US Nationalism and Peak Oil

[Guardsman Bass]

First of all, "indigenous Americans" are not and never have been one homogenous group. There were thousands of tribes who did or didn't adapt to different degrees. Nor were all tribes systematically exterminated, and the proof of that is that there still exist Amerinds and there are still (few, admittedly) tribes on traditional lands. Others were forciably relocated but still exist. That is NOT to claim things are rosy - they aren't - but with a 90% native population die-off it would be stupid to expect that anyhow.

I don't want to get involved in these marathon posts because I don't have the time or patience for it right now, but could you explain what your point is here? You keep raising example after example of horrible disasters which befall human societies and the fact that somebody survives. Well fuck, people even survived the Nazi Holocaust. Yippee! The problem is that I don't see what this proves, other than the fact that if you don't kill 100% of the people, then some fraction will survive (which falls into the "no shit Sherlock" category).

I think the point is not so much that people will survive as that societies can pull themselves back together after taking an incredible percentage of their population lost in a rapidly occurring die-off. More than a few of the Indian societies lost nearly all of their people (in Lies My Teacher Told Me, the author mentions accounts by the Puritans in the area of "scarcely one in twenty people being alive"), yet they managed to endure as societies - at least until the Puritans, who took the time when the Indian societies were decimated and struggling to replenish to solidify their positions in New England, pushed them out.

[K. A. Pital]

I think the point is not so much that people will survive as that societies can pull themselves back together after taking an incredible percentage of their population lost in a rapidly occurring die-off

Really, I'm kind of sick seeing all this "well, societies pulled back after..." (insert what you wish: enormous population drops, horrible natural disasters, decline of industry and science...).

Well, no shit, they did.

Is that somehow making it "okay"? I've lived through an economic crisis which left me on the street as a bum for several months, introduced to street crime on the scale of modern Harlem at night - except it's everyday at daytime - and complete with hunger, too. Of course, societies pull back - I mean, extreme population and living conditions damage isn't anything out of ordinary, is it?.. You want to be one of the "rapidly declined 22%"? Go on and say that all this is "needless alarmism" and other bullshit we hear daily on TV and talk shows from stuffed "experts" on climate, oil and other problems of our planet's natural resources. Society will pull back together for sure, but you and I can be among those who will not see it

[Guardsman Bass]

I think the point is not so much that people will survive as that societies can pull themselves back together after taking an incredible percentage of their population lost in a rapidly occurring die-off

Really, I'm kind of sick seeing all this "well, societies pulled back after..." (insert what you wish: enormous population drops, horrible natural disasters, decline of industry and science...).

Well, no shit, they did.

Is that somehow making it "okay"? I've lived through an economic crisis which left me on the street as a bum for several months, introduced to street crime on the scale of modern Harlem at night - except it's everyday at daytime - and complete with hunger, too. Of course, societies pull back - I mean, extreme population and living conditions damage isn't anything out of ordinary, is it?.. You want to be one of the "rapidly declined 22%"? Go on and say that all this is "needless alarmism" and other bullshit we hear daily on TV and talk shows from stuffed "experts" on climate, oil and other problems of our planet's natural resources. Society will pull back together for sure, but you and I can be among those who will not see it

Don't put words into my mouth. I never said that Peak Oil was anything like alarmism; my views actually tend more towards the Duchess's in terms of how things will go down. The reason I'm using the example of a society actually managing to hold together in the loss of the majority of its members is for the same reason we look at the examples Diamond presents in Collapse - historical precedent. How do societies react to losing the majority of their members? What societies pull together after a massive die-off, which ones don't, and why? How can we compare these societies to a modern industrial society (i.e., could a modern industrial society take losses in population akin to 30-50% of its population (Black Plague), or higher (Native Americans), and still pull itself back together as an industrial society?)

[K. A. Pital]

How can we compare these societies to a modern industrial society (i.e., could a modern industrial society take losses in population akin to 30-50% of its population (Black Plague), or higher (Native Americans), and still pull itself back together as an industrial society?)

Without the loss of industries, population loss is not critical as long as it's possible to replenish the losses with new humans.

But how is that relevant? It's industries which will be lost, and this will result in the loss of people, not the other way round!

[brianeyci]

Dude, without cheap oil, we will no longer be a nation industrially farming (we won't be able to keep the combines and trucks running, and won't be able to provide the feedstock for fertilizers and pesticides, which may not even be desirable even if it were feasible depending on the severity of global warming, cropland depletion, and biodiversity decline) with a total labor use of around 2%. No fucking way. A large percentage of the current population is going to have to move outside their sprawl and try to learn to farm or otherwise support a self-sufficient agriculture for their region or starve.

You mean without oil the combines and trucks won't be running. Expensive oil on the other hand would just mean increased cost of food.

If you want to convince me the locusts will destroy the foundation of civilization you'll need more than just citing the number of people involved in agriculture, especially since other non-oil societies have had a low percentage of their population involved in agriculture. It might not be single digits like modern society, but I'm sure there's plenty of slack for rurals to take up farming before even touching the city people.

