my wife and I fled from there a decade ago.
Cherokee, it's been interesting to watch from a distance the real estate boom in your country. Here there are a couple of dozen bubbles, most backed by "assets" much less tangible than land, and it's an interesting question what's going to pop first.
Star, that's fascinating news. Do you happen to know what's going on in the small coastal towns in Mississippi and Louisiana that, by all accounts at the time, were basically leveled by Katrina? That's been shut out of the news pretty comprehensively since then.
Moe, why, yes, I do. There are gunsmiths in most rural towns of any size, and handbuilt guns of various kinds feature in local popular culture -- not long ago one of the Masonic lodges raffled off a stunning Kentucky long rifle with Masonic symbols carved into the stock, to raise money for charity. It had been handbuilt by a gunsmith and donated for the purpose, and yes, I bought a ticket (though I didn't win the gun).
Karl, excellent! Thanks for the links.
Moe, I discussed that a while back. The short version is that the military we have now is so dependent on wildly extravagant and fragile technosystems that military defeat is one of the more likely ways US hegemony could come crashing down. My recent novel Twilight's Last Gleaming is about that.
Jean-Vivien, oh, no doubt. If I'm right and the US runs a serious risk of military defeat in the not too distant future, it'll be interesting to see how the media rationalizes that.
Janet, the indigenous spiritual leader and his fellow holy men aren't the only ones on the 300 year plan. I've talked to Taoist teachers who are doing the same thing, and -- well, that's been my game plan for decades now. If you don't have the resources to change the direction in which the system is moving -- and very few people still do -- that's really the best option left.
Mindful, you're welcome!
11/10/14, 9:44 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Moe, it's an interesting article -- I think the author is mistaken about some crucial points, but he's got a broad sense of what's going down.
Nastarana, I've seen the same thing, and that was one of the things behind my invention of "Circle" in Star's Reach.
Troy, warlords are transient phenomena. It's what remains after they're gone, and some sort of protofeudalism takes their place, that I'm discussing.
Unknown Deborah, thanks for the extensive discussion. Didn't the Israelis also have women in combat positions back in the day?
11/10/14, 10:08 PM
Phil Harris said...
Sotland & trees
You wrote - "Phil H. -- There may have been some changes in the paleoecological thinking since 1993 (21 years ago)."
Thanks! Yes I know! Time passes and I get old. But coppicing - we are working on it - old resources will come in handy again.
Yes, grazing keeps the tree seedlings low and eventually there are no viable seeds in the bed. Trees for Life I linked to have a lot of good info in their archives on just this matter and the results from fencing-out deer and sheep. And I have seen the Rowan grow again inside fencing on our little Eildon Hills.
very best
Phil H
11/11/14, 4:02 AM
Phil Harris said...
Quick postscript - Trees for Life for my own quick update
http://treesforlife.org.uk/forest/human-impacts/deforestation/
Quote: "The history of this deforestation in the Highlands is long, complex and shrouded in mystery, but we can still gain glimpses of what has been lost."
Followed by a useful summary.
very best
Phil H
11/11/14, 4:10 AM
Patricia Mathews said...
11/11/14, 5:54 AM
J. Raven Star said...
Most of those places have rebuilt by now. Biloxi and Gulfport (which got a direct hit from Katrina) are in good shape - we went there this summer. The smaller seaport towns suffered more damage from the BP oil spill and the subsequent hit to their normal fishing income.
The population of those areas is really sparse (and for good reason), which would be why it doesn't make the news very often. It's mostly swampland peppered with small towns based on the fishing and oil industry.
11/11/14, 7:22 AM
Slow Moe said...
Do you have any thoughts on which article/s would be a good jump on point for new readers? Because your work is sort of difficult to take on all at once.
11/11/14, 7:30 AM
Phil Harris said...
You wrote: "I hope the government has the common sense to encourage a return to crofting as things get tight.”
Sadly, reverse migration has more than one snag. We can look for instance at British history: almost all the good or reasonably productive cultivated land (arable) has not been cultivated by crofters for almost 200 years in either Scotland or England. Surplus crofters from Highland and other very marginal farming areas in western Scotland arriving in cities or crossing the Atlantic were only part of an overall displacement of surplus farm labour from rural to urban. I have figures for England where by 1850 only 22% of the population was employed in agriculture. When in the latter half of 19thC the return on earlier 18thC and 19thC investment in British farming (for the growing largely urban market) became uncompetitive in the face of new imports, much of British farming again shed people.
