[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Uninspired123', ' ')I'm asking can we equilibriate in another different system that has different values than the one we have currently set up? We can never equilibriate in this system. I'm asking if you have any ideas for a new economic system that is value based, not growth or product based. What kind of currency does it have? Is it based on barter? What does it take to set up?

[Baldwin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Uninspired123', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Baldwin', '
')Exactly what can a businessman trained to push papers at Deutschebank or HSBC know about an agrarian lifestyle? There is a bit more to farming then "plant seeds, water, pick, and eat".

Can anyone else see the value of an herbalist? It should be fairly lucid, since before CVS, that elderly lady down the lane was your pharmacist. She knew how to ID, pick, and prepare herbs for cuts, fevers, stomach trouble, and even abortions.

You neglect the value of musicians. ALl people need some scant form of entertainment. A flutist at Christmas dinner may be a significant morale booster.

[Ponce]

I really don't know what is the big deal about not having oil, I mean oil was not used before 1850 (but for here and there for lamp oil) and we did just fine.

I was alive before I had a wife and I am alive after having a wife.

The real loosers will be those that make a bundle out of selling oil.

[Uninspired123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Baldwin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Uninspired123', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Baldwin', '
')Exactly what can a businessman trained to push papers at Deutschebank or HSBC know about an agrarian lifestyle? There is a bit more to farming then "plant seeds, water, pick, and eat".

Can anyone else see the value of an herbalist? It should be fairly lucid, since before CVS, that elderly lady down the lane was your pharmacist. She knew how to ID, pick, and prepare herbs for cuts, fevers, stomach trouble, and even abortions.

You neglect the value of musicians. ALl people need some scant form of entertainment. A flutist at Christmas dinner may be a significant morale booster.

[Baldwin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Uninspired123', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Baldwin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Uninspired123', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Baldwin', '
')Exactly what can a businessman trained to push papers at Deutschebank or HSBC know about an agrarian lifestyle? There is a bit more to farming then "plant seeds, water, pick, and eat".

Can anyone else see the value of an herbalist? It should be fairly lucid, since before CVS, that elderly lady down the lane was your pharmacist. She knew how to ID, pick, and prepare herbs for cuts, fevers, stomach trouble, and even abortions.

You neglect the value of musicians. ALl people need some scant form of entertainment. A flutist at Christmas dinner may be a significant morale booster.

[MonteQuest]

Hey guys, You don't have to quote the whole thing. In fact, you aren't supposed to.

[manu]

A real herbalist is the Doctor. In ayurvedic medicine from India (which has been around at least 5,000 years) the combinations of different herbs can cure many illnesses that the allopathic medicines cant. In fact, allopathic medicines only treat the symptoms of the disease, not the root cause. Not to mention that the number two killer now in the U.S. is allopathic medicines. And that is from JAMA.

[manu]

Good post seven. May I add that the powers that be also dont want people to live simple, off the grid, because those people would not need them (the powers that be) for anything. They are basically a bunch of money grubbing buisnessmen that will destroy animals, the earth, people or whoever gets in the way of their demoniac lust for power. Unfortunately to many people have put their faith in these power mongers and when they see their dream slipping away, they will probably nuke everything.

[gg3]

If you need a telephone, I've still got a job, along with a handful of my pals who can make it work & keep it working.

---

Professional warriors: People who have served in the military will be needed to organize & manage community defense and train civilians for various roles. Conscientious objectors can be trained as medics and other noncombatant roles.

Musicians: Uninspired, you're simply wrong about this one. Music has been a cultural essential since humans first figured out how to sing. Participating in music in any number of ways, also contributes to the development of mathematical abilities. Do away with music and you put yourself at a competitive disadvantage in any field where math abilities count.

Health: Herbalists and apothecaries, and compounding pharmacists. Sorry, Uninspired, the science says you're wrong about this one too (BTW, I'm a "real engineer" with a decent layperson's background in the sciences as well, so this is not foo-foo talk). Plants are the source of most of our core essential pharmacopoiea. Plant-derived medicines will need to be standardized as to potency and dosages, and much of this will be a rediscovery and refinement of knowledge that existed in the 1800s, expanded upon by way of more modern techniques and means of analysis.

Here are a few that are not obvious but are still essential, and can be sustained in a rural-based agrarian society consisting of small farms and small villages:

Legal system: Police and/or Sheriffs & their deputies. Judges and their clerks & secretaries. Prosecuting attorneys and defense attorneys including public defenders. Wardens and guards for jails and prisons. If you believe in preserving a system of equal justice under law, and for that matter a system of justice rather than tribal vengeances, you have to keep all of these. Containment and reduction of violence over time is one of the two core essentials for civilized human society.