I'm not talking about what is desirable - I'm talking about what might have to be necessary. Do you really think every other suburban college student will just be able to opt out of these pressures because they don't think it'll be fun or easy? Quite frankly, if we must be subsistence farmers, we're better off trying to learn sooner than later. Always better to be ahead of the rush.

To me it looks like you're opting out of the pressure. It looks like you want to take your big fat inheritance, find some farm to hole up in and live a life away from your fellow man avoiding hardship in the city. It looks like you're not accepting two ideas. Firstly, that college students may not be the most suitable to go out in the fields and farm. Last I checked eight out of ten people didn't finish college and six out of ten went straight into the workforce after high school. I'm not sure what the numbers are, but I wouldn't be surprised if five out of ten people didn't even finish high school given dismal test scores and the broken education system. Secondly, you are assuming a life in the city will be difficult or impossible, when it appears to be the other way around.

Well, I'll sure as fuck do that over being a plantation serf or a forced laborer digging canals until my back gives out. I have considered these things. And while that sucks, I prefer it, and even want it. What the hell do you think you're going to do with your education? And what higher class opportunities do you foresee? What do you think people in college should choose to be educated in?

You all think I haven't thought these things out. I have, the options all blow, there's little one can do on an individual level, and maybe no matter how hard you'll try it might just not matter two shits.

Here's the shit of it. If it gets so bad that forced labor's introduced, and the need to tap into people with economics degrees rather than white collar service personnel, then everything goes to shit anyway and there's very little point planning for doomsday since the planning will mean nothing. What the fuck am I supposed to do, what the fuck do you suggest I do, work out so my back's tougher so I can haul more shit?

Have you looked at your employment opportunities yet? I hate to break it to you but very little people go into the field they actually study for in university, and these days as long as you have a degree in something you can get a job. Peak Oil has already happened, but the disaster hasn't and you still have two to ten years to get into necessary employment. If I were you I'd look at the federal service first, since last I checked at leasts 40% of economists were employed by the government. And if the government can't take care of its own, civilization will be going to shit anyway and there's no real way to plan for that other than making yourself less reliant on the healthcare system, which should happen regardless of peak oil.

Except people growing their own food needs. And we won't have the cheap oil energy to replace human labor in producing and distributing food.

The government will not let people starve on the streets of large cities. At worst, what the fuck do you Americans call it, eminent domain. People growing food will have their own food needs, but expensive food is still doable, even if bread was ten dollars a loaf. And again I ask you, what do you think I should do besides finishing my education? If can convince me that my education will be worthless and I need to get ready for doomsday, then sure I'll drop out of my final year, get together all my credit cards and line of credit and even student loans which should total at least 30k, buy myself all the supplies I can and train myself to be a mountain man. Since you're independently wealthy and even have an inheritance, it should be even easier for you. You can always finish those final few credits a few years down the line if it turns out peak oil is not as bad as it seems.

No? And why not? I'm not accusing you of being a hypocrite, I'm just trying to see whether your logic's consistent, and whether you "walk the walk." If you do want to finish your education, is that just because of your ego, or because you admit that yes even in an oil scarce economy education especially worthwhile education is the only thing that differentiates you from your peers. Last I checked an economics degree is heavy in math, and you've mentioned physics before so you're even going the extra mile.

Habsburg Spain went bankrupt a half dozen times. Russia defaulted on its loans in the 1990s. Sure they can't go "bankrupt" but they can wreck their infrastructure, waste their energy on white elephants, and trash their monetary policy.

Why did Russia have to default on its loans? I think you're way too confident things will just work out. The world financial system will probably collapse and the currency will have to be reestablished. I expect our fiat currency to hyperinflate into garbage once the first major panics set in.

I can't really disagree with your facts. As soon as they let me, in about eighteen months, I'm putting my loans into a fixed interest rate, so I have to hope that the disaster doesn't happen before then (it's impossible for me to consolidate my student loans or get a fixed rate before I graduate.) And I'm going for the fixed rate too, just for peace of mind. So no, I am not overconfident. I only disagree with the conclusions you make with those facts, which I can't seem to pin down other than "things will be bad." Well no shit, I knew that since I was a kid, and it's obvious even to people who know nothing about peak oil by looking at the subprime mortgage situation, the US debt and so on.

This will all ruin the modern financial market and banking system - a private, for-profit system predicated on endless growth, I might add. To say nothing of the fiat currencies. Which is why metallic standards will probably see a comeback.

I am aware that modern corporations live on equity. The idea that shareholders can contribute money to a company and never be legally obligated to be paid back seems insane to me, and the idea that shareholders are not liable for the company's debt seems to me to encourage people dumping their money into useless ventures only to be disappointed later. If you are right the shareholder as we know it will be dead. The only lenders will be creditors who will want ironclad contracts for repayment and repossession of assets should payment schedules not be met, and perhaps future generations will laugh at the idea of a corporation, a model which encourages irresponsibility and visceral waste.