However, considering the present day, there was talk a few years ago of "wind-crofting" in Scotland, which might not be as daft as it sounds, but it is hard to see it reaching any scale. It might just be like having a 'stripper oil well' on your property producing half a barrel a day. And for a community, wind-farming might be as durable as having a small coal mine. But relative cost structures and maintenance of wider infrastructures would determine how realistic this might be, I guess.
Late in the day for this week, so forgive my musings.
best
Phil
11/11/14, 9:56 AM
John Michael Greer said...
Star, okay, that's good to hear. I hope they have relocation plans in place once sea level rise kicks in in a big way!
Moe, the easiest way in is one of my books -- for a political liberal, either The Long Descent or The Wealth of Nature is probably the best starting place. Plunging straight into the blog is a difficult proposition!
Phil, oh, granted. I'm thinking here mostly of bare subsistence -- as things tighten up, the Scottish government (and a good many others) might find it advisable to set up some kind of homesteading program to get people supporting themselves in crofts and the like, as an alternative to soaring numbers on the dole at a time when most national governments may have a hard time paying their bills at all.
11/11/14, 10:59 AM
DeVaul said...
I expect modern firearms to be used extensively at first, but then after the ammo and spare parts run out, most people will resort to simple, old fashioned black powder weapons that do not require a factory to make or repair. In fact, I would expect flintlocks, and in particular the Kentucky Rifle, to be the main hunting firearm after 2100 or 2150 (I'm being generous here timewise, I think, since most modern firearms can go through a box of ammo pretty fast compared to a flintlock.)
At the rifle range, I can fire off about 20 rounds from my Kentucky Rifle in 4 hours, whereas if I were using a bolt action rifle, I could easily go through several hundred or even more than a thousand rounds in the same time period. Also, you can dig up the old lead round balls and remelt them into a mold and use them again and again.
A return to using bows and arrows would mean that the art of rifling or making gunpowder had been lost -- something that is entirely possible in the unknown future, but not likely.
11/11/14, 11:50 AM
Marcello said...
"As to who would make the women's experiment, the U. S. Department of Defense. Right now."
Deborah, modern combat is quite a bit different from the muzzle loader era. Firepower rules and not very well thought attempts at getting close to the enemy will result in one sided spectacular slaughter; most of the casualties are caused by artillerymen, mortar teams and pilots who probably can't even see the enemy. 18-19th century warfare is a lot closer to the earlier era when getting into personal contact with the enemy with blades was normal.
Hence the premium that was put on
tall imposing men for grenadier or cuirassier units, large horses, uniforms designed to impress etc. etc.
Male mass psychology is a known quantity in such circumstances, female one, not so much. That women can be good snipers or tank drivers and a number of others tasks is well known but muzzle loaders impose a different type of combat.
11/11/14, 11:52 AM
Unknown said...
John Muir, who was born in Scotland, witnessed the introduction of sheep herding in the Central Valley of California. He called sheep "hoofed locusts". He lamented that before the sheep, the Valley was one enormous "bee pasture".
Of course, Muir was not aware of the active role that indigenous tribes had in actively managing California ecosystems before European settlers killed most of them and drove the others from their ancestral lands.
Sheep and goats have their uses. In many places, goats are an effective way of clearing invasive plants without poisoning the soil. Perhaps the problem is overgrazing rather than grazing per se.
11/11/14, 12:41 PM
Raymond Duckling said...
What I came out with from this reading is that for an invading force/war band, the main issue against women fighters is troop morale. The typical warband material is young frustrated male with little prospects and even less hope. They are out to grab back what they think they are entitled for and to make those who denied that to them pay dearly. Having a girl in the unit means males have to restrain themselves (unless said female probes to be extra-degenerate, e.g. welcome as "one of the boys")
Military forces that are fighting in a defense roll do not have this issues, and women can be highly effective in a modern setting (from the same article, see YPG female fighters). As others have pointed out, by losing fertile age females you do lose the potential to bounce back demographically, but this matters little if you are facing a war of extermination. Sometimes short term benefits do pay out, and doubling your potential force is too big an upside to be left out without further thought.
