[Antimatter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')erely your utopian opinion as I see it differently. For the group aged 15-24, suicide has tripled since the 50s. Job satisfaction has gone down in every age group and income bracket. The citizens of the US now officially save $0 and are at record levels of debt. That goes with the record levels of Bankruptcy. When I go to a store, I don't see smiling clerks or salespersons. At work, more complain about 'life' than they praise it. Turn on the Tv or radio and much of what you hear or see is gloomy. Sorry I don't see it. I would love for more to share your view, but that's not how it is IMHO.

[Ghog]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t’s only a very small percentage of the population that are obsessed with attaining mass riches. We would all like to be rich, and we all worry about money, but for most of us it’s not the primary motivator to live above all else.

[oiless]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('xerces', 'T')he purpose of life is to grow and evolve into ever greater degrees of complexity.

These things are hard-wired into us as a species.

[holmes]

Now do you understand why we need lots of guns and ammo? These weirdos will be "growing their complexity" with your flesh. It never ends and when they get to the boundary of your food plot and land you will ahve to shoot everyone of them in order to survive. Ban guns and self defense with these lunatics and greedy mad men around? are we really that advanced? I sure dont see it. Oh but they are all smarter than einstein.

[Omnitir]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('holmes', 'N')ow do you understand why we need lots of guns and ammo? These weirdos will be "growing their complexity" with your flesh. It never ends and when they get to the boundary of your food plot and land you will ahve to shoot everyone of them in order to survive. Ban guns and self defense with these lunatics and greedy mad men around? are we really that advanced? I sure dont see it. Oh but they are all smarter than einstein.

[PrairieMule]

Try this reality for size.

America 2030, with American enginuity and it's can do spirit science solves the problem of Energy Consuption, Unemployment, housing and hunger. The country has created a economical organic source to create cheap abundant fuel to the masses. It is form of biodesiel and with the stabilization. I know this is already in the works because I listened to the consultant speak of this on the Art Bell Show. The fuel is know as SG98 or nicknamed Gold 98 because of its color and octane. The only drawback is...

DEAR GOD! SOLYENT GOLD IS PEOPLE! THEY MAKE IT FROM PEOPLE! SOLYENT GOLD IS MADE FROM PEOPLE DAMM YOU!

[gg3]

Back to page 1, Xerces' starting post:

I'm a telecoms engineer, I build the telephony side of telecommuter infrastructure. Some of what you wrote there practically sounds like an advertisement for my company (seriously, and darn good too!).

Re. your cyber/agrarian world: When "virtual reality" was new, I wrote a piece about the downside version. Basically it comes down to people living in cramped festerous warrens and escaping into virtual paradises. Come home to your little ghetto-hovel, put on your VR suit, and suddenly it's the Taj Mahal.

One of my clients is a pretty decent-sized player in the virtual worlds business. They grew so fast that they just outgrew the PBX we installed for them last year, and have just confirmed the order for an upgrade that will enable them to more than double in size. Virtual worlds are a growing business, no question about it.

Personally I am quite happy doing the virtual universe in text mode. Any two (or more) people who share a common language and culture can create vivid dreamscapes in each others' minds using nothing more than words. I did my MA thesis on this subject and was amazed at how much is possible in this area.

I think you overestimate the service economy. The core fundamentals on which any economy is based, are physical goods and basic services such as utilities. Most of the rest is an "overlay," i.e. a meta-layer made possible only by sheer prosperity in the fundamentals.


Colorado-valley, re, "Shires with laptops." Nice mind-picture, I would like that.

But the problem here is, we can design utopia, and mean-spirited people will still poop on the rug. Ask the rail enthusiasts on this site. Ask the folks who are experts on nuclear fission. Engineers can design anything to work beautifully for people who would use it properly. A rational and reasonable society of level-headed people. But then along come various social predators & parasites, the greedy, lazy, dishonest, criminally-minded, and make dog-doo out of anything they touch, in order to "get theirs."

Most of our problems are not technical, they're cultural and characterological. Solve the issues of culture and character, and the technology part is easy.

[Paul64]

GG, you make some good points. The original periods of prosperity in the U.S. have been largely based in these fundamentals and goods manufacture, thanks to our resource-rich base, and made for more comfortable and interesting living for a growing middle class after WW2. Over time the overlays you describe have become more and more prominent in the economy with the continued expansion of fiat money.

The financial corporation I worked for the past 6 years until leaving earlier this year was an example of this...the business is making money from money, but truthfully not providing any direct benefit to anybody except our employees and shareholders...and the "system" or "machine" overall, such as it is. My company was one of many implicated in the scandals that swept the mutual fund industry, but we managed to, despite paying a large penalty, get away with 'neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing'.

Besides the financial sub-economy in the U.S. one other huge sub-economy that includes tremendous 'overlay' is health care. Much of this system will go to the dogs in some manner or another when energy becomes more scarce - which may be for the good overall as people will have to learn to take care of themselves...eating less of more natural food (maybe no choice!!), and physically exercise, both which prevent a great deal of disease. Incidentally people can be very healthy as almost absolute-vegetarians...but for good health a diet of almost solely industrial commodity foods like wheat bread or rice, and tofu, and sickly farmed fish, won't cut it.