But here's the shit of it: this readjustment would happen regardless of peak oil and I don't see the point of you bringing it up other than a red herring. The GAO talks about debt and deficit fine without talking about natural resources at all, so what the fuck conclusion do you want me to draw and what idea are you trying to support by bringing up the fucked up financial situation of the world? Lack of oil is a geological phenomenon so even if there was endless amounts of cash and America was fiscally responsible, the oil crisis would not be mitigated in the slightest. Or am I missing something comletely obvious here?

Our economy is largely specialized to continue suburban hypertrophy and servicing of that middle class' consumer good consumption. Without cheap oil the entire economic premise that the U.S.'s wealth runs out will be crushed. Globalization is ONLY POSSIBLE because of cheap transportation and global peace, both of which will vanish due to energy scarcity and price volatility and violent resource competition.

As long as it's cheaper to hire foreign workers to make shit than to make it domestically then there will be globalization. If oil goes to three hundred dollars a barrel... which the Duchess says it will, that looks like a four to five times increase in oil prices. It will still be cheaper to hire foreign workers for certain products, except for bottom barrel unnecessary widgets which I will be happy to see disappear. Either that, or the widgets themselves would get more expensive. So what do you have to say about that eh? Three hundred dollars a barrel will not crush globalization, five hundred would not.

Dude, a lot of people in the exurbs of the Sunbelt will not be able to commute to work by walking or biking. Physically impossible. This is really pie-in-the-sky stuff you're saying. There are people with over a hour each way commutes, a huge amount of the labor force.

A commute can involve public transit, which runs on rail (subways) and pie in the sky? Give me a break. I walk 30 minutes to school every single day, and people will walk two hours a day and walk two hours back home if they really need to and go on six hours sleep. People will walk three hours. I have done it before, when I was a teenager and bored to shit. If fatass suburbanites are fucked, well cry me a river. A working day is what, eight hours a day with one hour prep time. Even two hours of walking each way is doable, three hours is doable. It's not pretty and it's not fun, and it'll waste a shitload of time you could instead use to take care of children or relax. But big deal.

I am more worried about - in the short term - the bottom following out of the information, entertainment, and service industries so heavily invested on in the U.S. economy as their importance vanishes over the horizon in a world awakened to scarcity and sustainability. I don't see the business models based on razor thin profit margins and barrel scraping prices at big box retailers on the farthest reaches of the exurbs working. I see them bankrupting sooner or later.

It's already happening, since people fucking hate Wal-Mart and Wal-Marts close leaving huge parking lots that small town America hates for their crime. But economists are right -- price wars are unsustainable, even without peak oil. Price wars hurt industries, which is why prices will... increase as people demand higher quality goods. Here is what I don't understand from people who say the information and entertainment and service industries is a US weakness. The population will still demand entertainment, still demand service, still demand information. They will still want Internet, and if unemployment is that great they'll want it more than ever since they'll have loads of free time on their hands. Entertainment, information and service is easy to produce compared to an actual finished product, especially in a resource scarce environment. So again what is your point bringing this up, other than to say the obvious, that America is an overconsuming piece of shit?

How exactly will you accomplish this Herculean feat of public works with an exponentially shrinking energy pie to take slices from, during GDP contraction, and much faster than the first round of railroad construction and the IHS, and serving a much more inefficient spread out and large population?

If you've been following the recent peak oil threads you'll have seen people bringing in numbers like 40% of GDP redirected during World War II. An exponentially shrinking pie is nothing when the pie is gargantuan. Do you know how rich the US is? The US is so rich it can afford to throw away manpower and equipment right now in a useless foreign war without any of its citizens feeling the economic impact. The rebuttal is, well the American people will not wake up until it's too late. I beg to differ. The pie is gargantuan, but Americans are used to their lifestyle, and once a piece of that pie vanishes, they'll be screaming blood. If the economy goes into a recession, people will wake up. It will not be until half the pie's gone that the government's overturned, no way.

Well I'm saying that's catastrophically bad compared to anything since the Great Depression, which is probably fundamentally a less serious and shorter-duration situation than the Sustainability Crisis.

It only looks catastrophic since you won't have the lifestyle of your parents. But it's not really catastrophic, since you'll still be alive. The village analogy is good -- there's ten people in a village, nine with 1 dollar and one person with a thousand. All of a sudden peak shit, and the one person has five hundred. He's still rich. He will survive if the other nine can.

Ecosystem collapse will not permit stable human habitation. Can you imagine just the catastrophic loss of insect pollinators? Something which is debatably already occurring?

Insect pollinators are important. So are fisheries (to deplete within 50 years). So are bird pest predators, etc., etc. Do you really believe a 50% in 100 years mass extinction of all species is a sustainable situation for human habitation on Earth?

