Isn't it weird how people seem to think that the digital world doesn't require physical resources? It's this bizarre level of dissociation from the fact that modern humans are really just teeny pieces of Earth's crust. Some of us trying to live reciprocally. Some of us fucking destructively around like cancer cells.
This is how hitting limits to growth looks like in real life: not a sudden fall off the cliff but a long, slow whimper, followed by a sudden fall off the cliff.
It's not that weird. It follows much the same trajectory as the other abstractions in life. Money has no effect on resources, electricity magically comes from the sun or the power plant, food comes from the well stocked supermarket, waste disappears to infinite landfill, and so on. It's a product of complexity I guess. As soon as you provide the veil of layers between the individual and the resource, the resource effectively becomes invisible. You could argue that representative democracy suffers the same problem. The further you are from the seat of power (via layers of representatives, physical proximity) the less say you have in decisions and the more abstract those decisions become.
You're right. I am always thinking about where things came from and how unsustainably and unethically sourced they are. I try to make careful choices. But I have so little control over it, seeing as how I have a normal little job and can't suddenly become a full-time homesteader or a billionaire who can pay to reform systems. So I in effect live my life similarly to someone who doesnt know or care where stuff comes from or where waste goes. Sigh.
1) "The scarcities we face today are mostly due to growing demand for stuff outstripping stagnating minerals supply."
2) "The recent rally (and crash) of the price of silver thus raised many eyebrows, calling the stability of the global economy, and the status of the dollar in it, into question."
The scarcity argument 1) does have merit. But the price variability consideration in 2) is quite different from the actual physical amount of silver. The spot (bullion trading) price of silver is predicated on speculation by central banks and hedge funds, as well as the futures markets of the LBMA, COMEX and Shanghai Gold Exchange. In addition, it has been argued that China suppresses the silver price through various means and not just the central bank buying paper contracts. One example is buying silver doré and keeping the refined silver off the books. (Doré bars are semi-pure alloys of both gold and silver produced at the mine mouth and then sent off to the refineries.)
The gold and silver markets are stable over the weekend and this allows some speculators to manipulate the market. A couple of months ago, a huge sell-off happened in the middle of the night (East Coast Time) and the price crashed. Then a few minutes later, the amounts dumped on the paper market were bought right back at the lower price. This is entirely legal and it happened while most people in the US were fast asleep. A lot of money was made in an hour. The automatic price control stops only work for a set number of minutes, so knowing this allowed the speculators to accomplish their task. Who was it? We don't know. I watch several finance channels and listen to the bow-tied greedy finance guys every day. They have lots of stories about this kind of thing.
The point is that the spot price of silver is driven by the paper market, NOT physical silver or market demand. It is capitalism on steroids, especially as there are creative ways to defeat the AI algorithms. Oops. Nevertheless, the paper market drives demand too. If the price goes up, it increases the price of the raw materials for solar panels, smart phones and missiles. Silver is a better conductor and stays more flexible at cold temperatures in the wiring for missiles. B makes the point that the solar and EV industries are trying to reduce their need for silver per unit through efficiency gains. This too is driven by the manipulation in the paper market.
So what do YOU - the person who has to survive collapse on an individual basis - do? You have to stack silver and gold. I have been stacking silver for over 15 years and gold for the last two years. I just bought some more silver the other day after the flash crash. I lost a little bit through timing it too early, but I only bought 4 Spanish 5-peseta coins and 4 French 5-franc coins this time. In the long-term, I am so far ahead of the game that it is more important to increase my stack than worry about the price. Buy the dips in small amounts, dontcha know. My main concern is having a readily available precious metal in a traditional format (coins that were once used in every day commerce) so that I can buy food once globalization and the electrical grid are either out of commission or working on an intermittent basis. You don't need total collapse to make silver coins worthwhile. You just need the Baghdad template, where electricity is only available a few hours a day.
"So what do YOU - the person who has to survive collapse on an individual basis - do? You have to stack silver and gold."
Yum! Silver and gold is what I turn to when I'm hungry and the grocery stores are all empty because of economic collapse! :-)
I'd argue that silver and gold will be the *least* valuable things to have in a collapse.
"Collapse" sorta implies the collapse of trade. If you can't trade it for anything, gold and silver won't be worth as much as a goat or a sack of beans.
Food first. Grow it. Preserve it.
Then, I'd focus on booze. In hard times, people are always willing to trade the family jewels for any way to deny the situation they find themselves in.
Jan - I think we had this same argument 15 years ago. I assume you are still on Salt Spring Island, while I have moved on from Ferndale, Washington, to sunny southern France. For the sake of other people who read this blog and the comments, I will address your arguments. Again!
1) Economic collapse does NOT mean a collapse in trade. Your trade will just be in a smaller circle. Don't get caught in George Bush-style logic of one thing excludes the other.
2) Trade is a necessary part of human evolution. It is highly likely trade is what allowed Homo erectus to move out of Africa in the first place. That and rudimentary language. These were both solid arguments back when I was in grad school a long time ago. They are still solid arguments. Trade scales both up and down. The collapse of globalization or even the electrical grid does NOT mean you cannot trade with your neighbor for what he/she has and you don't. Indeed, writing will likely go out of fashion long before trade, especially as hand-made paper is a laborious process and there are better things to do with calf skin than write down drivel and storekeeper accounts.
3) Trade with scrip or some sort of barter requires trust. Silver and gold coins do not. As I said in the chapter on alternative currencies in my first book, "Even if your neighbors hate you, they will still take silver in trade." The modern parlance for this on the finance channels is that gold and silver have no third-party risk. Testing silver is achievable at a local level and silver coins that were already used as money in the 1870s will likely be welcome at local merchants. Even if they are doing business out of a wall tent or lean-to back in the woods. Have a little faith in the craftiness and greed of small-town businesspeople! You have plenty of them on Salt Spring Island. (I have been there several times.)
