Developed in Italy, no less! But if too many kites are put up it will slow the rotation of the Earth, and we'll all be screwed!Originally Posted by FDG
Developed in Italy, no less! But if too many kites are put up it will slow the rotation of the Earth, and we'll all be screwed!
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
I'm not here to argue for nor against Peak Oil.
However, the effects of increased gas/oil prices which aren't matching income increases is definitely affecting the community I live in. Ok, I wouldn't call it a community, more like an extended neighborhood.
First, a description of where I live:
Where I live is 20 minutes to the nearest town.
There are 2 bars/restaurants and 4 'corner' stores within 10 minutes. These corner stores are akin to gas station stores, with limited food options available, and what's there is far far from anything healthy.
The two bars and the one church are the only local providers of 'entertainment'. The church at least makes an effort to get the local communities to gather together and meet each other. Too bad they also do their conversion spiels which pushes people away.
We have one bus that runs every two hours, between 9am-5pm that will take you into town. Of course, it costs $3.50 to park you car in an unsecured area. And, it's 5 miles away from my 'neighborhood'. The road is a very dangerous road for bicyclists. It's a narrow, windy, two lane road with a recently reduced speed limit of 45mph. Bicyclists are often run off the road and injured, accidentally due to poor line of vision and unthinking/unaware drivers, but also often deliberately (I guess you could call bicyclists on the road another form of local entertainment).
The road used to be safer when it was a regular motorcycle touring road. But their main destination closed down, and now the motor bikers no longer 'patrol'.
How gas prices affect this area:
When that one gas price increase hit, the one that sent our prices from under $3/gal to over $4.50/gal, two of the four gas stations shut down...they couldn't afford to buy the gas to provide it. Many people lost their jobs because they couldn't get into either town. Quite a few people lost their homes. And many homes went up for sale...their owners having moved closer to their jobs. Of course, with the traveling prices so high, only a small handful of those homes were actually sold.
Now, with the gas price over at about (and sometimes over) $4/gal, while not hitting as hard as before, is definitely causing more people to seek the solution of moving closer to their jobs, to food, to friends, etc.
I know of at least one family that has doubled up in their home already. (two families of 3 each in one 3 bedroom home). (How this will effect their septic system is something I'll be waiting to hear about.)
If this area were to be hit again with gas prices higher than their income can handle, this place will likely become a ghost town fairly quickly.
* There's only one local food source (a farm about 10 min away), that most people here don't even know about. The only other food option is those corner stores mentioned. I wonder how long people can live off of beer...
* There's no sense of community here. People keep to themselves and/or do their own thing regardless of its influences on other people. Which means that they don't team up to save on gas costs, they find entertainment via computer/games or damaging other people's property (including bicyclists themselves), and even the kids go to different school systems.
* School bus systems radically dropped the first time, with the schools asking parents to transport their kids to school (which is 45 min away)...thus increasing the transportation costs for the families.
Basically, there is nothing here to keep people invested in this area. It's a place to store one's belongings, and to lay your head at night, while you do your living elsewhere.
And because the 'neighborhood' is smallish (Richard wasn't available to give me an approximate figure of population size), we see the for sale signs and the moving vans, but with little detail nor background. Which encourages a sense of panic.
Anyways, we are definitely being impacted here by the rising gas prices, which the income isn't catching up to.
For myself, it costs me $50 to fill my tank. And it takes 1/4 of a tank to cover a round trip to town. (add in that I'm on social security, and that it's not increasing to cover the cost of living increases, and that welfare got hit with a major financial set back, resulting in dependents of people on social security no longer being covered financially by welfare...resulting in my daughter and I losing a significant chunk of income and increased expenses.) So basically, one can say that I'm getting a sneak peak at what many people will be facing in the next 15 or so years.
It doesn't matter where the cause is coming from ...blame it on peak oil, blame it on inflation, blame it on the banks, blame it on the government, it doesn't matter ...the effect IS there.
What to do about it?
We can either hope that government or someone else will step in and 'save' us...or we can take our future into our own hands.
I've chosen the latter option.
Right now, I'm cleaning house in a big way (lol, when I'm able at least).
I figure this first year will be spent getting our house and finances into such a way that we aren't as dependent on getting or household energy and food needs met by outside the area.
This will include creating some kind of ride share program for this area. Honestly, I'd like to figure out how to set up a forum for this area, so that people can meet others in the same area, and that families can work together to find solutions to the problems they are facing. I will probably work on this in the Autumn.
Eventually, some of us will be figuring out which perennial food plants will grow well in our area and create our home gardens. This will also provide a few jobs in our area, that won't require traveling to town daily.
If things do hit here hard, eventually we'll get some of the rules here changed so that some people are allowed chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits, goats, and other such small 'farm' animals.
This place could actually become a community, providing each other food, entertainment, education, and resources.
Will this happen if we sit on our thumbs and hope that things improve on their own? Not likely.
Will it happen if we sit and hope someone else will do something in a top-down approach to improve things for us? Not likely.
But it can happen if we take matters into our own hands, and change things here from the bottom up.
And...*shrug*...if things do happen to recover or change...at least this place will be a little better than it was.
Change doesn't always have to be about doom and gloom.
IEE 649 sx/sp cp
on the bright side...the scales will show a significant decrease in weight. Instant diet!!
IEE 649 sx/sp cp
If you think the reason we don't use these energy sources today is because we can't afford them, think again. We don't make use of alternative forms of energy because it is too efficient and would put oil companies out of business.
ILI (FINAL ANSWER)
Here we go again.
Last edited by Nico1e; 04-28-2011 at 01:28 PM.
you're creepy.
And YOU are an emotionally laden epithet. Yes, I'm creepy. I'm about as creepy as it's physically possible for any human to be, in every possible way that you can imagine.