I don't really want to talk about biodiversity since it's not an area I have any expertise in. But I will say that your predictions sound alarmist, since I haven't seen any documentaries or environmentalists say fifty percent of the world's species will die out. And even if that's the case, it's not the number of species which matters, but the ones required for human life. Ten thousand different kinds of insects getting extinct doesn't hurt humans in the slightest.

Preytell, with massive unemployment, and without an economy servicing endless suburban expansion and the shortfalls across the technology and financial markets, and the simple demand destruction of many of the industries and sources of employment from which many Americans make that spoiled living, where are they going to get the money to keep paying that? Modern wealth is largely based on market confidence that growth will continue. Since it will not and there will be massive demand destruction across key industries and employers, that wealth will rapidly evaporate. Remember stagflation? That economic paradox was the direct result of oil price volatility. Prices will skyrocket - ruining the financial markets and US currency - while employment and wages collapse as businesses no longer have sufficient demand to break even and growth contracts. Peak oil will cause endless and progressively worsening stagflation for decades.

All of which would happen without peak oil. So I don't see your point in bringing it up, other than saying it will make peak oil worse. Which is not technically correct, because no matter how solid an economic system is, it cannot weather a geological weakness. Money doesn't make oil. So bringing all this up seems to be one big fat red herring. Only technology can mitigate a disaster of this magnitude, and technology will not be significantly hindered in a disaster of this size by huge equity to asset ratio or any other economic weaknes. Deploying already existant technology is not like research, it is not like investing money which will take decades to pay off if at all, it is solid stuff that already exists. And the expertise to build nuclear power plants is already here.

[Broomstick]

First of all, "indigenous Americans" are not and never have been one homogenous group. There were thousands of tribes who did or didn't adapt to different degrees. Nor were all tribes systematically exterminated, and the proof of that is that there still exist Amerinds and there are still (few, admittedly) tribes on traditional lands. Others were forciably relocated but still exist. That is NOT to claim things are rosy - they aren't - but with a 90% native population die-off it would be stupid to expect that anyhow.

I don't want to get involved in these marathon posts because I don't have the time or patience for it right now, but could you explain what your point is here? You keep raising example after example of horrible disasters which befall human societies and the fact that somebody survives. Well fuck, people even survived the Nazi Holocaust. Yippee! The problem is that I don't see what this proves, other than the fact that if you don't kill 100% of the people, then some fraction will survive (which falls into the "no shit Sherlock" category).

I think the point is not so much that people will survive as that societies can pull themselves back together after taking an incredible percentage of their population lost in a rapidly occurring die-off. More than a few of the Indian societies lost nearly all of their people

Yep. That's the point. Massive disasters that wipe out a chunk of the population do not end civilization forever and ever. It's not just a fraction merely survive, but that they will rebuild afterward even if it takes generations.

Really, I'm kind of sick seeing all this "well, societies pulled back after..." (insert what you wish: enormous population drops, horrible natural disasters, decline of industry and science...).

Well, no shit, they did.

Is that somehow making it "okay"?

No, of course not. It's not OK for massive numbers of people to be wiped out whether by disease or natural disaster or war or whatever. Noting that something occured does not automatically condone that something.

I, however, find it hopeful that societies do recover even after horrific losses. Of course, I would like to be among the survivors rather than the decimated.

[Broomstick]

None of it requires an industrial society, and it will all relieve or prevent suffering

Sorry to interrupt the conversation, but industrial production is required to supply all those simple things, including food and tea, to the mass of humans in today's urban centers and densely populated countries. Industrial agricultural production and industrial production of medicines are extremely important.

Right. How the fuck do you think cities were fed before the advent of the internal combustion engine? Or did you notice that there are thousands of cities around the world that managed the task of bringing in food and taking out waste long before we started using petroleum, or even steam, to move things around.

My list delibrately left out things like manufacturing antibiotics. They are all items that can be produced/done on a small scale with nothing more than human muscle power. Saying "but we won't have the modern industrial complex to supply this!" is not the point - the point is, it's knowledge that our ancestors didn't have that is now farily common knowledge. Even if our industry went back to pre-steam (which I don't think it will) that knowledge won't suddenly evaporate, and thus the base standard of living may be better than that of people in the past who had the same industrial base, or lack of it.

And arguing that we couldn't supply the current population without petrol power or a massive industrial base ignores the fact that IF we have a big crash in energy/industry the current population will NOT be sustainable. In other words, a lot of people will die, and not just from lack of cheap antibiotics. On the other side, there will be a smaller population that may well be able to satisfy its essential needs with so-called alternative energy systems.

[Broomstick]

OK, let's try this again - although nuclear and hydroelectric production of electricity will be major, for some applications liquid and gas fuels will continue to be the better choice. For those applications, biodiesel, biomethane, and alcohol will be your choices and yes, they will be more expensive than gasoline and dinodiesel, but with no other choice that's what you'll have. And someone will have to produce them.