4) Food is primary, yes. What in the hell do you think I have been working on for the last fifty-five years? Remember that I started both farmers markets in Ferndale (2006) and Lynden (2010). I just put up a post on my own Substack about my landrace research over the last thirty years too, by the way. For anyone who wants to read it, the Substack is Paradigms for Adaptation, which is the title of my third book from 2024 too.
5) As you probably remember, I am a numbers guy and I actually calculated what percentage of our food needs I grew back in Ferndale, based on grocery receipts over a year and my production spreadsheets. I produced about 65% of what we consumed. Even thinking from a health angle, all us sustainable farmers cannot produce 100% of what we need, especially on depleted soils we are in the process of building up. Will Bonsall comes closer than most, but even he and his family engage in trade for some things.
6) The isolated prepper meme as applied to sustainable farming is not a good fit.
7) Hard liquor is something I store. It has value in disinfecting wounds and other things too.
8) The point here is more irons in the fire. It is foolish to disregard tools you can buy now for later use, whether cheap hand tools or cheap silver coins.And silver IS cheap, especially as the US and Canadian dollars and euros and pounds circle the toilet on their way down the septic tank of debasement.
You make a lot of assertions. Some or even all of them may or may not come true.
But they all focus on *assets*. This has not worked for 99.9% of Homo existence.
I think it will be much more important to be focused on *capabilities*.
That's how Homo erectus developed the first tools and walked on two feet out of Africa ~1,800,000 years ago. That's how Homo sapiens existed for their first ~293,000 years.
If you have capabilities, you can acquire assets. But if you only have gold and silver, you might as well use them as rocks for grinding acorns if we are forced to live in groups of under Dunbar's Number.
But someone will still need to teach you how to make acorn flour, if you've focused on assets. And they'll first teach you that granite works better than precious metal.
Have you seen "The Gods Must Be Crazy"? Gold and silver might as well be an empty Coke™ bottle in a world that depends on capabilities.
Have you read Bradbury's brilliant "Galápogas"? Humans evolved into smaller-brained seal-like creatures who were better adapted to their environment. No, evolution does not have a "direction", so we cannot be on such a path of ultimacy.
We big-brained fire-apes think we're hot stuff. But evolution doesn't care. We thrived in an unprecedented period of environmental stability, which favours K-selected species.
Thanks to our own waste products, we're entering a period of profound instability, one in which our big, energy-hungry brains may well become a liability. One in which the agriculture that make capitalism possible may itself become impossible.
The future belongs to the nimble and swift, not the plodding middle-manager, no matter if his savings went into stock certificates or bits of shiny metal.
LOL. Jan, I just don't fit into the boxes you are trying to shoehorn me into. I can still remember how to make acorn flour, per one example you are using. (The last time I did that was in 2001.) Come on now. Do you really think I am incapable of adapting to new situations on the ground? I do it every day. I remember one time I helped a guy pound down his well back in 2015 in Ferndale. I had not put down a well since the ones we did in 1971, 1972 and 1976 back in northern Minnesota, but I still remembered how to do it. So . . . he did everything I told him to and he just couldn't get the water. So I showed him to just keep pumping and priming. Finally I broke it free. And I was 65 at the time! Not only do you have to understand how the sand point forms a pocket, but you have to just keep doing the grunt work until you get results. That is a good metaphor for what we are going through now.
I don't really care if you don't want to buy silver for possible use in the future. It is the larger audience I care about. Those who listen to me and learn how to form their own paradigms will be ahead of the game.
Outside of the first sentence, I wasn't referring to you at all.
I was interested in exploring the grand sweep of things, and how things are accelerating, and how we will have to change our ~7,000 year strategy that is no longer working for us.
Walter, I found your "Paradigms for Adaptation" post under your wvhaugen substack, but in this comment you say you have a substack by that name. My searches always just come back to your post on your wvhaugen substack. I do not see a link to another substack on your substack profile. Do you actually have another substack by that name, and if so, how do I find it?
Well, it beats the hell out of me. I titled my substack Paradigms for Adaptation and I though that would be it. Silly me! I get the title, heading, and my original photo of a hand holding some ergot-infected and regular wheat grains and the “Share This” button, etc. I don’t know why it is so difficult. I will investigate on how to fix this. Until then, do the best you can. I have been putting out a post almost every day. Have you been getting them? The latest one this morning was The Value of Epic Poetry.
"substack" got auto-corrected to "substance" in your reply. I just tried duck duck go instead of google and got the same results as google. I tried collapsing it all into a single word and got no results. Neither hyphens nor underscores found anything. Could you just post a url in this comment thread? Or does that violate some sort of ethic?
I have not yet subscribed to your substack. Beginning to explore it. I subscribe to way too many substacks. I've added your 2024 book to my wishlist. Too many books in my reading pile already! My pile is neither a FIFO nor a LIFO, it's more chaotic than that, but I do try to favor books that have been in the pile longer.
Just one of many problems that will be solved on the ground level. I cannot figure everything out. The vikings carried scales and broke silver bars, coins and arm bracelets into pieces. The smart shopkeepers in the future will also have credit ledgers or bookkeeping with pencils and paper (or slabs of wood) for their regular customers. Then there is the barter system as a back up. The gift economy (a la Marcel Mauss, famous French sociologist) will likely be up and running too. His book The Gift (1926) is worth a look to explain the nuts and bolts of a gift economy in previous human societies.