Now, forgive me, but I'm going to be thoroughly rereading things that are very important to me. I'm off into my creepy little world now, where everything continues to be just as creepy as it has been all this time, and where it will continue to be creepy in the future.
(*This one is bizarre, but I'm leaving it the way it is.*)
So I'm doing my 'close read' from the very beginning. That means that I will painstakingly pick apart every sentence, in thorough detail, because that's the kind of person I am. It will take a while. (Never mind - I ended up picking apart, like, one sentence, and then going into a million different explanations from there.)
Most of my ideas came from reading Julian Simon, so I didn't think of these things myself, and I am merely remembering them and applying them.
Do unto others as you'd have done to you? Fine, it's my turn to translate then. My job is to use my ego block as much as possible, and try to avoid using anything else but that - for instance, I will be totally, hopelessly, completely oblivious to hidden subtexts or deeper meanings, since I was never very good at dealing with all that stuff anyway. So, this requires a special type of mental focus.
And yes, my 'rebuttal' of the analogy earlier was totally a joke, which explains why it looked like a bunch of meaningless gibberish. That's because it actually WAS a bunch of meaningless gibberish. While writing it, I was laughing uncontrollably, because of the strange mood I was in. Even so, I am going to use that same approach to this. I'm doing this because, for some reason, I seem to enjoy spending time with writers more than with anyone else.
Warning: This will be unbearably LONG and totally unreadable to almost everyone, including myself. When I look at this forum post later on, I'm going to say, 'Oh my god, I can't believe I actually wrote that,' which is what I almost always say when I write anything in forums. So please be patient. Skim over it with a glance, see if anything in there is interesting, and then click on some other forum topic to look for livelier conversations elsewhere. This is going to be extremely dull.
It's true, not only am I really creepy, but I am also a crazy wackjob in my own bizarre eccentric harmless little ways, so if you're reading this and thinking to yourself, 'OMG, this person is nuts,' well, that might be true, but there's no need to be alarmed. And you will see occasional fragments of sanity. And so if I am disturbing to anyone, I'm sure there's some way for them to just ignore me. Don't worry - I'm off the net in just a few weeks and I'll only be able to do rare, occasional posts, so I won't be monopolizing any more discussions by writing extremely long incoherent rambling off-topic monologues while simultaneously rudely ignoring everybody.
***************************
"Welcome to the Post Peak-Oil World
A world where fewer and fewer people fly, and their radius of travel shrinks."
(Because the cost of flying or driving is gradually increasing.) Is the price actually increasing? What is causing this increase in price? Is it caused by peak oil? Has anything else ever caused the price of oil to rise?
I agree that the price of gasoline at the pumps has gone up - that's something I can see. I've also seen online that the prices of commodities are going up too, and that includes everything, not just gasoline or oil. (Wait... I just lost my insight.)
Okay... this is hard to explain... and I promised I would be using my ego block, but I had an insight here. *IF* the prices of *EVERYTHING* (no, actually, 'many things,' not everything) are all going up at the same time, then why would you assume that the rising price of oil is causing the price of everything else to go up? You assume that the prices of everything are rising due to the fact that gasoline's high price is making it expensive to transport everything else. You assume that all of the high prices are a consequence of the high price of transporting things.
But why would it necessarily all be caused by gasoline's price in particular? Is the entire 100% of the price rise of everything accounted for by the price rise in gasoline? Is there any percentage of the price rise (in 'commodities') that is caused by something other than the price rise in gasoline and the indirect consequences of the price rises elsewhere? What is causing that other percentage of the price increase?
But wait! you say. You think that oil is running out. Even if something else was contributing to the price increases, that doesn't matter. There could be ten different causes of the price rise, but the only cause that you are interested in (for the sake of this discussion) is the idea that 'peak oil' has occurred at some time in the recent past.
Yes, you would explain this by using a metaphor, but unfortunately, that was the moment when I began laughing uncontrollably and entered a bizarre manic state of mind lasting for hours and became unable to communicate like a normal human being, so maybe we will have to avoid using any metaphors in the future while trying to explain the process of running out of oil. I know it's not easy to describe a cyclical process or a self-reinforcing process or any other complex process without using some kind of simplified metaphorical description, but unfortunately, if you do that, I am going to start laughing and not only that but I will also start interpreting everything as having a hidden sexual meaning in addition to the metaphor's original intended meaning in the discussion. Someday when I am no longer having my chemical-sensitivity induced mood swings, I will be able to talk in a calm and reasonable manner without going into uncontrollable laughter, but alas, as of right now, that is not possible.
I'm going to skip to a totally different random idea which came from Julian Simon. When HE used a metaphor to describe the process of extracting oil, he said that, in this metaphor, you'd imagine that for some strange reason, you kept finding that the water in the pool or whatever it was kept filling itself up after you took water out. This would be what you observed happening. You wouldn't be able to explain where the new water was coming from. (He was talking about, like, a bathtub full of water or a pool of water or something where no matter how much you took out, you kept mysteriously finding that more of it was in there again later.) You would have to find some explanation for where it was coming from.
For instance, he said, maybe there are bacteria that are right now creating new oil, and this process of creating new oil is happening much faster than most people believe it's happening.
I'm not done yet, but I quit for now. This internet addiction is annoying.
Last edited by Nico1e; 04-28-2011 at 01:31 PM.
Inflation causes purchases power to diminish, and it's measured by examining prices in the CPI and the PPI, which are both pointless as inflation can be directly observed at the store.But why then isn't purchasing power rising in sync with inflation (or is it)?
Okay, I should have been clearer, and I can see what you're saying. But my point isn't that there is some fixed ratio in the price of silver; what I meant was that because silver is real money that the government hasn't arbitrarily inflated, the value of it has increased along with its scarcity, meaning that silver is experiencing deflation while the opposite is happening to the inflating dollar, and deflation is exactly what's needed in a recession/depression. So we can see real money adjusting properly to economic conditions while the dollar inflates and causes further misallocation.As for silver coins buying more oil today than years ago, silver does not have an inherent fixed value, so you can't say "the real money price of gasoline has gone down." If the quantity of silver per capita were the same as then, then I agree that the price comparison would make sense.