First of all most of the bio options will compete with food resources unless its organic waste unusable for composting and fertilizers

Methane is a normal product of the composting process, so actually you want to use stuff that IS suitable for composting. There are fairly simple systems for capturing that gas for use already in use both in North America and in China, utilizing naturally occuring bacteria and requiring no additional power input. Dairy farmers, for example, can compost cow shit to generate methane and the resulting solids can be used for fertilizer, with enough methane generated to heat barns, the farmer's house, and provide gas for cooking. That's power that's not coming off the grid, it's not reliant on petroleum, and the cowshit was going to decay anyway. I'm not talking about industrial scale production to supply tens of thousands of homes, I'm talking about making a farm energy self-reliant. Yes, you can produce energy from non-food agricultural waste. You can make it from human waste, and food scraps. Admittedly, this is not the most rapid or efficient process imaginable, but for some people it's good enough. It gets the job done.

I'm not proposing composting and methane as the One True Solution because there is no single solution. Saying "but bio-whatever won't supply the cities!!!!" is beside the point because no one thing is going to solve all the problems. But if you can take the farms off the grid and make them energy-independent (as farms used to be) that's however many buildings/people no longer dependent on petroleum.

and either way maintains carbon emissions.

Cowshit decays whether we use it for energy or not. How does converting it to methane and fertilizer through natural processes "maintain carbon emissions"?

You can't pack everyone into the cities - someone needs to be out on the farm. I fail to see the problem with making non-city dwellings and enterprises energy self-sufficient.

We'd have to build hundreds of nuclear power plants, force NIMBY to deal with it, rollback fuel reprocessing and breeder regulations and somehow figure out how to fix the silting problem in the hydroelectric dams.

But what's wrong with small scale solutions alongside those big ones? Every house off the grid is one less that needs the Big Energy solutions.

Last time I was at Home Depot for some building repair supplies they had considerable space devoted to solar-powered LED lights for outdoor lighting. Do you have a problem with that? Would you rather people light their driveways at night with stored solar power, or power from the grid? For an individual house, no, it doesn't make much difference, but if half the houses in the US converted the savings would add up, don't you think? Should we stop encouraging people to switch to compact flourescent lighting because it only saves pennies per household? Even if it doesn't stop demand from rising, if it at least slows that rise it contributes to mitigating the problem.

No one has demonstrated you can run modern factories off solar power, wind, or anything else reliably and cost-effectively. Nor build nuclear power plants or anything else.

Didn't say that. But if we no longer needed petroleum to power farms then that would leave more petroleum for your big projects, wouldn't it?

And I also think our definitions of "cost-effective" are going to change as well.

But I'd like to point out that there is precedent for running production facilities off wind and water - it's been used to grind grain for centuries, among other things. Steam has been used to run factories. The industrial revolution started before the use of petroleum. Are they factories like we have today? No. Did you think the factories of a century from now would look like today's even if we had limitless oil?

Given that there are already people recycling grease into diesel and farms using waste-generated methane for heating, lighting, and running machinery I fail to see the continuing objection to the idea we will be utilizing these options.

It still won't stop the crunch, and moreover, grease is made from intensive farming. There is a net investment of oil in all food products, something like 8 kilocal per kilocal of food produced. All of that is net energy loss using the modern farming/economic regime.

But do you have a problem with taking, say, McDonald's french fry grease and extracting additional energy out of it, or should we continue to just toss it into a landfill. The grease, in that case, is already produced and it's a matter of extracting more of the energy we already put it in. Strikes me as more efficent use of what's already been put into the system. Is that going to power every automobile in a city? No, I dont' think so. But what if a city collected used cooking grease (sort of a tax in kind) from businesses or even households and used it to power city hall or run municipal vehicles? Is there a problem with that? That leaves more gas and dinodiesel for other applications.

You seem to concentrate solely on supply. You need to look at demand, too.

[Gustav32Vasa]

[You can't pack everyone into the cities - someone needs to be out on the farm.

How a out moving the farms into the city?

[Redleader34]

Thats still under testing, Sky Farms, so Manual farming isn't going away till we can make Asmov;'s Universal Robots to labor for us

[Pablo Sanchez]

I think that is true, and the basis for most of our problems. Your view of authoritarianism seems to be in line with despotisms or absolute monarchies of Louis XIV's form. My definition is loose enough to allow limits, usually constitutionally, to the government's power.

Sure.

The possession of civil rights rings hollow if a government cannot even ensure the so-called "natural rights" of man. If I have inaccurately clumped you with that "group", I apologize.

No, I agree that civil liberties are secondary to survival. Suspension of habeus corpus in areas stricken with rioting, etc., would probably be necessary. I disagree that it would be necessary to discard all guarantees of liberty, though.

Meh. I see your point, but I do not believe there would have been a marked difference between rule by Wilhelm II and the Hindenburg-Ludendorff duo.

Well, on the level of the individual German there wasn't a perceptible difference. But they succeeded in effectively shutting out the Reichstag from any role in the war at all, denuded the various ministers of power and made them effectively servants of Ludendorff, and directed the use of Reich industry. They did increase governmental power significantly.

