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

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi Paul,

this is a great, thoughtful essay, a big thanks!!

I think though that between the theory of saying, 'nothing is lost' (of
iron,etc..) and the capability to effectily do it in practice, there is a
very great leap. I also don't think this is true for all resources ... so in
practical terms, thinking of nature as limited, and requiring balance, i.e.
putting back in what you get out of it, is the soundest of all principles
and can unite both approaches.

Who is James Hogan?

(this article would require a bit of extra editorial work to make it
publishable, but I'm ill right now, so I'll pass for this time, it would be
great if somebody else would publish it on our blog, perhaps you yourself
Paul? James Burke can give you access)

Michel

On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 10:06 PM, Paul D. Fernhout <
pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:

> 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)<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Turismo_%28series%29>
>
> 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."
>
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>



-- 
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