As far as the cultural problem...and I see it too and getting worse over time...I wonder if it is more a dissociation from nature and community caused by excessive modern tech and growth that is the cause of the problem, as opposed to the other way around. Or maybe the problems of excessive or inappropriate modern tech and cultural degradation both feed off of each other.

[gg3]

Xerxes and Oiless, where are y'all located and how'd you like to join our sustainable community project (northern California)?

---

back to page 2 here:

The daily schedule of the hypothetical cyber/agro lifestyle sounds entirely plausible. It will probably be more comfortable than what ends up happening to people who try to cling to the status quo.

---

Telepresence can get you sight & sound, but not smell or taste (which are chemical senses) or kinaesthetics (body movement through space, interaction with gravity & inertia), and are pretty poor at tactile (contact between skin and object).

As for direct transmission into the brain, not without significant potential for damage (lengthy technical digression omitted to save space). In any case do you really want your brain being subjected to all the privacy & security risks that go along with being connected to a public network...?

---

UIUCstudent101: Agreed, not without massive deployment of nuclear along with renewables. So add to the mix, your cyberio-agrarian goes out in the morning to weed the garden and feed the chickens, and across the valley s/he sees the sturdy dome of the local reactor and the towering wind turbines adjacent to it.

---

Xerxes, I agree that an energy shortage per se won't cause overnight collapse; but it could easily trigger a long and worsening recession that leads to a generalized worsening of living conditions for the vast majority. OTOH, bird flu or other pandemic, or a terrorist bioweapon or atomic bomb attack, or even a string of nasty weather events plus a few well-timed sabotage attacks against infrastructure, could precipitate a rapid economic collapse along with a degree of authoritarianism that makes the present regime look benign by comparison.

Never underestimate the power of a sudden crisis to break an already shaky or marginal system.

---

Supply & distribution: postal service and parcel delivery services will take up a lot of the demand in this area. United Parcel Service trucks have been increasing in size over the past 20 years to keep up with increase in shipping demand. Expect the post office's trucks to do likewise. This is still a highly efficient method for handling distribution. Add to it a separate service for grocery delivery to individual households, and much unnecessary driving can be eliminated.

---

Wildwell, the very fact that you can say that phone, internet, and email are not reliable, is an indication of how far we've fallen. Thirty years ago in the US, phone service was darn close to 100% reliable, and when the internet was new to civilians, it was a lot more reliable than it is today.

I've seen the standards of workmanship decline precipitously, and also the expectations of end-users decline precipitously. None of which is necessary, and much of which is simply a matter of lack of training or experience. Also the tradeoff between convenience and reliability, for example cellphones with intermittent signal and sound quality that's barely intelligible, etc. etc. I could go on for six more pages on these topics...

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Huge highrises: No, no thanks. Studies from the UK show that depression and juvenile delinquency increase significantly the further you go above the 2nd story. Parents can't look out the window to supervise their kids, casual socializing is limited, elevators become necessary, the whole infrastructure becomes more complicated, etc. etc. And as crowding & density go up, privacy and individual freedom necessarily diminishes. How would you feel about your sex life knowing that the neighbors can hear everything...?

---

Oilless, the "useless" aspects of the modern internet can be eliminated in community networks. I can design a community-based telephone company & ISP that provide all the necessary functions & features without spam or other BS.

Blacksmiths and mechanics will be essential in the world to come; your skill-set sounds particularly impressive. On a village scale most of your clients will drop in to talk about the projects they need done. Some will phone first and some will email, but those calls & emails will be more along the lines of asking when's a good time to come over.

This also assumes your workshop is on the equivalent of the local main street or village circle, which is more likely in sustainable development (or after all the chainstores that deal in fluff & frills have gone away).

Something to think about: how to train new people in your skills, and grow your operation to employ a bunch of people in various specialties.

---

[gg3]

Paul, agreed; the fundamentals require relatively little labor. If the overlay (layers of bureaucracy and paperwork, and money being made from nonproductive activities) went away, people could work part-time at providing for real needs and the result would be a life of comfort & prosperity on a 20-hour or less workweek. We can design & build that, but the prevalence of monkey-politics in society will sabotage it at every step.

"Neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing" is a textbook example of what's wrong with today's economy. Your employer did something harmful to its clients and ended up in court and paid a penalty. That means it did wrong, no two ways about it. This isn't aimed at you, this is aimed at your employer. In the world we're all trying to build, there's no such thing as "neither admitting nor denying," there's direct responsibility, and reputation has meaning.

Health care is another prime example: huge amounts of money sucked up by administrative superstructures whose job is to prevent people seeing their doctors. Really! Could anyone design something so ass-backwards and aggressively stupid if they tried...?

The cultural problem is that people have been spoiled rotten. A particular combination of greed and laziness and irresponsibility. This isn't due to technology per se, but due to the "consumer economy" that trains people to be both avaricious and spoiled at the same time. Like two-year-olds at the supermarket throwing tantrums when they can't have everything they want. We'll all be happy to see the end of that.