Last edited by discojoe; 04-14-2011 at 04:57 PM.
Hello Bionicgoat, I think you are my activator. Nice to meet you. Activators sometimes take each other too literally, so if you are nearby while I am talking, I will make sure that all of my hypothetical situations created for the sake of argument will be physically safe to try at home.
lol no. you took my taking you literally literally. i was mostly amused at your posts.
And actually, now that I think about it, I'm still confused about which type of ethics is which. I do this all the time. I think you might be my superego relation instead. I even spent some time last night reading wikisocion trying to understand which types of ethics was which and how to recognize them, but I fell asleep while reading, which explains why I might have missed something.lol no. you took my taking you literally literally. i was mostly amused at your posts.
(*Edit. After further discussion and research: not even the superego relation.*)
Last edited by Nico1e; 04-28-2011 at 01:32 PM.
Huh, I haven't posted in this thread before.
Sounds like a good plan/s, Ann
Excellent post, Ann. This makes me interested in the geography of your location: what is the climate, topography, vegetation, etc. and population density, how far is it from economic centers, and what natural resources exist in the vicinity. Sometimes, I think that places that are being deserted due to infrastructural oversights or rising fuel prices actually may have the potential to support high populations in the long term. I'm very interested in identifying "strategic locations." If you're in Washington, it's got a lot of things going for it: water, biodiversity, diverse crops, fisheries, access to the sea, not too fierce climate (in most areas), and probably a sustainable population (in the medium term at least). But if you're in such a rural location, it's probably out in the drier eastern 2/3 of the state which is dependent upon irrigation. But still not a bad place to be. Better than the northern Great Plains or most of the Southwest and Southeast.
Have you read much about permaculture? I found Bill Mollison's (ILE) book on the subject fascinating, and a great old video with him can be found on YouTube. It is a more sophisticated (and less labor-intensive) way of managing land resources and producing edible plants and animals. Before studying permaculture, I had the view that humans always had a negative impact on their environment, but now I understand that this is not necessarily the case.
No matter what our energy future and whether or not there is a societal collapse or we just jump to a new, higher level of technological development, sound land management principles must be implemented on a broad scale to rebuild soils, maintain and increase biodiversity, and get more carbon back in the ground and into biomass. "Soil building" should be among the top 3 points of most national agendas. Soil health is a reflection of general ecological health, so focusing on whatever is good for soils would help steer development in a better direction.
I am also excited about the prospect that many negative, decades-long trends caused by overreliance on fossil fuels may be reversed. However, all it takes is a major natural or unnatural (like, nuclear) disaster somewhere nearby to disrupt the gentle transition.
Last edited by Rick; 04-15-2011 at 11:28 PM.
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Hey Rick would it be weird if I emailed you (or PMed) you about stuff like this? You can PM me an email if you like.
I'm just collecting contacts and figuring out other people who are privy to such things.
Anyone else, too.
Rick,
I'm in the northwesternest portion, between Bellingham and Mt Vernon (about 45 min from the Canadian border). We have a mountain to the north of us, but we also get a lot of turbulence when winds hit it, causing trees to crash down on electricity lines and houses. The people who created this area didn't think too well, imo.
However, we also draw our water from two small lakes that are within the community. About 2 miles or so away is a larger lake that provides water for most of Bellingham if not all. I still have some research to do on that. At least one of our lakes provides fishing, but it's not well maintained....yet.
We have colder temps than most of the areas around us, putting us at one zone colder. I'd have to look the zone code up, lol. Like I said...lots to learn. We also get tons of rain, more than the nearby areas, probably due to our specific location. Lots of shade, very little sun, and the idiots who put the homes in didn't even consider making use of the sun's path. Most of the plots here are about .2 acres, then subtract the house portion and the septic tank portion. It's also a fight to take out any of the pine trees in order to encourage the sun into our yards. We get lots of frost, and if it snows anywhere close to us, we usually wind up getting it too, lol.
We have a very short growing season, and as mentioned lots of shade. One of the things I'll be researching is which plants will grow here specifically. We can't get many of the stuff that grows easier in nearby locations. Seriously, if we moved just 5 miles east, 30 minutes north, or 30 minutes south, we'd have some awesome weather for growing food.
In all honesty it's a sucky location for a community.
However, I figure that if we can make it work..it'll show that almost anyone can do something similar.
I am currently studying Permaculture. I can't take a course itself due to cost and back issues. I've considered getting Mollison's and Lawton's dvd course, but I'm waiting to hear back on if its too much like what's in the books. If it is, then I'll put my money into a local horticulture course. Much of the stuff I see for permaculture is set up for dryer climates and larger pieces of land. So I'll have to do a lot of researching and experimenting to find what will work for here. I have Whitefield's book too, which is for the UK....a closer environment to what we've got than Australia's, lol. Lawton is working on an Urban Permaculture dvd that I'm anxiously awaiting, as well.
When I start..encouraging...community interaction here, I'll be studying the Transition Town stuff to help guide me.
I'm excited and nervous about this goal. If it works, it could be a great example for nearby areas. And my daughter will be learning skills and ideas that will help her generation. But it is a LOT to take in and learn from scratch. A lot of it also requires a different way of thinking, and a different way of viewing things that are foreign to me. For example, I'm reading a book on Reading the Landscape. It's exciting when I find myself noticing things about the environment around me that I never even thought of before...and that I have some info to link it to. On the other hand, I'm just not used to focusing on those physical aspects even half this much. Not to mention trying to overcome my fear regarding insects...much less considering encouraging snakes in this yard to eat all the darned slugs we have.
