Quote from long article.Worth reading. "Yes, we can and will build a largely local economy out of the ruins of a collapsed globalised one. It will be a much poorer one and one where we will have lost much of what we take for granted. It can also provide a good life, where our basic needs are met, where meaningful lives can be lived, and a rich texture of experience found. But in the interim we face a huge resilience gap between the basic welfare and social needs once provided by integration with the globalised growth economy and what is available without it. We need to prepare for sudden shocks such as freezes in the banking system, and its effect on food access say, and the more strategic changes we require in agriculture, monetary systems, employment, and governance. The problem with such preparations is that in many cases they are likely to be too late. This is because the risk of severe financial shocks is rising all the time, and the issues are complex and often unclear. In addition real preparation would require a new and wide consensus on the nature of our predicament. But the emergence of such a consensus would lead to people and institutions taking rational action such as withdrawing deposits from banks, cashing in financial assets, or the refusing of credit. Such action would begin the re-enforcing process of supply-chain contagion and a systemic collapse in the globalised economy." ................................................. "Growth is very recent, two hundred years or so, and resilient, bouncing back from world wars and a great depression. It's been the driving dynamic of the integrated, de-localised system that has tied our welfare to trillions of transactions across the world. It has been so stable, and we have become so habituated to it that we barely notice what has transpired, the inherent complexity obscured by attenuation in simple things and services-my phone rings, I take a bus, my money works to buy my bread. Bread was once hard won from our local environs and required a large share of our time or income. Now it is of slight cost, accessible with trivial effort, but requires the integrated dance of complex transport, IT, banking, electric grid infrastructure; factories supplying factories, supplying factories; and the economies of scale and supply-chains that depend upon a globalised world. Not only have our dependencies become more and more de-localised and complex, they have also become more dependent on high speed flows of good and services. The real-time flow of deliveries is an integral part of modern production processes. If deliveries are halted, for example, by a large-scale systemic banking collapse, the flow can be arrested, and economic production halted. The longer production is halted, the deeper the supply-chain failure extends, and the greater the entropic decay, from rust, for example. And the longer the down time, the harder it would be to re-boot the economy, and the greater the risk of a terminal systemic collapse in the global economy. Indeed internationalised production flows are as important for the viability of our complex economy as energy flows, they are two of a number of co-dependent systems that integrate the globalised economy. If spare parts for our national grid could not be replaced due to some supply chain failure, having plenty of fuel may not matter, electricity might not be delivered. And electricity failure would compromise other critical infrastructure such as banking infrastructure, IT systems, sewage and water." http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-06-13/world-limits-growth
So basically collapse will be a self reinforcing cycle.. i.e. collapse leads to austerity and austerity leads to recession and recession leads to collapse??
What cannot happen, won't. Saw a great lecture on exponential growth by a professor of physics a while ago that touched on some of the same things that this article talks about. I think this was it... Al Bartlett... http://old.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/461
I dunnoh about that "growth happening over the past 200 years" bit. With the exception of the European Empirical expansionist regime into Australia, Asia and America, I think the main growth has happened in the 66 odd years since the end of the great wars. Before this current long and unprecedented period of peace, war has been responsible for holding us back and preventing growth. Since we've been freed from conducting, preparing for and/or rebuilding after wars, we've been able to solve many of the other great killers our society namley disease and famine. The Health and Green Revolutions that occurred post-war, have contributed more to growth than just the end of war itself. Before then, whole families were wiped out by war, famine or disease and their wealth transfered to others (this masked and negated the neeed for growth). Now with more people around and living full long lives, there is a need for growth so that everyone has enough. New money and resources have to be found where before they could just be recycled through the population as people were wiped out. QED for growth to stop there has to be a change to 'rapid continual renewal' through war, disease and/or famine to keep the population stable and a 'restricted wealth base' circulating rapidly through inheritence. maybe? comments?
The lecture that Dwayne mentions is well worth stackers time to watch (about an hour). We all instinctively know what he is saying (what attracted us to Precious Metals) but to hear someone educated and elequantly put it is quite nice. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY[/youtube]
All growth needs something to go before it (like a war ending, beginnings of industrial change), something to build on and then less effort is required for each new stage of growth eg: radio-tv-internet. After that growth has become exponetial there needs to be some renewal of resources before more growth can occur. Like bacteria colonies that grow slowly at first, then given the right conditions there is an explosion in the population before the nutrients are wiped out and the population subsides until a sustainable level is reached again. More nutrients and better conditions may eventually be supplied and off they go again. Humans are not so different from the rest of nature, our activiites and growth is just measured differently.
This minsomer of "Growth being essential" I think needs to be re-thought out. Especially for Australians and especially for the growth of population. Australia has one of the highest living standards in the world largely IMO due to our large resource base compared to our population. All of those billions of dollars in revenue are being spread around so few people. If Australia was bare of these resources we would not be as far advanced as we are today. Limiting population growth (or trying to hold it steady) is IMO essential to Australia's long term prosperity. Spreading the same weatlth between more and more people is only going to make us poorer and poorer. But we are so short sighted (largely due to democracy) that we crave "Growth". If SHTF does happen, Australia is best positioned world wide to survive from it (provided a superpower doesn't attack). If all world wide trade was to hault immeadiately oil is the only thing stoping Australia from continuing out current level of living. Sure it will be tough going with out it but we would do ok. Many countries can't even feed themselves let alone, be self sufficient in energy, steel, food, water, the list is very long. Lets forget about "growth" and see if we can actually maintain our current standard of living.
