[mos6507]

I'd really like to know, in all these economic threads, what the posters here thinks could be achieved through any sort of policy change, and how long-lasting the gains would be in lieu of peak oil, global warming, and population overshoot.

I mean, there have been endless threads in the past talking about die-off, WWIII, pandemics, etc... So who really cares if we fall into a hyperinflationary crisis if we fall off the peak oil plateau in as short as 2-8 years? How much time is there left to restore some sort of vaguely utopian fantasy of America that so many of you still cling to, before we start racing down to the back-side of limits-to-growth?

I mean, I see a tremendous amount of whining about the government up to the point of rooting for a violent revolution. But everybody's whining about that. There's really nothing insightful about this. It's the same desperate search for an outlet of people's rage that dominates the right wing.

But I thought that being a doomer means reaching some level of acceptance of limits, that the future is going to be a more austere one, and that our task is to try to get there gracefully, not to whine and scream all the way down that our utopian expectations can no longer be met, since we can't escape geology and Malthus.

I think the threat here is that the loftier holistic ideas of ecology and limits to growth will be cast aside by everyone as their reptilian brain takes over to the point where doomers will just be another sect of the Tea Party mob, and as far as I'm concerned, the tea party types are the ones who are eventually going to be the zombies, since their way of dealing with hard times is to blame and riot, not adapt.

[diemos]

I'd really like to know, in all these economic threads, what the posters here thinks could be achieved through any sort of policy change, and how long-lasting the gains would be in lieu of peak oil, global warming, and population overshoot.

The most useful thing that the gov could do would be to divert 10% of GDP to building out nuclear, wind, solar and a smart HVDC grid to move it around. Until we reached the point where we could replace all fossil fuel consumption.

Next would be to implement a one child policy. Or if that we're politically impossible, at least to rearrange all public assistance to discourage the production of children.

Next would be to sever all economic ties with the rest of the world and forbid immigration.

We currently produce 15% of our primary energy with existing hydro and nuclear plants. If we could get our population down to 15% of its current level they would be able to provide 100% of our energy needs. We would be set.

[mattduke]

Shutting down the war machine, the largest consumer of oil and major source of government spending, would go a long way.

[Sixstrings]

With all due respect Mos, you're too defeatist. There's no good reason for the American working classes to keep getting shafted by the elite globalist investor class and corporations just because "oh well it's all gonna end anyway because of Malthus, limits to growth, peak oil, global warming, etc. etc."

As for what good all this talk has done.. well for me it's clarified my political views. I think in 2012 I'll finally be ready to vote for someone like Nader, and understand why I'm doing it and why it's the right thing. Other than that yeah this is all a waste of time.

[Plantagenet]

The best thing that could happen would be a complete collapse of society with die-off of most of the overpopulation of the world except for small enclaves centered around Universities, where a peasant class consisting of former townspeople would farm the land and a new elite, composed of the University faculty, would use their academic knowledge to rule what remains of humanity with a wise hand.

After collapse the Professors would devote their lives to attaining tenure and pubishing research papers and books and striving to better society by ruling the peasants in a kindly way, even staging little religious ceremonies at the turning of the seasons to keep the peasants happy. The religous ceremonies would teach that peasants must be good and obedient to the professors if they want to go to peasant heaven. Even after retirement, the most gifted Professors, i.e. those who attained the exalted emeritus status would continue to serve society by volunteering to mate with as many tall and slender peasant women as possible, in a noble and selfless attempt to raise the overall IQ of the remaining members of society.

[Ibon]

I think the threat here is that the loftier holistic ideas of ecology and limits to growth will be cast aside by everyone as their reptilian brain takes over.

Maybe the emergence of the lizard brain isn't a threat but part of the solution. For as the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex has been useful during Kudzu Ape's global expansion the lizard brain will be equally useful during our species decline for it can cut through all the moral and ethical red tape.

How many of you have thought about limits to growth and human overshoot while having an orgasm?

[PrestonSturges]

Fantasy Sequence from the novel Steppenwolf

W e threw the bodies after the car. Already another one was tooting. We shot it down with a volley where we stood. It made a drunken swerve and reeled on for a stretch: then turned over and lay gasping. One passenger was still sitting inside, but a pretty young girl got out uninjured, though she was white and trembling violently. We greeted her politely and offered our assistance. She was too much shaken to speak and stared at us for a while quite dazed.

