For some time now, I have been promoting hypercomplexity in my comments on the Web, my books and my own Substack. Those who read my writings know this. I have gotten some pushback as well as arguments from the troll populace, but it is still to my advantage to make this delineation, something B does not do yet. YET! He may get there soon enough since he is an astute analyst and is able to follow where his own argument leads.
In a nutshell, the US and UK are not just complex societies; they are hypercomplex in their growth economies, which also translates into their societal functions. This is based on the acceleration of acceleration of their growth models (the third derivative, or "jerk" in calculus parlance) and comes from the NECESSITY to go faster and faster just to stay in place on a treadmill that is not just increasing in speed, but actually rising in its incline, so the speed at which the economy and society in general is moving needs to constantly accelerate its acceleration. Other countries, like France and Germany are accelerating their growth economies but not increasing their acceleration. In fact, they are contracting AND they seem to be managing their contraction. (And yes they could do a better job of it. C'est la vie.
The US and UK need everyone to not only consumer more and work more, but also increase their consumption and work at a constantly increasing pace. This argues against their ability to work within any form of limits and manage their coming contraction. Therefore they will just crash.
I have mixed feelings about the analogy of an economy or a society to an individual organism. It is well known in the study of ancient cultures that people just vote with their feet rather than go down with the ship. Also, the autophagy example is suspect too, as autophagy is a regular process that eats up the depleted cells and the toxins that have been freed. In B's analogy, the autophagy process eats up everyone.
In real terms, we just don't know how this collapse will play out beyond some broad strokes. The best adaptation is to be adaptable. Since industrial agriculture depends heavily on globalized phosphorus reserves that require control of source, plus massive amounts of fossil fuels to build the tractors and combines, plus massive amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture fertilizer, plus massive amounts of fossil fuels in production and transport, it is unlikely that die-off can be put off in any appreciable manner. In other words, as many of us have been saying for sometime; it is not a question of IF there is a die-off. It is a question of WHEN. Then it is all a crap shoot and no amount of airy-fairy design work will see you through. You will have to adapt to survive.
What I and many other sustainable farmer types have been doing for some years is developing alternate strategies. These can be tested right now AND they actually provide a favorable EROI for food production. It is not a question of whether it is sustainable in some rarified academic treatise; it is a question of how many people we can save now and in the future.
I get a lot of flack from computer jockeys who want to argue about what sustainable means or if agriculture is "bad" or some other bullshit. What I work on is growing potatoes, beans, wheat, etc. with lowered energy inputs. Once you get on that particular train, you have more places to jump off before the train goes over the cliff.
My understanding ( I have only planted small vegetable gardens where success was not critical) is that low tech farming and animal husbandry (chickens) is hard work and fraught with failure especially for the novice. Crop failures, predators, theft, disease, etc. At 71 with no family or help, I would fall below self-sufficiency in a low tech scenario.
Against the backdrop of declining ore and energy grades combined with accelerating fossil fuel depletion from renewables, even as the last gasp burst in production conceals the longer term drop off awaiting us down the road, the productive, can-do people (middle class) will be caught in a political and economic vise.
Our society (middle class) is carrying an incredible parasitic burden. I describe it as the parasitic pyramid. The oligarchs on the top have captured political control, the money supply, the means of production for example corporate monocrop farming, beef, hog and chicken industry, distribution, etc.
From the bottom, we have all these people who lacking initiative have relied on getting government jobs for their pensions and paychecks, with little value added productive skills or service compared to what the private sector could offer. Even worse are the hoards of welfare recipients. I hear the remark over and over again to members of our military "thank you for your service." Yes, if you join the armed forces, you risk being killed or even worse, crippled. I get that. But for the rest, it's more about what benefits they can get from joining the military---not serving your country. That's all I hear from members of the military at the gym. Sorry, but I call them as I see them.
So getting back on topic, I see a political upheaval in the future. I would not get too comfortable on a nice suburban mansion requiring 20 mile commutes to a job that might not exist in ten years, even if you are like me who thinks this AI is yet another hoax to siphon off wealth from pension funds and ultimately the taxpayer so that the elites can build a digital prison around us.
My first concern these days would be how quickly can I relocate. Hopefully the roads would still be passable and the trucks still running so I could load up and move, but that too may be wishful thinking.
Some good points. Since you already have some experience growing food, you are ahead of the game. Think of prepping for the long term. A bug-out bag is just a preliminary step to get you to a safe place. Well, how about getting to a safe place well ahead of die-off and building up relationships in that community? Relocation is a key concept. After building up our soil and establishing a 60-tree orchard on our little farm in Washington state, we were able to sell off our sweat equity and have enough to move to France in 2018. Now I have about an acre to work with in the foothills of the Pyrenees, which is plenty. As for self-suffiency, none of us sustainable farmers either here or back in the states grow everything we need. The key is to grow a surplus so you can trade, either now or after the Dark Ages return. It is likely that Homo erectus was able to make the first move out of Africa because of humans trading with each other. So there is a long precedent for trade.
My family have lived in the Pyrenees for many centuries, being Basques. Our family name comes from a tiny hamlet, a cluster of 5 houses recorded in ta records as early as the 12thc, and which was abandoned in the 1960s when nearly everyone moved to own as Spain grew wealthier.
