PeakOil is You
THE Poverty Thread (merged)
by JohnDenver » Thu 16 Jun 2005, 06:59:28
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('johnmarkos', 'A')t one point you mentioned that you were, "Viscerally opposed to powerdown." Has your opinion changed?
Yes. Of course I still believe 100% that our human destiny lies in space, and that we can and should make the next step to Lunar Space Power etc.
I see two ways the future can turn out:
1) We get through peak oil, synch into nuclear and discover fusion (or realize that space power isn't as hard was we thought) etc. We have some tough times, but there is no severe plateau or trough in the growth curve. Fusion or space power saves the day, and we smoothly expand into space with our current economic and consumer mindset intact.
2) Cars really are a virus. Not just a nuisance, but actually a lethal threat which could kill us while we're trying to hatch out of the egg. Oil peaks, but we handle it by liquefying every hydrocarbon (gas, coal, unconventional, oil shale) left in the earth to fuel an exponential explosion of cars. We raise up the poor, so they can have a higher standard of living, i.e. cars. Chinese peasants are driving en masse. Oil peaks, but that doesn't stop us, because we can liquefy gas and coal. Then gas runs out, so now we're running on nuclear electricity, and mining coal and uranium like mad to fuel private automobiles. We're also liquefying huge amounts of food to fuel cars, and paving over agricultural land for parking, roads etc. There's a lot of stress in the system, and a lot of fissile material in the world, and a nuke or two get blown off. Massive fuel stockpiles are sucked dry by pointless wars. Meanwhile, the atmosphere is getting all fucked up from car emissions, and the green house effect is kicking in for real. Eventually, the strain is so great that we don't get out into space, because we wasted too much of our resources making cars.
I disagree with the doomers who think this sequence of events is imminent. I think, if we just let it run its course, it might take 70 years or more. I personally expect to die before society serious questions the car.
No matter which scenario is true, we should learn from the poor.
Case 1) People living in a sealed space colony will need to live a lot more like the indios or Chinese peasants than like us. Growth capitalism isn't going to work inside a sealed space colony. What is needed is the mindset of cyclic man, who enacts the same ritual every year, and regards deviation from the cycle like an error or a sin. (Mircea Eliade has written at length on this topic.)
Space colonists will also need to recognize their own excrement as a resource, just like the poor Chinese did (do?) and the poor Indians (in India) who grow fish in ponds fertilized with sewage.
The most important thing we can learn from "primitive" people is how to exist in a condition of economic stasis. I am not anti-growth. The destiny of humanity is exponential growth into space. But to do that, we've got to learn how to control and stabilize growth, when necessary. Monte is right: In a static economy, the real interest rate must be zero. Positive interest won't work in a space colony. You don't want anybody sitting on their ass and megaconsuming, no matter how much money they have. Resources are too critical to allow any form of parasitism, no matter how well founded it is in the works of Ayn Rand.
Case 2) Here we need to learn from the poor so we don't kill ourselves. I'm not talking about powerdown where we shun technology and money etc. I'm talking about about power-stabilize, where we synch into a graceful stasis or powerdown so we don't foul up the step into space. We need to conserve our resources and restructure because metamorphosis takes a lot of energy.
The cornucopians are right. We can, and probably will, stall off dealing with the car problem for a long time. But in the long view, we only have two options, space or death, and wasting energy on cars and other frivolous bullshit makes death a lot more likely. The doomers are right on that point.
Unfortunately, I think Kunstler is wrong. Peak oil will not kill the car, and its going to take an excrutiatingly long time dying. Peak oil is not going to save the day, and we're going to have to kill the car ourselves. I regard that as virtually impossible, but I think it's a good idea to be optimistic, and try anyway.
So, you can count me as a strange bedfellow of Heinberg etc.
- JohnDenver
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by Dezakin » Thu 16 Jun 2005, 14:36:59
JohnDenver:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t's more complex than that. Even capitalist states immediately revert to a planned economy in times of war. Does that mean they are communists at heart? That they believe in the market when it suits them, but believe in the planned economy when performance really counts?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t's more complex than that. Even capitalist states immediately revert to a planned economy in times of war. Does that mean they are communists at heart? That they believe in the market when it suits them, but believe in the planned economy when performance really counts?
No, it means that government is naturally opportunistic and power hungry, and in times of war seeks to swallow more control. FDR certainly was a statist at heart.
The assertion that planned economies naturally perform better than market economies is plainly misguided, given the experience we've seen over the past several decades in every country that tried to plan their economies. You might as well plan the weather.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Y')ou could say the same thing about multinational corporations. They're planned, command economies. The internal resources are allocated by fiat, not by price. Imagine the U.S. as one big corporation. It would be a communist country.
You're attempting to turn a cigar into a pretzel. If the US were one big corporation, we would arbitrarilly hire and fire citizens, have unmitigated free trade with other countries, and behave rationally at the whim of shareholders, wherever they may be. And we would be subject to class action lawsuits and bankruptsy, would not be able to produce fiat currency at the drop of a hat...
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by johnmarkos » Thu 16 Jun 2005, 17:33:51
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', 'Y')es. Of course I still believe 100% that our human destiny lies in space, and that we can and should make the next step to Lunar Space Power etc.
< . . . >
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o, you can count me as a strange bedfellow of Heinberg etc.
Thanks, JohnDenver, for that excellent description of your position. Although my focus is a little less long-term than yours (I'm primarily interested in terrestrial sustainability in the next 50 to 100 years), I think we're basically in agreement on the big picture. I also agree that the dominance of the private automobile is the most wasteful characteristic of modern society, as well as a source of both corruption and pollution. Eliminating this viral institution would be a giant step in the right direction.
The big question is, how do we move humanity beyond the automobile? How do we get people out of their cars? That is a topic for another thread.
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