"Well, first let us look after the old boy," said Gustav and turned to the occupant of the car who still clung to his seat behind the chauffeur. He was a gentleman with short grey hair. His intelligent, clear gray eyes were open, but he seemed to be seriously hurt; at least, blood flowed from his mouth and he held his neck askew and rigid.

"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Gustav. We have taken the liberty of shooting your chauffeur. May we inquire whom we have the honor to address?"

The old man looked at us coolly and sadly out of his small gray eyes.

"I am Attorney-General Loering," he said slowly. "You have not only killed my poor chauffeur, but me too, I fancy. Why did you shoot on us?"

"For exceeding the speed limit."

"We were not traveling at more than normal speed."

"What was normal yesterday is no longer normal today, Mr. Attorney-General. We are of the opinion that whatever speed a motorcar travels is too great. We are destroying all cars and all other machines also."

"Your rifles too?"

"Their turn will come, granted we have the time. Presumably by tomorrow or the day after we shall all be done for. You know, of course, that this part of the world was shockingly overpopulated. Well, now we are going to let in a little air."

" Are you shooting everyone, without distinction?"

"Certainly. In many cases it may no doubt be a pity. I'm sorry, for example, about this charming young lady. Your daughter, I presume."

"No. She is my stenographer."

"So much the better. And now will you please get out, or let us carry you out, as the car is to be destroyed."

"I prefer to be destroyed with it."

"As you wish. But allow me to ask you one more question. You are a public prosecutor. I never could understand how a man could be a public prosecutor. You make your living by bringing other men, poor devils mostly, to trial and passing sentence on them. Isn't that so?"

"It is. I do my duty. It was my office. Exactly as it is the office of the hangman to hang those whom I condemn to death. You too have assumed a like office. You kill people also."

"Quite true. Only we do not kill from duty, but pleasure, or much more, rather, from displeasure and despair of the world. For this reason we find a certain amusement in killing people. Has it never amused you?"

"You bore me. Be so kind as to do your work. Since the conception of duty is unknown to you--"

He was silent and made a movement of his lips as though to spit. Only a little blood came, however, and clung to his chin.

"One moment!" said Gustav politely. "The conception of duty is certainly unknown to me--now. Formerly I had a great deal of official concern with it. I was a professor of theology. Besides that, I was a soldier and went through the war. What seemed to me to be duty and what the authorities and my superior officers from time to time enjoined upon me was not by any means good. I would rather have done the opposite. But granting that the conception of duty is no longer known to me, I still know the conception of guilt--perhaps they are the same thing. In so far as a mother bore me, I am guilty. I am condemned to live. I am obliged to belong to a state, to serve as a soldier, to kill and to pay taxes for armaments. And now at this moment the guilt of life has brought me once more to the necessity of killing the people as it did in the war. And this time I have no repugnance. I am resigned to the guilt. I have no objection to this stupid congested world going to bits. I am glad to help and glad to perish with it."

The public prosecutor made an effort to smile a little with his lips on which the blood had coagulated. He did not succeed very well, though the good intention was manifest.

"Good," said he. "So we are colleagues. Well, as such, please do your duty."

The pretty girl had meanwhile sat down by the side of the road and fainted.

At this moment there was again the tooting of a car coming down the road at full speed. We drew the girl a little to one side and, standing close against the cliff, let the approaching car run into the ruins of the other. The brakes were applied violently and the car reared up in the air. It came to a standstill undamaged. We seized our rifles and quickly had the newcomers covered.

"Get out!" commanded Gustav. "Hands up!"

Three men got out of the car and obediently held up their hands.

"Is anyone of you a doctor?" Gustav asked.

They shook their heads.

"Then be so good as to remove this gentleman. He is seriously hurt. Take him in your car to the nearest town. Forward, and get on with it."

The old gentleman was soon lying in the other car. Gustav gave the word and off they went.

The stenographer meanwhile had come to herself and had been watching these proceedings. I was glad we had made so fair a prize.

"Madam," said Gustav, "you have lost your employer. I hope you were not bound to the old gentleman by other ties. You are now in my service. So be our good comrade. So much for that; and now time presses. It will be uncomfortable here before long. Can you climb, Madam? Yes? Then go ahead and we'll help you up between us."

We all climbed up to our hut in the tree as fast as we could. The lady did not feel very well up there, but we gave her some brandy, and she was soon so much recovered that she was able to admire the wonderful view over lake and mountains and to tell us also that her name was Dora.