Copper coins became largely useless during the collapse of Bronze Age civilizations for several key reasons:
1. Shift in Economic Structure
The collapse led to a significant breakdown of trade networks. Many Bronze Age civilizations relied on complex trade relationships to acquire essential goods. With these networks disrupted, the economies shifted towards subsistence, and the need for standardized currency diminished.
2. Devaluation of Metals
During this period, the traditional value placed on bronze, copper, and other metals declined significantly. As cities fell into disarray and populations dwindled, the intrinsic value of metals was overshadowed by the urgency of immediate survival needs.
3. Loss of Metallurgical Skills
As civilizations collapsed, so did the knowledge and infrastructure for producing metal items. The loss of expertise in metallurgy made minting coins impractical and further reduced their acceptability as a medium of exchange.
4. Emergence of Alternative Trade Systems
Communities reverted to barter systems where goods and services were exchanged directly without the use of currency. This was more feasible for small, locally-oriented economies that emerged in the face of larger-scale collapse.
5. Resource Scarcity
The collapse often led to famines and resource depletion, making the value of copper nearly irrelevant compared to food and basic necessities. Survival took precedence over conventional forms of wealth.
6. Social and Political Instability
With the fall of centralized authorities, the trust necessary for accepting coins as currency eroded. People were more inclined to trade tangible goods they deemed immediately valuable.
Good points. The question for me is, "Since we have lost our attachment to the land and live at a higher degree of technology adaptations, will the same arguments apply in our own post-collapse future?"
I considered buying copper too but rejected it for logistical reasons.
That’s maybe okay Walter when the lights go out for a few hours or a couple of days, your silver may have some value in barter. But beyond that what happens when the lights go out and nobody knows when it’s coming back on, as Alice Friedemann’s book title says “When Trucks Stop Running” and to take that situation a little further as depicted in Kurt Dahl’s book “An American Famine”: Opening quote by Thomas Hobbes — “Hell is the truth seen too late —
As America's fragile empire crumbles under the weight of insatiable consumption and ecological ruin, “An American Famine” unleashes a nightmarish chronicle of societal disintegration that claws at the soul. What begins as an insidious downward spiral. Supply chains fracturing, farmlands withering into dust, and cities swelling with the desperate and the destitute; escalates into a cataclysmic year, where the grid fails, marauding gangs descend upon the starving masses, and the veneer of civilisation shreds to reveal the primal beast within humanity. Through a mosaic of shattered voices; widowed mothers clawing through rubble for scraps, once respectable men turned cannibals in the flickering light of burning suburbs, and hollow-eyed survivors bartering their last shreds of humanity. Kurt Dahl paints a harrowing tableau of anarchy's embrace, where famine doesn't just empty bellies but devours the very essence of the American dream, leaving only echoes of screams in the endless, barren night.
A situation Walter where all the gold, silver and diamonds is worthless compared to finding a can of: beans, sardines, steak and kidney pie; or in the end when all the accessible animals have been consumed, human flesh😱🤔
Well, your rather simplistic scenario is pretty darn romantic - in a rather grim sort of way. At least for the lone prepper types who think guns and ammo trump community building and trade. But then they haven't been working in communities trying to make change to an evil System for over fifty-five years like I have been doing. And other hard-working activists too. Let's give a shout-out to the people working on positive alternatives.
As I have argued with the other nay-sayers and trolls on the Web, we live in a complex system and there are an infinite number of possibilities for each situation that comes up. Let's imagine your scenario and poke holes in it. With grid failure, can you still light a fire to keep warm? Of course. With no trucks running, can you still get food from local farmers? Of course you can. Will the farmer take silver IF you do not have other items to barter? Maybe. Will the farmer actually prefer silver? Maybe. Do you have to depend on silver as your only barter tool? Of course not.
You are in love with a teeny tiny vision of the future. Cannibals? Get real. You might have noticed that the Palestinians and Sudanese are starving to death without eating each other. Is it just the stupid Amerikans who are going to eat one another? (That's a rhetorical question. You don't have to answer.)
Give me a little credit for multiple actions and multiple scenarios. Don't bother me with bullshit based on science-fiction and lowest common denominator computer jockeys who have no vision of how to make things better. And are you actually DOING anything to make the world a better place? Or are you just thinking up ridiculous notions that reinforce the MAGA types in their paranoia, hate and bloodlust?
If I was to pick Walter which country would survive the longest in a world of diminishing resources and global heating, I’d pick USA, and no I’m not a citizen of USA. But that doesn’t mean the USA would be immune from industrial and societal collapse when others around it have met their fate.
In a country (USA) with ~120 guns for every 100 citizens it’s not difficult to see how guns would play such a large part as supply lines fail along with manufacturing, over time, that’s weeks, months, years, decades even.
I’m not sure if you’ve read Kurt Dahl’s book “An American Famine” as you mentioned guns and ammo, and they do play a large part in the story along with who’s the most wily and brutish, also you don’t seem to have taken account of marauders. Whilst the story is obviously fictional, much of it, noted in the book is based on human psychology and past history of human survival. One such historical reference with regard to cannibalism is 1846-1847 Donner Party stranded by snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Cannibalism is a complex issue. Faced with starvation and a kill or be killed situation, hopium, morals and beliefs, in this context play their part. You brought up the plight of “Palestinians and Sudanese are starving to death without eating each other.” Whilst the suffering in Gaza and Sudan is immense and demands urgent global action, cannibalism hasn't occurred because of strong religious prohibitions, and partial aid access, and in both regions, effective law enforcement whilst undermined by conflict, competing armed groups, and limited state capacity and International actors playing roles in stabilisation, so it’s not completely lawlessness.