This doesn't mean the end of the service sector or the financial sector. There'll be banks and credit unions, and investment houses, and insurance companies. In a sustainable world, even a no-growth economy, there's still change over time, and therefore the potential for earning a profit on smart investments. There's less room in that system for some of the overhead layers that proliferate today, but the fundamentals will still operate.

---

Back to page 3 here..

Based on what Oilless is saying, plus Xerxes' input, seems to me the optimal solution for blacksmiths is: A general manufactory in each town that's equipped with foundry, machine shop, etc., and is run by a small group of highly skilled people like Oilless, with a handful of employees whose skills increase with experience. Each of these shops has the opportunity to develop some subset of its work into a highly-refined specialty, and then they network among themselves as needed.

So for example, if a farm needs work done on its horse-drawn harvester, the farmer phones or emails Oilless about the job, and then Oilless comes out to the farm to examine the machine (rather than the farmer dragging it five miles into town), and determines what's needed. Most of the parts he can produce in his own shop, but one or two items he posts a request on the network or emails another shop 50 miles away. The outside parts get shipped via regular freight or parcel service, and arrive at about the same time as Oilless & his crew have finished casting & machining the parts they produce locally. Then they can go to the farm and complete the repair on the combine, get paid by the farmer, and pay the suppliers for the outside parts.

Basically it's an early-20th-century industrial economy with small workshops & factories, and modern communications to link them all together.

[gg3]

Back to page 5 or so, Xerces & Omnitir re. growth:

"Growth" is a complex-equivalent, a word with many meanings & shades of meaning, and I suspect we're all using it slightly differently.

First, indefinite population growth on a finite planet is simply impossible; sooner or later a limit is reached that can't be overcome, and/or pandemics break out, and in either case comes the dieoff.

Second, indefinite economic growth is no more desirable; eventually it hits the limit when population does so. The only way to keep growing a service economy is to aggressively commotidize transactions that were previously done for non-monetary purposes. So for example, outlaw having grandma babysit the kids, require babysitters be licensed, bonded, and insured, and lo & behold you've grown the service sector. Do you really want that? Do you really want to "rent" your computer software by the month rather than buying the CD and installling it and being able to re-install when you upgrade your computer OS...?

Third, growth in complexity eventually hits a limit which I call "combinatorial overshoot" (copyright; all rights reserved; I'm writing a paper on this topic which will be published in an appropriate forum), at which point things break dramatically.

Live evolves; nonliving matter entropies; fine & well; but evolution does not require "growth" in the sense of any of the above.

Civilization = decreasing violence over time, and increasing knowledge over time. Those are the core irreducibles that define civilization, and the latter makes possible evolution in the social sense, i.e. memetic evolution.

Knowledge can grow infinitely. And eventually that could bring us to the point where we can get to Mars and terraform it, and then colonize it, and start the cycle over again with plenty of room for population & economic growth on a new home planet. And so on indefinitely to the stars and the far reaches of the galaxy.

But what's needed for that, is what EnergySpin calls the "powerswitch" scenario: powerdown the frivolous wasteful consumer lifestyle, develop viable infrastructure, and then power up on a new paradigm.

The powerdown part is inevitable, and we're entering it right now. Whether we manage it intelligently and come through to a power-up on the other side, remains to be seen.

There is not a tradeoff between scientists and farmers. There is a tradeoff between science education on one hand, and a frivolity-oriented economy that produces more circuses than bread, cuts taxes for the wealthy while going $300 billion into deficit spending, and allows people to burn dinosaurs for amusement.

We can have farmers, and we can have most of the "service sector" workers redeployed toward agriculture and toward the construction trades to build the nuclear reactors & wind turbines we need. And we can have scientists and engineers working on the next stage. Think of all the brainpower currently wasted on utter frivolous BS, that could be redirected to more productive pursuits.

As for utopianism and "playing let's pretend," the future we get depends in some part on the future we envision. There is nothing inherently unrealistic about upside scenarios, any more than there was about 1940s and 50s science fiction about rocket trips to the moon. Envision the future you want, and build it. The same case goes for downside scenarios. Bottom line is a choice: what do we want, and what are we willing to do in order to get there?

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')ivilization = decreasing violence over time, and increasing knowledge over time. Those are the core irreducibles that define civilization, and the latter makes possible evolution in the social sense, i.e. memetic evolution.

[Paul64]

GG3: $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')"Neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing" is a textbook example of what's wrong with today's economy. Your employer did something harmful to its clients and ended up in court and paid a penalty. That means it did wrong, no two ways about it. This isn't aimed at you, this is aimed at your employer. In the world we're all trying to build, there's no such thing as "neither admitting nor denying," there's direct responsibility, and reputation has meaning.

[Paul64]

gg3:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')asically it's an early-20th-century industrial economy with small workshops & factories, and modern communications to link them all together.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Paul64', ' ')Because one thing will not change...men by and large will always be driven to the occupations and situations where they can attract and mate with the most beautiful women they can get.

[Paul64]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o men become computer programmers (nerds) so they can attract and mate with beautiful women?

[oiless]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'X')erxes and Oiless, where are y'all located and how'd you like to join our sustainable community project (northern California)?