@Patricia,
Yes, it will worse for the individual female fighters. They will draw disproportionate hostility from the enemy, for the reasons best explained in the article. But on the other hand, a people well known for their fierce women warriors will deny attackers of one of the bounties they yearn (submissive women that take with little complain the killers of their men). I wouldn't want anyone's daughters or sons going through this kind of experiences... but if they are going though anyways, what's the least bad scenario?
11/11/14, 12:46 PM
Nastarana said...
Following the likely sequence of events sketched by the Archdruid, it is the citizen militias and their leaders, proto-feudalists, who will assign tasks and determine roles. I would suggest that keeping productive adults in secluded idleness is a luxury which many future societies will not be able to afford.
11/11/14, 1:07 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Yeah, it is interesting to watch them all get pumped up. Actually it is quite disturbing too because I reckon the higher they go, the further they may have to fall.
No need to reply, but I thought you might like this one. Apparently $15m can buy a fast tracked citizenship here. What could possibly go wrong?
Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb mulls investor visa overhaul
Hi Janet,
No probs!
Cheers
Chris
11/11/14, 1:13 PM
Redneck Girl said...
Women have to be taught to be victims and in a slow motion collapse women will be much more physical than today. Why do you think women who are so physical are going to let some punk intimidate them? Such men make big targets and aren't going to have a high survival rate. They are much like any predator, they don't like to risk themselves and are only going to be that nasty if they think there's no consequences. Few women are going to go one on one against such men but you don't have to come out and challenge them. A more 'workman' like response is to remove them from the equation at the first opportunity. Concurrent with that you remove the genial duffer too! The weakness of warbands and the men who form or hire them is that they assume few or no one will have the fortitude to oppose them. Done right they won't know what hits them. Why do you assume a woman's hand can't be the one holding the knife and 'doing it right'?
One factor that might play the right way is that they underestimate the abilities of women as much as you do!
Wadulisi
11/11/14, 1:15 PM
Cherokee Organics said...
Just wanted to add a note to the sheep discussion. They are a special case because of two reasons:
Hard hooves compact the soil which is not good especially down under, but plenty of other introduced animals do that too.
Their big problem is that they will eat not only the plant above the ground, but they will also eat the root systems too. That is their secret to surviving in adverse conditions. They extract more from the environment than their competitors, which as a farmer means you get more bang for your buck - until they've eaten the paddock down to bare soil.
My gut feel is that if you are running sheep, it is because there is nothing else profitable to run on that land that yields as much. It is a sign that the land has been flogged more than anything else. There are a lot of sheep in the UK and I reckon they're not doing you or the soil any favours.
Cheers
Chris
11/11/14, 1:23 PM
Phil Harris said...
Shepherd guard dogs
I have an interest in Macedonia because I worked there on and off. A vetenarian I worked with was mightily impressed by these big fellows.
Are they very like the ones you know?
http://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum/showthread.php?t=5067
best
Phil H
11/11/14, 2:05 PM
Varun Bhaskar said...
I agree, it's a very bad habit of mine talking about things from a systemic perspective to the point I often lose sight of the fact that we're all just aam aadmi. I am curious as to why you reject farming as a viable skill-set. Even if you don't get a chance to practice farming it is still useful to know the basic theories of subsistence farming.
I don't know what to say about the Indian Union. People in India have been making-do for generations. As you pointed out earlier, crisis is a daily affair in India, but this one might be worse than all others. I've always felt that if India can resolve it's water crisis and restore enough of the fallow farmland things might proceed a little smoother.
11/11/14, 3:19 PM
Shane Wilson said...
Perhaps I know too many gender atypical lesbians, but I can EASILY think of many strong, powerful women that defy stereotypes.
@ troy
To my knowledge, the Mexican drug cartels are not known for sexism/misogyny, and women participate as well as men. There are quite a few notorious queenpins that rate right up there with the guys. I think it's just another stereotype that Latin America is more sexist/homophobic than the U.S.- -they're really not that different, depending on the country.
11/11/14, 5:40 PM
Shane Wilson said...
11/11/14, 5:44 PM
Shane Wilson said...
11/11/14, 5:57 PM
jean-vivien said...