From the lack of affordable (EROEI) energy and critical tech minerals along with global heating the predicaments of the poly and meta-crisis will force humanity into the bottleneck of ecological overshoot and the great simplification resulting over time humanity regressing down a series of Seneca cliffs before plateauing in a 17th century feudal lifestyle before finally becoming extinct.
Whatever you put forward Walter as industrial civilisation and human society maintaining cohesion, I’ll just say ain’t gonna happen🤔
The US uses a tremendous amount of energy per capita. About twice what Germany and France use and four times that of Spain. Therefore they have farther to fall than these three European countries once a grid-down or stoppage of fossil fuel scenario is in play. You can make the same argument for African countries. Greater dependence on fossil fuels makes for a more precipitous decline and collapse once fossil fuel supply chains break down. Also, the US is a hypercomplex economic system rather than a complex economic system. The US cannot handle a contraction in GDP or any other metric you wish to use. It will just collapse, rather than endure a nasty contraction like other countries. We left the US in 2018. Once we stepped off the plane in Europe, our energy footprint dropped dramatically.
You appear to be edging towards my Doomist view of the future Walter.
“The US cannot handle a contraction in GDP or any other metric you wish to use.”
But not just the US, Global Industrial Civilisation cannot handle a contraction in GDP, the economic system’s not designed for regression, just taking Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics for example it’s an idealists fantasy.
Europe through a lack of cheap energy and materials is being forced into deindustrialising, at a time when AI will reduce white collar jobs, Europe’s between a rock and a hard place.
If you have the opportunity to remain in the US but chose Europe that could well turn out to have been a bad move, but then maybe like me you’re of an age where you’re heading towards deaths end, so doesn’t matter.
You used the word “metric”, so based on metrics regarding food production, energy resources, and geographical isolation, a few developed Western countries have the potential to be largely self-sustaining. The top candidates, often noted for their low population-to-land ratios and high resource availability, are Canada, Australia, the United States, and New Zealand. What you don't believe me, then check it out with your favourite web browser, or AI assistant.
At every opportunity Walter, along with and whoever ‘we’ are, should go out into the great outdoors, enjoy what nature provides for free, whilst we still can🤔
Your arguments lack nuance. There are quite a few differences between industrial civilizations. As a former IT guy, I assume you have at least a nodding acquaintance with calculus. Consider the difference between a complex society, which uses a growth model to even out the ups and downs of the economy over time - a rising tide lifts all boats. This is based on acceleration, or the 2nd derivative. Now consider - even if just for a moment - that the US has moved into hypercomplexity, as measured by the 3rd derivative or acceleration of acceleration. Going faster and faster on a rising treadmill, like when you take a heart stress test in the lab.
I lump the UK in with the US in this hypercomplex category. I am inclined to add Sweden too, but I don't know enough about Sweden's economy and have only been there briefly. I am well acquainted with conditions on the ground in some other countries. What I see in Germany and France are contracting economies that still have a safety net. Merz and Macron are dummies, to be sure, but the stability of their underlying safety nets keeps the populations satisfied enough that the social mechanisms work. This is not true in the US that does not have an adequate social safety net, even with a growing economy. It helps to be a social scientist to understand how the social mechanisms provide leeway to cushion the effects of idiotic governmental policies. But you don't have to be a social scientist to see differences in all these countries and their adaptations on the ground. As I say, your arguments lack nuance.
As for the land issue, a low population-to-land ratio doesn't mean much. I grew enough food on a small farm to feed several people back when I was a market gardener. There are many people still doing this. Even retired and at the age of 75, I grow plenty of food to feed ourselves and give some away. Plus I am building up my soil for future generations. And if you widen your scope a bit and look at differing countries in Asia, there is plenty of food grown on small plots to feed a much higher population-to-land ratio. Do a little more research on how small farmers actually feed most of the world and how the Amerikan methods of farming 1) destroy the land and 2) focus on wasteful production, distribution and marketing methods.
You are missing the boat by not focusing on real energy metrics. I will give you just one example, for which I have years of good data. I was able to produce 2.5-3.5 kilocalories of food for each kilocalorie of fossil fuel and human labor input from 2005-2018. In my retirement I am still able to get a ration of 1.5-2.5 kcal for 1 kcal of fossil fuel and human labor input. US industrial agriculture uses 10 kcal of fossil fuels to produce 1 kcal of food. Even in retirement, my methods are still 15 to 25 times more efficient in energy use than industrial agriculture. I have gone on at length on these topics for years and written three books on the problem AND solutions that are doable by anyone willing to get off their dead asses and out from behind their computers.
To be blunt Barry, you don't have method or theory or a working hypothesis or data. All you have are conjectures from what you read.
Walter, I still have the silver and gold coins I bought at your recommendation 15 years ago. It's not a lot, but it's not nothing. Thank you. I hope you are well.
Chris Clugston has written the book (three actually, magnificently researched and presented) on this materials scarcity for decades now, but pundits never seem to want to credit other authors for doing the work before them.
Excellent read. Your point about the diesel required to mine and ship all these resources is especially important and often overlooked. So many people act as if we can just flip a switch and that the government can push buttons to magically increase the supply in a cheap way.
Additionally, I’m skeptical of certain renewable forms of energy like solar making a big impact on our overall energy output long-term, however, I was listening to a grid specialist the other week who was in the same camp but said that solar is by far the quickest way to add additional capacity to the grid. That was some important context that I was missing
Adding too much solar energy to a power grid can be detrimental because traditional grids were designed for one-way, consistent power flow from large power plants, not for thousands of intermittent sources acting at once. When solar generation is high but demand is low, the system faces, voltage issues, potential blackouts, and economic inefficiencies.
Here is why too much solar can be bad for the grid:
1. The "Duck Curve" and Over-Generation
As solar installations increase, the demand for traditional, baseload power (like coal or gas) plummets during the middle of the day, creating a "belly" in the demand curve—known as the Duck Curve.
