[p2p-research] Fwd: a very interesting essay on the collapse of the roman empire

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Michel Bauwens wrote:
> Subject: a very interesting essay on the collapse of the roman empire
> 
> http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5528

Very interesting. I like the modal of increasing complexity leading to
diminishing returns and then negative returns because of the cost of
maintaining complexity. I see the same thing with computer software, as it
builds in complexity to the point where it is easier to start over. Still,
sometimes complexity of just the appropriate sort can actually have long
lasting benefits, and we can also get design patterns out of watching what
works and then rapidly apply them to new systems without so much trial and
error. Christopher Alexander's work on a pattern language for architecture
("a timeless way of building") relates to this.

One issue with the model derived from the Club of Rome scenario. The author
says: "If these resources are non renewable, as it is the case of our
mineral resources, eventually, the amount of capital that can be created and
maintained must go down - it is one of the possible causes of collapse."

As I mentioned before, we have all the atoms of iron on the planet we had
one hundred years ago (except a few sent out in space probes, perhaps offset
by some meteorites). So, while it is true in a sense that certain ores are
not renewable resources, the atoms are infinitely reuseable. From this
mistake in logic would flow an inevitable collapse in any computer
simulation which had that assumption embedded in it. We also have a nearly
endless supply of wind and solar power (and other renewables) that can
supply even ten or one hundred times current needs for millions of years.
Whether we use those resources well is a different story, of course.

Agriculture is a bit different, since eroded soil goes into the ocean.
Still, rock ground into rock dust can remineralize the soil, so there is a
straight forward solution to soil erosion if you have the energy for
crushing rock.

Economies also can shift what they make things out of. As discussed recently
on the open manufacturing list, we could easily make cars out of wood and
ceramics. They might not be as nice in some ways as ones made out of metal,
but we can produce wood indefinitely by decomposition and recycling, and we
have lots of stuff to make ceramics out of. But in any case, it is easy to
recycle metals from cars if we really try. So, we don't even need to
substitute for metals if we recycle well or start mining landfills. Our
society may well collapse, and lack of ores may well be related to it, as
might be soil erosion, but, as another part of that essay suggests, the true
reason would be deeper, in that, why did we just not mine landfills or use
solar power? Or why did we not just grind up the rocks? There may be
ideological reasons why we don't do these things, but there are no technical
reasons we can't do them.

As I was reading the beginning of the essay, about one emperor resisting the
division of Rome, it occurred to me. The wealth in a capital city is
generally proportional to the area under military control. That explains a
big part of why people in a capital city fight to maintain or enlarge
empires. (Although that fact may get changed into other beliefs about
cultural superiority.) Although, as the article points out, there is also a
pyramid scheme aspect of such conquests, as the wealth to hold together the
current empire comes from additional conquests (WWII Germany faced the same
problem). See:
   "How Germans Fell for the 'Feel-Good' Fuehrer"
     http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,347726,00.html

Another mistake in the article is here: "Surely there are differences: our
society is more of a mining society and less of a military based society."

See, there the author is being part of the problem. Our entire schooling
apparatus, and our entire military-industrial-educational-prison complex
exists because the dominant ideology in our globe is militaristic in
outlook. Progress may come more when we view advocating militarism more as
mental illness as opposed to a good reason to be elected. See:
   "WAR IS A RACKET" by Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient 
Major General Smedley D. Butler - USMC Retired
     http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

Empires in that sense as places that need to grow are pyramid schemes. They 
will either transform or collapse. Sustainable civilizations might *want* to 
grow for ideological reasons or population expansion, but they don't *need* 
to grow for economic pyramid scheme ones like Rome or WWII Germany. Or, for 
that matter, a pyramid-scheme oriented USA believing that the only right to 
consume comes from work, which entails needing bigger export markets and 
more internal advertising to sustain economic growth when facing limited 
internal demand and rising unemployment from automation and improved design 
(but failing to find such markets anymore from global competition, and so 
the USA is now collapsing economically and ideologically even as the 
physical infrastructure is intact and could easily supply all the world with 
abundance).