Good for you for doing something and making a go of it, but the reality in the past, into the mid-20th c, was a very harsh,, uncertain life, frequent famine or near-famine, and rampant TB, typhus, and the diseases of malnutrition, etc.
They were very tough people in a way no one in the West is anymore, even the small sheep farmers who survive here and there in Europe.
This is not meant to be a negative comment in any way, and I hope you enjoy where you are and your orchard is fruitful!
I grew up on a dairy farm in southern Minnesota in the US. We had to move to town in the 1960s too. In Willard Cochrane's Development of American Agriculture (1979), he gives some numbers on US farmers moving off the land. The largest number was in the 1960s, much more so than in the 1970s after Nixon's recession and the move to "get big or get out." Living in the Occitan, we see much more peasant agriculture than we did in the US. This also translates into more hand tools to collect at les vide greniers (flea markets in French), as well as more local food and more markets. We have lots of old neighbors, some of whom were children during the Nazi occupation. Good luck to you.
Well Mike, are you going to go off on me with some bullshit AGAIN or are you serious? If you had been paying attention the last time you started an argument, you would know that I am doing research on both sustainable methods and landraces BECAUSE of the unstable climate and decreasing biodiversity. Duh! You are just sitting at a computer thinking of "yeah but" arguments without doing any actual work on fixing problems. And no more of your problem/predicament false dichotomy bullshit either. I made my position clear on that in our last argument. Read at least some of my books and familiarize yourself with my research before you bother me again.
And for those readers who are not familiar with all the bozos on the Web who just say, "That is not a problem, but a predicament," and then stand back as if they have just achieved dominance in the argument; let me point you to the cause of the problem/predicament false dichotomy. Look up Chris Martenson's Crash Course (2011). The book is available on the Web and the problem/predicament dichotomy is in Chapter 6. Anyway, it is easy to find. The proponents, like Mike and others I have argued with never make a solid case. They just redefine terms to come to a foregone conclusion based on those definitions. This is just stinky cheese and is basically the same technique Marx used 150+ years ago. It does not stand up to scrutiny. Here is a downloadable copy of Martenson's book on Dokumen.
I make it my special mission to crush stupid arguments. It is foolish to play nice with bozos who are trying to make money on the coming collapse. This is what Martenson has been doing for many years and why the bow-tie finance set just loves him. If you are a critical thinker, you can poke holes in his argument easily.
So, your sustainable methods can cope with increasingly unstable (and unpredictable) climate? That would be great and I wish you success in your endeavours.
I think you’re right about the inability to predict complex systems’ futures, but B DOES say that as well. And I’m not sure your hypercomplex systems are actually different from regular complex systems. But you’ve got the right idea. I’m not sure farming carbs will get us anywhere in a future of less food availability, but again, your ideas are in the right direction. Keep going for it!
Thanks. Hypercomplexity is kind of a direct observation plus a bit of calculus. I live in France and it is very different from the US, so I am looking for explanations of the difference. France is kind of stuck at an acceleration of its growth model, especially as it values tradition much more than the US. This keeps France from acceleration of the acceleration of their growth model, which I have seen in spades over the last 65 years in the US (ever since Kennedy was inaugurated in 1961). So the US gave up on tradition, unlike the French, in favor of bright flashy speedy cultural pursuits AND offshoring manufacturing in favor of finance. The UK, especially London, has been the lord of finance longer than the US, so that is why I dump the UK into the same hypercomplex category as the US. You are the first person online to actually engage with hypercomplexity based on the third derivative, so good for you.
I like the idea of hypercomplexity. It sounds about right. In terms of France, do you feel that it's a homogeneous block? Aren't the cities hypercomplex, both in design and subsistence? Isn't Macron a president of the hypercomplex faith? Friends and relatives there certainly seem to fit into two categories, but perhaps it isn't a complex Vs hypercomplex split.
It is not that France is a homogenous block. It is that the laws and institutions are distributed across the block - across the country. The local police have some jurisdiction, but you only see them collecting fees at the market. Otherwise, the traffic laws and the criminal apprehension and the dog complaints are handled by the national police force - les Gendarmerie. When you get a tax notice, you pay the local mayor and/or the department, but the notices are controlled and mailed out from Paris. The control comes from Paris.
What people miss is that villages and rural areas are under the thumb of the cities, so the complexity of the cities is spread out to the rural areas. This has its own special problems of course. For instance, we cannot get on a bus and go to the nearest train station. Nor is there a tram nearby. But the mass transit infrastructure and funding is based on buses, trains and trams serving the larger cities and towns.
President Macron was a banker. He is NOT a social scientist, nor an economist. I doubt he understands calculus either, but if he does, he is certainly not paying attention. There are a lot of pundits and financial analysts who talk about deficits and stock returns and the like as "parabolic" but they do not really know what they are talking about. To them, parabolic is the same as exponential (!). They will probably start using "hyperbolic" soon because it sounds more mathematical (!).
My assessment that France, Germany and Spain are only complex is based on their economic growth models as they are played out on the local level. Because of the safety net, the local French people didn't suffer starvation or even much discomfort during the Covid epidemic. And the local economies bounced back quickly. There is an energy component too, as the energy use per capita in France is about half what it is in the US (52% was my last calculation). There is also an individual component. The French have no problem just getting by on fewer resources. It should be noted too that credit cards are not a thing in France. We cannot get one, so this makes renting a car in Italy for our last trip to Sardinia more expensive, for example, as we had to find a company that takes debit cards. The point here is that I am using multiple lines of evidence to flesh out my theory, not just an overview. Details are important, but direct observation is that the US and UK are going faster and faster on a rapidly rising treadmill. Acceleration of acceleration of the growth model. France has a growth model, but it has failed and now they have to deal with contraction. They seem to be coping. The UK is not coping and is tanking badly. The US is still growing so the underlying failures are masked.