Immediately after this, there was another car below us. It steered carefully past the overturned one without stopping and then gathered speed.

"Poltroon!" laughed Gustav and shot the driver. The car zigzagged and dashing into the wall stove it in and hung suspended over the abyss.

"Dora," I said, "can you use firearms?"

She could not, but we taught her how to load. She was clumsy at first and hurt her finger and cried and wanted court-plaster. But Gustav told her it was war and that she must show her courage. Then it went better.

"But what's going to become of us?" she asked.

"Don't know," said Gustav. "My friend Harry is fond of pretty girls. He'll look after you."

"But the police and the soldiers will come and kill us."

"There aren't any police and such like any more. We can choose, Dora. Either we stay quietly up here and shoot down every car that tries to pass, or else we can take a car and drive off in it and let others shoot at us. It's all the same which side we take. I'm for staying here."

And now there was the loud tooting of another car beneath us. It was soon accounted for and lay there wheels uppermost.

Gustav smiled. "Yes, there are indeed too many men in the world. In earlier days it wasn't so noticeable. But now that everyone wants air to breathe, and a car to drive as well, one does notice it. Of course, what we are doing isn't rational. It's childishness, just as war is childishness on a gigantic scale. In time, mankind will learn to keep its numbers in check by rational means. Meanwhile, we are meeting an intolerable situation in a rather irrational way. However, the principle's correct--we eliminate."

[cephalotus]

all (most) people would realise that there is no positive correlation between the amount of money / stuff and happiness after a certain level (maybe living standard of the 60's).
If politics would also realise this there could be a new politics without the need to unlimited growth.

7 (or 9) billion people could easily live on this Earth at level of wealth that would be enough for maximum happiness. We would probably have to give up some material wealth, but we would gain a much better life...

The technology to do this is already available. Earth is destroyed by greed, not because of the current population number.

http://www.happyplanetindex.org/explore/historical.html

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/clima ... ca-smiling

[Cloud9]

Mos, from the signing of the Constitution until the present day there has been a gradual concentration of power in Washington. With that concentration came a paradigm shift that embraced the abandonment of personal responsibility in favor of the collective. More and more came to believe that the government would provide for us and protect us. The consequences of poor decision making were either muted or done away with all together. Promiscuity would not damn you and your offspring to a life of poverty. Infidelity in business would not render your riches into rags, rather it would make you eligible for a government handout.

We as a society in an effort to right all wrongs have suspended the law of cause and effect. We have unhinged nature. The collapse we all imagine is the only logical outcome of this foolishness.

The single most important thing we can do is convince our fellow countrymen that the government cannot save us. If we are to be saved, we must save ourselves.

[Unconventional Ideas]

There will be no shutting down the war machine. The imperialist military industrial complex is the engine that drives the U.S. economy. We "need" to be able to steal cheap resources from around the world to keep our economy going. Military action or the threat of it is what enables us to do that.

So protests aren't going to end military action anymore.

[sparky]

.
confused thinking , as usual
Mos....... "I'd really like to know, in all these economic threads, what the posters here thinks could be achieved through any sort of policy change"
Nothing much really , it's like a butterfly with the life span of a week , arguing about changing the laws of gravity
most posters do not make the difference between the American supremacy , of fifty years duration
the consumer society , pretty much the same span and the industrial age about two hundreds years

The U.S. is toast as a super power ,
it will remain a great power for what it's worth, mostly because it's a continent wide authority ,
De Tocqueville pointed this out in the 1850ies ,
even if we go back to the steam age there will be a U.S. internal revenue service backed by whatever force is needful
those of you who think a rifle is a weapon don't understand organized firepower
Sooo ... no central government collapse , only a rather more obvious lash
when push come to shove , public servants will show you what keeping order means
all protest will be statistically manageable ,If any blood flow in the street will not be theirs
As Mao could have said , there is two side to a gun the funny one and the one which is not

America has a fine track record of whinging a lot about taxes and not paying too much of them
it should be called the Santa Claus society
There is not so much enthusiasm for fighting their own government and hanging them
except the long defunct and un-mourned militia movement
God's grief even Romanians have done better
the Brits and French at least chopped some in their time

This being said the modern consumer society is bound to collapse simply because there is too many consumers .....period , it's basic arithmetic
...When ??....is an interesting question , not tomorrow morning that's for sure and I doubt if it will last a generation
....How ??... is the fascinating question ,a total collapse is the long odds ,the main chance is a series of crisis with the masses being led down the garden path of instant solutions

[mos6507]

The most useful thing that the gov could do would be to divert 10% of GDP to building out nuclear, wind, solar and a smart HVDC grid to move it around. Until we reached the point where we could replace all fossil fuel consumption.