Here is another core part of the argument:
"""
"Emperor, first you need to plant trees. the land needs rest. In time, trees 
will reform the fertile soil."
"But, druid, if we plant trees, we won't have enough food for the people."
"Nobody will starve if the patricians renounce to some of their luxuries!"
"Well, Druid, I see your point but it won't be easy....."
"And you must reduce the number of legions and abandon the walls!"
"But, but.... Druid, if we do that, the barbarians will invade us....."
"It is better now than later. Now you can still keep enough troops to defend 
the cities. Later on, it will be impossible. It is sustainable defense."
"Sustainable?"
"Yes, it means defense that you can afford. You need to turn the legions 
into city militias and..."
"And...?"
"You must spend less for the Imperial Bureaucracy. The Imperial taxes are 
too heavy! You must work together with the people, not oppress them! Plant 
trees, disband the army, work together!"
"""

Sounds nice, but it is based on some big creative limitations and flawed 
assumptions. Consider China, which had both a bureaucracy and farmed for 
forty centuries. What did they do differently? Well the history of China is 
complex, and has multiple cyclical collapses, but essentially:
* they returned human waste to the soil to keep it fertile, and also 
benefited from a natural process of rock grinding that produced silt from 
overflowing rivers;
* they sometimes had more effective defenses (the great wall) and less 
offenses in military posture (helped along by geographical issues); and
* their bureaucracy was more efficient and meritocratic, and so produced 
greater value for the people in philosophy and harmony, underpinned by a 
different ideology.
(These are just some broad trends, obviously there are lots of specific 
counterexamples one could find in a place as big and old as China.)

There is probably a lot one could say in negative ways about various 
historic Chinese governments, as well as about aspects of 
ancestor-worshiping Confucianism or imperial bureaucracies as resisting 
needed changes (which left China open to, say, drug-pushing Westerners 
during the Opium war), but there obviously are alternatives to shutting down 
a society, and the Chinese must have got a lot of things right.

So, in this sense, the essay presents a "false choice" about sustainability. 
How can one talk about "Limits to Growth" when, for example, the local solar 
system could easily support quadrillions of humans, plus thousands of Earths 
worth of ecologies, in space habitats? Even on Earth, better use of 
technology we already have could support an even larger urban population 
that we have now, perhaps by a factor of ten or a hundred. (Rural population 
growth would be more limited, as even seasteading could not give us that 
much more rural land beyond maybe a doubling or tripling of what we have.)

Had Romans known to grind rocks into fertilizer, avoided lead goblets and 
pipes, rethought their military structure to be more defensive and helpful, 
and focused on an imperial bureaucracy providing value more than the taxes 
that supported it (like by doing research and development of new ideas like 
solar power), we might all be Romans today. One may wonder why Rome did not 
do that, but that is an issue of complexity and ideology (including the 
ideology of slavery), more than about energy or resource use by itself.

As Langdon Winner suggests, our infrastructure reflects our ideology, but in 
turn, having a specific infrastructure then shapes our ideology in return in 
unexpected ways. Rome had the hammer of a strong military, so every social 
problem looked like a nail the military could solve. The USA is suffering 
from the same ideological breakdown, sadly, and the military in the USA 
readily admits it is overused because it is the one institution that is well 
funded in the USA and very capable (within certain bounds).

With that said, why bother saving Rome if the ideology is so messed up it 
can't save itself? While Rome existed, so did China. So did the "barbarians" 
who may not have seemed to "barbarian" to themselves. So did Native American 
societies. Rome was just part of the world seen as an Empire, and just a 
tiny place seen as a city (even if it was an influential city using a vast 
road network to extract resources from a huge area).

Still, a lot of people got hurt during the fall of Rome, so there are 
arguments that transforming it are better than letting it collapse. I 
suggest that our role is to help safely remove the collapsing 
scarcity-oriented scaffolding that surrounds the core of what is already a 
post-scarcity capable society. The irony of Rome, and the USA, is that both 
are using post scarcity technologies like bureaucracy, networks (roads, the 
internet), biotechnology (improved crops),  advanced manufacturing 
(metalworking, nanotech), to create artificial scarcity through 
military-backed monopolies (extracting from the surroundings rather than 
helping the surroundings grow). That irony stems more from ideology than 
anything else. But in that sense, the essay on "Peak Civilization" just 
contributes to the problem, by beating on the drum of scarcity that 
justifies the misuse of post-scarcity technologies to create artificial 
scarcities.