Thanks, that makes complete sense. I'm in Scotland, so it's slightly different here than in England, but not to the extent of France. I can see your hypercomplex Vs complex theory, it stands up!
In order to have the sustainable peasant lifestyle & community you will need to increase the likelihood of your survival, you will have needed (a) the wisdom to pursue this avenue and (b) the wealth to own the land, both in youth or at most, early middle-age. Very few people have that wealth, and fewer still have it while still young enough to work the land. And if you are brought up in The Machine, you lack any sort of mentor to develop that wisdom. Nice that you have arrived in such a place, Mr. Haugen. Meanwhile, what's left for the rest of us is to do our darnedest to apply the brakes.
You are correct in stating how difficult it is for those brought up in The Machine to get out or find mentors or even get a grasp on how to improve their creativity for that matter. Which is where I come in. For the online community, there are tips and tricks and hints and leads all over the place. I try to distill them based on my own agenda. And my agenda is transparent. "It is to my advantage to get as many people as I can up to speed before collapse hits full force." I sometimes say "before the Dark Ages return."
For those who are willing to get down and do the grunt work, there are plenty of alternatives. Community gardens, vacant lots, sidewalk strips, dense patches of forest that are known to only a few, guerilla gardening, neighbor's land and back yards, potato bags on the side of the house or on the balcony, sprouting seeds (alfalfa, lentil, mung, etc.), etc. The number of alternatives is much greater than many people think. Use your creativity.
For those who are just lost in the mire and cannot get a grip, allow me to suggest shifting your paradigms. This is bumping the question up to the next level, which I think is important. Thus my third book, Paradigms for Adaptation (2024). The idea here is that you know your own situation intimately and so if you devise solutions and adaptations based on your own unique paradigms, you will be ahead of the game. The book is a primer on how to do this. Since your mind is hard-wired to solve problems, just reading the essays starts the process of devising your own unique paradigms.
Beware those who want to sell you off-the-shelf solutions. They are lowest common denominator rubbish. What you need to do is Tune In to what is happening, Turn On your creativity, and Drop Out of the rat race. If you can find an old snaggle-toothed hippie in your area who is still alive after dropping out for a long time, that is a valuable resource. You can find sustainable farmers at farmers markets. You can visit ag experimental stations and come into contact with leading edge ideas on landraces, wheat trials, experiments on blight suppression, etc.
The point is that there are plenty of alternative methods already out there. But you have to do it for yourself. I can point the way with my writing and the results of my experiments in sustainable agriculture, but you still have to do it yourself. I was dirt poor most of my life and it is only in the last ten years that I have been comfortable. I will soon be 76 and I can state categorically that you will NOT be able to apply the brakes on the evil Amerikan System. However, if you survive the coming Bad Times, you will have an opportunity to apply what you have learned in small localized communities. What you learn now will be very important. So good luck and be creative.
Complexity is a form of fragility no doubt. For complex societies to exist there needs to be vast energy surplus to support the various inputs across each aspect of complex global and often just in time logistical delivery. My deep concern is that there is a threshold of instability where complexity can no longer be maintained. Our energy base has been eroding for years, debt has masked the issue - debt being a burden on the future to maintain the present. The future cannot support that burden which will ultimately break the currency monetary system. We live is worrying and complex times.
Observation about the unsustainable push for renewable energy. It has been mentioned that building out renewable energy infrastructure consumes vast resources and we don’t have enough energy nor resources to fully transition to renewables. Now, consider that every piece of that renewable energy generation will need complete replacement within 50 years.
If renewable energy can’t be built out once, then how will it be completely replaced every 50 years? And don’t say it will be “recycled”. Some of the metals will be recycled, but even that takes energy. Solar panels can’t be recycled, nor can wind turbine blades, etc. Realistically, just a tiny percentage of the energy and resources which went into building that renewable infrastructure will carry forward to its replacement.
The very first modern wind turbine - Tvindkraft, look it up - has been running WELL past the 50yr mark. I was part of the restoration team around 2003, that patched the rust spots, and also repaired parts of the blades.
The difference between THAT project and the mega-corps build-outs, is that it was completely hand built. The machinery was repurposed WW1 battleship parts, it was built with ease of access in mind, and electronics are an absolute minimum - it had a pre-pentium laptop monitoring it inside the turbine, and that was a new addition.
Such genuine community projects can keep running long after the corporate installations have collapsed into ruin. Nor were any 'rare earths' used.
Needless to say, its output is considerably lower than more modern turbines too. But it paid back the 'energy costs' (Most of which were in the colossal amounts of concrete used in construction) after 20 years, and has been effectively 'free energy' since.
How long it can be kept running is impossible to know. Concrete of course has a finite lifespan (They used industrial concrete, of course, even cutting edge 60s anti-nuclear hippies were not yet aware of the problems and possibilities in that field back then), and sooner or later even the iron shell will be unable to be safely patched.
Solar panels will fail sooner, and be less 'repairable'.