Nuclear silos kept by disgruntled soldiers
http://clicks.slashdot.org/ct.html?ufl=f&rtr=on&s=x8pb08,22q6a,10sc,cutl,lohz,l5lu,grr9
And on a different topic, this is making the headlines right now on lemonde.fr : GW up 3.6 degrees by 2040
http://www.lemonde.fr/energies/article/2014/11/12/selon-l-aie-la-temperature-sur-terre-pourrait-grimper-de-3-6-degres-d-ici-2040_4522103_1653054.html
It is interesting how our times' predicament is always expressed in terms of huge complex systems (global climate, nuclear weapons...). Articles about folk's problems also make it up front, but the problems mentionned usually involve employment or social benefits from the state. I have yet to see a headline about people not managing to grow their tomatoes this year, for example. To be fair, in the summer droughts usually make it to the headlines here in France, and for a reason.
11/11/14, 6:50 PM
HalFiore said...
Bill Pulliam, by coincidence I met Jeff Poppen this last weekend at a sustainable ag conference in Jackson, MS. A mutual frend introduced us, and I attended his session, and after a panel discussion he was part of, I had a brief conversation with him. I can't say I'm all that convinced by some of his ideas (it seems to me that crushed quartz is still SiO2, and around here, we call that stuff "sand") but I appreciated and had to applaud when he made a skeptical comment regarding the current high-tunnel craze. It was not popular on the panel.
11/11/14, 8:06 PM
onething said...
I find this bit a little off the mark:
" If you really think that a battalion of well drilled women in the front lines would perform as badly or worse than a bunch of male raw recruits, you are saying that no amount of drill will compensate for the innate physical cowardice of women."
I think it means he is saying that ultimately women are weaker physically. I am not sure he ever specified that the men had absolutely no experience, but in the end, what matters is how well trained women will perform against well trained men.
I would be dismayed and very angry if my son were a soldier in a combat situation in which some of the team were women. That means my son might have less of a chance to live. Also, yes, men are hardwired to protect women, thus having women on the team would create emotional distortions. Or maybe they are not hardwired to protect women? Certainly most male animals are, so this is millions of years deep.
I find all this incomprehensible. It makes me feel so helpless. As if things weren't unfair enough when women were more oppressed, now we are shown the way out of oppression: Prove you are as strong as a man! Way to set us up for failure, and thus prove we are worthless after all.
And, no, it is not up to some warlord's whim whether women have rights. That is precisely my point. It is up to women to insist on being treated fairly, and if they are not capable of a certain amount of organized insistence, then they deserve to be controlled like any other animal. But if the women know how to insist, men do NOT have a choice.
This does not mean, in my book, that there are no gender roles. It's a matter of fairness, having a voice in society and at home, having some choices.
11/11/14, 9:22 PM
steve said...
I'm a little late to this thread, but would just like to reply to your thread about property law.
I have a law degree from a Louisiana university, and Louisiana along with Quebec, uses French Civl Law as opposed to English Common Law as the basis for their legal systems.
Civil Law has its origins in the French Revolution which sought to eliminate vestigages of feudalism and feudal law throughout Europe. It set the legal stage for capitalism and is now the predominant legal system in the world.
Louisiana civil article 447 states ("things" refers to property):
"The provisions of the ancient laws concerning the distinction of things into things holy, sacred and religious; and the nature and inalienability of these kinds of things are abolished; and nothing prevents corporations or congregations to which these things belong from alienating them . ."
That abolished feudalism, or at least church holdings. The Louisiana code abolished that codal article in the 80s because it was considered archaic and no longer relevant, but you get the point.
Another thing--there is no "real" property in Louisiana, "real" referring to "royal". There is only "immovable property" which is what real estate is called in Louisiana (and "movable property", i.e., common law personal property).
Regarding your query about the royal origins of property title, in Louisiana, that would be the state since after the French Revolution and the subsequent adoption by Louisiana of French civil law, royalty as a source of legal authority was abolished:
Louisiana Civil Code Article 1:
"Law is a solemn expression of legislative will."
Sounds self-evident nowadays, but it was revolutionary back then, and was Louisiana law when the colony was sold to the US, and remains so today.
