[Pops]

So your argument is at some discrete point in time capitalism will end because profit will end because all surplus production will end?

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'T')he bouncing record bangs away.... Capitalism is dead. Growth has ended so has capitalism. Long live communist paradise.

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'S')o your argument is at some discrete point in time capitalism will end because profit will end because all surplus production will end?

[SeaGypsy]

It's not my fault you don't understand me. Most people do without a problem. You feel like arguing for the sake of it. I don't. Lucky we aren't in a pub somewhere.

SG, Check your PMs.-FL

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'I')t's not my fault you don't understand me. Most people do without a problem. You feel like arguing for the sake of it. I don't. Lucky we aren't in a pub somewhere.

[Pops]

now, now

[Quinny]

SeaGypsy

I tend to agree with most of your posts, but feel that you have some kind of issue with ralfy that distorts your normal reasonable attitude.

Ralfy

I tend to agree with most of your posts, but feel that you have some kind of issue with SeaGypsy that brings out your pedantic nature.

I would put both of you in the 'friend' category and find it uncomfortable when two people who IMHO are on the same side argue so much.

Please bury the hatchet.

[SeaGypsy]

Quinny, you know Pretorian of course? Man I hated that guy when I started here, for obvious reasons to those who know me a bit. However, Pretoid and I became friends. We are on opposite sides in some respects, basically the anarchist hippy with an interracial marriage versus the South African redneck holed up in the French Bordeaux, but I would have a beer any time with the guy and thoroughly enjoy our conversations. I have stuck up for him on occasion. I like his wit, his dry humour, his challenging positions put in sound bites add flavour to the site. He likes my art of career switching and travel experience, my ability to call it as it is.

This poster Ralphy, I have tried repeatedly to make peace with, but.
He obviously has his peak oil heroes, who he has put way up on some pedestal unreachable by mere mortal anonymous internet posters. He makes assumptions galore about the knowledge and beleifs of people he has clearly not invested the time to read. Like trying to write a review of a thousand page essay on peak oil by randomly reading a few pages, comparing that to what you have become convinced of by reading the 'big personalities' in the subject; setting out with an agenda to trash anyone outside your preset agenda. Basically a really shithouse attitude not belonging on an anonymous forum. Arrogant, presumptuous, stubborn and not very bright, a bad combination in any writer. A dangerous position in a social setting, such as a bar.

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Quinny', 'S')eaGypsy

I tend to agree with most of your posts, but feel that you have some kind of issue with ralfy that distorts your normal reasonable attitude.

Ralfy

I tend to agree with most of your posts, but feel that you have some kind of issue with SeaGypsy that brings out your pedantic nature.

I would put both of you in the 'friend' category and find it uncomfortable when two people who IMHO are on the same side argue so much.

Please bury the hatchet.

[SeaGypsy]

Having different takes on things is part of being human. There are in total about 3 people on this site who think peak oil is not a deadly serious problem and I am not one of them. Excuse me for taking offence at being lumped into that category simply for stating that capitalism will continue anyway, because there isn't anything else to replace it with.

[Serial_Worrier]

Cannibalistic capitalism as opposed to cannibalistic Communism? Maybe unfettered capitalism does destroy lives and environment, but nothing on the scale of Communist societies since 1917. Communist countries are well known for their gulags, famines and unprecedent environmental destruction. Russia was a pristine paradise in 1917, by the 1970s a wasteland.

[SeaGypsy]

Has communism ever even really existed? I doubt Marx would say so. The closest thing is micro scale existing at the village/ community level in some undeveloped parts of the world and in a very few 'intentional communities' in first world countries. The possibility has always existed for a greater communist state, but invariably human nature gets in the way and despotism becomes the state of affairs. The only current supposed communist state of any import is not at all as Marx envisioned. The only advantage China has in it's one party system is far less waste on maintaining the farce of a democracy two party system.

I doubt there is any trust left in humanity for a new experiment in communism. Any attempt at such would quickly result in a bloodbath as distrust manifests into defence against the state. There is enough distrust in government already.

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Serial_Worrier', 'C')annibalistic capitalism as opposed to cannibalistic Communism? Maybe unfettered capitalism does destroy lives and environment, but nothing on the scale of Communist societies since 1917. Communist countries are well known for their gulags, famines and unprecedent environmental destruction. Russia was a pristine paradise in 1917, by the 1970s a wasteland.