Next would be to implement a one child policy. Or if that we're politically impossible, at least to rearrange all public assistance to discourage the production of children.

Next would be to sever all economic ties with the rest of the world and forbid immigration.

We currently produce 15% of our primary energy with existing hydro and nuclear plants. If we could get our population down to 15% of its current level they would be able to provide 100% of our energy needs. We would be set.

I'm talking about fixing the economy first, not mitigating doom. Joe Sixpack doesn't care about anything else. It's the solidarity that the peanut gallery here appears to be demonstrating over '99ers' and all that I'm addressing.

For everybody out there whose talking points are now almost identical to Fox News, what exactly do you see possible in the handful of years before we fall off the production plateau? Isn't your world outlook predicated on peak oil being either a non-issue or so far out in the distance that we could (in theory) enjoy one last hurrah before Toecutter and his gang of mutant zombies take to the streets? How compatible is this prescriptive approach towards government with a world that has already pretty much run out the clock?

Even for someone like Cid.. He got pulled into the political debate like everyone else, when otherwise his mantra was that he was moving to the arctic circle in Canada to await the great die-off due to global warming feedbacks. What relevance does the short-term trajectory of national politics have in a looming mass-extinction? Is it not akin to arguing over a game of poker on Death Row?

If Japan is still reeling from its "lost decade" then is there any hope that the US economy could ever get back to where we were in 2007 before resource depletion sends us back down again?

I see a lot of ideology swirling around here, a lot of a need for meting out some sort of "justice" to those that you see as having robbed or cheated you or committed some moral sin, but I see very little recognition that life as we know it, aka Business as Usual, has little chance of persisting much longer.

If the country gets torn up in some sort of civil war, what are the odds that a more benign government would take its place? The populism of the Tea Party has in fact made things worse in the sense that it has further empowered corporatocracy by stocking Washington with free-market deregulators.

It seems to me that the things that people rail about most will largely solve themselves due to resource depletion. Globalization, outsourcing, the disparity of rich and poor (largely via imaginary paper wealth), foreign policy (our military's thirst for oil will keep it constrained). What we should be spending more of our time on is how to keep people from flipping their lids because Wal-Mart culture is breaking down. As long as people have a blame-game way of looking at the world, then resource depletion will never be recognized. They will just lump everything under the bucket of being the fault of "them". That's already the Alex Jones spiel and it will cross over to Beck and the rest of the right wing as much of his other tinfoil has. I really see a lot of sacrificial lambs at the altar of the Mayan pyramids to appease the Gods in the future. This problem of mis-reading the situation is the biggest threat, not Obama's mythical $200 million trip to India. Instead what I'm noticing is this dumbing-down of the level of doomer discourse, due to the growing fog of rage. This is something that's been building up since the economy started tanking in '08. It seems like instead of the "sheeple" becoming wiser, that the doomers are racing to the bottom to meet the "sheeple" with knives and pitchforks. That to me is the tragedy.

[Ludi]

Best that could happen with appropriate policy changes: The middle class and poor are enabled to transition to a less-energy way of life in a way which protects their well-being. The wealthy are prevented from siphoning more wealth into their own pockets (they already have plenty) to the detriment of the rest of us.

I could go into all kinds of details about what policies need to be changed, but, seems like I've only been writing about this stuff here for like, 5 years, so I don't think I feel like doing it again right now.

I agree with Sixstring's statement: 'There's no good reason for the American working classes to keep getting shafted by the elite globalist investor class and corporations just because "oh well it's all gonna end anyway because of Malthus, limits to growth, peak oil, global warming, etc. etc."'

[PrestonSturges]

Read Karl Popper (Enemis of the Free Society) and Erich Fomm (Escape From Freedom) who wrote about this stuff in the1940s from the perspective of people that grew up in Germany.

The stuff they wrote 1944-1964 describe the hysteria and tear-it-all-down theme that the Nazis were able to fan because of the economy.

When I say the Tea Party is "romantic" idea in the way a philsopher desribes an idea as "romantic." And when people on the right talk about "spirit" and a "spiritual" movement, they are using exactly the same terminology as Hitler.

