Tuna, Toilet paper, and Timing

The drive home had me thinking thoughts on various levels. On the surface, I was curious as to how many people unaware of peak oil and fundamentals of debt/credit crisis have been intuitively preparing for some sort of social dislocation. An ivory tower moment for me, of sorts, I suppose. But as I thought about it deeper I wondered, in a world of myriad possibilities, intentions and trajectories, what actual long term advantage would people with gold, or foodstocks, or ammo, really experience – 3%? 50%?. In the grand scheme what kind of edge will Savinar-with-slingshot types have over those who haven’t prepared one whit, but who are smart, resourceful and crafty?
Or is it just perception of an edge? When we make decisions for tomorrow, is it to improve our odds for some perceived future bottleneck? Or is buying/hoarding stuff like buying State Farm life insurance – it allows us the expectation of a better, smoother, (risk adjusted) future? Or, just like higher returns in the stock market, as a (perceived) indicator of relative fitness vis-a-vis others. (e.g. Bob has 400 lbs more rice and 7 more guns than Bill – we gotta be friends with Bob!) Still, on an even deeper level, even though goods accumulation is in preparation for the ‘future’, it is still a focus on the very near term future, not the time frame needed for long term symbiosis of our species with the rest of the planetary ecology. So hoarding/peak oil prep. may be just another avenue for individual out-performance in a global commons, via competing for real goods instead of financial.

When we think about the future, whose future are we really thinking about? Our own? Our yet-as-unborn grandchildren? Or yet to be speciated future evolutionary organisms, products of hundreds of thousands of years of vibrant/healthy world ecosystems into the future? The above graph is totally hypothetical, but attempts to illustrate that as the focal point of our cultural/global decisions extends outward in time, it will have differing impacts both on future human welfare (black line) and future non-human welfare – biodiversity, healthy ecosystems, etc. (green line). As our focus moves forward in time, the black line suggests that future human welfare will decline until we begin to focus beyond the next 20 or so years. It is unlikely that many organisms, even possessing language and culture, could think/plan much beyond their own lifespans, but until such a point is reached, focusing on the present, especially when using finite extractable resources, borrows from the future, and quite possibly the immediate future. It seems to me that ‘hoarding’ as individuals is the opposite strategy as ‘hoarding’ as a species, which would entail consuming anything beyond renewable flows and the barest trickle of non-renewable resources. (The graph could be drawn many different ways depending on ones assumptions about population, resources and impacts)

The Oil Drum: Campfire