Rapid Ramping Issues: As the sun sets, solar output stops, and electricity demand peaks simultaneously. Traditional power plants must "ramp up" extremely fast to fill this gap, a process that strains infrastructure and, if not handled correctly, can lead to blackouts.
Minimum Demand: When solar production exceeds local demand, the grid becomes unstable, akin to "cycling on a bicycle when it's moving very slowly," making it hard to keep the system balanced.
2. Grid Instability and Voltage Problems
The grid relies on consistent, predictable power. High solar penetration brings, unpredictability.
Voltage Spikes: A surge of excess power from rooftop solar can drive up the voltage on local power lines, exceeding safe limits and causing appliances to run inefficiently or become damaged.
Tripping Components: To prevent damage from these, safety systems can cause transformers to "trip off," leading to localized blackouts.
Loss of Inertia: Solar panels generally lack the rotational inertia provided by conventional generators, which keeps the grid stable. A grid with too little inertia is more susceptible to frequency disturbances.
3. Economic and Operational Inefficiencies
Negative Electricity Prices: During the peak sunny hours, there is sometimes so much power that the price of electricity turns negative. This means generators have to pay the grid to take their electricity.
Curtailment ("Spilled Energy"): When the system cannot handle the excess power, operators are forced to turn off or disconnect solar panels—a process called curtailment—resulting in wasted energy.
Infrastructure Strain: The surge of power often goes back to the grid, overloading transformers and power lines that were not built to handle reverse power flow.
4. Need for Costly Upgrades
To accommodate more solar, massive, expensive upgrades to poles, wires, and energy storage systems (like large-scale batteries) are required to keep the grid stable.
Solutions to these issues include increasing energy storage (batteries), developing virtual power plants (VPPs) to manage demand, and, in some cases, implementing "sun taxes" or two-way tariffs to incentivize exporting energy only when it is needed most.
Australia struggling with oversupply of solar power
Another excellent essay reminding us that we live in a material world. It was good to see you on The Great Simplification. You look so young! You give me hope that the skills I wanted to acquire as an engineering student in the 1980s, especially how to repair electronics and motors and how to communicate without the internet, are still useful. Thank you.
A couple of years ago Bald Guy Money (no kidding - that is his YouTube channel) suggested preparing for the future by gradually stacking up 5 ounces of gold and 200 ounces of silver. I think that is good advice.
Reading I was thinking about a reason all oil won't be completely mined is people eventually won't risk oil-in-hand for unknown oil deep underground. Silver will experience similar, if not worse. As you point out, people hold silver as stored value. They won't give it up for silver for industrial uses. What would anyone trade for it?
Net-net, your story is more about the growing battle between silver hoarders and silver users. Declining supply might be the least of our problems ;)
"They won't give it up for silver for industrial uses".
Not always true. Back in the 80s, when the silver price went to $35 oz ($133 today), lots of people sold silver jewelry and flatware to get the money. The price then declined to $6 oz and remained pretty stable for years.
Yes! We must also remember one of the biggest industrial uses of silver was photography. I believe that had more to do with silver's decline. Not to diminish your great comment, but people sold silver sitting in their drawers, as you pointed out. Today they'd be selling the emergency fund. A different psychology.
This covers so much ground in terms of all of the basic raw materials we rely on and how interlinked they all are across the globe and, more vitally, how delicate those systems are.
I love to go really big picture with all this stuff... like this book, looking at it top level, then go really small and bring it back to super local level, individual level... basic survival, what materials we need, I really think there needs to be some of national / global citizenship sort of thing to teach everyone about raw materials, the sources of things, show them the complex web of layers and levels required to get a single product they use.
Even a very simple thing like practising zero waste for 1 month ... like throw away nothing, not even food scraps, everything has to be used, it really makes you appreciate the amount of 'stuff' that is wasted... and absolutely everyone should be taught how to grow food and how bloody hard it is (depending what you’re growing) and how to adapt to super localised diets - what can you grow easily in your local climate and get used to eating those sources of food etc. This sort of educational activity really should be happening right now.
Aside from all of that. I have absolute faith that humans are incredibly adaptable creatures and innovators and inventors and when the comfort and ease at which materials can be extracted and sourced gets too difficult, then the need to innovate really kicks in. We always find alternative solutions to things in every 'crisis' and 'collapse'.
I also believe that all of the evolutionary lessons we have learned are still hard baked within us... just because we have experienced extremely high levels of comfort and security and safety and lack of disease etc for a tiny blip of all of human existence all of the lessons and skills learned from all of our previous generations are still within our DNA and make up and will be there to serve us when we absolutely require them.
We are hard wired to take the easy route, always, it makes total sense... but as things get harder we of course adapt. We are a species that knows how to survive... of course... doesn't mean all will survive... naturally that's not how it works in life... I guess the grief of the massive amount of loss will be one of the things we need to adapt to as so many people are now sheltered from the discomfort of violence and death, but I think it will come back easy enough, it wasn't even that long ago, when it was reasonably common for still borns etc even in advanced western economies... people just got on with it.
Brilliant analysis on the thermodynamics of silver. You correctly identified that Silver is no longer 'money' but the 'blood of industry.'
However, there is a second layer to this crisis: Geopolitics. You mentioned that 70% of silver is a byproduct of copper/zinc. What’s missing is who controls the smelting of those base metals. It's not the US, and it's not Mexico anymore. It's System B (China).
We are not just facing a 'Bronze Age Collapse'; we are facing a 'Geopolitical Chokepoint.' The West (System A) prints the money for the Green Transition, but the East holds the physical keys to the furnace.