The essay has a lot of interesting facts, and points to very real problems, 
I'm just disputing the focus and the conclusions and a few core assumptions. 
There is more to why people reject the essayists analysis than:
"""
We are subjected to the "fish in the water" curse. We don't understand that 
we are surrounded by water. And we don't want to be told that water exists.
"""

There is truth to that, but the bigger truth is that the analysis (and "Peak 
Oil" theory) is in some ways despairing and flawed. There is much more room 
for optimism than it admits, even though changing ideology can be hard. 
People are naturally conservative for good reasons; the problem is when they 
are conservative about strategies that are not sustainable.

So here is a rewrite of the discussion with the emperor (like Amory Lovins 
might suggest, upgrading that empire into a Rome 2.0 as it were :-):
"""
"Emperor, first you need to grind up rock and dredge up silt and bring human 
waste back to the fields to maintain soil fertility. You should plant some 
trees, too, because they look nice and are useful for raw materials. You 
should use some metal to make solar ovens to reduce the burning of trees for 
cooking fires. Insulating homes would also reduce the need to burn trees."
"But, druid, if we do those things, they will be expensive, we won't have 
enough food for the people."
"Nobody will starve if the work is done incrementally, with each step paying 
for the next. Abundance will generally increase, and the patricians as well 
as everyone else will have more luxuries if we provide a basic income to 
everyone to keep the economy circulating and the market functioning."
"Well, Druid, I see your point but it won't be easy....."
"And you must restructure the legions to a more defensive posture and 
reshape the walls!"
"But, but.... Druid, if we do that, the barbarians will invade us....."
"Actually, a defensive posture will make it less likely the barbarians will 
invade. You will be securing the gains you have made. Rome will cease to 
grow, but it will be sustainable at the current size. After it has renewed 
itself, it might grow again. It is better now than later. Now you can still 
keep enough troops to defend the cities. Later on, it would be impossible. 
It is sustainable defense."
"Sustainable?"
"Yes, it means defense that you can afford. You need to turn the legions 
into city militias and..."
"And...?"
"A transformed military will also be useful in other ways to defend core 
Roman values and transform other aspects of the infrastructure, but over 
time the most important heroic military values of honor and self-sacrifice 
and caring for others need to be woven into the infrastructure, because 
security should be intrinsic, not an afterthought."
"Intrinsic?"
"Yes, it means defense that is woven into the fabric of daily life and daily 
infrastructure. It means decentralized systems that fail gracefully 
including in the face of plagues and famine and sieges and fire and storm 
and volcanoes. It means a population that is mentally resistant to being 
taken over because they believe strongly from their own first hand 
experiences in the value of an advanced Roman way and have access to 
advanced tools to use in their own creative defense and strong peer networks 
that can function even under economic duress. It means cities that are 
inherently very productive and so are targets it would be foolish to attack 
like one hundred soldiers attacking a herd of a million vegetarian 
elephants. It means a society which attackers could not govern without 
becoming advanced Romans themselves, so it becomes easier to join it than to 
try to beat it. Both the military and the society around it must focus on 
finding good balances of top-down goal-oriented hierarchy and bottom-up 
self-directive meshwork (see the Druid Manuel de Landa), to maintain 
life-affirming cooperative advanced Roman values while applying them in 
situation specific ways. Part of that is also focusing on mutual security of 
all neighboring kingdoms rather than security only for Romans through the 
unilateral dominance of Rome, thus ensuring others see Rome Legions as an 
asset to their security, not a threat."
"And...?"
"You must spend differently for the Imperial Bureaucracy. The Imperial taxes 
are too heavy for what they inefficiently produce! You should be providing 
more benefit from taxes by transforming the Imperial Bureaucracy into a 
learning culture that studies things like how lead effects the mind, or how 
solar energy could be used to heath the baths, or how the military could be 
used to defend core important life-affirming values or reconstruct the 
infrastructure to be both sustainable and intrinsically secure. Then there 
will be so much productivity, you could even raise taxes and few will care, 
and there would be so much you could sustain a basic income of bread and 
circuses and education and libraries and health care for the people of all 
of Roman Empire indefinitely. You must work together with the people, not 
oppress them! Grind rock, plant trees, use solar energy, transform the Army 
and the Imperial Bureaucracy into learning cultures focused on intrinsic 
security and sustainability, work together!"
"""

That is advice the Emperor might be more likely to follow, an it comes from 
optimism not despair, if the Emperor's mind was not already to messed up 
from drinking from lead goblets or infected by weaponized Lyme disease (like 
President Bush was acknowledged to have). Still, even that advice means the 
fall of the Roman Empire 1.0, even if it is replaced with a Roman Empire 2.0 
with the same name, but a totally different ideology (productive instead of 
extractive).