Essential public services: Police/sheriff, firefighting, EMT, and sanitation. All of these are related to public safety & health. Firefighting is an interesting one in terms of technology and energy, and will probably remain a priority for access to concentrated fuels e.g. petroleum, and eventually, biodiesel. The technology of waste disposal & recovery will change in a number of ways that are oriented toward short-path recycling and source reduction of wastes, and increased manual sorting of the solid waste stream; I could write a lengthy paper on this subject but I'll leave it here for now.

More essential public services: School teachers & administrators. Librarians and their admin & support staffs. Conservation and propagation of knowledge is the other core essential for civilized human society.

Finance: Banks and bankers, returned to their essential roles of managing & directing savings, landing, and investment by average citizens. Investors and investment management firms, for directing capital efficiently to private enterprises (unless you prefer some form of socialism, and that's another discussion for another day). To the extent that there are any common denominators of trade, these institutions will be necessary as repositories of stored economic value and means of directing it toward useful endeavors.

Communications networks: Communication reduces transportation. The internet as originally designed is an essential for sharing knowledge and information, and minus the huge amount of multimedia fluff presently available, can be maintained with little in the way of energy & resources, compared to any equivalent functionality obtained via printed material on paper or via transportation. Telephony in its essential form is even more obviously sustainable and was so before cheap energy.

Higher education: Where do scientists & engineers come from, eh? I trust this one is self-explanatory. Education in specialized fields is still likely to be provided by major colleges & universities, and this will mean that talented individuals will have to spend their undergrad & graduate school years away from home. However what is needed is to develop the means & incentives by which most of them can return to their home locales and utilize their knowledge locally.

Religion: Hopefully more than one pastor (etc.) per village, of differing denominations, to maintain de-facto the freedom & diversity of religion that is a key component of any free society. And, a balance of denominations is also essential to maintaining freedom for those who are not theistic, i.e. atheists & agnostics.

[Baldwin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'I')f you need a telephone, I've still got a job, along with a handful of my pals who can make it work & keep it working.

---

Professional warriors: People who have served in the military will be needed to organize & manage community defense and train civilians for various roles. Conscientious objectors can be trained as medics and other noncombatant roles.

Musicians: Uninspired, you're simply wrong about this one. Music has been a cultural essential since humans first figured out how to sing. Participating in music in any number of ways, also contributes to the development of mathematical abilities. Do away with music and you put yourself at a competitive disadvantage in any field where math abilities count.

Health: Herbalists and apothecaries, and compounding pharmacists. Sorry, Uninspired, the science says you're wrong about this one too (BTW, I'm a "real engineer" with a decent layperson's background in the sciences as well, so this is not foo-foo talk). Plants are the source of most of our core essential pharmacopoiea. Plant-derived medicines will need to be standardized as to potency and dosages, and much of this will be a rediscovery and refinement of knowledge that existed in the 1800s, expanded upon by way of more modern techniques and means of analysis.

Here are a few that are not obvious but are still essential, and can be sustained in a rural-based agrarian society consisting of small farms and small villages:

Legal system: Police and/or Sheriffs & their deputies. Judges and their clerks & secretaries. Prosecuting attorneys and defense attorneys including public defenders. Wardens and guards for jails and prisons. If you believe in preserving a system of equal justice under law, and for that matter a system of justice rather than tribal vengeances, you have to keep all of these. Containment and reduction of violence over time is one of the two core essentials for civilized human society.

Essential public services: Police/sheriff, firefighting, EMT, and sanitation. All of these are related to public safety & health. Firefighting is an interesting one in terms of technology and energy, and will probably remain a priority for access to concentrated fuels e.g. petroleum, and eventually, biodiesel. The technology of waste disposal & recovery will change in a number of ways that are oriented toward short-path recycling and source reduction of wastes, and increased manual sorting of the solid waste stream; I could write a lengthy paper on this subject but I'll leave it here for now.

More essential public services: School teachers & administrators. Librarians and their admin & support staffs. Conservation and propagation of knowledge is the other core essential for civilized human society.

Finance: Banks and bankers, returned to their essential roles of managing & directing savings, landing, and investment by average citizens. Investors and investment management firms, for directing capital efficiently to private enterprises (unless you prefer some form of socialism, and that's another discussion for another day). To the extent that there are any common denominators of trade, these institutions will be necessary as repositories of stored economic value and means of directing it toward useful endeavors.

Communications networks: Communication reduces transportation. The internet as originally designed is an essential for sharing knowledge and information, and minus the huge amount of multimedia fluff presently available, can be maintained with little in the way of energy & resources, compared to any equivalent functionality obtained via printed material on paper or via transportation. Telephony in its essential form is even more obviously sustainable and was so before cheap energy.

