Off the keyboard of RE
Discuss this article at the Frostbite Falls Daily Rant inside the Diner
So here we are now, on the cusp of another Auld Lang Syne. Pretty much every year since I started Blogging the Collapse in 2007, I have written some sort of paean to the New Year, and this one will be no different. Sometimes I write Prognostications for the Future in such posts, other times I write Nostalgia for the Past. I suspect this one will contain both also.
We got through the big Mayan Date of 12/21/2012 without a Planet Killer sized Asteroid hitting, and without Global thermonuclear Warfare also! So I guess we are SAFE now? Of course not, and pinning your prognostications on any given day is pretty much like picking out the right numers in the Lotto, your chances of being precisely correct here are quite small.
What we do see inexorably are incremental changes in the way we live, and the way our economic system functions, or does not function as the case may be. So this leads many in the Collapse Blogosphere to conclude that our spin down will continue to eb incremental, long term “Boiling Frog” or “Long Emergency” in Jimmy Kunstlers terminology.
At this point, after witnessing 4 years of various Kick the Can methodologies undertaken by the CBs to keep the system floating another day, Iexpect more of same in the coming year, but to ever less success all the time. The “Fiscal Cliff” bullshit playing out over the next week looks likely to give a good Kidney Punch to the Markets, and all the liquidity in the world won’t get commercial banks loaning to credit exhausted customers.
The main CBs of Da Fed, the ECB, the PBoC and the BoJ are basically now in the Bizness of directly funding their respective Goobermints by buying their bonds, since nobody else will. Thus, any outflow of currency to J6P basically has to come from Da Goobermint now, dribbled out in SNAP Cards and SSDI and other Transfer programs. The number of people who can afford to Happy Motor around continues to shrink, with an ever widening gap between Haves and Have Nots here.
Juggernauts don’t stop on a dime of course, and this is a BIG Juggernaut. It remains unlikely the Dollar fails first in the currency warfare, so I don’t think we will see HI this year again in the Dollar, much to the consternation of John Williams of Shadow Stats and Speedy Gonzalo Lira.
I do think some Goobermint over in Eurotrashland will topple this year, repudiate odious debt and try flying their own new currency. The Spanish or Portuguese seem the most likely candidates, more than the Greeks who are just mired in Political Corruption on a vast scale and probably could not even figure out how to issue Drachma and make it work at all at this point. Like Zimbabwe, they are a Failed State now and cannot administer their own currency without it turning instantly worthless right off the Printing Press. Far as International Trade goes, getting Gas to run their cars and trucks and food staples they no longer grow enough of there for the population, the Greeks are basically dependent on the Kindness of Strangers, basically Krauts who historically are none too generous a people. LOL.
Trying to predict the future here even on the short term though is pretty much a losing proposition, we’ve been teetering on the Precipice since 2008, and we could teeter a while longer here. Here in the FSofA, I don’t see Mad Max likely this year or even next now, but I do see ever increasing social disruptions and a Tipping Point will come eventually. We’ll get a Canary in the Coal Mine window on a lot of how it will play out here just by watching Europe and Japan.
In Japan, the Radiation Poisoning around Tokyo is even greater than in Fuk-U-shima itself, and already there are reports of increasing Thyroid Nodules and Cancers occuring. I cannot imagine how any Nipponese with means to get out of Tokyo would not do so at this point. The new Goobermint is talking about restarting their still functional Nukes, as I am sure J6P Salaryman is getting tired of Brownouts and says Fuck IT! Nuke till we die! Kamikaze!
For myself sitting here in my perch on the Last Great Frontier, I can only look back and wonder at the STUPIDITY of all of it now.
I remember back to going to school at Stuyvesant, taking the Number 7 Flushing Line every working morning at Rush Hour. I was fortunate to be at the first stop on the line so could wait for an empty train most of the time and get a seat, but by the time the train left the station, it was already Standing Room Only with every “Strap” hung onto sometimes by more than one person, so you got the grubby cooties of whoever it was hanging on the same strap as you. By the time we got to Junction Boulevard station, there weren’t even straps or poles left to hang onto, but no worries about Falling Down, since everyone was packed shoulder to shoulder inside the Tin Can like Sardines.
This is a way for Human Beings to LIVE? Even if you have a “good job” in the Big Shitty with a decent paycheck that allows you to have a decent apartment in Queens, 3 hours a day every day of your work week you are a Human Sardine.