One analogy from my own experience, as to why the ideology is so hard to 
shift. The mascot of my alma mater, Princeton University, a university which 
is a fundamental part of the US empire's intellectual infrastructure, is the 
tiger. Now, when you are attending such a university, it is easy to thing, 
tiger cubs are so cute, tigers are so strong, growing into a tiger shows 
health and vitality and business and productivity. But, ultimately, the 
tiger is a parasite on other animals. Maybe when it eats only carrion or the 
weak it might not be that bad a parasite, but it none-the-less a tiger is an 
"extractive" creature ecologically, not a "productive" creature like, say, 
growing green plants or blue green algae. So, when you attend such a place, 
and see all the economists creating complex books about free markets and the 
evils of regulation, or see the sociologists going on about communications 
being a fad, or see the physicists designing better nuclear bombs, or the 
mathematicians creating better cryptography for the government while 
creating weak crypto for the masses, and you see all the teenagers studying 
so hard to be just like these professors, then it is is easy to think, 
Princeton is such a productive institution. It is producing so much, and it 
is so sad the rest of the world is so poor, but if we only give more money 
to Princeton, in time, the productivity of Princeton University will spill 
over and make the world a better place. But, it is only productive in the 
way a tiger is, or, for that matter, productive in the way a tick is, the 
kind that might not just suck your blood, but give you weaponized Lyme 
disease as well (the "millionaire wannabee" ideology that can poison the 
life of the poor or middle class).
   "The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe's"
   http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47

If you give Princeton University more money, it will only be a better tiger, 
or a better tick. John Taylor Gatto says the same thing about mainstream 
schools in general for other reasons. So, when you are at a place like 
Princeton, it is easy to confuse being in a system that is primarily 
productive versus one that is primarily extractive, because from the inside, 
they both look pretty much the same (taking in stuff, growing, and putting 
out stuff), even as socially they are quite different in global implications.

I'd suggest the Roman Empire looked the same from inside the city of Rome. 
You look at all the armor being produced, all roads, all the great speeches 
given in Rome, and you say, wow, isn't Rome productive, when all the time, 
the production is just like a tick growing so it can suck more blood out of 
its host (the Roman supply regions).

Of course, this is an extreme charicture. There are many people at Princeton 
University sincerely trying to help the world, and no doubt Rome had many 
people who tried to promulgate the better parts of Roman culture and Roman 
engineering to others. But in the main, Princeton and Rome will both have 
failed for the same reasons -- taking more than they give. Some Native 
Americans knew this, and tried to help, but were misunderstood:
   http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance.  The gratitude we show as 
Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on 
the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When 
the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to 
assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native 
understanding is that there is always enough for everyone when abundance is 
shared and when gratitude is given back to the Original Source. The trick 
was to explain the concept of the Field of Plenty with few mutually 
understood words or signs. The misunderstanding that sprang from this lack 
of common language robbed those who came to Turtle Island of a beautiful 
teaching. Our "land of the free, home of the brave" has fallen into taking 
much more than is given back in gratitude by its citizens. Turtle Island has 
provided for the needs of millions who came from lands that were ruled by 
the greedy. In our present state of abundance, many of our inhabitants have 
forgotten that Thanksgiving is a daily way of living, not a holiday that 
comes once a year."

Rome is history. Princeton Universtity still has a chance to transform: :-)
   "Post-Scarcity Princeton "
   http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html
And aspects of it are transforming, but is it enough?

It may well be too late to shift the ideology of the empire (or Princeton 
University and the rest of the Ivy League that brought us Bush and Obama) 
from extractive to productive. But even if it is too late, in the honorable 
Roman way, or the way of any trained pilot flying landing an aircraft low on 
fuel and with a broken rudder, maybe we should still keep trying, even when 
it appears hopeless sometimes? See:
   "The Optimism of Uncertainty"
   http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040920/zinn

And as Paul Hawken suggests in "Blessed Unrest",
   http://www.blessedunrest.com/
things are changing. And many people are trying. Even if the core is 
mentally dysfunctional, the periphery may still transform and transcend to 
the point where it can then transform the dying core or just work around a 
dysfunctional core entirely? So, as as Bucky Fuller said, whether it will be 
utopia or oblivion will be a touch and go relay race to the very end.