So not just having to pay attention to things previously ignored...but also having to research the different elements and plan out a strategy for transitioning this yard?? Ouch.
I just keep telling myself to focus on the inside of the house for now, figure out an easy way to build up this soil while I'm studying, and that it's ok to take it slow, one element at a time, experimenting and learning as I go. AND, that if I get that forum done, then I may be able to draw on local knowledge as well. Ugh, so much to do!!! lol
However, when it comes to spreading out to the rest of the community, I'll definitely be making use of other people's skills.
Sorry for the all over the placeness of this response. There's just sooo much about it that I'm trying learn, juggle, and consider...trying to make it coherent right now is a little beyond me, heh.
IEE 649 sx/sp cp
in the event of oil scarcity, i think the case can be made that it actually makes more sense to live in population dense areas, considering economies of scale can be applied to the distribution of goods in these areas.
I would argue that the most secure spots would be small to medium-sized walkable towns with a history of community involvement that are adjacent to natural transportation corridors and have local access to basic resources (water, fertile soil, wood). A very dense urban area might make centralized distribution easier, but you'd pretty much be at the mercy of whatever local/regional government decides or doesn't decide to do for you.
In emergencies even fairly densely built-up cities can provide maybe 10-30% of their own food (more if there's open land around the city), but if there's an economic collapse along with it, then many people will be out of work and will have to find something useful to do. The people who do best in a doom-and-gloom situation would be those who have access to basic resources and/or can do useful things.
A friend of mine, a Peak Oil doomer, chose a small historical town http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przemy%C5%9Bl (65 thousand people) in eastern Poland as his permanent home. It's got a fairly nice climate, a low regional population density, sense of community and history, an old town center, a substantial river flowing from nearby mountains, and is located on ancient transportation routes. If oil disappears it will be a relatively mild transition to a more traditional way of life where food is carted or floated in from nearby farms and the town becomes a center of crafts and administration.
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Ann, I've actually been through that area and have a good idea of what it's like (plus, I found your town on Google maps). Yeah, the lack of sun up there is the main limiting factor. Agriculture there might be pretty marginal, i.e. attempted in times of famine and abandoned shortly thereafter. While people in other climes are kicking back waiting for their crops to mature, you've got to waste your time building greenhouses and stuff
Here's a basket of cold-climate veggies that can be grown: http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...ns.html?cat=32 (I'm sure you've read stuff like this)
What's the name of that book? It sounds interesting.
Last edited by Rick; 04-16-2011 at 10:12 AM.
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Eastern Poland nice climate for a post-peak oil world? Too cold, IMHO. I believe oceanic climates would be better suited for low energy life, since winters and summers are milder, and rainfaill is almost evenly spread.
Obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit
I'll PM you my address so you can see the specific area I'm in. Then you also might be able to find the bylaws of this community. Any ideas on how to circumnavigate some of them would be great, lol. As they won't be willing to change anything until they lose a lot of people.Ann, I've actually been through that area and have a good idea of what it's like (plus, I found your town on Google maps
Here's a basket of cold-climate veggies that can be grown: http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...ns.html?cat=32 (I'm sure you've read stuff like this)
What's the name of that book? It sounds interesting.
As for food production, berries and greens grow like crazy here. Apples/pears, stone fruits, grapes and kiwi also seem to grow here ok. One nicely situated house on our block grows a cherry tree..though I don't think I've seen it fruit. Across from it are a couple of plum trees that the owner doesn't harvest. Some brassicas do ok, but not as well as the outlying regions. Smaller fruiting vegetables that grow prolific in almost any spot work as well, like zucchini. Peas, beans, etc. Root crops would need some rain protection, but the level of sun works well for them. And I keep seeing hints that there might be a few grain grasses that will grow well here. Some squashes do well, but not the big ones. And small cherry tomato plants in pots. In this area, things like tomatoes, peppers, and such will be hard earned treats. But primarily berries!! Oh, and mushrooms, lol.
Food preservation techniques will definitely be needed.
And many of us will have to alter our primary diet.
Cob ovens wouldn't do well with all this rain, but rocket stoves combined with 'straw ovens' would do great. I've got my eye on one of these small stoves right now.
Red meat will likely have to be traded for. The few deer here will likely be hunted down before people realized that we should let the herds build up first. In our specific community, we are surrounded by outlying houses which aren't part of this community...those will be the ones who'd be taking the deer. But hey, at least there won't be as many hit by cars and wasted that way.
I think that some material products will grow here as well. Instead of sidewalks we have ditches, and these are our "rain gutters". With all the rain those areas often flood. I can see cattails (edible shoots) and/or bamboo (clumping to reduce uncontainable spread) thriving in those spots. I think some of the fast growing forest products will work here too.
There is a group in Bellingham that is called Re-Store. They basically recycle old homes, taking them apart, categorizing the pieces, and then storing the good pieces that can be repurchased and used to build a home elsewhere. I can imagine this area setting aside a home or lot for storage, and doing similar, rebuilding small homes that are better oriented to make use of the lot and sun.
I doubt this community will be able to support the 2,000 or so people that live here now. But many of them wouldn't even want to try, preferring to move closer to their jobs. And the current bylaws would prevent homesteader types from buying homes here, at least until the bylaws change.
Anyways, yeah, this has been on my mind alot. I'm just finally limiting the daydreaming and imaginings and putting some effort into the actual learning and doing part. One small step at a time. Until I have something to show to others, to prove that it'll take more brain power than labor to get most of our needs met. Once I've got that, then I'll feel more comfortable with creating a group. Though I might put a small ad on the store bulletin board to see if there's any people who are also looking into making changes...or who might have specific knowledge/experience that I could make use of. *sigh* That forum thing is probably a high priority as well.