Not a whole lot better for the next tier up of peoples either, living in McMansions in Nassau and Suffolk counties commuting in their Carz on the Long Island Expressway either. Traffic Jams, your own Flat tires running over a discarded Switchblade, an Accident at least every couple of years driving up you Insurance rates and forcing you onto the LIRR for a week while the car got fixed…etc.
For those at the Very Top though, in Penthouses on Park Avenue, gee it was all WONDERFUL. Doorman greets you with a big smile when you arrive, makes sure none of the Hoi Polloi get thru the door of the building. No Parking Issues, walk out the door of your building and the Limo is there to pick you up and take you down to Wall Street.
These of course are the people who were running the show through it all, going right back to the Robber Barons (and before that!), and they Invested their BORROWED money on building out the system for their own further Comfort and Enjoyment, hell with the fact that somewhere down the line it was polluting Love Canal or setting the Cuyahoga River on fire. Later of course to be moved over to China where now the Rice Paddies in Guanzou Province are irrigated in Sewage.
Going way back to my early years in Brazil, I was always irritated by the vast discrepancy between the people living in the Favelas around Rio and those living inside the “Bubble” on Rua Joachim Nabuco where I lived. Some folks living very well, others in desperate poverty. Why? Made no sense to me as a 7 year old, makes no sense to me today.
Along the way between then and now, I’ve been subject to the same Propaganda everyone else has, that everyone has Opportunity to Bootstrap themselves up and Poor people are Poor because they are Lazy & Stupid. Which in fact many of them are, but so are many Rich people! In fact I think Rich people are Lazier & Stupider on a statistical basis than Poor folks are! As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in the Great Gatsby, “The rich are different from you and I. They have more money.” LOL.
Anyhow, as I have discovered in the interim, the monetary system as it is constructed is a Control Conduit, a mechanism by which the powerful in society stay powerful and subjugate the weaker in the society. Moving between the Castes here was briefly enabled in the FSofA as there was so much resource base to go out and Plunder after the First Nations people were decimated by the Smallpox and Guns, that it created just a ton of Nouveau Riche folks here, particularly in the post WWII era.
The Nature of the Monetary system though is to perpetually sieve wealth back to those who have the POWER to issue credit, and who will issue it to themselves endlessly. They only issue the Credit out to J6P though as long as it behooves them to do so and betters their own lives.
In today’s world as we march forward into 2013, it no longer behooves the elite in society to issue more Credit to J6P, because the resources upon which said credit is based are rapidly diminishing in availability and EROEI. So entire Nation-States like the Greeks and Spaniards are being Triaged off the credit bandwagon to buy the Oil that a very few people hold control over. As they get triaged off, their Jobs disappear, and so do their Pensions. It is happening over there across the Pond already, it will arrive at our shores also in the Bye & Bye.
This has not been a good way for Homo Sapiens to live and inhabit the Planet for a long time now, certainly anyone who was ever packed like a Sardine into a Tin Can subway Car should know that. Anyone who ever sat in a two hour Traffic Jam with their car burning gas at Idle while moving about nowhere should know that. Anybody who ever had a bullshit, go nowhere job (which almost all of them are for the Hoi Polloi) should know that.
Being real smart leveraged some folks out of this during the growth period, anybody who either could figure a way to get others working “for” him or could jump through the University Hoops to get into a Gate Kept profession could make some decent buckolas and become an FSofA member of the Upper Middle Class. Doctors and Lawyers, Insurance Agents, Real Estate Developers and Costruction Contractors, any number of people did this in the Salad Years of Growth of this sort of economy.
It even was possible for some 2nd Generation people in the FSofA to leverage into the Elite of the Society, Billionaires like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates jumped on the bubble of Computers and Information Technology as vast sums of credit were poured in this direction. To this day, Wall Street makes Billionaires out of nerds like Suckerbug from Facepalm. HUGE quantities of debt are issued, a few Banksters and “Entrepreneurs” get filthy rich, then over time it all colllapses because in fact it is not really producing anything at all, merely it is just another way to burn energy.
So now we cross the threshhold into 2013 in the early stages of the vast collapse of all the debt accumulated to drive Industrial and Technological civilization. Nowhere in the Industrialized World does anybody want this to end really, other than a few real Doomers. No Pensioner wants to accept that his Pension is Worthless. Nobody working in any end of the automobile economy wants to accept that people simply cannot afford to Happy Motor about anymore. Nobody who wokrs even as a Starbucks Barrista in a Mall somewhere wants to accept that not enough peole will make it to the mall to buy their overpriced coffee so they can keep their jobs either.