11/12/14, 4:57 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
onething -- "Also, yes, men are hardwired to protect women, thus having women on the team would create emotional distortions. Or maybe they are not hardwired to protect women? Certainly most male animals are, so this is millions of years deep."
This is nonsense. Whenever someone says that "most animals" do something therefore we are the same, you know they are talking out their posteriors. Other than the basic biochemistry, there is pretty much nothing that "most animals" do. "Most animals" are insects, I believe, and they generally don't have a whole lot of protective behavior about anyone but themselves and their own very young offspring, if even that much. Like many people, you proably meant "mammals" when you said "animals." OK, most mammals are rodents. In most rodents there is zero parental care or mate guarding provided by the male. But in reality, there is nothing that "most mammals" can be claimed to do when it comes to social structures, and there are example of just about every sort of social structure you can reasonably imagine. So appealing to nature to justify proclamations about human gender relations and claim that whatever framework you are trying to force on the enormous pantheon of human societies is Preordained By Darwin is just nonsense.
11/12/14, 5:56 AM
Bill Pulliam said...
So did Jeff have shoes on?
Much of what he does is drawn from biodynamics. In spite of the "scientific" veneer that some of its adherents try to put on it, biodynamics has more to do with folk magic traditions than with conventional agroscience. If it works, and many feel it does, it is not through processes like micronutrient augmentation. It is more in the arena of feng shui and homeopathy. Please note that by saying this, I am not claiming that it does not work. But I do think these various practices and their underlying philosophies should be understood within appropriate conceptual frameworks.
And within this framework, it is the process of crushing the quartz and the intention of the farmer when she does this that differentiates the "crushed quartz" from "sand."
11/12/14, 6:05 AM
Unknown said...
With the break-up of this framework, the bourgeoisie spreads across all of society, invents the nationalist state, rationalist technology, anonymous urban agglomerations, industrial society, the mass man, and finally the process in which society wavers between the despotism of the mob and the despotism of the expert."
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
11/12/14, 8:01 AM
Darragh McCurragh said...
11/12/14, 8:34 AM
xde345 said...
11/12/14, 8:57 AM
Rita said...
On the topic of birth control I would note that abortion by D and C is very low tech--tools for it are found in Greek and Roman times. Infection would be a threat if antibiotics and sterile technique is lost, but it would be a risk in childbirth as well.
11/12/14, 11:03 AM
Robert Mathiesen said...
"Given that the paradigm of employment for money is collapsing all around us, what career tracks would you recommend for the next 20-30 years?"
JMG will speak for himself, of course, but my answer is, There's no such career at all. Teach yourself a trade instead. The US is done with careers now, though it doesn't realize the fact yet.
Learn to make or repair useful things by simple mechanical means from easily available raw materials (that is, materials which you can gather or scavenge). Collect all the second-hand non-electric tools that you will need to make or mend these things. (Go to flea markets for this.) Set up a home workshop and spend all your (former) TV and entertainment and going-out time in it, developing and practicing the skills you hope to earn your living by in the future. Find and buy a few old books that explain how these skills are learned and practiced. Such books were published in the killions in the early 20th century. Be frugal, very very frugal. Cultivate like-minded friends. Keep a low profile as you do all these things.
11/12/14, 11:53 AM
Jane Miller said...
I have no knowledge of these subjects. Could you provide the professors name (history of magic), and any books you would recommend about practically using thaumaturgy. I know you have many books on these subjects generally but I'm confused about which one I should consult.
Thank You
Jesse
11/12/14, 11:59 AM
onething said...
You spent a lot of effort to remind me that I was careless, and that yes, indeed, I mean the social mammals.
Of which we are one.
And, you should know me better than to think I would invoke Darwin! There is no need. Nature is sufficient, regardless of how it got here.
11/12/14, 1:09 PM
onething said...
Too bad it is so late in the commentary, because I wonder if what you say would apply to the stock market in general? I.e., is it really possible that people can park their money in stocks and expect multiplication without causing loss elsewhere? I can see where at least sometimes, investing might be sound if a business starts small and grows in value, but for the reason of what you said I have always refused to invest in the stock market, feeling that it is probably immoral, but without being sure if I am right.
11/12/14, 1:15 PM
Bob Patterson said...
11/12/14, 3:00 PM
Unknown said...