In that sense, I agree with the part of the essay in the following quote, 
except I would substitute "Post-scarcity Society" for "The Middle Ages":
"So, our Druid had seen the future and was describing it to Emperor 
Aurelius. He had seen the solution of the problems of Empire: Middle Ages. 
It was where the Empire was going and where it could not avoid going. What 
the Druid was proposing was to go there in a controlled way. Ease the 
transition, don't fight it! If you know where you are going, you can travel 
in style and comfort. If you don't, well, it will be a rough ride."

So, I certainly agree with some of the sentiment of the essay. But here is 
the deepest problem as John Taylor Gatto talks about here of why the Emperor 
can't save us by himself or herself:
   http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue8.htm
"""
   My worry was about finding a prominent ally to help me present this idea 
that inhuman anthropology is what we confront in our institutional schools, 
not conspiracy. The hunt paid off with the discovery of an analysis of the 
Ludlow Massacre by Walter Lippmann in the New Republic of January 30, 1915. 
Following the Rockefeller slaughter of up to forty-seven, mostly women and 
children, in the tent camp of striking miners at Ludlow, Colorado, a 
congressional investigation was held which put John D. Rockefeller Jr. on 
the defensive. Rockefeller agents had employed armored cars, machine guns, 
and fire bombs in his name. As Lippmann tells it, Rockefeller was charged 
with having the only authority to authorize such a massacre, but also with 
too much indifference to what his underlings were up to. "Clearly," said the 
industrial magnate, "both cannot be true."
   As Lippmann recognized, this paradox is the worm at the core of all 
colossal power. Both indeed could be true. For ten years Rockefeller hadn’t 
even seen this property; what he knew of it came in reports from his 
managers he scarcely could have read along with mountains of similar reports 
coming to his desk each day. He was compelled to rely on the word of others. 
Drawing an analogy between Rockefeller and the czar of Russia, Lippmann 
wrote that nobody believed the czar himself performed the many despotic acts 
he was accused of; everyone knew a bureaucracy did so in his name. But most 
failed to push that knowledge to its inevitable conclusion: If the czar 
tried to change what was customary he would be undermined by his 
subordinates. He had no defense against this happening because it was in the 
best interests of all the divisions of the bureaucracy, including the army, 
that it — not the czar — continue to be in charge of things. The czar was a 
prisoner of his own subjects. In Lippmann’s words:
   "This seemed to be the predicament of Mr. Rockefeller. I should not 
believe he personally hired thugs or wanted them hired. It seems far more 
true to say that his impersonal and half-understood power has delegated 
itself into unsocial forms, that it has assumed a life of its own which he 
is almost powerless to control....His intellectual helplessness was the 
amazing part of his testimony. Here was a man who represented wealth 
probably without parallel in history, the successor to a father who has, 
with justice, been called the high priest of capitalism....Yet he talked 
about himself on the commonplace moral assumptions of a small businessman."
"""

And the original essayist, Ugo Bardi, says much the same thing here:
"""
   All that is, of course, pure fantasy. Even for a Roman Emperor, 
disbanding the legions couldn't be easy. After all, the name "Emperor" comes 
from the Latin word "imperator" that simply means "commander". The Roman 
Emperor was a military commander and the way to be Emperor was to please the 
legions that the Emperor commanded. A Roman Emperor who threatened to 
disband the legions wouldn't have been very popular and, most likely, he was 
to be a short lived Emperor. So, Emperors couldn't have done much even if 
they had understood system dynamics. In practice, they spent most of their 
time trying to reinforce the army by having as many legions as they could. 
Emperors, and the whole Roman world, fought as hard as they could to keep 
the  status quo ante , to keep things as they had always been. After the 3rd 
century crisis, Emperor Diocletian resurrected the Empire transforming it 
into something that reminds us of the Soviet Union at the time of Breznev. 
An oppressive dictatorship that included a suffocating bureaucracy, heavy 
taxes for the citizens, and a heavy military apparatus. It was such a burden 
for the Empire that it destroyed it utterly in little more than a century.
   Our Druids may be better than those of the times of the Roman Empire, at 
least they have digital computers. But our leaders are no better apt at 
understanding complex system than the military commanders who ruled the 
Roman Empire. Even our leaders were better, they would face the same 
problems: there are no structures that can gently lead society to where it 
is going. We have only structures that are there to keep society where it is 
- no matter how difficult and uncomfortable it is to be there. It is exactly 
what Tainter says: we react to problems by building structure that are more 
and more complex and that, in the end, produce a negative return. That's why 
societies collapse.
   So, all our efforts are to keep the  status quo ante . For this reason we 
are so desperately looking for something that can replace crude oil and 
leave everything else the same. It has to be something that is liquid, that 
burns and, if possible, even smells bad. Drill more, drill deeper, boil tar 
sands, make biofuels even if people will starve. We do everything we can to 
keep things as they are.
   And, yet, we are going where the laws of physics are taking us. A world 
with less crude oil, or with no crude oil at all, cannot be the same world 
we are used to, but it doesn't need to be the Middle Ages again. If we 
manage to deploy new sources of energy, renewable or nuclear - fast enough 
to replace crude oil and the other fossil fuels, we can imagine that the 
transition would not involve a big loss of complexity, perhaps none at all. 
More likely, a reduced flux of energy and natural resources in the economic 
system will entail the kind of collapse described in the simulations of "The 
Limits to Growth." We can't avoid to go where the laws of physics are taking 
us.
"""