Above all, nobody in the Industrialized world wants to accept Lights OUT. For anybody born inside these cultures in the last 50 years, Electricity at the Flick of a Switch is a God Given RIGHT! To give up Electricity is to give up the GHOST here, the end of the meme of ever improving Techology, the end of the Jetsons and Star Trek Dream.
The Japanese won’t give it up, even in the face of Nuclear Toxins in their environment, they wanna go ahead and restart their Nukes. “If you are Going through Hell, keep Going” as Winston Churchill said. The other side option is a collapse of their economy, and with the 100M plus on those Islands, more will die faster without the electircity than will die from Radiation Poisoning. Cannot STOP till you are DEAD!
So it goes here for the culture at large, but that does not mean as an Individual you cannot seek your way out of the mess. Here on the Diner, we SEEK the ways out the individual can muster up here. None are foolproof, none are perfect. Any one of them though ups your chances of surviving the Zero Point by orders of magnitude. Just UNDERSTANDING what is going on does that.
As we move forward here into 2013, I know it will get worse, perhaps much worse and quickly too. At the same time, I know it is important to reach out to others, deliver the TRUTH, and hunker down to make it through the Zero Point. When Toba went Ballistic, some people made it though that Bottleneck. Some can do it again. Diners.
RE
wade says:
excellent article!
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31st December 2012 at 9:03 am
KaD says:
Indeed, well said.
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31st December 2012 at 9:48 am
sangell says:
I’ve mentioned it before but the only way I can see to get off the government entitlement program treadmill that is impoverishing nations with debt and crushing any middle class person that seeks to rise above average income with taxes is to re-institute domestic servants on a large scale.
I’ve noted that in the UK prior to WW1 when the Empire was at its zenith and Britain was still a manufacturing powerhouse the largest source of jobs in the nation was still domestic service. Yep, before the welfare state and the dole those without useful skills were employed as servants by the rich and upper middle class. It was the only way to absorb everyone into useful employment. It also had the politically useful side effect of having the affluent ‘pay their fair share’ without taxes by offering them the services of the poor in return for them providing food and accomodation to them.
We are going to be facing that same situation as employment in the real economy shrinks due to automation and we can either stay on the tax/entitlement/debt treadmill till it collapses or we can offload the poor onto the affluent as servants. For legal and social reasons employing servants went out of style but it needs to become fashionable again. An affluent doctor or lawyer with a large house on 5 acres needs to stop hiring illegal aliens to mow his lawn and put a gardner or two or is staff. Instead of hiring a maid service that can’t pay a living wage to their employees these people need to put a couple of maids in their home and a cook to prepare meals for the family and their staff. Government needs to modify labor laws to make this possible. Instead of giving the working poor food stamps because the jobs they can get in the real economy are part time or so low paying they cannot afford to eat and commute to their jobs put these people in homes where they can dine on their employers nickel and don’t have to commute.
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31st December 2012 at 10:22 am
Stucky says:
Was the Great Flood global, or local?
LOL Sorry, RE.
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31st December 2012 at 12:49 pm
Stucky says:
RE
In that subway picture I see one bald white man with a funky mustache. I suspect that’s YOU?
Calling Germans “Krauts” is racist. I will not stand for it. Apologize immediately before I introduce you to the new German microwave …. it seats twenty.
Any updates on 7 million dying? You indicated 100M on the Nip islands. Is THAT the new number?
Nice article.
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31st December 2012 at 12:59 pm
Jimi d says:
sangell
I have NEVER heard before such a totally fucked up idea as the one you mention here !
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31st December 2012 at 2:04 pm
sangell says:
Jimi d. It was how the world worked for centuries. The fact of the matter is entitlements are going to be reduced. We simply cannot afford to give every young woman who has a baby her own apartment with free food, medical care for life etc. Government expenditures are outpacing revenues by 50% now. There are not enough jobs in the real economy to employ everyone. We can either tell the poor they are going to have to live in dormitory settings and eat meals in cafeteria settings much like a Salvation Army mission cares for winos and the like or these people are going to have to take what work as is available and if is as a maid, gardener or cook in an affluent home that isn’t so bad a life.