Oh, and did I mention that Richard is just not interested in any of this? He'll support my taking classes on it, or buying books for it. But he doesn't see a need for actually changing anything at home. "It doesn't matter how much water we use, it costs me the same each month." So no need to conserve water, reuse water, get a rain barrel, set the roof up to collect rain, get a better toilet (composting toilet would be my preference) etc etc. Maybe if I learn more about the septic tank, I can use that info to hopefully convince him to make SOME changes at least.
I don't think I'll have to be more creative in my life than figuring these things out for this area AND finding ways around the bylaws AND finding ways around Richard, lol.
Anyways, that one book is: "The Living Landscape: How to Read and Understand It" by Patrick Whitefield. It's written of the UK landscape, so there's a lot of references that I don't get. Places, names of plants, etc. that a native UK would get. But at page 32 so far, I've learned how grazing lands are created and maintained by the animals, and how different types of rocks shape the land. (since I have a poor memory for names and details, I'm also having to learn how to study at the same time...*sigh*)
Rick, I want to thank you for this thread...and for responding to my post. I hopped on the forum because I had been feeling overwhelmed and frustrated on this topic by all the hurdles I've already hit, and the ones I've noticed ahead of me. This forum acts as an escape tool for me. But last night,after the postings on this topic, I found my focus again. I looked at the stuff I was working on, and some other info I had of similar nature, and trimmed it down to some core basics to help guide my next steps. Now I don't feel so muddle-headed. ty
IEE 649 sx/sp cp
the guy who can get things
This is just a thought. As of right now, it's still possible for most people to continue working at their normal jobs. Even if the economy gets worse and worse, many people will still keep trying to find work in the 'white market,' the legal market. They will eventually need to know how to find work in the 'gray market.' The gray market is the place where you do things like babysitting or lawn mowing and you get paid in cash without reporting that cash income to the IRS. It's technically not legal, but they don't usually put people in prison for those things either. They are more interested in arresting people who work in the 'black market,' people like drug dealers, prostitutes, and organized crime gangs.
In the gray market, it helps if you can find 'The guy who can get things,' like in Shawshank Redemption. If someone has a large network of friends and acquaintances, and if he has some idea of who has what, who needs what, who is trustworthy, who has which skills and knowledge, who might possibly be able to get things people need in the future, then that person is able to help a lot of people if the economy does get very bad and people are not finding jobs in the white market. It would be like a job recruiting service. He might say, 'I know someone who could use your help.' In a severely depressed economy where large numbers of people cannot find jobs or cannot afford basic necessities, that is a valuable service.
Argh, I forgot about bylaws and zoning regulations. In this [increasingly less] hypothetical post-Peak Oil situation we're talking about, current bylaws and community structures will be major obstacles to getting things done. For instance, how can a functioning community be "surrounded by outlying houses which aren't part of this community?" It doesn't make sense. Once people begin staying put and working locally, conflicts will ensue between the community and these outlying homeowners who feel they own the land and resources adjacent to their houses. For your community to function long term, it has to develop a whole new concept of resource ownership and management.
My intuition is that many communities will "cling to the past" and fail to change zoning regulations and other bylaws, but these regulations will increasingly not be enforced. It will be like legislation in post-Soviet countries, with laws and systems left over from the Soviet Union that nobody has bothered to change, but that are not enforced... usually. Obviously, communities can avoid a lot of suffering by adjusting to changes as they take place rather than years after the fact. That's why local political involvement is so important. But there will also be an ideological struggle between community members who believe that the changes are temporary and that soon everything will be back to normal in their state and country (just like it took many people in the former USSR several years to realize that the country/system had indeed fallen apart for good) and those who believe the changes are permanent.
Anyways, I wonder if you know who makes these regulations and how one would go about letting their opinion be made known. Try laying out in writing a good case for adjusting the bylaws that are holding people back in the current economic downturn. Maybe they would listen to you and call you in for a discussion or something. At the very least, for starters people should be able to grow food and animals in their own yard for personal consumption. If you want to make an effective proposal, try to identify all the stakeholders and address their interests with your new proposal while making sure your own interests are satisfied, too. I think many bylaws are made to support real estate prices, and a case can be made that a home with lots of food growing on the lot and some worthwhile animals that don't stink (i.e. not cows) is actually becoming more attractive to potential buyers than a house with a decorative lawn.
That Re-Store idea is really great. I have long thought (well, 2 years) that a great business will be tearing down and modifying existing homes to make them more practical: cut the living area in half and double up the insulation, and turn the rest into work areas, food and feed storage, etc. Someone could do this to their home and use the freed up space as a tool "library" for the community so that people can come and check out anything they need for a symbolic price or membership fee.
There's so much that could be done to make life better now, and in a small community it should be comparatively easy to do it. Plus, a small community can function efficiently on a barter system, while a larger town needs currency. The main obstacles are people's conceptions about what is happening and why (which hold them back from being proactive), and perhaps even more -- the legal and taxation system that was build around and for corporate capitalism.
The pessimistic and probably default scenario, though, is that in the early stages of a collapse people will first abandon these small communities (because there's no work and they can't pay their bills) and move to larger towns and cities where there might be work, living as squatters or moving in with relatives. Then, in later stages of collapse people begin to move away from cities in groups as the infrastructure there breaks down, government ceases to provide basic services, or famine ensues, resettling areas that had been abandoned. By the time resettling takes place, people will have gone through a lot of hard times together and may finally have bonded into some semblance of a tribe or community. Obviously, if people can avoid the trauma of moving to the city and then back again even more impoverished, they will be a lot better off -- but only if they have built a functioning community where people help each other out and have developed ways to take care of common property.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I just ordered it to pick up this August in England. I'll be traipsing around the UK for 3 weeks, and it will be a perfect book to read along the way
Definitely. The gray market is the future. More and more people will be developing gray market "backups" for the event that they lose their jobs. It's only "gray" because the legal/tax system is stuck in the past and incapable of change. "Gray" services are essential to life, so Americans shouldn't have so many qualms about gray income and not keeping all the rules all the time.