Passive solar heating can last for centuries, but will not of course power your phones, or PCs.
(Of course, they are pro oil and gas, pro growth, pro industry, who cares about the natural world, etc. so keep that in mind when reading.)
I remember once listening to an interview with Simon Michaux when he was telling a story about presenting his findings to leaders in Europe and how they simply didn't understand materials and energy (relative to his expectation, anyway). The various dependencies Europe has on other parts of the world, and their attempts to decouple themselves, which then lead to withdrawal of industry and therefore increasing other dependencies, is fascinating. Between your articles and the BSJ, an interesting picture emerges.
Economic Liberalism is predicated on growth - unlimited resources, unlimited landspace etc.
Fascism is about taking that growth from others (Either external 'Lebensraum', or internally from the workers).
Communism is about autarky for the community.
Social Liberalism is by the far the nicest social system to live under, based as it is on Individual Rights, rather than rigid hierarchy (right), or communal enforcement (left).
Ergo, the pleasant possible future would be social liberalism, economic autarky as far as possible as resources decline, and a 'hierarchical' impulse into genuine defence against the marauding nations/peoples (Currently by far the "West").
Chances of this happening?
<1% is my guess, what with the "Christian" religion and other monotheisms abounding and armed to the teeth.
It is not a question of controlling a complex system. It is a question of controlling yourself and your immediate situation. If you can control that small circle and then build out into increasing concentric circles (family, community, larger community, bioregion, etc.), you will be doing more positive than negative.
From what I can tell, the math, physics, geology, astronomy and climatology aspects to our civilization are relatively simple, at least in terms of the basic causes and effects.
The complexity arises when humans are introduced, with their habits of greed, lying, binary thinking, etc. As the "Decline" of modern standards of living continue, the "human factor" will dwarf the materialistic and physical arrangement of the planet in terms of influencing how we bump along the path to acceptance.
A century ago, many Americans still lived on farms without indoor plumbing, electricity or communications (telephone, radio) with the outside world. 50 years ago, the collapse began from the "peak" of middle class wealth, but many aspects of mitigation related to the multiple predicaments of resource depletion were put off by additional poor decisions. Now many reasonable options to guide society to the path of the future are off the table.
It seems quite probable the next 50 years brings a collapse back to the mid 1920s in terms of energy use, population, etc., but getting there will be a much bumpier ride than on the way up. While we have some ability to re-localize ourselves and make better choices, it seems clear to me that much of our lives will be at risk from .gov, domestic violence, and other factors outside of our control. Buckle up.
The suggestion that US electric arc furnace steel production cannot or does not provide adequate structural steel for infrastructure purposes is simply wrong. Get your facts straight.
I’ve just come across your Substack and tbh don’t know why i wasn’t directed to it sooner. The points you make are completely aligned with my own thoughts and writings. Look forward to reading more of your work.
I would argue that entropy is orderly in and of itself. When everything at last reaches the lowest common denominator is that not order? At least of a sort, everything is dead but in order.
Great article as always. I want to add/ask about two things.
First as global material and energy flows start to decline instead of grow, wont that put enormous gametheoretical pressure towards conflict instead of cooperation?
Second, if you, Nate, Berman, Hall, Michaux, Greer etc. know and write extensively about this, some even for decades, surely Intelligence Agencies, Military Planners and Elite circles must be aware of this? Im thinking of the escape plans of the super rich that Rushkoff writes about or the private cities people like Peter Thiel are envisioning. Sometimes I get the impression that writers like yourself imply that no one in the system can be capable of knowing about our predicament, just because the system is incapable anticipating change. Im german and our military produced a Future Analysis study about peak oil, which was leaked in 2010ish, got brief public attention, but got dismissed by the government and the topic has been dead silent ever since. Personally im convinced there must be some strong top down narrative control in place.
Good one, B! I like the analogy between civilization and an individual, but I think you might be qualitatively wrong about the lack of steady-state in these systems. Most humans have a heavy growth period, then maintenance period of up to several decades, and then the late stage decline. If you looked more closely, it’s very dynamic of course, but from afar, it looks like the middle period is relatively static. This seems to be true for almost all life, and almost all complex systems, and even, in a way, for non-living things. A new widget seems to operate with amazing performance for a while, then settles into reasonable performance for quite a while if it’s built well, then starts to decline. Again, yes, if you look closely, it’s always changing (and degrading), but from afar, it looks steady for a while.
Exactly as the fully referenced archeology of Easter Island tells us summarized in the 2003 Massey Lectures book "A Short History of Progress" (Wright) (122 pages of text and 55 pages of bibliographic references - Easter island as the central example as it follows its rise and fall with little "contamination" i.e. influence, via contact with other "civilizations").
For some time now, I have been promoting hypercomplexity in my comments on the Web, my books and my own Substack. Those who read my writings know this. I have gotten some pushback as well as arguments from the troll populace, but it is still to my advantage to make this delineation, something B does not do yet. YET! He may get there soon enough since he is an astute analyst and is able to follow where his own argument leads.
In a nutshell, the US and UK are not just complex societies; they are hypercomplex in their growth economies, which also translates into their societal functions. This is based on the acceleration of acceleration of their growth models (the third derivative, or "jerk" in calculus parlance) and comes from the NECESSITY to go faster and faster just to stay in place on a treadmill that is not just increasing in speed, but actually rising in its incline, so the speed at which the economy and society in general is moving needs to constantly accelerate its acceleration. Other countries, like France and Germany are accelerating their growth economies but not increasing their acceleration. In fact, they are contracting AND they seem to be managing their contraction. (And yes they could do a better job of it. C'est la vie.