You fail to take into account that Germany needed to fight on two fronts, while also propping up her allies in the midst of an almost total economic embargo.

Even with the two front war, Germany was still stronger in absolute terms than her foes, because in any short-term analysis she was winning the war--defeating the Russians, parrying attempts by the French and British to launch assaults. She was winning because of non-political issues; the strength of her martial tradition, the skill of her general staff, the level of her technology. She lost in the end because of economic and thus political issues; her foes mobilized more effectively than she.

Hardly. The French army mutinies of 1917 rendered France militarily impotent until the end of the war. Only the actions of General Pétain kept the army from disintegrating completely. If Germany had been on the offensive in the West, the entire front would likely have collapsed.

Pétain's efforts had restored the French morale to a condition wherein it was by 1918 capable of undertaking major offensives like Second Marne and defeating the Germans. The French didn't stand alone by any means, but that was true of the entire war.

The Wilhelmshaven Mutiny, by contrast, resulted in the total collapse of the German state.

And the Entente did so with actions such as the Munitions Act, whereby strikes and many unions were banned, preventing workers from leaving their jobs in factories, and reserving the state the right to seize ownership of factories.

None of these activities are particularly authoritarian, and in fact you could very easily see them today in any of the Reformed Socialist democracies.

You are ignoring the rather massive number of weapons and supplies imported from the United States, which at all times was vastly greater than American trade with Germany. In fact, the Entente imported so much American supplies that by 1919 they were too bankrupt to pay back the loans they took to buy the supplies in the first place.

Supplies like ammunition, food, etc. were imported from the US, but not weapons--US production of weapons was so low that the first American units into action were carrying Lee-Enfield Rifles.

First, his failure to rescind requests for reinforcements to the Eastern Front when the Russians had already been beaten back, costing the German army vital manpower that was sorely missed when the Entente halted their advance on Paris.

We have the benefit of hindsight here, he didn't. He and Hindenburg were of the opinion that crushing Russia first would allow a decisive victory on the Western Front--and they turned out to be very nearly right. Moreover, this wasn't his mistake to make, it was Falkenhayn who chose to fulfill those requests.

Secondly, his bizarre decision to keep several hundred thousand soldiers in Russia to strike such far-flung targets as Baku when he was meanwhile launching his final throw of the dice in France.

One could argue that Baku was a critical operation for the postwar period, because the fields constituted a large proportion of world crude production at that time (one sixth, IIRC) and were in definite danger of falling under British control. Remember that at this time the Ottoman Empire was completely collapsed; it could have been possible for the British forces operating in the Mediterranean and Balkan theaters, including a massive force in Thessalonika, to use Britain's seaborne superiority to undo German gains all over the southern part of the Eastern Front.

When you say democracy then, it is customarily referring to a republic or parlimentary government, wherein leaders to chosen to administrate. So why should those least capable determine who rules?

Actually, those least capable in the American system tend to not even vote, so to a certain extent that's self-correcting. At the same time you're just sort of dodging semantically, the answer is the same as before, whether or not there's a screen of elected representatives between the people and the decisions. The election is the key.

I see no reason why this type of determinant (proper education and intelligence) cannot be suitable applied to any responsible meritocracy.

The Chinese example does work well, but then again, its alone in history, and one can definitely argue that China and its meritocracy "failed" to deal with the 19th century. There's also the problem that the Scholar-Official system depended on the absolute authority of the Son of Heaven as the principle on which it was built, something which just doesn't obtain today.

And what of the multitude of republics that exist today?

What do you mean? Are you trying to say that the republics are also incapable forms of government? If so, then the onus is on you to show what's bad about them.

It's simple. Any expansion of the number of enfranchised voters does not in any way affect the way a state is governed. It merely determines how many people are involved in selecting what leaders will administrate, rather than how the state itself is administrated. At best, it alleviates dissent of the recently enfranchised, but only because those dissenters believed they were entitled to enfranchisment to begin with.

It also allows the said dissenters to now positively affect the course of government in such a way as to alleviate problems they're having, or at least forces major political parties to take their wishes into account. Thus, the government becomes better at understanding and acting on the needs and wishes of the people--becomes a better government.

And those are probably the reasons why the laws were repealed in 1842, I believe. At which point, approximately one fifth of Britain's male population could vote. The poorer classes and unlanded citizens remained without suffrage.

The extension of the Franchise in 1832 was what made the Corn Laws a Parliamentary issue at all (whereas before, the only people capable of electing representatives were the very landowners who benefitted from the Corn Laws) it took a long period of substantial agitation in the face of those who still represented the corn barons, which eventually succeeded. During this period, the injustice of the corn laws played a major role in calls for suffrage extension--e.g., it was one of those injustices that most motivated the people at large to demand the vote.

I believe this disagreement stems from our divergent definitions of authoritarianism.

Fair.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Time to condense.