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Rick, as I mentioned earlier, this isn't really a community, despite what it calls itself. My understanding, which could be wrong, was that this is a large bit of land that was owned by a family who then portioned it off, got the zoning, set up a political and bylaw thing, and sold the plots of land off to people. Their intent, I believe, was to create a sub-urban community similar to one on the other side of the mountain we're on. Which is little more than an extension of the town north of us. They at least get bus service, heh. But it was never set up to be a functioning community in and of itself. Which is actually one of the problems that the other side of the mountain had. They at least have bus service and a mini-strip mall, and far less traveling required to get into town.
One of my hopes is to help turn this into a functioning community. When I'm ready to deal with the community side, then I'll do some training or something from the Transition Towns movement and study up on Intentional Communities. But I suck at politics, so I'll more likely be a mental support for someone who's better at the political and organizational aspects.
There are political stuffs going on here. Owners of plots have the ability to vote. Which has created a conflict between developers who don't live here and the people who actually do. Richard is actually interested in politics (and he's the plot-owner). But he likely won't get involved in it until it reaches near ghost town stage...you know, the point where it's too freakin obvious that the bylaws are screwing up his investment. He is one of those people who doesn't think anything is going to change...that the gas prices are just going to increase along with wages or else technology will save us. However, of the two of us, he has the far better ability to create a good argument, and if he believes in it strongly enough, he'll be quite proactive. (As quiet as he is, he was the main speaker for the labor union of the business he works at. Because of him the business had to pay more in medical and wages and vacation time offs. Their response was to hire him into a production management position, which put him on salary pay, and put him out of the union, lol.) However, currently, he sees my ideas and interests as a bit eccentric but harmless...other than to his pocketbook.
But all this is why I intend to use this time inbetween to study things like permaculture and gain experience not just in the designing, but also in the actual implementation of the physical systems. This would provide something more concrete to show that these things can be done, despite our limited sunshine etc.
And also why something simple, like a community forum so that a sense of community can start to be felt/built by some members. Which might help create a greater force when it's time to get into the political changes here.
And, as I said, if all else fails, at least my daughter will have a skill set that can carry her through rough times.
I'm jealous.Thanks for the book recommendation. I just ordered it to pick up this August in England. I'll be traipsing around the UK for 3 weeks, and it will be a perfect book to read along the way
I wonder, too, if the author would be willing to meet with you for a mini tour of his permaculture garden and/or his immediate area. Offering a first hand taste regarding the info in his book, and his knowledge/experience. He's also the author of one of the permaculture books I mentioned, which, while written for the UK, is used by some Northern parts of the usa rather than the Australia written books (environment is more similar than with Australia, heh).
Either way, it would be cool to actually get to see first hand some of the stuff he talks about in his landscape reading book, with or without him.
May you enjoy your traipsing.
IEE 649 sx/sp cp
Inappropriateness
Still off-topic.
Last edited by Nico1e; 04-28-2011 at 01:34 PM.
I haven't checked that mailbox in days. I purposely limit my online life so that I don't begin to use the Internet for things better done offline. What difference does it make if I befriend someone or not on this site? If people want to become my friends, then meet me in person to talk about or do something I'm interested in. This site for me is for testing ideas and learning from other people.
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Yes, and I actually agree with you about that.
(*Edit. I am merely a soulless robot who does not experience feelings or emotions, so I will remove all mention of feelings and emotions from this post.*)
Last edited by Nico1e; 04-28-2011 at 01:35 PM.
Some people believe that the money system is the cause of inflation and economic depressions. Other people believe that peak oil is the cause of the rising prices and economic hardship.
These two groups of people will take different actions. What is the consequence of their beliefs? What do they do? What actions do they take in reality as a result of their beliefs? What plans do they make for their futures?
Those who believe that the money system is the cause will do particular things to solve that problem (or just cope with it while leaving it unsolved). Those who believe that peak oil is the cause will do other things to solve (cope with, work around, endure in spite of) that problem. These two groups of people both exist in the world and are both taking action right now. Both groups are planning their futures based on their beliefs about what is causing the problems in the world.
Of course there are other groups of people too. Those aren't the only two groups of people in the world.
If peak oil is real, if it's causing the problems in our economy, that's just something we have to get used to. We can't fight against peak oil. We can't have rebellions against peak oil. That would be like rebelling against gravity. It's supposedly a force of nature, something inevitable. There would be people rebelling against the government as they argued over who gets which scarce resources, but all would agree that the scarcity of oil was the problem.
On the other hand, there are those who believe that the money system is the cause of the economic problems. There are those who, like me, believe peak oil is a myth. We would take different actions to solve the problem.
Peak oil draws attention away from the government, which is the true cause of the economic problems. Peak oil makes us say, 'Oh well, we just have to get used to it. That's the way things are. We're out of oil, and that's that.' Meanwhile, the government's money system continues causing economic boom and bust cycles in the economy. The economy improves for a few years, then crashes, then improves again, then crashes again, as a result of the banking system.
Some people interpret everything as being somehow connected to the oil supply. Perhaps, if the economy improves a little bit, if things temporarily get cheaper, if inflation is less severe, they might say, 'Well, we must have found a large supply of oil somewhere, but it's temporary, and it's going to run out again.' And when the economy crashes again, they might say, 'Well, that's the end of the big supply of oil that they found a couple of years ago.'
You will not see a steady decline in the future as the oil gradually runs out forever. You will not see all the oil used up. You will not see the price of oil going infinitely higher and higher as people struggle to get the last little bit of it out of the ground. However, you WILL see the economy go through boom and bust cycles, periods of inflation and deflation, periods of investment and then sudden losses of their investments. You will see stagnation. You will see the government continuing to nickel-and-dime people to death with more and more taxes. You will see a slow decline in the quality of life, or stagnation, and some parts of the world will see temporary improvements here and there, but overall, you will not see the oil getting completely used up until it's gone.
