by Whatever » Sun 19 Jun 2016, 06:04:15
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ennui2', 'I') assure you if I stop contributing to this thread you'll face just as much dissent from Kub, Adam, Rockman, etc...
I think he prefers "the ROCKMAN".
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ennui2', 'A')s to posting style, let's just say I'm not the one who got banned from TheOilDrum.
More importantly, have you ever been banned from
this site?
As to the Tempest in the Oildrum, I don't think I did anything wrong. See for yourself. Courtesy of the *WAY* back machine, here is the post that got the whole thing started:
http://futilitist.blogspot.com/2012/08/ ... tchen.html$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')OREN_SOMAN aka FUTILITIST on August 23, 2012 - 3:40pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Parent subthread | Comments top
Leanan,
You said: "But for many people, events over the past 3-4 years have led them to realize that there isn't going to be a fast collapse, and/or that other issues are more urgent (climate change, financial collapse, getting a job)."
That statement describes a rationalization that some people seem to have adopted lately. The original doomer perspective that peak oil would lead to the total collapse of industrial civilization and a rapid and severe human die-off, was, and still is, correct. It just hasn't happened yet. The logic behind the idea of an eventual fast collapse has never been successfully rebutted on this site or anywhere else. The arguments against a fast collapse are illogical and circular.
John Michael Greer is the poster boy for the slow collapse idea. Whenever anyone argues against a fast collapse, they generally reference Greer and his "catabolic collapse" theory. I recently read the latest Feasta paper by David Korowcz which lays out in excruciating detail the many ways in which a fast collapse will likely begin and then must accelerate because of the positive feed backs that would be activated. I would invite anyone who shares your view to read that paper and then explain how it's projected outcomes can possibly be avoided.
Here is how Greer carefully words his attempt to refute Korowicz's paper in his Archdruid blog from July 18:
"...Faced with the imminent reality of national collapse, the US government did not sit on its hands, which is what those with the capacity to do something are always required to do in fast collapse theories. Instead, it temporarily nationalized the entire American banking system, declared that all assets held by the banks were owned by the government until further notice, made private ownership of gold by US citizens illegal, and ordered every scrap of gold in the country much bigger than a wedding ring sold to the government at a fixed, below-market price, with stiff legal penalties for anybody who tried to hang onto their gold stash. (I’m not making up any of this, either. Look it up.) Flush with seized bank assets and confiscated gold, the government poured money into the nationalized banks, which could then meet every demand for funds, stopping the panic in its tracks. Once stability returned, the banks returned to private ownership and got their assets back, though gold remained a government monopoly for decades longer.
This sort of drastic measure is far from rare in economic history. Germany in the 1920s put paid to its era of hyperinflation by issuing a new currency, the rentenmark, which was backed by taking out one big mortgage on every single piece of real property in the country. Other countries have done things even more extreme. A nation facing collapse, it bears remembering, has plenty of options, and it also has the means, motive, and opportunity to use them. It’s only fair to point out that this sort of drastic response is something that the Feasta study specifically excludes. One of Korowicz’ basic assumptions, stated as such in his study, is that governments will respond to the crisis by choosing the minimal option they think will solve the immediate problem. It’s a reasonable assumption, right up to the point that national survival is at stake, but at that point history shows in no uncertain terms that the assumption goes right out the window. Nation-states are good at surviving—that’s why they’ve become the standard form of human political organization in the viciously Darwinian environment of modern history—and it’s hard to think of anything a nation-state won’t do if it thinks its survival is threatened.
That said, Korowicz’ study points to one very plausible way that the next major round of crisis could slam into the industrial world. The fact that the nations affected by it could kluge together responses to it, slap the equivalent of defibrillator paddles onto their prostrate economies, and get a heartbeat again for the time being doesn’t change the fact that a financial collapse followed by even a partial supply chain breakdown would be a massive crisis, the sort of thing that could well plunge hundreds of millions of people into permanent poverty and push the global economy further down a long ragged decline that will be much less amenable to drastic responses. We’re in agreement, in effect, that the patient is terminally ill; the question is simply whether first aid measures available to the paramedics on site can get his heart beating again, so he can drag out the dying process for a while longer."
Greer begins here with the straw man that fast collapse would require that governments 'sit on their hands' and not react. But Korowicz never suggests anything like that in his paper. Quite the opposite actually. Korowicz details how any possible government responses will be ineffective and likely even make the situation worse.
In effect, Greer (a historian?, not a scientist) is saying that nation states are inherently powerful and literally too big to fail. When the nation's existence is threatened, it would be able to control the situation favorably, and when faced with imminent collapse it would do just that. That argument is obviously completely circular.
Greer's analogy of the terminally ill patient is not very well thought out either. It is better used to prove the opposite point. If the patient is resuscitated at great expense "so he can drag out the dying process for a while longer", what happens next? We would have to assume that all the problems couldn't be permanently fixed and the patient would be left to face the next crisis in a much weakened state. Presumably in this scenario, the government would step in again and save the day. Over and over again to infinity! Obviously that couldn't work. Just like in a real human patient, life can be prolonged by extraordinary measures, but death will still be the ultimate outcome. And the transition from life to death is always sudden (a fast collapse).
Greer's rebuttal of Korowicz's paper is intentionally dishonest, misleading, insulting, and completely inadequate (i.e. silly). If anyone on this site wants to take up and champion Greer's cause, or if Greer himself were to debate this on this site, I think it would be the best discussion The Oil Drum has ever had. Greer's position is so obviously the losing one. I guess it is always socially easier to agree to disagree than to have one side actually lose the argument.
It's like deja vu all over again! The more things change, the more they stay the same. I feel like I am frozen in time.
The Korowicz paper has yet to be properly discussed.