Here's a comment on the main topic of this week. In complex societies, a lot of economic activity is impersonal exchange governed by written law. In simple societies there is little of that. As JMG wrote, most economic activity is an expression of longstanding personal relationships. Some societies have a mix.
Some commenters seem to be looking forward to getting rid of intermediaries. I'd like to point out that economies that are based more on personal relationships than on formal rules which apply to everybody have drawbacks.
One is that the treatment you get from other economic actors may depend as much on what your relatives have done, including people who died before you were born, as on what you do. This can favor or hurt you. As in the story about Higg, the lord may give you a customary privilege because of a service your grandfather performed. It's equally likely that the miller will hate you and always give you short measure because one of your male relatives got one of his female relatives pregnant and then couldn't come up with the bride price.
You will be dealing with the same people, plus their sons and daughters, for your entire life, and can never get away from them. Unfortunately, ordinary life contains many occasions for causing offense and accumulating resentment.
Some essential economic activity can't be done independently by a single household because it requires sharing of equipment and labor. Everyone knows when their neighbors have a rite of passage (wedding, birth, funeral) and there will be customs about who gets invited to those rites, what they are expected to bring, and how they are supposed to behave as guests.
These days, if your neighbor borrows your lawnmower, keeps it for six weeks, and returns it in bad condition, you won't lend him any other tools and might give him a frosty greeting when you run into him. If his son has an accident using the mower, he'll sue your insurance company to cover his medical bills. Eventually one of you will move away and in the meantime the bad relationship can be compartmentalized from the rest of your life.
If the two of you have to help each other with thatching and harvesting every year, and your daughters have to be invited to each other's lying-in regardless of whether they like each other, there's going to be at least one elderly female relative on each side who is keeping score of all the bad behavior in the other family. Unless the culture of this village includes periodic ceremonies for reconciliation and forgiveness of debts, decades of accumulated petty grudges between neighbors can take a lethal turn, either in the form of blood feuds or in witchcraft accusations followed by a lynching.
There is a book called Witches and Neighbours, by Robin Briggs, that shows how this dynamic played out in French and English villages in the early modern period.
11/12/14, 4:26 PM
Bill Pulliam said...
11/12/14, 4:48 PM
Thomas Prentice said...
Also interesting is "he will give a tenth of his crop at harvest each year for the support of the village church". A TENTH! What does the village CHURCH/Mosque/Synagogue/Ashram etc. need with a TENTH of EVERYTHING? Maybe to take to the market to fetch a good price...?
King James is said to has said "No Bishop, No King."
It is unclear what, exactly the Baron does for Higgs; indeed how the Baron is not himself a vexing intermediary.
The irony is that our species is basically in a race to even GET to feudalism in order to cut off the gas to Climate Disruption and thereby permit the centuries required for Bishop-free feudalism to fully arise.
It isn't clear whether the species has a few decades or a century -- or whether the clash of the PetroDollar with everything else might result in all out nukular war -- which would make a race to feudalism PLUS Climate Disruption rather moot at best.
11/12/14, 6:08 PM
HalFiore said...
11/12/14, 9:15 PM
Rhisiart Gwilym said...
(I even have a hunch that they may carry re-concentrated gene assemblages of Dire Wolves, got from Dire/Grey crosses, which were likely still around when humans first began domesticating wolves towards Canis Familiaris, and when the Dire Wolves were sinking towards extinction, and would have been cross-breeding with Grey Wolves, as often happens when two closely-related species share a terrain, and one is numerous but the other has nearly gone and can't find mates of their own kind. But that's another story)
One of the signature characteristics of the Shepherd Dog family is the wheel tail: curling into anything from a corkscrew, through a watchspring shape, to just a slight forward bend.
Much more important, though, is the selective breeding that brought out their tendency to be particularly devoted and protective to their own clan members, which - as they imprint on the creatures around them in their first sixteen weeks of life - can include particular, individual humans, and - interestingly enough - particular, individual lambs, goats or whatever, with whom they're growing up in step. They're incredibly good at being able to recognise individual familiar creatures.
I reckon the other thing the shepherd-breeders did, perhaps without putting it quite like this to themselves, was to select for a balanced blend of doting, maternal lovingness - in both sexes - and a committed, redoubtable courage in defending their own. Good Shepherd Dogs, like good Mastiffs/Bulldogs, just will not back down in the face of threat, danger, or battering.