They won’t be slaves, they will be household staff. They will not live in a ghetto with predators and crime. They will live in an upper middle class home or even a grand estate. They will get treats and rewards from their employer. Perhaps the use of a nice automobile to run their errands. Its a fact that people are social beings. You cannot live in close proximity with another person for years and not develop ties of affection. Servants are sometimes treated beyond well in life and death. Like most things in life its what you make of it.
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31st December 2012 at 3:19 pm
Reverse Engineer says:
Thanks Wade, KaD, Stucky.
Sangell, take the neo-feudal domestic servant model and stick it where the sun don’t shine.
Stucky, everybody knows inside every Kraut there is a Nazi just waiting to Bloom
100M is just the Dead Nips! Think of all the Chindians and Towel Heads! People of Walmart, 30 Blocks of Squalor residents…
Then there are all those Banksters with a Guillotine in their future…
Then the Zombie vs Doomsteader Wars…
Gotta up it here a couple of Orders of Magnitude at least. Let’s peg it at 700,000,000 in the First Round.
I SEE DEAD PEOPLE.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 3:23 pm
Stucky says:
Not being able to find a Regular Job … sangell answers an Ad for Apprentice Wrestler to help him prepare for a Servant job
Seriously, you need to put a ‘DWS’ after a post like that. Unless you’re serious … in which case you can Blow Me.
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31st December 2012 at 3:36 pm
sangell says:
RE,
One of the guys I supervised up in Richmond had a friend who was a servant for the CEO of Ethyl Corporation. He lived on the guys estate and had a role somewhat between caretaker and butler of the maids and tradespeople that were more or less always working on one project or another on such a large property. He lived in a small guest house on the property. I learned of him when my employee came in to work whining that we never got Xmas bonuses ( we were employed by a municipal utility) but his friend had been given a new Chrysler 300 by his boss! Like I say life is what you make of it.
Richmond has an area called Windsor Farms and it s where many of the very wealthy live. I spent a lot of time there meeting with homeowners ( or their staff) owing to the fact that we had a problem maintaining gas pressure in the winter and there wasn’t much we could do about it until the system was rebuilt there but when Mr. Reynolds of Reynolds Aluminum had no gas in his 20 million dollar home in January someone had to go out there and explain what had happened and it was my area so I got picked. The family that owned Media General, forget their name, but they lived out there and they got water in the gas lines and I had to go get it out and relight their gas appliances. They had an ancient black guy named “Louis” who was their manfriday and looked like the guy on old Uncle Ben’s Rice boxes. He took me around the home to light all these gas fireplaces, restaurant sized kitchen appliances and what not and then out to his quarters. His place was a lot nicer than mine I’ll tell you that! He was not doing bad at all.
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31st December 2012 at 3:55 pm
Reverse Engineer says:
“An affluent doctor or lawyer with a large house on 5 acres needs to stop hiring illegal aliens to mow his lawn and put a gardner or two or is staff. Instead of hiring a maid service that can’t pay a living wage to their employees these people need to put a couple of maids in their home and a cook to prepare meals for the family and their staff.”-Sangell
Mr. Neo-Feudal here seems not to grasp the fact that Doctors and Lawyers won’t BE “affluent”. they need clients/patients who can pay something, and Domestics Servants who scrub the toilets in McMansions on 5 acres for leftovers don’t have any money.
As we speak, numerous graduating Lawyers got no jobs to go to, and Law Firms are closing and dismissing partners. Doctors are getting squashed out of income as insurance costs skyrocket and Medicaire pays less, if they actually pay off at all if you file all the right papers your records clerks spend their working day fabricating up.
Doctors in Da Old Days worked for Chickens in Barter. When credit stops flowing out, the affluence of these Gate Kept professions is revealed as a mirage. they go broke too.
The credit of this time was all based on the availability of cheap energy to manufacture a way of life that is not sustainable. Everybody will go broke, and that INCLUDES the Illuiminati. Just they will do all in their power to make sure they are the last to go broke. When they can no longer fund and fuel the Big Ass Military, the game changes.
Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 3:57 pm
sangell says:
Hey stucky, you never see employees at an office or a plant not have to brown nose the boss?
OTOH, a member of a rich families household staff can be pretty immune to cuts at the company if they are in tight with the boss’s wife or kids. Daddy isn’t going to fire you if it makes his wife mad or his kids cry!
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31st December 2012 at 4:08 pm
Reverse Engineer says:
Sangell, you are in a dream world. Wait…that how I would put it on the Diner. Let me rephrase for TBP. You have your head up your ASS.
