[p2p-research] James Howard Kunstler

[Ryan Lanham]

The topics you raise are all of great interest to me...and I've tried to
think about and research them without much success.  Starting with the
Middle Ages, where I think we have modest knowledge given the relative
proximity, but also things like the impact of public administration and
colonialism.

I'll say a few things I think I can generalize...but I agree generalities
are at least hard and possibly impossible.

1. The imposition by the Normans of civil law structures of commonality
(especially common law and its base elements) was all important in forming
the Modern world.  Britain broke out of Roman Law which has a strong
tendency to this day toward despotism.  It was really a necessity to
implement common law because the sheriff system of the English Saxons was
localism run wild...a system that didn't allow for innovation...Brother
Cadfael notwithstanding.

2. The decline and fall of the Church when it became celibate, and thus,
hierarchical rather than community based, also factored greatly in the new
rise of the Middle Ages that Michel speaks of...innovation in plowing,
markets, transport, etc.  around 1000AD for the next few centuries until
shattered by urban plagues.

3. Colonialism.  This is, I think I have written here, the most understudied
topic of the modern world.  Colonialism is to Europe what slavery is to the
US...the dirty secret that keeps on giving by virtue of its denial.  That
said, the real issue wasn't the lack of skills transfer, it was access to
capital.  The skills were not that great in the 19th century...the US proved
this by continually activating new waves of immigrants with minimal schools
and almost no training infrastructure.  The issue was instead the support of
credit flows.  Absence of banking structures was the key.  If you want to
grow any sized community...start an honest and fair bank...until credit ops
dry up...then you are screwed...which is the modern world.

4. That Russia itself removed the Soviets is of little doubt to me.  The US
didn't so much win the Cold War as Russia and Eastern Europe did.  It nearly
bankrupted the US and we got nothing.  At least Europe gets cheap natural
gas.  We should have gotten a peace dividend, but our system is too corrupt
and the world's free riding on our military too great for that to have
occurred.

5. I am leaving the training and learning world, but I'd say this: Skills
matter, but they don't matter that much.  Neither does education.  What
matters is systems.  Systems are working networks of flows that make
economic sense.  They are hard to build and those who build
them--entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs, are the closest thing the
modern world has to saints.  Co-ops are the right way, in my view, to grow
them...to multiply them.  That was as true in 1150 AD under Henry II as it
is now.  P2P is the means of growing experts by co-op'ing knowledge on
distributed projects.  Schools and TVET help, but only a very little.  A
good bank and a good working network of enabling experts in success is far
more powerful than skills.

I'd like to say more about public administration, but I am of mixed emotions
on the topic.  Right now I am inclined to see most governments as failures.
Those that are good are very engaged with civil society and working at the
street level in many ways to create stability and sound contracts.  Few
places have that.

Ryan

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 5:18 PM, 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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>


-- 
Ryan Lanham
rlanham1963 at gmail.com
Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
P.O. Box 633
Grand Cayman, KY1-1303
Cayman Islands
(345) 916-1712
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