GHung wrote:O_S said;
"I respectfully don't think this kind of behavior will realistically crash the system, though. I think the system is far more flexible and durable and adaptable than the "fast crash" crowd gives it credit for. I also don't think a 5% downturn would do it, and if you got 10% of folks to cooperate and lower consumption/spending by half over time, that's what you'd get -- IF you could stop the global population from growing (and good luck with that)."
The combination of contraction-promoting proceses will have knock-on effects. As few as 5% 'pre-collapsniks', people like us that have had it with BAU, along with a growing number of involuntary recruits will send the overall industrial project into a death spiral.
So I think where we disagree is magnitude. Where do you come up with 5% reduction in economic activity over time (everyone won't do this at once clearly) will crash the entire system?
Why couldn't it be 20%? Or even 40% if it's somewhat gradual? People doing this will clearly be reducing their debt, BTW.
I think we can put some parameters on this. Clearly 100% will do it, by definition. 2% wont. (We had about a 2% global reduction in the 2008-9 crash, rapidly and involuntarily. It was scary and crashed the stock markets about 40%. People were worried about a possible depression. But all it caused was a deep recession, and some scaling back.) And for most people, more than perhaps 30%, or 50% at most would induce real hardship (hunger, lack of heat/cooling, transport, medical care, etc.) And people aren't going to do THAT en masse, unless they have no choice.
Do you have anything more than a gut feel that 5% would do it? (And complaining about things like "all the debt" doesn't come close to justifying 5%, without real specifics as to how/why the dominos would fall).
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.