I got the impression that you personally, Rick, are not drastically changing your lifestyle to prepare for the loss of all the oil in the world. You are watching to see what will happen and you are adapting to it as things change. But I don't know. That's just the impression I have gotten so far.
One example. Some people might buy a bunch of barrels of oil, hoping to store it for future use, and hoping to have enough to sell to people so that they can make lots of money in the future when people are desperate to get oil that they can't find anywhere else. Unfortunately, they find that storing a bunch of oil barrels is expensive and dangerous (it's even more dangerous if you store something explosive like gasoline, which, yes, some people have tried to do - don't ever do that). After storing them for a while, they feel that it's such a huge hassle, they wish they could just get rid of all these barrels of oil because they don't want to have to deal with this anymore. It turns out that they're not making any profit on this, when they expected that they would get really, really rich because of the oil shortage, because they had oil when the rest of world was running out of it. I'm not saying that happens to EVERYONE. I'm saying, that's the kind of thing that happens to some people who do these things.
But you yourself are not storing up barrels of oil. What if, instead, you were spending very large amounts of money to buy some kind of financial investment, I don't know, oil futures or something? You'd be expecting the price of oil to keep going up and up and up, so you'd get rich if you bought the right financial investments now while oil was still cheap.
I wouldn't want you to waste all your money on something like that. If you strongly believed that peak oil had already happened, and that oil would be getting more and more scarce in the future, then you'd feel falsely confident that this particular investment of money could not possibly go wrong. That would be a terrible risk and a waste of money if the investment collapsed in the future.
But if you are not doing anything like that either, then maybe, you are not really at any great risk by believing in peak oil. If you are not taking any particular ACTIONS as a result of this belief, then it's like any other harmless belief that has no effect on our daily lives.
I myself am interested in intentional communities as I think they will improve the quality of life in many ways, but not because of running out of oil. I think they are a way to create a better culture. I also agree that yes, the economy is having problems, but I interpret the cause differently. In fact I agree with most of your observations, but not with the idea that the phenomena are the result of a permanent oil shortage.
Last edited by Nico1e; 04-20-2011 at 03:53 AM. Reason: deleted a bunch of notes; removed an annoying word
Here's a very short presentation on how student loans work in the U.S.:
http://www.collegescholarships.org/r...student-loans/
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Peak Oil is not a "harmless belief that has no effect on our daily lives." Like I wrote earlier, Peak Oil affects our lives not so much as an "idea about the future," but through prices. You may not believe in Peak Oil, but choose to travel less because of higher fuel prices. My ideas about Peak Oil have contributed to choosing to live in places where I am at no disadvantage for not owning a car. Soon relatives of mine who didn't figure high fuel prices into their choice of residence may have to walk away from their home because they commute one hour to work. I will not put myself in such a vulnerable position because my default assumption is that fuel prices will remain high, the economy will be in poor shape and that many aspects of modern life are not sustainable, and will thus be gradually abandoned. So, ideas about Peak Oil contribute to my foresight, allowing my family to avoid problems that others will face head-on or have already been facing.
How can we be having a debate about "whether Peak Oil is real or not?" That position is baseless. Here are some charts:
1. Global annual oil production peaked in 2005. http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploa...2001_20101.jpg
Here's a chart with a higher resolution for the last few years:
http://www.theoildrum.com/uploads/28/Scenario1Final.jpg
Our current drop from the peak is not yet dramatic enough to convince most people that Peak Oil is indeed behind us. Could production pick up again and exceed 2005 levels?
2. Perhaps it could — very briefly. Here's a graph showing oil discoveries against production:
http://www.oilcrisis.com/campbell/im...rowinggapB.gif
Since the 80s we've been extracting more oil than has been discovered. Here's a different graph presenting that information a bit differently:
http://informationracer.com/GiantOilField-1.jpg
As you can see, the average size of new fields discovered has been dropping since the 40s, and the total size of new discoveries has been dropping since the 60s.
3. Are there any precedents to Peak Oil?
Of course — peak oil production in separate countries or regions. Most oil-producing countries are past peak. Once just a few more key oil-producing countries hit their peak, than cumulative, global oil production will also peak, if it has not already. Here's an example of a past-peak oil producer: the U.S.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-co...20_to_2005.png
Despite all the advances in extraction technology and generally high oil prices, oil production in the U.S. is still dropping. It's even dropping in Alaska:
http://www.gold-speculator.com/attac...1_1aquinn6.jpg
The best-guess estimate of Peak Oil is 2005-2007. The optimist's best guess is 2012-2015, but I think the chances are very high that it was 2005-2007.
Last edited by Rick; 04-20-2011 at 02:11 PM.
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Disconnecting from socionics
Not again.
Last edited by Nico1e; 04-28-2011 at 01:36 PM.
delete
Last edited by Slacker; 11-02-2011 at 06:17 PM.
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.-Mark Twain
You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.
It is irritating to be harassed with all these questions and comments directed at my personal life in a thread on an unrelated topic. Could you please stop it?
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
LSI: “I still can’t figure out Pinterest.”
Me: “It’s just, like, idea boards.”
LSI: “I don’t have ideas.”
Edit, blah blah, feelings feelings, more personally directed comments.
If we were having an argument in the real world, I would lose, because I'm slow and dull-witted and I can't think on my feet. But thankfully for us all, this is the internet. I have plenty of time to compose a reply. It's like taking an open-book test.
Once again, I admire your lifestyle. You chose a place to live, based on a vision, based on your criteria, instead of just living somewhere random.
People feel socially humiliated when they go bankrupt or lose their house, their car, or their jobs. In a way it's not really their fault, as they only did what everyone else was doing. But they still feel like a failure. And they have to pay the debt and someone can garnish their wages. So you saw that happening to other people and made sure it didn't happen to you, and the Peak Oil ideas influenced your decisions.