The number of CEOs who can afford large staffs of domestic servants is vanishingly small, and is going to get a lot smaller. The companies will all go broke as margins are squeezed and there is no profit to be had. there really never was, it was all based on extraction of cheap resources that are no longer there.
The Slavery/Servant paradigm only works in a society in surplus, where one group controls the surplus and the other group is beholden to them. In a society in deficit, it costs more to house and feed a servant then that servant is worth to keep alive. This is why Pharoah let the Israelites go really. He simply could not afford to feed them anymore, so sent them packing for the Desert.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 4:09 pm
sangell says:
When Mr. Johnson of Johnson and Johnson died he gave his sons $10. He gave his nurse/attendant $500 million. Proximity to wealth has its advantages.
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31st December 2012 at 4:12 pm
AWD says:
The usual heavy shit. I’m just glad to be alive, and witness to what is to come.
At the end of the day, you have to enjoy the little things in life….
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31st December 2012 at 4:14 pm
Stucky says:
I believe sangell is of India heritage.
That culture has no problem with servitude and the Lower Class (the caste system). They have no problem telling the dirt poor to just accept life as is … since they were no doubt bad people in a previous life.
So, it is no surprise that he would think being a servant is a great economic solution. Sad, really.
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31st December 2012 at 4:24 pm
Reverse Engineer says:
“When Mr. Johnson of Johnson and Johnson died he gave his sons $10. He gave his nurse/attendant $500 million. Proximity to wealth has its advantages.”-Sangell
On the chart below Sangell, you don’t even make the first step up to Idiot.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 4:25 pm
sangell says:
RE we are already stuck with the cost of these people through government benefits. SSDI benefits to a ‘disabled’ person $1000 to $1500 per month plus medicaid. Section 8 voucher $1000 per month or more. Now I realize no one is going to want a fat welfare mom and her brood moving onto their property no matter how cheap they work but some portion of the poor can be housed in the homes of their employer at greatly reduced cost to society.
Single mom employed as what used to be called a ‘likely girl’ in the South. Kid lives with grandma ( if she doesn’t already) and mom lives and works as a domestic in affluent persons home. No section 8 voucher needed for mom and kid. Mom earns money that she can save instead of doing same work for merry maids and spending $5 per day on public transit getting too and from work. Meals provided by employer so we eliminate food stamps for her.
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31st December 2012 at 4:27 pm
sangell says:
RE your attempt at humor is neither funny nor rational argument. People who argue by claiming their interlocutor is an ‘idiot’, moron, fool etc are not refuting anything. It is simply what is left when you have nothing to add to a discussion.
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31st December 2012 at 4:37 pm
Anonymous says:
Wait, I can be a racist for not liking sauerkraut, blaukraut or rotkraut?
KES
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31st December 2012 at 4:58 pm
sangell says:
No, but speaking negatively of Kim Chee could only be interpreted as anti Korean hate speech!
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31st December 2012 at 5:05 pm
Reverse Engineer says:
“It is simply what is left when you have nothing to add to a discussion.”-Sangell.
Hahahahahahahahahaha. CLEARLY you don’t know me very well Sangell. I ALWAYS have PLENTY to add to a discussion! I just pitch out Napalm like that when somebody is such a clear nincompoop and doesn’t respond to any of the points I made at all. Man, I can SWAMP you with prose a mile deep. Ask Stucky or Jimbo. LOL.
You did not resond to the fact that the “affluent” in society are going broke right along with the poor folks. You did not respond to the fact that credit creation was based on cheap energy, and is drying up. You did not respond to the fact that the number of filthy rich who can affor a housefull of domestics servants is vanishingly small even now, and bound to get a good deal smaller here. You did not respond to how surplus works in society, nor did you respond to the fact that the “affluent” can stay affluent when their clients got no money.
How many domestic servants does anybody need anyhow? Lets see, bodyguard, chauffer, cook, gardener, maid,nanny, Tutor, “Man Friday”, Sex Slave, that about covers it. Lets be generous and round it up to 10 here, given any one of these could fulfill more than one function. Let’s say 1% of the population could afford this even now. With their domestic servants, you now have 11% of the population covered. Assume 50% of the population can make some kind of living outside of being a Slave. This still leaves you with 39% of the population uncovered here.
This is a very generous estimate BTW, by no means do I think 1% of the population can afford a house full of servants, more like 0.1% MAYBE. Even $1M a year would go down the tubes quickly with 10 servants and a big enough place to house all of them.