Copper paste for PV Modules comes with degradation and also cost pressure for thinner frames and then you get more damages … we may see the bottom of cheap PV. What do you think about Phyto and bacterial mining in combination of weathering?
This story will evolve further through March. CME is supposedly short by 300 million oz of silver needed for delivery by the end of the month. The Shanghai physical metals market hasn't enjoyed the same crash... supposedly. And apparently, Silver has been anointed a reserve asset by several BRICS members. Oh, and the endless stories about the solid state batteries being a thing and needing loads of silver... seem to have entirely vanished.
It's a wonderful time to own shares in popcorn producers... I'm sure.
I think that there actually was not enough physical silver in the U.S. and U.K. vaults to satisfy the paper claims that holders understandably made when the price went up. Those who did hold physical silver claims moved them to Shanghai, who had to close their silver market for two trading days to prevent it from being manipulated, too. Also, China began restricting export of silver and silver products January 1st, causing importers in the west to panic. So yes, I believe you are correct.
Vital resources like these minerals and precious metals are quite finite. Capitalism demands endless growth, so how do we plan on feeding the endless machine? It is impossible.
Isn't it weird how people seem to think that the digital world doesn't require physical resources? It's this bizarre level of dissociation from the fact that modern humans are really just teeny pieces of Earth's crust. Some of us trying to live reciprocally. Some of us fucking destructively around like cancer cells.
This is how hitting limits to growth looks like in real life: not a sudden fall off the cliff but a long, slow whimper, followed by a sudden fall off the cliff.
It's not that weird. It follows much the same trajectory as the other abstractions in life. Money has no effect on resources, electricity magically comes from the sun or the power plant, food comes from the well stocked supermarket, waste disappears to infinite landfill, and so on. It's a product of complexity I guess. As soon as you provide the veil of layers between the individual and the resource, the resource effectively becomes invisible. You could argue that representative democracy suffers the same problem. The further you are from the seat of power (via layers of representatives, physical proximity) the less say you have in decisions and the more abstract those decisions become.
You're right. I am always thinking about where things came from and how unsustainably and unethically sourced they are. I try to make careful choices. But I have so little control over it, seeing as how I have a normal little job and can't suddenly become a full-time homesteader or a billionaire who can pay to reform systems. So I in effect live my life similarly to someone who doesnt know or care where stuff comes from or where waste goes. Sigh.
Two quotes from B:
1) "The scarcities we face today are mostly due to growing demand for stuff outstripping stagnating minerals supply."
2) "The recent rally (and crash) of the price of silver thus raised many eyebrows, calling the stability of the global economy, and the status of the dollar in it, into question."
The scarcity argument 1) does have merit. But the price variability consideration in 2) is quite different from the actual physical amount of silver. The spot (bullion trading) price of silver is predicated on speculation by central banks and hedge funds, as well as the futures markets of the LBMA, COMEX and Shanghai Gold Exchange. In addition, it has been argued that China suppresses the silver price through various means and not just the central bank buying paper contracts. One example is buying silver doré and keeping the refined silver off the books. (Doré bars are semi-pure alloys of both gold and silver produced at the mine mouth and then sent off to the refineries.)
The gold and silver markets are stable over the weekend and this allows some speculators to manipulate the market. A couple of months ago, a huge sell-off happened in the middle of the night (East Coast Time) and the price crashed. Then a few minutes later, the amounts dumped on the paper market were bought right back at the lower price. This is entirely legal and it happened while most people in the US were fast asleep. A lot of money was made in an hour. The automatic price control stops only work for a set number of minutes, so knowing this allowed the speculators to accomplish their task. Who was it? We don't know. I watch several finance channels and listen to the bow-tied greedy finance guys every day. They have lots of stories about this kind of thing.
The point is that the spot price of silver is driven by the paper market, NOT physical silver or market demand. It is capitalism on steroids, especially as there are creative ways to defeat the AI algorithms. Oops. Nevertheless, the paper market drives demand too. If the price goes up, it increases the price of the raw materials for solar panels, smart phones and missiles. Silver is a better conductor and stays more flexible at cold temperatures in the wiring for missiles. B makes the point that the solar and EV industries are trying to reduce their need for silver per unit through efficiency gains. This too is driven by the manipulation in the paper market.
So what do YOU - the person who has to survive collapse on an individual basis - do? You have to stack silver and gold. I have been stacking silver for over 15 years and gold for the last two years. I just bought some more silver the other day after the flash crash. I lost a little bit through timing it too early, but I only bought 4 Spanish 5-peseta coins and 4 French 5-franc coins this time. In the long-term, I am so far ahead of the game that it is more important to increase my stack than worry about the price. Buy the dips in small amounts, dontcha know. My main concern is having a readily available precious metal in a traditional format (coins that were once used in every day commerce) so that I can buy food once globalization and the electrical grid are either out of commission or working on an intermittent basis. You don't need total collapse to make silver coins worthwhile. You just need the Baghdad template, where electricity is only available a few hours a day.
"So what do YOU - the person who has to survive collapse on an individual basis - do? You have to stack silver and gold."
Yum! Silver and gold is what I turn to when I'm hungry and the grocery stores are all empty because of economic collapse! :-)
I'd argue that silver and gold will be the *least* valuable things to have in a collapse.
"Collapse" sorta implies the collapse of trade. If you can't trade it for anything, gold and silver won't be worth as much as a goat or a sack of beans.
Food first. Grow it. Preserve it.
Then, I'd focus on booze. In hard times, people are always willing to trade the family jewels for any way to deny the situation they find themselves in.
Jan - I think we had this same argument 15 years ago. I assume you are still on Salt Spring Island, while I have moved on from Ferndale, Washington, to sunny southern France. For the sake of other people who read this blog and the comments, I will address your arguments. Again!