Had a few like that myself! The key is to win their love, by loving them demonstratively, which they love! I even won over a particularly feisty adult rescue Anatolian like that. They then will die rather than hurt you, and will include you on their 'kindred to be defended to the death' list.
And yes, the Macedonian Sarplaninas are part of the kindred.
11/13/14, 1:43 AM
Brad K. said...
re: Deborah Bender -- I served in the US Navy about the time they started assigning women to ships going to sea; I never served in combat, myself.
What I observed was that all units, even those without women assigned, adapted. Most of the changes I saw simplified work and procedures, usually at least as effective, often easier and with less risk or danger. That is -- I saw an improvement for all, rethinking assumptions and removing unneeded obstacles.
Thinking about serving "in combat", all I have to rely on is my understanding of what I have seen and read. But I am pretty sure that that troops on the ground don't usually choose their equipment or tactics, or even the battle ground. Superiors, the general staff, and ultimately Congress and the President decide who goes where, what they will have to use, and what they will be assigned to do.
Today's recruits have different expectations of social interactions and economic "necessities" than did those of a century ago. There is a vast difference in health, in average body weight, in height, and in expected strength of the incoming troop. I imagine that experienced and skilled leaders will make the best advantage of every troop today, regardless of gender or other details of background.
Just as one for-instance, since WWII we read and talk about individual sacrifices, and less about units used as cannon fodder.
I think we need people of character to meet our nation's need for security in troubled time. I hope this isn't too prejudicial a statement.
11/14/14, 6:56 AM
Heretic Scientist said...
I am reading your blog since 2006, and even if do not post comments very often, I would like to thank you for your writings.
As a scientist myself (astrophysicist) I've often thought of the future of institutional science, and for me it looks pretty bleak to say the least. You do not imagine how corrupted the whole thing is becoming.
You were talking about the many ways science has "whored itself", and colleagues just sent me this week two perfect examples to illustrate this.
First, as you know, to survive professionally we're supposed to publish as much as possible, and quite often quantity trumps quality: "publish or perish" as we say. The result is an exponential growth of scientific papers, of which most do not contain any significative result, and most of them present results which are just plain wrong, or at least not reproducible, which is especially worrying in biology and medecine. Even meta-studies have been published showing that amongst publications in medecine, more than two third present results that happen to be non-reproducible.
Science publishing is becoming a strange business, with a market increasing in size to satisfy all these scientists who struggle to publish whatever tiny results they can to advance their career. To satisfy these demands, each year predatory publishers create new scientific journals, often on a pay-to-publish model, with quality criteria going lower and lower, but very efficient to suck out the money from the labs. If you pay enough, your paper will be published, whatever the quality is. I receive quite a lot of spam from editors suggesting that I should publish in their journals, or even become an (unpaid) prestigious editor for them. Since the Sokal affair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair), a game amongst scientists, especially young physicists and mathematicians, is to ridiculise this process by submitting rubbish papers, full of non-sense, sometimes generated by computer algorithms, just to see if the paper will succeed to pass the reviewers, the editors, and finally get published. We just reached a new low recently, as two scientists got a paper published in "International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology" which just contains the same profanity repeated on several pages:
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/11/21/journal-accepts-profanity-laden-joke-paper
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam
The second example is about ranking. Now, for managers in universities and research centers, the alpha and omega in science is to obtain a good ranking for your institution in various international rankings, like the (in)famous "Shanghai ranking". University managers, sometimes even governments are now hiring "science stars", merging universities, reorganising whole sectors of research just to optimize their ranking. I personally know the case of a university hiring a very old Nobel price, not doing any significant research since decades, just to improve its ranking... (the number of Nobel prices in your university improves your university ranking).
For a scientific institution/university, ranking is mostly based on the amount of publications in scientific journals where the authors indicate that they belong to that given institution. Recently, an obscure Saudi Arabia university managed to reach a very good ranking in mathematics, just by asking hundreds of the best mathematicians of the world to pretend, when they publish a paper, to be affiliated to that Saudi Arabia university, for some money of course:
http://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/to-some-a-citation-is-worth-3-per-year/
We live in interesting times...
12/4/14, 11:45 PM