The whole paradigm is nonsense, right out of Upstairs/Downstairs off the BBCs Masterpiece Theatre, recalling the heady days of Victorian England. All funded of course by stripping wealth from India through the British East India Company. This model failed, and Rich Bits on the Gravy Train don’t have servants anymore.
A few Filthy Rich CEOs still have household servants, apparently you worked for or hung around some of them and got an incredibly skewed view of how this system works, and it doesn;t scale up in any way shape or form. End of Story.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 5:06 pm
Anonymous says:
kim chee and balut
ES
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31st December 2012 at 5:13 pm
Anonymous says:
John Kenneth Galbraith quipped, “…a precondition for obtaining a central bank post is tunnel vision when it comes to understanding that governments can create their credit as readily as banks can. What is necessary is for one’s political loyalties to lie with the banks.”
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31st December 2012 at 5:20 pm
Llpoh says:
I have been suggesting a great many of the FSA need to be given shovels, rakes, and hoes and tend the fields as happened throughout history. At least then they would produce something of value. The US has vast farmland.
The counter to this is that they will not do it, and the number of overseers required to make them do it would be vast. I suggest that either able-bodied people work, or starve. It is how it has always been. I see no reason to think things have changed – the welfare state trial has failed. Amazing how so few realize it, tho.
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31st December 2012 at 7:28 pm
Reverse Engineer says:
“I have been suggesting a great many of the FSA need to be given shovels, rakes, and hoes and tend the fields as happened throughout history. At least then they would produce something of value. The US has vast farmland.”-LLPOH
The problem with this solution is that as long as there is Oil around, you don’t need people with pipcks and shovels to produce food, it is done more efficiently with machines.
If Oil is not around, given climate change and depleted aquifers, people with picks and shovels won’t be able to raise enough food for themselves, much less have leftover to feed Pigmen and their Overseers. At least by conventional means anyhow. Hydroponics another story, but you don;t need picks and shovels for that.
The Slave model doesn’t work in an environment of scarcity of resources and population overshoot.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 8:35 pm
Llpoh says:
RE – more thinking it requires them to produce something rather than nothing. People survived millennia that way.
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31st December 2012 at 8:42 pm
Reverse Engineer says:
“RE – more thinking it requires them to produce something rather than nothing. People survived millennia that way.”-LLPOH
Homo Sapiens survived millenia by progressively depleting the earth of its resource base. I suggest you read Toby Hemenway’s recent article on his blog Pattern Literacy, “Is Sustainable Agriculture an Oxymoron”?
http://www.patternliteracy.com/203-is-sustainable-agriculture-an-oxymoron
Anyhow, on the Diner we advocate for a distrributed model of Hydroponic food production, where everybody grows their own food at home. No picks and shovels required.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 9:08 pm
crazyivan says:
Fuck it.
On careful consideration of the remarks above, I have decided to devote the rest of my life learning the art of barbarism.
I certainly am not going to be seen hauling 5 gallon buckets of water a mile and a half up from the Missouri river to top off my 2500 gal hydroponics food mill, in the middle of winter.
Barbarians predate hunter gathers, so I look at as kind of old school.
Finally! Something to believe in.
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31st December 2012 at 9:55 pm
Reverse Engineer says:
“I certainly am not going to be seen hauling 5 gallon buckets of water a mile and a half up from the Missouri river to top off my 2500 gal hydroponics food mill, in the middle of winter.”-CI
Windmills dude, the old fashioned kind for pumping water. And you need nowhere near 2500 Gallons anyhow. Check out Peter’s setup. Fits in his Living Room.
http://www.doomsteaddiner.org/forum/index.php?topic=1058.0
RE
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31st December 2012 at 10:18 pm
llpoh says:
CI – barbarians need established communities/civilizations to thrive so as to be able to demand tribute from them. Where are you gonna find that?
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31st December 2012 at 10:20 pm
crazyivan says:
Alright, RE
I humored you in light of the fact that you have obviously survived the winter solstice in the Mat-Su valley, otherwise known as pussyland by your northern breathen and clicked on your link.
Surly you jest. How is it that you think we can feed ourselves, in our numbers, without fossil fuels. Where are the added nutrients and minerals, and nitrogen and phosphorus needed to grow food crops gonna come from?