Anyway, there is the problem, but only half-truth solutions. Organizations 
can change into learning communities, individuals can learn and grow, many 
leaders are well informed in various ways or at least their staffs are, and 
the internet facilitates this (even as the internet also facilitates a 
stronger police state). It is a struggle, even to realize the life-affirming 
prospects of the internet before death-facilitating aspects gain ascendancy, 
but there remains a chance.

In some ways, I feel the Ugo Bardi is both too optimistic and too 
pessimistic. He is too optimistic, since even in 1964, the Triple Revolution 
memorandum pointed out how with modern weapons, war on any large scale was 
too terrible to contemplate, so if Rome falls in an uncontrolled way, it is 
likely these weapons (nukes, bioweapons, killer robots, others) will be used 
and render the Earth very difficult to inhabit for humans, especially with 
only medieval technology. But he seems too pessimistic in thinking it likely 
will fall uncontrollably given all the millions of people working to rebuild 
our society into something better, as Paul Hawken documents, or this 
p2presearch list illustrates.

Anyway, I used to be more like the Peak Oilers twenty-five years ago. Most 
of them may come around eventually (I hope) to a post-scarcity vision, like 
I did in part from reading the writings of James P. Hogan and many others. 
Many pieces of that puzzle are in the essay, just not put together yet along 
with a few missing pieces. Producing that essay was a good step forward, so 
others like me can respond to the core assumption in it (and no doubt make 
our own mistakes based on flawed assumptions in our turn. :-)

But one point the essayist makes and I agree with is that there are 
solutions to various "crises" we face -- whether we as a society implement 
them is the important issue. What is always odd to me is that while people 
readily admit we face huge problems from the threat of nuclear war, global 
pollution from CO2 or endocrine disruptors or pesticides, compulsory 
schooling dumbing down most of humanity (John Taylor Gatto), or even that 
abundance from automation and better design poses a threat to our way of 
life (Marshall Brain), the solutions proposed are timid and piecemeal. But, 
the essay helps explain why, as the first reaction is always to try to 
conserve the status quo, often way beyond the point where it can be 
conserved in any sustainable way. Still, I feel the essay defines a problem 
without really defining a good solution (like a basic income for all to make 
their needs or wants known to the market, a transition to post-scarcity 
economics gift economy, or something else).

As I read through the comments after writing this, I see some of them touch 
on these ideas. They even link to a youtube video of Michel:
  "P2P in History: Learning From Rome - Michel Bauwens 12/12"
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU9r4wh8sxc

Still, as I see it, the dynamics of the current collapse are different. For 
a reasonably steady population, here is the equation that describes the 
crisis our society is facing:

Jobs = (Demand - (Stockpiled_Supply - War)) / (Automation * Good_Design)