Higher education: Where do scientists & engineers come from, eh? I trust this one is self-explanatory. Education in specialized fields is still likely to be provided by major colleges & universities, and this will mean that talented individuals will have to spend their undergrad & graduate school years away from home. However what is needed is to develop the means & incentives by which most of them can return to their home locales and utilize their knowledge locally.

Religion: Hopefully more than one pastor (etc.) per village, of differing denominations, to maintain de-facto the freedom & diversity of religion that is a key component of any free society. And, a balance of denominations is also essential to maintaining freedom for those who are not theistic, i.e. atheists & agnostics.

[dohboi]

How about civil engineers? With no fossil-fuel-driven plumbing system to wash away waste, its going to be pretty darn important to know how to deal with the truly enormous quantities of poop that will be generated. Many more people now die of disentary and other diseases caused by poor handling of waste than die of violence. This includes those in the poorest areas.

That this has not been mentioned before here shows that even this very thoughtful and enlightened group of people commenting here shows that most people are going to be totally clueless as to what is in their own best interest.

My best guess is that there will be some kind of Pol Pot type movement--destroy everyone who knows anything about anything. It will not be pretty!

[Ayame]

It's simple, just like the song:

Butcher, baker, candlestick maker.

Oh and probably a few spooky old women can be apothecaries who will be prosecuted and burned from time to time when times get tough.

[oliveoil]

-Energy gatherers:
Depending on what type of energy predominates (wood or coal or something more hi-tech), lumberjacks or coal-miners will be needed.

-Animal people, including vets, trainers and herders.

-Depending on what happens to currency, someone good at bartering will be useful : call them a 'merchant'. But not too many now...

-'Nuclear fallout cleaner'.

-We also forgot 'politician'! who will be relegated to 'village headman'

But maybe having 'roles' is a misleading paradigm. Its more likely that people will need to cross train and be able to do many jobs. So someone like the musician will not have time to practice their B# all day but will work in the field like the rest and entertain the villagers (lol) when everyone is resting after a hard day's work around the campfire. The picture I am getting here is increasingly looking like some form of American wild-west type society.

As to the 'civil engineers' I believe they were already included in the generic role of engineers who will be doing everything from making buildings to small mechanical devices and of course, public works like irrigation systems for fields or sewage works.

[Baldwin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('oliveoil', '
')
-We also forgot 'politician'! who will be relegated to 'village headman'

[FreakOil]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')s for musicians, in a hard crash, like you seem to think, the last person you need is a musician. Seems totally worthless in a society lacking energy to waste on music. You're thinking 20th and previous centuries where there was energy that could be put towards entertainment. I'm pretty sure entertainment will be first on the chopping block in a shortage.

[gg3]

Dohboi, you're talking about sanitary engineers. Civil engineers do bridges and buildings, sanitary engineers do sewage systems. I touched on it tangentially under "police/fire/EMT/sanitation."

---

Baldwin, the likely transition looks like the USSR during its own crash, and the aftermath, optimistically, like Cuba after their own PO event but preferably with free enterprise.

But I could go for the more doomerish version if you like, and that looks like a major dieoff followed by re-emergence of hunter/gatherer (HG) society, at best resembling the Six Nations / Iroquois Confederacy. Or the most-doomerish version, which looks like a cross between Zimbabwe and Somalia.

Me & mine operate on the premise "hope for the best, plan for the worst." And we are in fact planning ahead and should have land before the year is up. Our group includes permaculturists (the majority, almost all from the scientific/technical side of permaculture), hunter/gatherers, and eco-industrials (I'm one of the latter), and we take nothing for granted.

I'll tell you this: I'd prefer that none of this was happening, and that we were back in the mid 20th century when it seemed life would go on normally forever. It frankly sucks to look forward to a future that looks like a stinking pile of turds, but that's what we've got so we may as well make the best of it. Human emotional homeostasis being what it is, there will still be times of relative calm and even happiness, even if daily life is spartan as hell.

[IslandCrow]

Add sailors to the list, and shipwrights. The wind will still blow, and there will still be trade (although vastly reduced from now).

Also I expect 'the world's oldest profession' to survive.

[Fredrik]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('oliveoil', 'T')he picture I am getting here is increasingly looking like some form of American wild-west type society.

[IslandCrow]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fredrik', 'F')armers ploughing their acres, cowboys on the prairie, law enforcement officials on horseback and so on. There's just this little problem that as the cheap energy powered green revolution is undone, 19th century agriculture won't feed half of 21th century population.

[Fredrik]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('IslandCrow', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fredrik', 'F')armers ploughing their acres, cowboys on the prairie, law enforcement officials on horseback and so on. There's just this little problem that as the cheap energy powered green revolution is undone, 19th century agriculture won't feed half of 21st century population.