“CI – barbarians need established communities/civilizations to thrive so as to be able to demand tribute from them. Where are you gonna find that?”– LLPOH
Your mindset on this subject is rooted in your successful past. You may in fact be confusing a lucrative target with any ole’ target.
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31st December 2012 at 11:21 pm
Reverse Engineer says:
@CI
You clearly didn’t read through the text.
Hydroponics is extremely conservative of nutrients, perhaps 1/20th the amount needed for any other type of growing scheme. Peter estimates the 100 lb bag he has will last for 20 years.
Besides that, you can make fertilizer from seaweed, fish guts etc, not to mention reprocess guano and human feces also. Ocean life processes Phosphorous and Nitrogen out of the seawater, there is plenty of it there. If the phytoplanton collapse due to ocean acidification that’s another story, but that is at least 30-50 years off if it happens.
Toby Hemenway estimates that even using just Horticulture techniques, the Earth can probably sustain up to about 2B Homo Sapiens. Peter thinks the full 7B could be fed with Hydroponics, which I doubt but if you draw a median in there maybe 3.5B is possible without fossil fuel input.
I do figure on a fairly impressive die off event, as just about everyone here knows. Hell, look at my Dead People comment up thread here a bit. I am pointing out that this doesn’t mean EVERYBODY gotta die, or that YOU need to be one of them.
On a larger social scale, I think it is fully possible for most people to grow their own food this way and scale down industiralization gradually over a period of time, if we have the social will to do so. It will have to wait for a full collapse of the current schema however before this can happen, and that will likely serve to knock down the population of Homo Sapiens by 50% or more anyhow.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 12:57 am
crazyivan says:
“Peter estimates the 100 lb bag he has will last for 20 years.”–RE
100 lb bags of anything, especially when their tits start drooping horrendously, are of little scope in the scheme of things. You know that.
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31st December 2012 at 1:25 am
Reverse Engineer says:
@CI
I only mentioned the 100lb bags of fertilizer to demonstrate how little fertilizer you really need. The main point is that you can get renewable fertilizer from the ocean and by recycling organic wastes.
You can also forget trtying to take me off my agenda with nonsense like that last post. I will just keep responding by taking it seriously.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 1:47 am
crazyivan says:
Ok, RE I will try to keep it serious since you just don’t seem to be in the funning around mode.
Ultimately, the sun provides the energy for all life.
Negate that .
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31st December 2012 at 2:09 am
Reverse Engineer says:
@CI
I actually could negate that, but there isn’t a need to do so. The Sun is providing plenty of energy to grow food, and will pretty much until it goes Red Giant.
The issue here is not of having enough solar energy to grow food, it is about water and nutrients mostly. The key in both cases is to operate in a conservative manner in food cultivation, and to be able to harvest the necessary nutrients for fertilizer from the Oceans.
If you want the argument on how some life is NOT dependent on Solar energy, it goes like this.
Down at the ocean floor, numerous forms of life exist off the Sulfur effluent from Undersea Volcanoes. Those volcanoes in turn derive their energy from the core of the earth, which stays hot due to radioactive decay mostly of the actinide series of transition metals contained in the core. Even if the Sun flicked Off tomorrow, said volcanoes would still be active, and so would the life forms surrounding said volcanoes, at least until the oceans froze up.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 2:23 am
crazyivan says:
“I actually could negate that, but there isn’t a need to do so. The Sun is providing plenty of energy to grow food, and will pretty much until it goes Red Giant”.– RE
Then why is it RE that we have to add so many fossil fuel derivatives such diesel for our tractors, and hydrocarbon based nitrogen to achieve the yields we desire.
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31st December 2012 at 2:42 am
Reverse Engineer says:
“Then why is it RE that we have to add so many fossil fuel derivatives such diesel for our tractors, and hydrocarbon based nitrogen to achieve the yields we desire.”-CI
Generally, it’s the result of Waste Based Economics. You can read more about that on the Diner also. It’s a multipart series with contributions from myself, Agelbert and Monsta666. Some ancillary Macro Economics from Steve from Virginia who runs Economic Undertow also. Just type “Waste Based” into the search box on the Diner Blog, and you’ll get a good selection of articles on this topic. Or just click this link.
http://www.doomsteaddiner.org/blog/?s=%22Waste+Based%22
Industrial Agriculture became predominant for all the same reasons the rest of Industrialization ovverran the world. Profit seeking by resource extraction and waste has been the meme here for a good 500 years easy, and you can make the case it goes back a good deal longer than that as well.