We can assume "Automation" and "Good_Design" are increasing, which tends to 
reduce the need for "Jobs", all other things being equal. Mainstream 
economics suggests "Demand" is essentially infinite -- that is, if people 
have two cars, they want four cars, and if they have four cars, they want 
one hundred cars parked in their driveway, and then even that won't be 
enough, they will want a thousand cars, a million cars. Clearly, stated that 
way, mainstream economics sounds absurd, because people only have so much 
time and attention they will devote to acquiring cars, especially because 
everything that you own, also owns you. Jay Leno might own lots of cars, but 
in general, even he stopped an slowed down buying cars, and in any case, he 
does not have 10000 snowmobiles too.
   http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/jay_leno_garage/4320759.html
Also, why own 100 cars yourself if you could let Jay Leno and his staff do 
all the maintenance work and just visit or volunteer in his garage or a 
similar place? Cars can be more fun in company:
   http://www.saratogaautomuseum.com/
Or, why not own the cars virtually in Gran Turismo?
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Turismo_(series)

So, if "Demand" is ultimately limited once most people meet their basic 
needs for food, water, shelter, information, and some consumer items ("the 
best things in life are free or cheap"), or at least "Demand" is rising less 
quickly than improvements in productivity "(Automation * Good_Design)", then 
the number of paying "Jobs" will go towards zero. And as there are less 
"Jobs", and so more competition for them, the remaining "Jobs" will get paid 
less and have worse working conditions.

The absence of good "Jobs" creates a crisis in a society that only allows 
people with jobs to direct the market and take goods from it (thus, the 
unemployed will starve, or riot, or be on unrelated small and depressing 
welfare payments, see Marshall Brain's Manna or described in the Triple 
Revolution memorandum).

"War" can increase jobs by destroying any stockpiled goods or existing 
infrastructure, requiring more goods and infrastructure, or vast stockpiles 
of military might intended no never be used, but "War" has become too 
terrible to contemplate even as stockpiles of war materials beg to be used, 
and in any case, building a *need* for "War" into an economic system seems 
inelegant and unethical, especially when "War" can so easily mean Armageddon 
these days.

The above is the equation I would suggest is more worth exploring these days 
than the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" one. That simple equation is IMHO 
key to understanding the next twenty years of our society, especially with 
the emergence of more capable robots. It would be worthwhile to plot the 
number of jobs over time for all sorts of assumptions of curves of demand 
and curves of automation and better design. One could also add in some 
demographic aspects of changing population sizes which I have left out for 
simplicity. Remember, in the next twenty years, none of the resource 
constraints Peak Oilers worry about are likely to be huge, but nonetheless, 
the equation above might show jobs trending low enough to create a huge set 
of social problems. We have already seen riots in Greece and other places in 
Europe related to the trends that come out of that equation.

And the result is we either need a basic income for everyone to make the 
system work, or we need to transition entirely to a post-scarcity gift 
economy, or we need some other approach to move beyond mainstream economic 
culture or even the market (local 3D printing like Star Trek matter 
replicators and recyclers that can print their own solar panels for power 
and print more replicators, etc. augmented by peer production and peer 
services in some local exchange way perhaps).

Any one of those three approaches (or some combination) might work 
sustainably without requiring war (or other forms of waste like compulsory 
schooling) to destroy abundance. Someday, it will seem ludicrous to describe 
the twentieth century as having been mostly about using war and schooling 
ust to create the kind of jobs people don't need to do anyway and shape the 
kind of people who will be satisfied with jobs that are easily automated or 
redesigned out of existence. So, moving beyond the economic collapse model 
also means seriously rethinking the nature and meaning of "Jobs" or "work" 
in our society.
   http://www.whywork.org/

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/

P.S. With all that said, the world's helium supply may be depleted a few 
decades,
   http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080102093943.htm
but people like Peak Oilers seem more worried about fossil fuels that we 
have centuries of at current rates of use. There is lots of helium in the 
universe, just not readily accessible on Earth. Helium is difficult to 
substitute for, and very difficult to make, compared to oil. If Peak Oilers 
were talking about Peak Helium, I'd be much more sympathetic. :-) Still, 
even for helium, rising prices may lead to changes in patterns of use and 
production, and maybe even an increased interest in a space program to 
collect helium. More links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Occurrence_and_production
http://www.newsobserver.com/print/saturday/business/story/818309.html
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009JPCM...21p0402H
"The increase in price of liquid helium has accelerated interest in the 
development and use of alternative cooling systems. In particular, 
pulse-tube coolers are now available that will allow cryostats with modest 
cooling needs to operate dilution refrigerators without the need for 
repeated refills of liquid helium from external supply sources."