The US and UK need everyone to not only consumer more and work more, but also increase their consumption and work at a constantly increasing pace. This argues against their ability to work within any form of limits and manage their coming contraction. Therefore they will just crash.
I have mixed feelings about the analogy of an economy or a society to an individual organism. It is well known in the study of ancient cultures that people just vote with their feet rather than go down with the ship. Also, the autophagy example is suspect too, as autophagy is a regular process that eats up the depleted cells and the toxins that have been freed. In B's analogy, the autophagy process eats up everyone.
In real terms, we just don't know how this collapse will play out beyond some broad strokes. The best adaptation is to be adaptable. Since industrial agriculture depends heavily on globalized phosphorus reserves that require control of source, plus massive amounts of fossil fuels to build the tractors and combines, plus massive amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture fertilizer, plus massive amounts of fossil fuels in production and transport, it is unlikely that die-off can be put off in any appreciable manner. In other words, as many of us have been saying for sometime; it is not a question of IF there is a die-off. It is a question of WHEN. Then it is all a crap shoot and no amount of airy-fairy design work will see you through. You will have to adapt to survive.
What I and many other sustainable farmer types have been doing for some years is developing alternate strategies. These can be tested right now AND they actually provide a favorable EROI for food production. It is not a question of whether it is sustainable in some rarified academic treatise; it is a question of how many people we can save now and in the future.
I get a lot of flack from computer jockeys who want to argue about what sustainable means or if agriculture is "bad" or some other bullshit. What I work on is growing potatoes, beans, wheat, etc. with lowered energy inputs. Once you get on that particular train, you have more places to jump off before the train goes over the cliff.
My understanding ( I have only planted small vegetable gardens where success was not critical) is that low tech farming and animal husbandry (chickens) is hard work and fraught with failure especially for the novice. Crop failures, predators, theft, disease, etc. At 71 with no family or help, I would fall below self-sufficiency in a low tech scenario.
Against the backdrop of declining ore and energy grades combined with accelerating fossil fuel depletion from renewables, even as the last gasp burst in production conceals the longer term drop off awaiting us down the road, the productive, can-do people (middle class) will be caught in a political and economic vise.
Our society (middle class) is carrying an incredible parasitic burden. I describe it as the parasitic pyramid. The oligarchs on the top have captured political control, the money supply, the means of production for example corporate monocrop farming, beef, hog and chicken industry, distribution, etc.
From the bottom, we have all these people who lacking initiative have relied on getting government jobs for their pensions and paychecks, with little value added productive skills or service compared to what the private sector could offer. Even worse are the hoards of welfare recipients. I hear the remark over and over again to members of our military "thank you for your service." Yes, if you join the armed forces, you risk being killed or even worse, crippled. I get that. But for the rest, it's more about what benefits they can get from joining the military---not serving your country. That's all I hear from members of the military at the gym. Sorry, but I call them as I see them.
So getting back on topic, I see a political upheaval in the future. I would not get too comfortable on a nice suburban mansion requiring 20 mile commutes to a job that might not exist in ten years, even if you are like me who thinks this AI is yet another hoax to siphon off wealth from pension funds and ultimately the taxpayer so that the elites can build a digital prison around us.
My first concern these days would be how quickly can I relocate. Hopefully the roads would still be passable and the trucks still running so I could load up and move, but that too may be wishful thinking.
Some good points. Since you already have some experience growing food, you are ahead of the game. Think of prepping for the long term. A bug-out bag is just a preliminary step to get you to a safe place. Well, how about getting to a safe place well ahead of die-off and building up relationships in that community? Relocation is a key concept. After building up our soil and establishing a 60-tree orchard on our little farm in Washington state, we were able to sell off our sweat equity and have enough to move to France in 2018. Now I have about an acre to work with in the foothills of the Pyrenees, which is plenty. As for self-suffiency, none of us sustainable farmers either here or back in the states grow everything we need. The key is to grow a surplus so you can trade, either now or after the Dark Ages return. It is likely that Homo erectus was able to make the first move out of Africa because of humans trading with each other. So there is a long precedent for trade.
My family have lived in the Pyrenees for many centuries, being Basques. Our family name comes from a tiny hamlet, a cluster of 5 houses recorded in ta records as early as the 12thc, and which was abandoned in the 1960s when nearly everyone moved to own as Spain grew wealthier.
Good for you for doing something and making a go of it, but the reality in the past, into the mid-20th c, was a very harsh,, uncertain life, frequent famine or near-famine, and rampant TB, typhus, and the diseases of malnutrition, etc.
They were very tough people in a way no one in the West is anymore, even the small sheep farmers who survive here and there in Europe.
This is not meant to be a negative comment in any way, and I hope you enjoy where you are and your orchard is fruitful!
I grew up on a dairy farm in southern Minnesota in the US. We had to move to town in the 1960s too. In Willard Cochrane's Development of American Agriculture (1979), he gives some numbers on US farmers moving off the land. The largest number was in the 1960s, much more so than in the 1970s after Nixon's recession and the move to "get big or get out." Living in the Occitan, we see much more peasant agriculture than we did in the US. This also translates into more hand tools to collect at les vide greniers (flea markets in French), as well as more local food and more markets. We have lots of old neighbors, some of whom were children during the Nazi occupation. Good luck to you.
