[p2p-research] James Howard Kunstler

[Kevin Carson]

On 6/22/10, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Those who like John Robb, might, for very different reasons, find JHK of
> interest.  I'm not sure if he has come up here at all.  I find his podcasts
> humorous...though if one is offended by colorful language, he's not your
> guy.
>
> http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/06/fierce-urgency.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+clusterfucknation+%28Clusterfuck+Nation%29
>

Kunstler's good on the kinds of stresses the energy and transportation
system will be subjected to, but IMO he seriously underestimates the
resilience of society.  I think we'll be amazed at how rapidly people
in the U.S. pick the low-hanging fruit of economic relocalization and
energy conservation, in the face of $12 gasoline.

Ditto for Dave Pollard, who thinks server networks will eventually go
the way of the Roman aqueducts in the face of extended rolling
brownouts and blackouts.  That strikes me as ludicrous.  When oil goes
back to and over its 2008 prices, and first 20% and then another 20%
of the trucking and airline industries shut down, telecommuting and
teleconferencing will be some of the most cost-effective low-hanging
fruit imaginable.  The Internet infrastructure will be worth its
weight in gold.  Whatever its base level of incompetence, if we're
faced with a real energy shortage emergency I imagine the government
will be capable of some sort of WWII-style rationing effort to direct
energy to top-priority sectors like freight trains, public transit and
Web servers.

I would also expect, in a time of rolling brownouts, that there'd be a
booming market in something like a handcrank or bike generator with
built-in battery and inverter, which could be used to power (say) a
radio, notebook or LED light.

It's literally inconceivable to me that the human response to energy
problems could be so passive and static as to result in the scenario
described in World Made by Hand.  Maybe if Peak Oil and the economic
bust were coupled with a supervolcano and monster solar flare, but not
by themselves.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html