[p2p-research] James Howard Kunstler

Thu Jun 24 01:18:17 CEST 2010

Good to have you hear michael!

A few remarks of my own: collapses tend to be slow and ongoing most of the
time, not abrupt, this leaves more time for adaptation.

The middle ages that ryan mentions are a good case in point ... if you were
a farmer, the situation wasn't all that bad, relatively speaking, and
arguable better than under the Roman Empire ... before industrialization
there was a resilient infrastructure of food and craft production which
survived many regime changes .. Remember that when the middle ages really
started, after 975, population doubled during three centuries ..

Michel

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 5:18 AM, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>wrote:

>  Your statement below concerning "that things don't organize when they are
> bad" and the examples--"most of Africa", "Burma" is I think of a piece with
> the "failed states" presentation... A bit of nuance and contextual
> understanding might be useful...
>
> The "natural" evolution of most of Africa and South Asia was interrupted by
> the imposition of imperial structures including in the economy, education
> system, public administration... When those structures were abruptly removed
> at the end of the colonial era -- whether forcibly or not -- there was a gap
> and a quite severe disjuncture between the base culture which continued to
> exist under the colonial regimes and what was required to function
> effectively in the modern era--no operating educational system,
> administrative system, economic system that was effectively adapted to the
> reality of the base culture/economy/governance structures that had survived.
> The absence of the colonial power to maintain the now empty facades of the
> colonial system meant that these inevitably imploded leaving nothing much
> workable in their stead.
>
> The capacity to develop something to replace this given an overall absence
> of trained local resources (another legacy of the colonial period) was
> equally absent and in many places is still absent (and this holds true for
> internal "colonies" like Appalachia -- colonized by capital from Pittsburgh,
> Philadelphia and the East Coast; the midlands and the North -- colonized by
> London and the South and so on.
>
> Where on-going processes of adaptation and internal evolution were not
> truncated by colonial superimposition--Thailand (compared to Burma), Morocco
> (compared to Algeria), Jordan (compared to most of the rest of the Middle
> East) the adaptation process while not smooth has at least not been
> disastrous.  Other places such as India and South Africa have been able to
> at least partially bridge the gap.  Other places such as the DRC, and much
> of sub-saharan Africa, PNG etc. have not.
>
> How that helps us to predict what might happen in a period of extreme
> energy scarcity etc. I'm not really sure but I'm not familiar with any
> country that has gone through a severe period of self-imposed
> de-industrialization except Russia where folks like you I'm sure would argue
> that the removal of the Soviet power structure was sufficient to create the
> gap that I am describing.
>
> Best,
>
> MBG
>
>
>
>  -----Original Message-----
> *From:* p2presearch-bounces at listcultures.org [mailto:
> p2presearch-bounces at listcultures.org] *On Behalf Of *Ryan Lanham
> *Sent:* Wednesday, June 23, 2010 2:40 PM
> *To:* p2p research network
> *Subject:* Re: [p2p-research] James Howard Kunstler
>
> On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Kevin Carson <
> free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> 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.
>
>
>
> This resliance theory was very hot in the graduate schools in the early
> 2000s.  I find it interesting but I doubt strongly it is right.  Things
> actually do fall apart to borrow from Achebe.
>
> The evidence for that seems to be that things don't organize when they are
> bad--as in most of Africa, or Burma, etc.--some of which I too have seen
> firsthand.  In short, with all the freeware in the world, undereducated folk
> don't spontaneously start functioning bureacracies which are notorious
> difficult to achieve--witness the Middle Ages.
>
> Further, when those things cash out and collapse (as they are in a number
> of the Failed State Index states with rankings worse than 100), or as in
> parts of Appalachia I have seen like War, WV, they don't come back either.
> Smart people move on and functionality ceases.  The Mad Max movies have this
> sort of right when the captive engineering type is made to run the town
> until he inevitably rebels.  Most will just walk out as they do in ghettos
> or in industrial towns in the Midlands of England which increasingly look
> like bombed out zones in Sheffield and similar.  I know many smart people
> from those places.  Most would like to be there because it is "home" but
> few, I think, will ever wander back to Detroit or Smolensk or Newcastle.
> What is left is the group that doesn't perform because they have little
> understanding or access to what performance is or how it can be done in ways
> that aren't magical.  The smart migrate.
>
> You can tell there will be few simple solutions for the masses because
> those who focus on stuff for the free (as in air) market rarely emphasize
> useability and ease of access.  Instead, they attempt to corner the
> technology expertise.  Everytime one of these currency tools, etc. that come
> through this list pops up I generally have a look.  Almost always, the tools
> are complex, require Linux expertise and advanced tinkering, and have poor
> user interfaces with little focus on ease of set-up or portability.
>
>
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