[americandream]

There will never be a return to feudalism which was characterised by pre-indutrial social forms. Any descent from capitalism will reflect the greed inculcated in this social-economy. In other words, it will be a brutish barbarism devoid of the religious norms that were a natural function of pre-industrialism.

[sparky]

.
The classic form for crushing small farmers is big taxes ,
they get into debt when the harvest is not prefect
the debts grow while the corn doesn't
a few interminable and expensive lawsuits

they sell cheap to the big man , who just happen not to pay taxes and is the local judge
it's all legal

[Pops]

I moved the archiving posts over here:
knowledge-archiving-media-methods-etcetc-t69760.html

[Mesuge]

The timeline and sequencing of trigger points is still not certain. I do follow majority of the prominent energy depletion and economic forcasters/analysts and the prevailing order could flip by 2015-17 as well as 2020-25, can't be predicted with razor sharp accuracy.

I guess replanting that "greek austerity" plan by TPTB can provide several years, perhaps even 2-3 decades of relatively orderly descent before another profound round of stair case step down occurs (freefall into dark ages). General population demonstrates and still surprises with ever so highly unusual docile-sheepish behaviour event after event, i.e. people will swallow almost everything these days, especially the youngest generation - give them a lowcost toy (social networks) and they will just crawl down in the basement without job and no anti establishment attitudes. It will be a combination of simply petering out (older generations and passive people starving out), active refusal/escape from the system (small neo-farm movement), and fight for the urban-industrial scraps. This diverse combo of trends will in aggregate decimate lot of systemic demand on the resources in quite short order. So, skillfull feudals can establish pockets of order here and there.

However, in practice even the immediate lite-collapse phase in next few years will be doomerish anyhow, insuficient diet, high mortality rates, crumbling infrustructure, local and int. insecurity, ..

As someone said earlier the "3rd world" will become quite bigger soon (the "1st" getting way smaller).

[careinke]

I plan to be a feudal lord/Mentor. My goal will be to establish as many perma ethical fiefdoms as I can, as quickly as I can. I've already begun.

[Mesuge]

/Mentor Yes. That's a good plan, there will be many new "clueless" land owners, when we look at the history they always needed smart and skillfull craftsman, landsurveyors, architects, waterway engineers etc. Perma-man is or should be all of the above. However, I do note that future perma-ethics would be a very broader spectrum in terms of human interactions compared to contemporary meaning if you haven't noticed yet there is also growing number of "armed preppers" picking up some specific parts of perma approach (food, land care).. Is the coming bottleneck going to affect human nature as jumping platform to higher ethical level, could be, but it's not guranteed. So far it never worked that way, greed, exploitation, territoriality, violence, .. still remain to this day as core definition points of human race-psyche mix after unspeakable number of prior resets and collapses, wasted opportunities to evolve.

[Pops]

Yeah, in the very long run it will be city-states alternatively trading and warring with neighbors, sorta like today, just with shorter range weapons.

[vtsnowedin]

I doubt that we will ever return to a mid evil style feudalism. There is just too much knowledge spread about in so many places , (libraries books in private homes , thumb drives, PCs etc.) that you could not wipe out vast chunks of knowledge as was done by the Christians in the middle ages by destroying a few major libraries .
Also much of the population is educated enough that they are not expecting a return of a messiah of any stripe and will not sit and pray for salvation while they starve or serve an oppressive master but will seek out and find solutions to their predicament.
The exact form of government ,social, and economic structures post peak is unknown but a return to feudal fiefdoms with lords in a manor fed by serfs tilling fields with ox drawn plows is not a likely result.

[Pops]

Knowledge without surplus power is useless for the average serf.

Did humans grow a huge cranium 200 years ago and Boom! iPhones?

Naw, we had a huge brain already. So what changed?

Fossil fuels.

We'll not forget some of what we learned but I don't think any of us here have much of an idea what that means. If our salvation is knowledge, then why are so many people living a neolithic existence so long after so many breakthroughs in basic science?

[Beery1]

The sort of catastrophe that would herald a return to feudalism would be far, far beyond anything likely in the aftermath of peak oil. All the feudalism ballyhoo seems to me to be the wet dream of far right libertarians and neo-nazis who seem to think that they'll somehow be elevated from their jobs cleaning toilets and unplugging drains to the position of feudal overlords. Not gonna happen.