1) Economic collapse does NOT mean a collapse in trade. Your trade will just be in a smaller circle. Don't get caught in George Bush-style logic of one thing excludes the other.
2) Trade is a necessary part of human evolution. It is highly likely trade is what allowed Homo erectus to move out of Africa in the first place. That and rudimentary language. These were both solid arguments back when I was in grad school a long time ago. They are still solid arguments. Trade scales both up and down. The collapse of globalization or even the electrical grid does NOT mean you cannot trade with your neighbor for what he/she has and you don't. Indeed, writing will likely go out of fashion long before trade, especially as hand-made paper is a laborious process and there are better things to do with calf skin than write down drivel and storekeeper accounts.
3) Trade with scrip or some sort of barter requires trust. Silver and gold coins do not. As I said in the chapter on alternative currencies in my first book, "Even if your neighbors hate you, they will still take silver in trade." The modern parlance for this on the finance channels is that gold and silver have no third-party risk. Testing silver is achievable at a local level and silver coins that were already used as money in the 1870s will likely be welcome at local merchants. Even if they are doing business out of a wall tent or lean-to back in the woods. Have a little faith in the craftiness and greed of small-town businesspeople! You have plenty of them on Salt Spring Island. (I have been there several times.)
4) Food is primary, yes. What in the hell do you think I have been working on for the last fifty-five years? Remember that I started both farmers markets in Ferndale (2006) and Lynden (2010). I just put up a post on my own Substack about my landrace research over the last thirty years too, by the way. For anyone who wants to read it, the Substack is Paradigms for Adaptation, which is the title of my third book from 2024 too.
5) As you probably remember, I am a numbers guy and I actually calculated what percentage of our food needs I grew back in Ferndale, based on grocery receipts over a year and my production spreadsheets. I produced about 65% of what we consumed. Even thinking from a health angle, all us sustainable farmers cannot produce 100% of what we need, especially on depleted soils we are in the process of building up. Will Bonsall comes closer than most, but even he and his family engage in trade for some things.
6) The isolated prepper meme as applied to sustainable farming is not a good fit.
7) Hard liquor is something I store. It has value in disinfecting wounds and other things too.
8) The point here is more irons in the fire. It is foolish to disregard tools you can buy now for later use, whether cheap hand tools or cheap silver coins.And silver IS cheap, especially as the US and Canadian dollars and euros and pounds circle the toilet on their way down the septic tank of debasement.
You make a lot of assertions. Some or even all of them may or may not come true.
But they all focus on *assets*. This has not worked for 99.9% of Homo existence.
I think it will be much more important to be focused on *capabilities*.
That's how Homo erectus developed the first tools and walked on two feet out of Africa ~1,800,000 years ago. That's how Homo sapiens existed for their first ~293,000 years.
If you have capabilities, you can acquire assets. But if you only have gold and silver, you might as well use them as rocks for grinding acorns if we are forced to live in groups of under Dunbar's Number.
But someone will still need to teach you how to make acorn flour, if you've focused on assets. And they'll first teach you that granite works better than precious metal.
Have you seen "The Gods Must Be Crazy"? Gold and silver might as well be an empty Coke™ bottle in a world that depends on capabilities.
Have you read Bradbury's brilliant "Galápogas"? Humans evolved into smaller-brained seal-like creatures who were better adapted to their environment. No, evolution does not have a "direction", so we cannot be on such a path of ultimacy.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17483107.2025.2477677
We big-brained fire-apes think we're hot stuff. But evolution doesn't care. We thrived in an unprecedented period of environmental stability, which favours K-selected species.
Thanks to our own waste products, we're entering a period of profound instability, one in which our big, energy-hungry brains may well become a liability. One in which the agriculture that make capitalism possible may itself become impossible.
The future belongs to the nimble and swift, not the plodding middle-manager, no matter if his savings went into stock certificates or bits of shiny metal.
LOL. Jan, I just don't fit into the boxes you are trying to shoehorn me into. I can still remember how to make acorn flour, per one example you are using. (The last time I did that was in 2001.) Come on now. Do you really think I am incapable of adapting to new situations on the ground? I do it every day. I remember one time I helped a guy pound down his well back in 2015 in Ferndale. I had not put down a well since the ones we did in 1971, 1972 and 1976 back in northern Minnesota, but I still remembered how to do it. So . . . he did everything I told him to and he just couldn't get the water. So I showed him to just keep pumping and priming. Finally I broke it free. And I was 65 at the time! Not only do you have to understand how the sand point forms a pocket, but you have to just keep doing the grunt work until you get results. That is a good metaphor for what we are going through now.
I don't really care if you don't want to buy silver for possible use in the future. It is the larger audience I care about. Those who listen to me and learn how to form their own paradigms will be ahead of the game.
Sorry you chose to take this personally.
Outside of the first sentence, I wasn't referring to you at all.
I was interested in exploring the grand sweep of things, and how things are accelerating, and how we will have to change our ~7,000 year strategy that is no longer working for us.
Of course I took it personally. You were replying to me.
Walter, I found your "Paradigms for Adaptation" post under your wvhaugen substack, but in this comment you say you have a substack by that name. My searches always just come back to your post on your wvhaugen substack. I do not see a link to another substack on your substack profile. Do you actually have another substack by that name, and if so, how do I find it?
Well, it beats the hell out of me. I titled my substack Paradigms for Adaptation and I though that would be it. Silly me! I get the title, heading, and my original photo of a hand holding some ergot-infected and regular wheat grains and the “Share This” button, etc. I don’t know why it is so difficult. I will investigate on how to fix this. Until then, do the best you can. I have been putting out a post almost every day. Have you been getting them? The latest one this morning was The Value of Epic Poetry.