But also, the GOP is merely playing the word games of dialectics - they will not answer a question under any circumstances, they just dig in their heels and start yelling about something unrelated.

But the idea that the government is on a rampage is crap. You live on .125 acres in the suburb, then you can't shoot deer from your back door, you have to cut the grass, you can't burn your leaves, you can't build a motorcycle track in your back yard. That's not "tyranny."

[Ludi]

I live in the country and I can do pretty much anything I want. I guess "the government" isn't out to get country people, just city people.

[Pops]

I'm pretty fatalistic about public policy, when was the last time a politician took the long view and cast a vote not because it would look good at election time but because it was the best choice?

We have a representative government in the US, elected officials are supposed to do the best thing, not necessarily the thing the public wants this week. I believe the way the house changed so much the last few elections with the senate moving more slowly is just the way things were designed.

Still, I see more and more of politics driven by the 1 or 2 issue politician, you don't get much idea of what kind of person you are electing when every ad talks about lowering taxes or defending women's rights - sure those things are important but are they the only thing important?

We have so much access to to information but we don't have much of an idea of how a person will approach a random problem because we elected him solely to cut taxes or legalize abortion. I guess it doesn't really matter because he is going to do a poll or focus group to find out what WE want anyway, that's where we get gas tax holidays, bridges to nowhere, stupid animal rights laws flag burning constitutional amendments and on and on.

And so now that's what we demand.

..
But on topic, I don't think there is a best that could happen. In fact, expecting something to happen, good or bad, is probably the biggest failing in the whole peak oil "movement" or whatever it might be called.
Peak oil is coming and we're all gonna die!
Peak oil happened and I didn't notice a thing!
The economy is going to go take off like a rocket!
Hyperinflation/PEVs/dollar collapse/fusion/world socialism/feudalism/madd max/biofuels/die off/the singularity is about to happen!

Nearly everything talked about on this site is About to Happen! What we forget sometimes is that something else will happen before and something else will happen after - no matter what Happens. In other words, there is no end game. Some will always try to get more, others will always get the short stick and the rest will have a mixed bag - it's a jungle out there.

I think we all want to be involved in the great event but this isn't a movie and there is no great arc and we aren't going to witness the climax and be crunching the last of the un-popped corn reading the credits.

[diemos]

I'm pretty fatalistic about public policy,

Me too, I gave up on humans a long time ago. It's maddening to know that if everyone in the world thought like me it would be trivially easy to create a sustainable world with a high standard of living but unfortunately humans are going to go on being human so we're doomed.

Nearly everything talked about on this site is About to Happen! What we forget sometimes is that something else will happen before and something else will happen after - no matter what Happens.

No its happening, its just happening so slowly that it seems like nothings happening. Future historians will look back on this period as an explosion of events. To us, its like the hour hand on the clock.

The peak oil scenario is playing out pretty much according to script. Production is flat. We've had our first major shock where oil production couldn't keep up with world growth, there was a price spike, the price spike kicked the financial system into contraction, the economy contracted, demand fell below supply, and the price collapsed. However, the price of oil is still quadruple what it was 10 years ago. I don't know about you but my salary hasn't quadrupled in that period so that's not just "inflation".

However, does the MSM finally proclaim that growth has reached a limit? Nope, they tout that the world is "swimming" in excess oil that nobody wants. Not realizing that peak oil is characterized by a reduction in consumption and that that reduction can either be achieved by everyone keeping their job and the price of oil skyrocketing or oil can stay cheap and available with fewer and fewer people having money in hand to buy it.

The constant drumbeat from financial "experts" that oil is going to $300/barrel is a major disservice to having the masses understand what to expect from peak oil. We'll probably spend the next 10 years blaming everything and everyone under the sun for our declining standard of living except the one thing that's actually causing it, a reduction in the resources available to us.

[Sixstrings]

I live in the country and I can do pretty much anything I want. I guess "the government" isn't out to get country people, just city people.

Well, it's always been the case that denser populations require more government. There are just all kinds of complicated issues and problems that crop up when people live in cities. If everyone lived in the boonies, you'd hardly need any government at all.

[Ludi]

Well, it's always been the case that denser populations require more government. There are just all kinds of complicated issues and problems that crop up when people live in cities. If everyone lived in the boonies, you'd hardly need any government at all.

I guess I wonder what the Libertarian solution to the denser population problem is? If folks can't get along, how do they solve their problems in a "less government" way? "Everyone move to the boonies" probably isn't a viable solution at this time....