Capturing the land through the property ownership paradigm, development of monoculture agriculture and then the further industrialization of this paradigm benefit the elite of society. They hold in thrall the Primary Conduit for social control, food production.
The vast yields possible by inputting the thermodynamic energy of fossil fuels into agriculture basically put outta biz every other form of Ag, but it is not a necessary thing, never has been. We overshot the carrying capacity of the planet by a long shot here doing this, but it made a few folks fabulously rich, and they run the credit creation mechanism.
Can we support 7B people by more conservative techniques? Probably not IMHO, but best estimates by people who work in the field directly like Toby and others who investigate this on their own like Peter suggest we can support upwards of say 3B. If that is possible, with a managed transition off of fossil fuels, it is possible the Die Off could be spread over Generations, and not prove to be utterly catastrophic.
However, the knowledge is not there in the public of any of this, and the Political system is corrupt beyond belief to keep the Uber Rich in power. The system cannot be undone until it collapses under its own weight. It took 500 years easy to build out this system, and it doesn’t stop on a dime.
Individuals however can use the knowledge, and they can form communities as well to apply it. Nobody can do this completely solo, well unless you live as remote as Peter does you can’t. It is possible though, and sure is better than throwing in the towel.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 3:14 am
flash says:
Good read , RE and very usual info , but still there is the established f tried and true method survival. Declare yourself an important leader.
….learn to work the dumbasses….they’re never in short supply…just take a look around….a damn entire nation full of catatonic consumers just waiting for a cliff to be led off of.
http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince00.htm
The Prince
by Niccolò Machiavelli
Written c. 1505, published 1515
Translated by W. K. Marriott
1908
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31st December 2012 at 8:29 am
Reverse Engineer says:
“Good read , RE and very usual info , but still there is the established f tried and true method survival. “-Flash
Thanks Flash.
As for “tried and true”, I’m not a big fan. Machiavelli’s material didn’t play out well the first go round, I see no reason it would work any better a 2nd time round. I prefer to think outside the box. You should know that by now.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 6:39 pm
crazyivan says:
thanks re
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31st December 2012 at 12:04 am
Reverse Engineer says:
YW CI.
My tag line for this is “Save As Many As You Can”. Can we Save Everybody? Hell no, and frankly many people aren’t WORTH saving. Helicopter Ben, Turbo Timmy, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, the entire family tree of the Rothschilds and Rockefellers…I could go on and on here. LOL.
Fo me, Giving Up is NOT an Option. If I am going down, I am going down swinging.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 12:34 am
crazyivan says:
You’re are wasting YOUR ammo there RE. In the very near future that will be a mortal sin.
My 2012 certified organic spring wheat crop was “fertilized” in 2011 with plowed down green peas (no harvested crop, just raising nitrogen fixing green manure and returning it to the soil). I beat the pants off my neighbors in return dollars per acre on the spring wheat with no chemical inputs but not in bushels per acre.
I used to be a cropduster ( with most of the subsequent character defects) so I’m not trying to ride a high horse here about purity and rainbows.
While I was paid more for my organic crop (this year) I produced less.
44% less.
Stick that in your ear and mull it around.
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31st December 2012 at 1:46 am
Reverse Engineer says:
You are not growing your organic crop Hydroponically CI. You are still dirt farming. Give the Hydroponics a try and check out the yields. Remember, with Hydroponics, you can harvest potatoes without killing the plant. Like picking tomatoes, except you do it from the root system. More grow back after you pick.
Think outside the box.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 2:44 am
crazyivan says:
Dirt is the essence of life.
If you ever get a chance scoop some of the good stuff and just take a good sniff.
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31st December 2012 at 3:09 am
Reverse Engineer says:
“Dirt is the essence of life.”-CI
Faith based thinking there CI.
Permaculture fans on the Diner argue similarly, including some metaphysical arguments trancendendal to existence.
As for me, I am a practical sorta guy. The growing of plants is mainly about energy delivery to the chlorophyll and nutrients and water delivered from the growth medium. Its a fairly complex system, but not one you cannot noodle out for the most part and make work quite well in media other than dirt.
You know who leads the way here of course, the Ganga Growers, and these folks got it worked out darn good. Fantastic yields per square foot of growing space. Yes, I said square foot, not square acre or hectare.
You apply the same techniques to growing food as Peter does, the yields are quite impressive. The food eats just the same.
Don’t knock it till you try it.
RE
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31st December 2012 at 3:58 am