[one_more_day]

I have read so many comments about the "zombie hordes". That may come someday, but before that happens I see some sort of feudal system.

Whoever has managed to hold onto property and wealth will need thugs to protect them. With so many people starving/unemployed, It would be easy to amasse a private security force. Most will probably work for a little bit of bread.

The truely wealthy who play things right will be in a position to buy up bank-foreclosed land, and then put more starving wage-slaves to work growing food that will go disproportionately to the land-holder. The rich won't be sweating in the fields...just because they act like everything is OK doesn't mean they don't know what is going on.

I predict that immediately after the collapse the biggest growing job fields will be Thug and Serf.

There may be revolts and uprisings, and then we may see true zombie hordes. However, I think that there will at least be an interim of mass slavery/servitude.

Also, look for organized crime (i.e. mafia) to shoot skyward post-collapse.

[manu]

I say it will be nuclear bombs, then zombie hordes, and then you will see feudal states.

[medicvet]

I see MZB's (mutant zombie bikers) more because I don't think the wealthy (conspiracy theorists to the contrary) have the organizational skills it would take to create serfs.

Unless a megalomaniacal leader arose who said that all of a certain group of people should be serfs, and all of another group were to blame for the tough times and should be imprisoned or killed..

people say we could never have a Hitler here..I say it is just a matter of time, situation, and circumstance.

[gg3]

Thugs and serfs eh?

I say we're already on the way to that. Blackwater. Illegal immigrants as "guest" workers.

Medicvet, "they" are more than well enough organized to pull it off, they're doing it right now as per above. The Illegal Alien Amnesty Bill that Bush was pushing, was exactly this: a means to obtain serfs.

However the serfs of the future will not be like the serfs of the past. Tomorrow's serfs will be mobile, migrants, without permanent attachment to place or locale. As oil dwindles they will find other ways to move about, including on foot if needed.

One thing that "guests" can't do, is vote. Convenient, eh? The way to keep people disenfranchised is to just keep them on the move. (Whenever you hear the phrase "movers and shakers," ask yourself, who is being moved and who is being shaken.)

For more on the emerging model, just take a look at how things work in Saudi Arabia. Small number of dissipated, decadent, pampered princelings. Small middle class that's bought off with oil welfare transfer-payment checks every month. Growing dissatisfied unemployed underclass. This is also a formula for a social explosion, but the decadent princelings don't see it even though it's right under their proverbial noses.

The other way out, of course, is sustainable community: set up a group, buy land, run your own gig, govern yourselves democratically. Me & mine are headed down that road, in an area that is notably progressive libertarian. Anyone who tries to make serfs up there, will get made into compost instead.

[OilIsMastery]

Sounds like Russia.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id ... =frontpage

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')r. Putin's government is unique in history. This Kremlin is part oligarchy, with a small, tightly connected gang of wealthy rulers. It is partly a feudal system, broken down into semi-autonomous fiefdoms in which payments are collected from the serfs, who have no rights. Over this there is a democratic coat of paint, just thick enough to gain entry into the G-8 and keep the oligarchy's money safe in Western banks.

But if you really wish to understand the Putin regime in depth, I can recommend some reading. No Karl Marx or Adam Smith. Nothing by Montesquieu or Machiavelli, although the author you are looking for is of Italian descent. But skip Mussolini's "The Doctrine of Fascism," for now, and the entire political science section. Instead, go directly to the fiction department and take home everything you can find by Mario Puzo. If you are in a real hurry to become an expert on the Russian government, you may prefer the DVD section, where you can find Mr. Puzo's works on film. "The Godfather" trilogy is a good place to start, but do not leave out "The Last Don," "Omerta" and "The Sicilian."

The web of betrayals, the secrecy, the blurred lines between what is business, what is government, and what is criminal--it's all there in Mr. Puzo's books. A historian looks at the Kremlin today and sees elements of Mussolini's "corporate state," Latin American juntas and Mexico's pseudo-democratic PRI machine. A Puzo fan sees the Putin government more accurately: the strict hierarchy, the extortion, the intimidation, the code of secrecy and, above all, the mandate to keep the revenue flowing. In other words, a mafia.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', '
')The other way out, of course, is sustainable community: set up a group, buy land, run your own gig, govern yourselves democratically. Me & mine are headed down that road, in an area that is notably progressive libertarian. Anyone who tries to make serfs up there, will get made into compost instead.

[gg3]

Speak for yourself, EU. We've got a representative democracy structure in place in our group and will be using it all the way through.

No doubt there will be individual differences in material circumstances, because we're not communists. Though, the spread from top to bottom will be a decimal place or two tighter than it is in the existing mainstream culture; again, not out of some kind of ideological plan but because that's the practical concomitant of life in the woods.

What counts are muscles, brains, experience, skill, and capability. I'm doing OK in the brains department, need to get in better shape in the muscles department, and people will after all want to have telephones so my job is secure. I suppose that means I have a cozy little niche in our system. But so will the guys and gals who dig ditches and weed gardens and do the bookkeeping and represent us in legal matters and teach the kids and build machinery and build houses and stand guard at the perimeter and bandage up cuts and compound medications from wild plants and clean the main kitchen and bathrooms and maintain the composting toilets and chair the meetings.

Takes all of us to make it work.

And none of us are taking any of it for granted, not for one minute.