First of all, there is a fundamental drift in the debate away from what my core points were and are. First of all, I do not think there will be human extinction. I am not claiming there is no road to survival and there are no examples to draw from.

My points are that you, Broomstick, claimed that the facts of the crisis facing my generation as a whole is in no way special or different from that of your generation as a whole or the previous one. And that's demonstrably untrue. I pointed out for a myriad of reasons why its different.

Firstly, nuclear war is not the same as PO.

I argue that your perception of nuclear war is inaccurate - even Sheppard did not dispute my point that the civil defense policies you mock were in the public interest. As Churchill said, "The responsibility of the government for the public safety is absolute, and requires no mandate. It is in fact the prime object for which governments come into existence." Duck and cover and makeshift shelters were education that ought to have been bolstered and as Stuart and many have posted out, nuclear war is survivable and there are distinguishable outcomes. Dispute your personal insults directed at me, your attitude with your youthful fears seems to have been "we're all fucked and so why bother giving us any education to help us." I wait a cogent argument on why civil defense education was bad and it served a rational interest to remove it. As an addendum, nuclear war seemed likely from the premise and mechanics of a decidably undeterministic, subjective, and uncertain discipline, global geopolitics. The peak oil and gas crisis is a certain prospect by the constraints of physics. Your generation could entertain educated optimism that no missile would ever fly, and that optimism has proven correct. Contrastingly, any optimism for a complete avoidance of a peak oil and gas crisis I'm afraid is a tragic prayer for superphysical miracles.

Secondly, your examples of the non-exclusiveness of my generation's situation was first rebutted by examples of your relatives in the Great Depression, and Russian famines. You could not dispute that there were fundamental macroeconomic differences supported by the US DOE and that therefore on a macro level my generation is facing an unprecedented crisis. You refused to concede this basic and factually-supported point by drawing on increasingly melodramatic examples and ones further removed from any meaningful or appropriate comparison to our high-energy, high-technology civilization. Yes, there are Polynesian islanders with zero net population growth. Yes, people survived the Nazi Holocaust. Yes, people survived the Black Death. But how is ANY OF THAT comparable to YOUR FUCKING GENERATION. I'm sorry, but if you're relying on examples that off the map, you're de facto conceding the point. My generation has a bigger problem. I'm not crying about it, but I do think there are enduring and incredibly destructive cultural tendencies, worldviews, and patterns of consumption which will make this crisis progressively more difficult to overcome gently and quickly as opposed to painfully and lengthy. Those pan-national cultural trends and tendencies must be rejected.

Globally, zero growth correction is an unprecedented phenomenoa for a civilization beyond the carrying capacity of the Earth without easily available energy resources which will shortly end. I said perhaps it could be looked at the most anthropologically important event. But not necessarily. Either way, my generation faces the largest, broadest-scale, most unprecedented challenge in the modern and industrial era of any generation living in that time. All other challenges were necessarily regional, transient, evolutionary - the sustainability crisis is global, enduring, abrupt, and evolutionary.

Thirdly, I never said that society had no chance of survival, or that everyone should give up. On a personal level, I predicted that most investment assets on the global market are extremely overvalued vis-a-vis a post-peak market situation, that precious metals, arable land, mining rights, and interests in replacement technologies will increase dramatically in value, and investment in those assets is a sound personal strategy. Furthermore, the social studies and other very soft components of advanced education will be very poorly valued on the labor market, so technical disciplines necessary for mitigation and reconstruction will increase or at least be much more valuable comparatively in the future. Lastly, I suggested that subsistence and organic farming skills, as well as a host of low energy-use and self-reliance skills would become increasingly important in day-to-day life and everyone who cares should attempt to acquire them sooner rather than later, as those who do have them will be able to charge a premium or simply be insufficient to meet demand for these technologies and skill sets once panic has set in.

For society as a whole, perhaps public energies may be geared toward a re-ruralization of the population, the resumption of locally self-sufficient and low-energy agriculture, use of strigent restrictions on frivolous energy and water use, and a crash program of alternative interim liquid fuel substitutes, nuclear and hydroelectric power plant construction, and the replacement of the U.S. highway system with heavy and light rail and extensive canals.

Simply because I point out drawbacks and losses does not mean that those losses are total, permanent, and complete. I simply mean to point out the hardship and non-ease of migitation and survival, which will make things difficult. Everyone who has lived in the U.S. has generally experienced a hundred years of a positive-sum game. The entire world is about to enter at least several decades of a negative-sum game.

[Illuminatus Primus]

That should be "revolutionary" on the sustainability crisis at the end of paragraph five. Basically, I'm saying that you're misrepresenting my essential points, that this is a big big big change and requires big big big attitude changes by a lot more people and a lot faster and working a lot harder than any challenge the U.S. has probably faced in its history to prevent suffering on a scale its never before experienced. And that, I think is factually supportable and I think that qualifies as a historically unique problem set for us. I think you've avoided conceding this obvious point despite making many comparisons that essentially prove it on my behalf, because you would prefer to strawman my arguments and misrepresent them.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Hate to triple, but if we've resolved perceieved misunderstandings on the most part from the original point of dispute, then I'd like to get back to discussing what is going to happen in a general sense (the macro picture) and then on the other hand what we can all do to maximize our utility and self-reliance in the various macro scenarios (the micro picture).