This happens. This is something that happens.
WHY did production drop? You assume that they are automatically, desperately trying to produce as much oil as they can, using all of the means available. You assume they are always, constantly producing oil at the maximum speed possible, but, alas, in spite of their efforts, it is futile - the oil production inexorably declines anyway.
What if they voluntarily chose to produce less for some reason? What could be a reason why they might voluntarily choose to produce less oil? Has anyone in history ever chosen to voluntarily produce less of a product? Under what circumstances might a business choose to produce less of something?
What other factors go into oil production, besides the oil itself? What if, for some reason, it was becoming harder to buy the equipment to extract the oil? What if the price of the land was rising, so it became less affordable to buy a bunch of land to go looking for oil on it? What if the process of extracting oil became more difficult or more expensive for various reasons (reasons having nothing to do with the quantity of oil), so that they produced less?
What if laws were written that made it more difficult to get permission to start up a new oil well? (I remember something about 'new oil' and 'old oil' in the laws, as in, old oil had special privileges that new oil did not have. It was in history class when they were talking about 'grandfather clauses' or something like that.) What if the oil producing countries were involved in wars or social unrest which made their entire economies less productive? What if economic sanctions were placed on some countries so that they could not get the supplies needed to build and operate oil wells? What if there was plenty of oil, but no one was allowed, or able, to look for it and get it out?
How much oil was being set aside into storage at any given time? How much oil was actually being sold? To whom was it sold, and for what? How much oil was being consumed, and how? Has the usage of oil changed over those decades? Has any process been made more efficient so that we use less oil and don't need to buy as much? Do we have stockpiles of oil? How much?
It's easy to measure the amount of oil extracted. It is NOT easy to measure the amount of oil discovered while it's still in the ground. Sometimes the amounts of oil discovered may turn out to be larger or smaller than originally estimated. Even so, it may be true that the amount of oil extracted is more than the amount discovered.
But, as I said above, the process of discovering oil is not an automatic process that just happens on its own. Somebody has to choose to go discover it. They may be inhibited in doing this for various reasons. How do you know for sure that anybody is actually LOOKING FOR new oil?
Maybe it's true that there's been a net extraction of oil, as we've taken out more than we've discovered. Perhaps they decided to settle for using up the oil they have already found. It might be less expensive or easier to just drain out the oil wells they already have first, instead of investing lots of money in looking for more oil. Perhaps when the oil wells are almost all drained out, then suddenly somebody will get up and go looking for more of them at the very last minute, because it will then be more profitable to do so.
Perhaps smaller-on-average fields are being discovered because we now have better technology that allows us to detect and locate smaller areas of oil. This is an increase in technical power, not a decrease. The average size of the oil fields would decrease if, for instance, we had a super oil detector that could locate one single drop of oil isolated in the ground all by itself. So we would discover millions and millions of individual drops, thereby decreasing the average size of oil fields discovered, if each oil field is only one drop wide. Who knows.
Perhaps in the beginning, we didn't have much technology for finding oil, and so the only oil fields we could ever find were the huge ones that jumped out and bit us. Perhaps, in the beginning, we found oil in the most obvious oil fields in the world, in the Middle East, where it's obvious that some kind of stuff is in the ground, as they have really weird stuff everywhere that anybody can see - for instance, entire hillsides constantly on fire because methane gas is escaping from the ground, or the Dead Sea, which, if I recall, is filled with chunks of naturally occurring asphalt. In a place like that, it's easy to notice that there's oil around. So we found those gigantic oil fields first, before we found all the harder-to-find oil fields that don't jump out and bite us.
If a peak on a chart can tell us that the chart will now go downwards forever, then perhaps the trough on the chart will tell us that the chart will now go upwards forever. That would be cool.
Edit, once again, just another soulless robot typing on the internet here, don't mind me.
Last edited by Nico1e; 04-28-2011 at 01:39 PM.
Edited, albeit with attitude.
Last edited by Nico1e; 04-28-2011 at 01:40 PM.
Your name is Queen Mother Maritsa ?
You better double check, I did and it turned out I'm not on ignore even though the person(s) "ignored" me 3 or 4 times repeatedly.I'm not sure which one of us thought of the 'ignore' idea first, but we seem to both agree that it is a good idea. I can't verify that I am actually on ignore, but will have to take his word for it.
You're Maritsa.Meanwhile, about that 'disconnecting from socionics' thing. Now that I'm on 'ignore,' I'll talk about Rick in the third person tense, which is what I normally do anyhow.
...and your point is ?He went to a foreign country, found something very useful, translated it, and brought it to the English speaking world. A few other people did too. He didn't get paid to do any of that, and he didn't get paid (as far as I know?) to make any of the socionics websites, although I really have no idea. I'm not sure who would have paid him, because nobody 'owns' socionics.
I'm going to publish my own soon, it's called "How to stand on a pint of piss and tell about it after".As for his writing a book about socionics? I wonder. I'd enjoy reading an autobiography.
I understand, Absurd. Thanks for the moral support.
(Looking at a basilisk in a mirror is still probably not a healthy or pleasant experience.)
I'm going to delete a couple things, but I'm not sure which ones yet. I've got them saved for future reference. I have to judge which ones to leave in there, because some of it actually had to do with peak oil.
Okay, I removed a few things, and complained once or twice about how I don't like being a soulless robot and all that.
Last edited by Nico1e; 04-28-2011 at 01:41 PM.
I'm so moral like a monkey in outer space. Thanks, anyway
Don't worry about my health and it's more like looking at Gorgon Medusa.(Looking at a basilisk in a mirror is still probably not a healthy or pleasant experience.)
Haha, the ironyI'm going to delete a couple things, but I'm not sure which ones yet. I've got them saved for future reference.
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