My typing: should be 'tax records' and 'moved to town'.
Have you thought about farming in an increasingly unstable climate, and decreasing biodiversity (including pollinating insects and birds)?
Well Mike, are you going to go off on me with some bullshit AGAIN or are you serious? If you had been paying attention the last time you started an argument, you would know that I am doing research on both sustainable methods and landraces BECAUSE of the unstable climate and decreasing biodiversity. Duh! You are just sitting at a computer thinking of "yeah but" arguments without doing any actual work on fixing problems. And no more of your problem/predicament false dichotomy bullshit either. I made my position clear on that in our last argument. Read at least some of my books and familiarize yourself with my research before you bother me again.
And for those readers who are not familiar with all the bozos on the Web who just say, "That is not a problem, but a predicament," and then stand back as if they have just achieved dominance in the argument; let me point you to the cause of the problem/predicament false dichotomy. Look up Chris Martenson's Crash Course (2011). The book is available on the Web and the problem/predicament dichotomy is in Chapter 6. Anyway, it is easy to find. The proponents, like Mike and others I have argued with never make a solid case. They just redefine terms to come to a foregone conclusion based on those definitions. This is just stinky cheese and is basically the same technique Marx used 150+ years ago. It does not stand up to scrutiny. Here is a downloadable copy of Martenson's book on Dokumen.
https://dokumen.pub/the-crash-course-an-honest-approach-to-facing-the-future-of-our-economy-energy-and-environment-revised-edition-9781394168866-9781394168873-9781394168880-1394168861.html
I make it my special mission to crush stupid arguments. It is foolish to play nice with bozos who are trying to make money on the coming collapse. This is what Martenson has been doing for many years and why the bow-tie finance set just loves him. If you are a critical thinker, you can poke holes in his argument easily.
So, your sustainable methods can cope with increasingly unstable (and unpredictable) climate? That would be great and I wish you success in your endeavours.
You should have listened to me the first time I said it.
I think you’re right about the inability to predict complex systems’ futures, but B DOES say that as well. And I’m not sure your hypercomplex systems are actually different from regular complex systems. But you’ve got the right idea. I’m not sure farming carbs will get us anywhere in a future of less food availability, but again, your ideas are in the right direction. Keep going for it!
Thanks. Hypercomplexity is kind of a direct observation plus a bit of calculus. I live in France and it is very different from the US, so I am looking for explanations of the difference. France is kind of stuck at an acceleration of its growth model, especially as it values tradition much more than the US. This keeps France from acceleration of the acceleration of their growth model, which I have seen in spades over the last 65 years in the US (ever since Kennedy was inaugurated in 1961). So the US gave up on tradition, unlike the French, in favor of bright flashy speedy cultural pursuits AND offshoring manufacturing in favor of finance. The UK, especially London, has been the lord of finance longer than the US, so that is why I dump the UK into the same hypercomplex category as the US. You are the first person online to actually engage with hypercomplexity based on the third derivative, so good for you.
I like the idea of hypercomplexity. It sounds about right. In terms of France, do you feel that it's a homogeneous block? Aren't the cities hypercomplex, both in design and subsistence? Isn't Macron a president of the hypercomplex faith? Friends and relatives there certainly seem to fit into two categories, but perhaps it isn't a complex Vs hypercomplex split.
It is not that France is a homogenous block. It is that the laws and institutions are distributed across the block - across the country. The local police have some jurisdiction, but you only see them collecting fees at the market. Otherwise, the traffic laws and the criminal apprehension and the dog complaints are handled by the national police force - les Gendarmerie. When you get a tax notice, you pay the local mayor and/or the department, but the notices are controlled and mailed out from Paris. The control comes from Paris.
What people miss is that villages and rural areas are under the thumb of the cities, so the complexity of the cities is spread out to the rural areas. This has its own special problems of course. For instance, we cannot get on a bus and go to the nearest train station. Nor is there a tram nearby. But the mass transit infrastructure and funding is based on buses, trains and trams serving the larger cities and towns.
President Macron was a banker. He is NOT a social scientist, nor an economist. I doubt he understands calculus either, but if he does, he is certainly not paying attention. There are a lot of pundits and financial analysts who talk about deficits and stock returns and the like as "parabolic" but they do not really know what they are talking about. To them, parabolic is the same as exponential (!). They will probably start using "hyperbolic" soon because it sounds more mathematical (!).
My assessment that France, Germany and Spain are only complex is based on their economic growth models as they are played out on the local level. Because of the safety net, the local French people didn't suffer starvation or even much discomfort during the Covid epidemic. And the local economies bounced back quickly. There is an energy component too, as the energy use per capita in France is about half what it is in the US (52% was my last calculation). There is also an individual component. The French have no problem just getting by on fewer resources. It should be noted too that credit cards are not a thing in France. We cannot get one, so this makes renting a car in Italy for our last trip to Sardinia more expensive, for example, as we had to find a company that takes debit cards. The point here is that I am using multiple lines of evidence to flesh out my theory, not just an overview. Details are important, but direct observation is that the US and UK are going faster and faster on a rapidly rising treadmill. Acceleration of acceleration of the growth model. France has a growth model, but it has failed and now they have to deal with contraction. They seem to be coping. The UK is not coping and is tanking badly. The US is still growing so the underlying failures are masked.