The reality is that feudalism had a complex cultural system supporting it, and virtually nothing remains of that system. Also, virtually the entirety of political and social history since the Enlightenment would have to be wiped from human memory. It's just not gonna happen. Besides, there is simply no basis for the idea that feudalism is some fundamental state to which all cultures may revert when faced with stress.

It might be fun to talk about, but it's about as likely as Santa Claus being elected president of the World Bank.

[Pops]

So then it will be:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 's')mall villages inhabited by self-sufficient, low-energy, and low-consumption locavores,

[ralfy]

One can probably consider various places worldwide where societal breakdown has taken place. In such places, many are forced to live in small communities with very little consumption while paramilitary groups or bandits prey on them and attack each other.

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mesuge', 'T')he timeline and sequencing of trigger points is still not certain. I do follow majority of the prominent energy depletion and economic forcasters/analysts and the prevailing order could flip by 2015-17 as well as 2020-25, can't be predicted with razor sharp accuracy.

[Strummer]

I think a few people are taking the "feudalism" part too literally. It's more about the "organisational" aspect of things. Having a small part of population which is wealthy and free to do anything they want on one side, and a large poor population that is bound by various debts to thier place of living / employment, etc... with all their option severly restricted, on the other side. Which is exactly what has been happening in the last 30 years, especially in the US, with its education debts, health care debts and mortgages. Education or access to information does not help you in any way, when the society around you is organised in a way which forces you into lifelong debt tenure since early childhood.

[phaster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mesuge', 'T')he timeline and sequencing of trigger points is still not certain. I do follow majority of the prominent energy depletion and economic forcasters/analysts and the prevailing order could flip by 2015-17 as well as 2020-25, can't be predicted with razor sharp accuracy.

[sparky]

.
Feudalism emerged when the central state system could not protect the countryside anymore
local big men with a few friends were doing the protection
the farmers and his descendants had a right and an obligation of cultivating the lord land ,
in exchange for taxes in kind
the big guys leagued with other like neighbors to mobilize an armed troops to clear their area of bad guys
they were basically a standing militia
farmers just couldn't do it , too much work on the farm ,
they just couldn't leave everything every week or so to go tramping around the countryside
the lords usually were bound to a bigger guy to come with their men at a summon ,
but only for a set period of days , the feudal system was very legalistic about rights and obligation

as for knowledge , the medieval monastery had collected plenty of old romain and Greek knowhow
including some very technical stuff , but they did not know how to use it

if a technique is not used it fossilize and is ,
in practice useless until the whole machine of production is re created
the knowledge of ball bearing is a critical piece of labor saving
without advanced metallurgy , it's just sets of diagram on a piece of paper
if one doesn't have some rare metal pure enough
electronic designs can gather dust and be copied and re copied ( with gorgeous paintings in the margin)

Knowledge is effective only if it is in use , else it just is a memory

[KaiserJeep]

We simply have to make the right choices for everything we do.

For example, the total energy invested in growing vegetables outdoors in California and then shipping them by rail to NYC is 1/6th the energy required to grow those same vegetables in a greenhouse in NY state. But nobody knows that is so until the correct total life-cycle energy analysis is made.

Somebody needs to do an analysis to see if for example the energy budget for manufacturing, disposing, and recycling cardboard or plastic milk containers is higher or lower than reusing glass milk bottles. In the 1950's, milk bottles cost more, today it might be different.

The point would be that in everything we do, we have to make the correct choices based on the energy budget. Then we have to transition to doing things that way. These changes are unavoidable as the cost of energy rises, I am only pointing out that if one recognizes and plans for the needed changes, the disruption is minimized.

For example, one change that has to happen is that we need to give up burning oil for personal transportation. Everyone knows this, but no politician has the stones to put real incentives in place for electric vehicles, and (more importantly) real disincentives for oil burning vehicles. A 100% surcharge for ICE vehicles would be a start, with milestone dates announced for when the surcharge goes to 200%, then to 500%.

Local is not necessarily better. The alternative with the lowest fossil energy cost is probably the one we want.

But I don't see any reason to return to feudalism, ever.

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Simon_R', 'n')o mercs (except the cops)