I'm going to try and condense from here on out.

[brianeyci]

In my opinion, self-reliance accomplishes nothing. First of all, even the most drastic predictions from Duchess and Vladamir say only a temporary interruption in basic food production. That means enough food stockpiled at home or in your garage somewhere, and perhaps a small potato garden, to survive six to twelve months of empty or long lineups at supermarket shelves. That doesn't mean going out and getting a farm. Also, a way to survive without a car. That probably means some kind of electric scooter or moped, or if you're in a city get used to public transit. If you don't live somewhere with public transit, _move_ and ASAP. Move somewhere into a major city with low rent and affordable housing, near somewhere you can take transit to work. Measures beyond this are unnecessary and impractical for the vast majority of people, unless you have a million dollars to go out and spend on real estate and a farm. If I was in the US I'd seriously consider getting a firearm and learning how to use it, to protect my stash, even though I'm anti-gun. Something like a shotgun. And plenty of ammunition. You have to be careful what to buy, especially stuff that won't be available or will be scarce until emergency measures bring some stability back. Also have to be careful because most people don't have a huge amount of money to spend on a stash. Things like medicine, non-perishable food, etc. Look at local food banks for what they stock, since they usually stock food for a year or so and know exactly what people need to have a healthy diet. Also for your own sanity stock up on entertainment, like board games and books.

Everybody already knows to kill their debt and if you can't get into fixed interest rates so you're not fucked when prime goes through the roof.

Next, in our society it's moving towards the point where you need even a bachelor's degree to work in McDonalds. I don't see this changing in an oil scarce environment at all. In fact it will be magnified. They will not just want uneducated beasts of burden, and even if they do a degree in something will set you apart. Head hunters will still look for _local_ schooling and _local_ job experience (immigrants with a degree from China, out of luck, get one from here and fast.) There is no such thing as being overeducated, since if you're overeducated you can always choose not to flaunt your degree.

Now here is a salient point I think is worth mentioning for recent graduates. A lot of university graduates think that their study has prepared them for the workforce. In a vast majority of cases, it has not. University is higher education, designed to teach people time management and theoretical problem solving. That does not automatically translate into real skills. Don't listen to people who tell you bullshit that if you have to go to a community college and get a diploma in cooking, accounting, computer repair or so on, that you're disgracing your higher education or that your higher education's automatically worthless. Just because you can do Calculus that doesn't mean you can automatically do accounting or fix computers. It does however, mean that if you put your money with your mouth is, you should be able to learn it. Hey, you've spent four years laughing with your buddies at dumbasses who go straight into the workforce or go to community college to learn a trade, and now you have to sink to their level? Or not. Get rid of that "only dumbasses do physical work" attitude as fast as possible or you'll die in an environment where physical work is valued above all else. Your university education _should_ make practical things like this trivial, and if it doesn't maybe you aren't as smart as you think you are (like in the case of pure humanities majors.) Any employment which cannot be outsourced and you have to be physically there to do is safer than something that can disappear. In other words computer programming doesn't seem such a safe bet since India's computer programmers are fast approaching the competence of US trained programmers and are willing to live with a lot less.

Then, try and get employed with the government, or a business which is financially responsible and will continue to exist during the crisis with the least layoffs possible. That means avoid tourism, hospitality, the auto industry etc., and get into either the government itself or a business the government will subsidize. The most secure is unionized employment, and hey, if dumbasses can sit all day and play Nintendo and still get a paycheque from the union, don't feel bad joining one. Also if you don't mind going straight to the bottom, people will still need bread, subway and bus drivers. Even libraries will need people more than ever, and library science is a pretty quick diploma to get and you're a city employee to boot.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I agree with all that. Hopefully I'll be out of school and already have sought employment utilizing my engineering degree. I am going to look for employment with the government, and I'm going to look for secure housing and all of that. I know that most people do not necessarily work at what their degree is in, but one cannot prepare for what they will fall into. And in an environment we're discussing, "falling into" will probably involve sliding into less desirable employment or none at all, so I'd prefer to find something secure and reliable. I'm not trying to avoid hard work or any physical work. I won't lie, I'd like to secure for myself a position in the upper or managerial class of this post-crunch American class system (which will, if anything, be much less class mobile than today's). I want to avoid physically unhealthy work and hopeless futures - like the people who wait to the last minute or hole up in their suburbs and expect everything to blow over, and are the ones mobilized out to the state-run farms, to the new railroad projects, or to dig canals.

What's your micro plan for yourself? What's your micro plan for everyone? What do you think will happen on the macro level?

[Broomstick]

You know, I think I'm going to start another thread, one with a more positive slant. This one is endless and bogged down at this point.