Thanks, that makes complete sense. I'm in Scotland, so it's slightly different here than in England, but not to the extent of France. I can see your hypercomplex Vs complex theory, it stands up!
In order to have the sustainable peasant lifestyle & community you will need to increase the likelihood of your survival, you will have needed (a) the wisdom to pursue this avenue and (b) the wealth to own the land, both in youth or at most, early middle-age. Very few people have that wealth, and fewer still have it while still young enough to work the land. And if you are brought up in The Machine, you lack any sort of mentor to develop that wisdom. Nice that you have arrived in such a place, Mr. Haugen. Meanwhile, what's left for the rest of us is to do our darnedest to apply the brakes.
You are correct in stating how difficult it is for those brought up in The Machine to get out or find mentors or even get a grasp on how to improve their creativity for that matter. Which is where I come in. For the online community, there are tips and tricks and hints and leads all over the place. I try to distill them based on my own agenda. And my agenda is transparent. "It is to my advantage to get as many people as I can up to speed before collapse hits full force." I sometimes say "before the Dark Ages return."
For those who are willing to get down and do the grunt work, there are plenty of alternatives. Community gardens, vacant lots, sidewalk strips, dense patches of forest that are known to only a few, guerilla gardening, neighbor's land and back yards, potato bags on the side of the house or on the balcony, sprouting seeds (alfalfa, lentil, mung, etc.), etc. The number of alternatives is much greater than many people think. Use your creativity.
For those who are just lost in the mire and cannot get a grip, allow me to suggest shifting your paradigms. This is bumping the question up to the next level, which I think is important. Thus my third book, Paradigms for Adaptation (2024). The idea here is that you know your own situation intimately and so if you devise solutions and adaptations based on your own unique paradigms, you will be ahead of the game. The book is a primer on how to do this. Since your mind is hard-wired to solve problems, just reading the essays starts the process of devising your own unique paradigms.
Beware those who want to sell you off-the-shelf solutions. They are lowest common denominator rubbish. What you need to do is Tune In to what is happening, Turn On your creativity, and Drop Out of the rat race. If you can find an old snaggle-toothed hippie in your area who is still alive after dropping out for a long time, that is a valuable resource. You can find sustainable farmers at farmers markets. You can visit ag experimental stations and come into contact with leading edge ideas on landraces, wheat trials, experiments on blight suppression, etc.
The point is that there are plenty of alternative methods already out there. But you have to do it for yourself. I can point the way with my writing and the results of my experiments in sustainable agriculture, but you still have to do it yourself. I was dirt poor most of my life and it is only in the last ten years that I have been comfortable. I will soon be 76 and I can state categorically that you will NOT be able to apply the brakes on the evil Amerikan System. However, if you survive the coming Bad Times, you will have an opportunity to apply what you have learned in small localized communities. What you learn now will be very important. So good luck and be creative.
The world still has plenty of resources left to feed, house and clothe its residents
8B+ are fed with petro chemicals... there can be no petro chemicals when our industrial society collapses.
8B+ will starve (and eat each other along the way)
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/financial-system-supply-chain-cross
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/collapse-and-cannibalism
Spent fuel pond cancer will kill the few survivors
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping
This is an extinction event
Complexity is a form of fragility no doubt. For complex societies to exist there needs to be vast energy surplus to support the various inputs across each aspect of complex global and often just in time logistical delivery. My deep concern is that there is a threshold of instability where complexity can no longer be maintained. Our energy base has been eroding for years, debt has masked the issue - debt being a burden on the future to maintain the present. The future cannot support that burden which will ultimately break the currency monetary system. We live is worrying and complex times.
Good post Walter, but there is one glitch, Fossil fuels does not exist...It's a lie
Well the gazole (French for diesel) is 1.67 euros for a liter at the local gas pumps in Belesta, so they must exist.
Observation about the unsustainable push for renewable energy. It has been mentioned that building out renewable energy infrastructure consumes vast resources and we don’t have enough energy nor resources to fully transition to renewables. Now, consider that every piece of that renewable energy generation will need complete replacement within 50 years.
If renewable energy can’t be built out once, then how will it be completely replaced every 50 years? And don’t say it will be “recycled”. Some of the metals will be recycled, but even that takes energy. Solar panels can’t be recycled, nor can wind turbine blades, etc. Realistically, just a tiny percentage of the energy and resources which went into building that renewable infrastructure will carry forward to its replacement.
The very first modern wind turbine - Tvindkraft, look it up - has been running WELL past the 50yr mark. I was part of the restoration team around 2003, that patched the rust spots, and also repaired parts of the blades.
The difference between THAT project and the mega-corps build-outs, is that it was completely hand built. The machinery was repurposed WW1 battleship parts, it was built with ease of access in mind, and electronics are an absolute minimum - it had a pre-pentium laptop monitoring it inside the turbine, and that was a new addition.
Such genuine community projects can keep running long after the corporate installations have collapsed into ruin. Nor were any 'rare earths' used.
Needless to say, its output is considerably lower than more modern turbines too. But it paid back the 'energy costs' (Most of which were in the colossal amounts of concrete used in construction) after 20 years, and has been effectively 'free energy' since.
