[p2p-research] James Howard Kunstler

Thu Jun 24 05:57:53 CEST 2010

Hi Michel, thanks!

I think this one if/when it happens might be rather more abrupt... in the
recent economic turmoil there was a lot of discussion of ow ICTs have (in
the interests of efficiency and rapidity) removed a lot of the shock
absorbers in the financial system.  The recent short lived catastrophic
plunge in the market is a likely outcome of that... The acceleration in the
"collapse" would be both directly impacted by this and as well there are a
lot of other "shock absorber" like features that have equally been removed
from our communications, political, and cultural systems -- notice how
little time it took from conception to realization for the removal of the
Aussie PM and Gen. McChrystal today and Helen Thomas the other day.

We live with and through highly complex, highly intertwined, and quite
brittle production and distribution systems.  It would I think, take very
little to unbalance the house of cards and quite a long time to reconnect
things and people at a much lower level of "sustainable" complexity
especially in urban environments. P2P would be a very important (essential)
part of that but my guess is that it is unlikely in advance of a collapse to
ever reach the necessary level of dispersal and assimilation into our
current systems of production and distribution to allow for anything like a
smooth transition.

MBG

-----Original Message-----
From: p2presearch-bounces at listcultures.org
[mailto:p2presearch-bounces at listcultures.org] On Behalf Of Michel Bauwens
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 7:18 PM
To: p2p research network
Subject: Re: [p2p-research] James Howard Kunstler

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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