[SeaGypsy]

Regardless of political imperative, what stable state can humanity exist in? Apparently the only examples of sustainability are in aboriginal societies, mostly nomadic or semi nomadic, with a very low population/ area ratio. Even the most stable agrarian societies have suffered the rise and fall of resource discovery, depletion and ultimately dire shortage. As Ralphy has already pointed out we are rapidly running short of the most basic resource: agrible land.
Without a median term/ long term plan towards massive population reduction, nature will nip our bud regardless of political machinations.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')ichard Heinberg explains the situation superbly in his most recent book, 'The End of Growth'. The concept of the end of economic growth is absolute heresy of course, because as far as orthodox economists are concerned, infinite economic growth at industrial age rates is a God-given right. All economics assumes infinite substitutabilty and doesn't recognise any particular resource as being more significant than any other.

The reality is different. There is a 'master resource' and that master resource is energy; specifically, net or surplus energy. Mankind has now all but blown 2 billion years worth of accumulated energy reserves (aka fossil fuels and, especially sweet crude oil) and from here on in ... certainly for the next few decades and possibly for a generation ... we're looking at trend economic growth at/around 1% - 1.5% per annum - like it was for thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution. The problem is that civilisation as we know it today doesn't work with economic growth at that relatively low level.

[Ferretlover]

Off topic posts split away. Focus, please.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', '.')..the world wide growth rate will fall to levels seen before the Industrial Revolution: 1 - 1.5% per year. That is not enough growth for business as usual, but it is still growth. Anyone care to speculate on what life/the economy would be like if we had that growth rate for decades? How would capitalism fare under such a scenario?

[ralfy]

Global population was less than a billion people for thousands of years, until it doubled in only a century, and after that more than tripled in only half-a-century. The main drivers might have been greater knowledge of sanitation plus materials and infrastructure needed for the same, availability of manufactured medicine (including vitamins and vaccines) and medical equipment, and the Green Revolution (which increased food production significantly). All of these were made possible through various forms of capitalism, which ensured greater production through various forms of technology. With that, infant mortality rates dropped and life expectancy rates rose.

Global population growth is currently slowing down due to greater prosperity (i.e., more profits thanks to the same global capitalist system), but the same prosperity is also be negating resource savings due to lower birth rates. For example, the U.S. has less than 5 pct of the world's population but has to consume up to a quarter of world oil production, with similar trends for various resources, and similar patterns in several OECD countries. Meat consumption per capita in China more than doubled in two decades, with similar patterns in emerging markets.

In order to ensure continued slow population growth and even steady aging population, the global economy has to keep growing. According to the IEA, we will need the equivalent of one Saudi Arabia every seven years in order to maintain economic growth of around 2 pct. Otherwise....

[Serial_Worrier]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'R')egardless of political imperative, what stable state can humanity exist in? Apparently the only examples of sustainability are in aboriginal societies, mostly nomadic or semi nomadic, with a very low population/ area ratio. Even the most stable agrarian societies have suffered the rise and fall of resource discovery, depletion and ultimately dire shortage. As Ralphy has already pointed out we are rapidly running short of the most basic resource: agrible land.
Without a median term/ long term plan towards massive population reduction, nature will nip our bud regardless of political machinations.

[SeaGypsy]

Me too. However, to elaborate....

I would like to see government get behind assisting alternatives to the suicidal economy we currently live in/ under.

The perpetuation of current welfare spending, case in point. Given that the situation with the economy is not going away; we are never going back to the cheap energy glory days/ some fundamental changes need to occur in how the future is spoken about/ envisioned/ planned for and dealt with.

The current strategy is propping up both individuals and institutions in denial of redundancy. The planned for recovery, is just not going to happen. What we will have instead is more and more and more dysfunctional individuals, families and institutions. Effectively wasted human potential. These people will not just stop breeding because they are on food stamps, that idea is silly and plain wrong. When people get used to poverty over generations, they breed more, to the capacity they have to feed the children. Self restriction of family sizes only happens when people are confident that their progeny have a high chance of survival. The lower the chance of survival, the more children you have, the more chance of passing on your genes.

What I hope to see (& I think this might be a point of agreement between me & Ralphy); is government 'getting real' about the utter unlikelyhood (impossibility) of 'recovery' in the main use of the word.
We need a renaissance; not a 'recovery'.

A renaissance of environmental recovery and repair. A redirection of the will of mankind.

This cannot be done by force. It can be done by political will, if the timing is right.

People need to have the ability to opt into an alternative to the current mainstream economy, easily, with no capital. People stuck on shrinking welfare/ foodstamps/ sitting around idle; need an open alternative which provides both sustenance and dignity as well as contributing to the repair of our ecosystem.

It can be done and the time is ripe. Will any government of import recognise the fact and the opportunity remains in question.