How long it can be kept running is impossible to know. Concrete of course has a finite lifespan (They used industrial concrete, of course, even cutting edge 60s anti-nuclear hippies were not yet aware of the problems and possibilities in that field back then), and sooner or later even the iron shell will be unable to be safely patched.
Solar panels will fail sooner, and be less 'repairable'.
Passive solar heating can last for centuries, but will not of course power your phones, or PCs.
Today's post from the Brawl Street Journal about Europe's energy woes is a good pairing with your article today, B.
https://brawlstreetjournal.substack.com/p/built-for-calm-weather
(Of course, they are pro oil and gas, pro growth, pro industry, who cares about the natural world, etc. so keep that in mind when reading.)
I remember once listening to an interview with Simon Michaux when he was telling a story about presenting his findings to leaders in Europe and how they simply didn't understand materials and energy (relative to his expectation, anyway). The various dependencies Europe has on other parts of the world, and their attempts to decouple themselves, which then lead to withdrawal of industry and therefore increasing other dependencies, is fascinating. Between your articles and the BSJ, an interesting picture emerges.
Economic Liberalism is predicated on growth - unlimited resources, unlimited landspace etc.
Fascism is about taking that growth from others (Either external 'Lebensraum', or internally from the workers).
Communism is about autarky for the community.
Social Liberalism is by the far the nicest social system to live under, based as it is on Individual Rights, rather than rigid hierarchy (right), or communal enforcement (left).
Ergo, the pleasant possible future would be social liberalism, economic autarky as far as possible as resources decline, and a 'hierarchical' impulse into genuine defence against the marauding nations/peoples (Currently by far the "West").
Chances of this happening?
<1% is my guess, what with the "Christian" religion and other monotheisms abounding and armed to the teeth.
Everything can never be completely under control because complex adaptive systems are never static. What are complex adaptive systems? Everything.
It is not a question of controlling a complex system. It is a question of controlling yourself and your immediate situation. If you can control that small circle and then build out into increasing concentric circles (family, community, larger community, bioregion, etc.), you will be doing more positive than negative.
It is very complicated yet very simple as well.
From what I can tell, the math, physics, geology, astronomy and climatology aspects to our civilization are relatively simple, at least in terms of the basic causes and effects.
The complexity arises when humans are introduced, with their habits of greed, lying, binary thinking, etc. As the "Decline" of modern standards of living continue, the "human factor" will dwarf the materialistic and physical arrangement of the planet in terms of influencing how we bump along the path to acceptance.
A century ago, many Americans still lived on farms without indoor plumbing, electricity or communications (telephone, radio) with the outside world. 50 years ago, the collapse began from the "peak" of middle class wealth, but many aspects of mitigation related to the multiple predicaments of resource depletion were put off by additional poor decisions. Now many reasonable options to guide society to the path of the future are off the table.
It seems quite probable the next 50 years brings a collapse back to the mid 1920s in terms of energy use, population, etc., but getting there will be a much bumpier ride than on the way up. While we have some ability to re-localize ourselves and make better choices, it seems clear to me that much of our lives will be at risk from .gov, domestic violence, and other factors outside of our control. Buckle up.
The suggestion that US electric arc furnace steel production cannot or does not provide adequate structural steel for infrastructure purposes is simply wrong. Get your facts straight.
You should write a book!
I’ve just come across your Substack and tbh don’t know why i wasn’t directed to it sooner. The points you make are completely aligned with my own thoughts and writings. Look forward to reading more of your work.
rise in entropy (disorderliness)
I would argue that entropy is orderly in and of itself. When everything at last reaches the lowest common denominator is that not order? At least of a sort, everything is dead but in order.
Great article as always. I want to add/ask about two things.
First as global material and energy flows start to decline instead of grow, wont that put enormous gametheoretical pressure towards conflict instead of cooperation?
Second, if you, Nate, Berman, Hall, Michaux, Greer etc. know and write extensively about this, some even for decades, surely Intelligence Agencies, Military Planners and Elite circles must be aware of this? Im thinking of the escape plans of the super rich that Rushkoff writes about or the private cities people like Peter Thiel are envisioning. Sometimes I get the impression that writers like yourself imply that no one in the system can be capable of knowing about our predicament, just because the system is incapable anticipating change. Im german and our military produced a Future Analysis study about peak oil, which was leaked in 2010ish, got brief public attention, but got dismissed by the government and the topic has been dead silent ever since. Personally im convinced there must be some strong top down narrative control in place.
Good one, B! I like the analogy between civilization and an individual, but I think you might be qualitatively wrong about the lack of steady-state in these systems. Most humans have a heavy growth period, then maintenance period of up to several decades, and then the late stage decline. If you looked more closely, it’s very dynamic of course, but from afar, it looks like the middle period is relatively static. This seems to be true for almost all life, and almost all complex systems, and even, in a way, for non-living things. A new widget seems to operate with amazing performance for a while, then settles into reasonable performance for quite a while if it’s built well, then starts to decline. Again, yes, if you look closely, it’s always changing (and degrading), but from afar, it looks steady for a while.
Exactly as the fully referenced archeology of Easter Island tells us summarized in the 2003 Massey Lectures book "A Short History of Progress" (Wright) (122 pages of text and 55 pages of bibliographic references - Easter island as the central example as it follows its rise and fall with little "contamination" i.e. influence, via contact with other "civilizations").