Today I made/bought/learnt (for a post oil world) 5
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=64507&p=1198732&view=show#p1198732
A locked thread but interesting to read. I was in that camp once, growing veggies and hoarding old shovels. Then I realized that for every hour I spent working in my business I could buy a weeks worth of food. That was food for thought. "But when the system collapses" they all said, "Then you'll only have what you can grow, you'll starve!" So I researched that, and found that in all places and at all times people with wealth could buy food, because people that grow food always have an excess that is useless to them. Of course to avail yourself of this you have be living out where they are typically, so I moved out country into a farming region.
This home farming/permiculture/Doomstead model they all followed had one fatal flaw. If it ever got as bad as they said it would, they would be overrun by hungry hoards, their crops stripped like as by a plague of locusts. This is well recorded in history too! It happens every time. In the German hyperinflation, in the french Revolution. Millions of hungry city people traveling out to get food for themselves and their children. And they find a way. They always do. So these hopeful simple souls who think they are going to weather the collapse of the industrial world tell all their neighbors and encourage them to grow food and stockpile things of value. And in so doing they make themselves a Huge target for the future. "Go down to Tom's, he has lots of food stored, medicines too and everything you could want."
PeakOil is You
Degrowth Thread Pt. 3
Re: Degrowth Thread Pt. 3
by theluckycountry » Sun 19 Jan 2025, 17:39:04
We're 17 years past the peak now and the 3rd World is going hungry and dark. We'll be next, we're well on the way in fact.
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Re: Degrowth Thread Pt. 3
by Tanada » Tue 21 Jan 2025, 21:30:28
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', 'n')o sharing needed. Just own less, consume less, produce less, waste less.
All true, but not for bezos, musk, Paris Hilton, or Me. We all go to the max, the max of our available resources or abilities, and even then some with debt. That's why nothing works to control the human appetite besides collapse. We all talk about giving up stuff but we never do until we lose our job or otherwise run out of money. Give the average person a million dollars and they'll be straight out the door shopping for a new car and a boat and a new home too in many cases.
Apparently 80% of plastics are not recycled, 40% or so go into landfills, 20% into the ocean, 20% is burnt into the atmosphere. So do we, as consumers, stop buying plastic? Never! Cheese comes in plastic, so do potato chips and wide screen TV's. None of us want to miss out on those products, none aside from the 1:1000,000 eco-nuts living in a yurt growing their own vegetables. But even they have a plastic coated cell phone that will go into a landfill, else how would we ever know they were out there living in the dirt if they didn't post up the saga on youtube.
I've OVER talking about "Saving" the planet and all that. All I want to save is my own lifestyle, and everyone is the same, pretending otherwise is just mental masturbation. The coming PeakOil collapse will settle all these accounts and reign in over-consumption. It will reduce population and pollution and all the BS the oil age has given us. But technology "Stuff" is like Heroin and as long as you can maintain your access to it, modern processed foods, and climate control and mobility etc, you won't give it up. It's what I like about this forum! Here all the dangers and pitfalls to modern life are shown, even in the majority reality-contrarian mindset that believes we can solve the unsolvable. It allows the rest to learn and adapt, to protect their wealth, to ensure their future happiness. To live like it's 1999.
Not really an argument but i am old enough that we got our meat from the butcher shop wrapped in white paper and I can remember getting potato chips in wax paper bags. Everything doesn't have top be wrapped and displayed in plastic, it is just how things have developed.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alfred Tennyson', 'W')e are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: Degrowth Thread Pt. 3
by theluckycountry » Wed 22 Jan 2025, 04:25:28
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', '
')Not really an argument but i am old enough that we got our meat from the butcher shop wrapped in white paper and I can remember getting potato chips in wax paper bags. Everything doesn't have top be wrapped and displayed in plastic, it is just how things have developed.
')Not really an argument but i am old enough that we got our meat from the butcher shop wrapped in white paper and I can remember getting potato chips in wax paper bags. Everything doesn't have top be wrapped and displayed in plastic, it is just how things have developed.
Yes Tanada, it is the rational profit maximizer at work. The plastic comes as a byproduct of gas liquids and has little use outside of plastic baggies so the market has been flooded by it. It's cheap, and trees are scarce in a sense and more costly to turn into paper equivalents.
I still see chips in paper bags, but they are more expensive, and it's a bit of a con anyway since they are plastic lined for freshness. Supermarket sales are a special case in the sense that those products are right in the consumers face and they get to hold them and make choices. When you order a Flat screen TV it comes in a cardboard box and inside a big plastic bag but no one challenges that because they don't see it at the point of sale.
It's a constant tug of war between the consumers who want cheap prices and the corporate bosses who want as much money as they can get. The plastic issue is just a small piece of the overall hunt for profit, and unfortunately, one that is causing untold ecological damage..
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') profit maximizer is any technique used to increase your customers' average order value and hence instant profit. Marketing every product separately is great and still makes plenty of money in its own right. But if you want to really upscale your game, creating multiple offers for your customers is an excellent way to rake in more money faster.
Profit maximizers enable you to squeeze out more value from your current customers and potentially save much more that you would have spent marketing and advertising to get new customers as well as distribution to more customers. This means that even without changing ad spend or increasing product prices, you can generate more income with the same customers you already have.
So you sell them cloth bags or paper bags if they want to go Green, but all your actual food must be in airtight plastic to ensure longevity and hence greater profits due to less waste. My supermarket imports all it's cakes and most of it's bread from 2000km away where it's made cheaply in huge complexes. It arrives in huge trucks, frozen stiff, nice and fresh so they say. Just don't refreeze it of course.
We're 17 years past the peak now and the 3rd World is going hungry and dark. We'll be next, we're well on the way in fact.
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