"substack" got auto-corrected to "substance" in your reply. I just tried duck duck go instead of google and got the same results as google. I tried collapsing it all into a single word and got no results. Neither hyphens nor underscores found anything. Could you just post a url in this comment thread? Or does that violate some sort of ethic?
I have not yet subscribed to your substack. Beginning to explore it. I subscribe to way too many substacks. I've added your 2024 book to my wishlist. Too many books in my reading pile already! My pile is neither a FIFO nor a LIFO, it's more chaotic than that, but I do try to favor books that have been in the pile longer.
Try this:
https://wvhaugen.substack.com/
If the coins are worth more than what you want to trade for, how would the merchant make change?
Pieces of eight ring any bells?
Astute comment.
Just one of many problems that will be solved on the ground level. I cannot figure everything out. The vikings carried scales and broke silver bars, coins and arm bracelets into pieces. The smart shopkeepers in the future will also have credit ledgers or bookkeeping with pencils and paper (or slabs of wood) for their regular customers. Then there is the barter system as a back up. The gift economy (a la Marcel Mauss, famous French sociologist) will likely be up and running too. His book The Gift (1926) is worth a look to explain the nuts and bolts of a gift economy in previous human societies.
Copper coins became largely useless during the collapse of Bronze Age civilizations for several key reasons:
1. Shift in Economic Structure
The collapse led to a significant breakdown of trade networks. Many Bronze Age civilizations relied on complex trade relationships to acquire essential goods. With these networks disrupted, the economies shifted towards subsistence, and the need for standardized currency diminished.
2. Devaluation of Metals
During this period, the traditional value placed on bronze, copper, and other metals declined significantly. As cities fell into disarray and populations dwindled, the intrinsic value of metals was overshadowed by the urgency of immediate survival needs.
3. Loss of Metallurgical Skills
As civilizations collapsed, so did the knowledge and infrastructure for producing metal items. The loss of expertise in metallurgy made minting coins impractical and further reduced their acceptability as a medium of exchange.
4. Emergence of Alternative Trade Systems
Communities reverted to barter systems where goods and services were exchanged directly without the use of currency. This was more feasible for small, locally-oriented economies that emerged in the face of larger-scale collapse.
5. Resource Scarcity
The collapse often led to famines and resource depletion, making the value of copper nearly irrelevant compared to food and basic necessities. Survival took precedence over conventional forms of wealth.
6. Social and Political Instability
With the fall of centralized authorities, the trust necessary for accepting coins as currency eroded. People were more inclined to trade tangible goods they deemed immediately valuable.
Good points. The question for me is, "Since we have lost our attachment to the land and live at a higher degree of technology adaptations, will the same arguments apply in our own post-collapse future?"
I considered buying copper too but rejected it for logistical reasons.
That’s maybe okay Walter when the lights go out for a few hours or a couple of days, your silver may have some value in barter. But beyond that what happens when the lights go out and nobody knows when it’s coming back on, as Alice Friedemann’s book title says “When Trucks Stop Running” and to take that situation a little further as depicted in Kurt Dahl’s book “An American Famine”: Opening quote by Thomas Hobbes — “Hell is the truth seen too late —
As America's fragile empire crumbles under the weight of insatiable consumption and ecological ruin, “An American Famine” unleashes a nightmarish chronicle of societal disintegration that claws at the soul. What begins as an insidious downward spiral. Supply chains fracturing, farmlands withering into dust, and cities swelling with the desperate and the destitute; escalates into a cataclysmic year, where the grid fails, marauding gangs descend upon the starving masses, and the veneer of civilisation shreds to reveal the primal beast within humanity. Through a mosaic of shattered voices; widowed mothers clawing through rubble for scraps, once respectable men turned cannibals in the flickering light of burning suburbs, and hollow-eyed survivors bartering their last shreds of humanity. Kurt Dahl paints a harrowing tableau of anarchy's embrace, where famine doesn't just empty bellies but devours the very essence of the American dream, leaving only echoes of screams in the endless, barren night.
A situation Walter where all the gold, silver and diamonds is worthless compared to finding a can of: beans, sardines, steak and kidney pie; or in the end when all the accessible animals have been consumed, human flesh😱🤔
Well, your rather simplistic scenario is pretty darn romantic - in a rather grim sort of way. At least for the lone prepper types who think guns and ammo trump community building and trade. But then they haven't been working in communities trying to make change to an evil System for over fifty-five years like I have been doing. And other hard-working activists too. Let's give a shout-out to the people working on positive alternatives.
As I have argued with the other nay-sayers and trolls on the Web, we live in a complex system and there are an infinite number of possibilities for each situation that comes up. Let's imagine your scenario and poke holes in it. With grid failure, can you still light a fire to keep warm? Of course. With no trucks running, can you still get food from local farmers? Of course you can. Will the farmer take silver IF you do not have other items to barter? Maybe. Will the farmer actually prefer silver? Maybe. Do you have to depend on silver as your only barter tool? Of course not.
You are in love with a teeny tiny vision of the future. Cannibals? Get real. You might have noticed that the Palestinians and Sudanese are starving to death without eating each other. Is it just the stupid Amerikans who are going to eat one another? (That's a rhetorical question. You don't have to answer.)
Give me a little credit for multiple actions and multiple scenarios. Don't bother me with bullshit based on science-fiction and lowest common denominator computer jockeys who have no vision of how to make things better. And are you actually DOING anything to make the world a better place? Or are you just thinking up ridiculous notions that reinforce the MAGA types in their paranoia, hate and bloodlust?
If I was to pick Walter which country would survive the longest in a world of diminishing resources and global heating, I’d pick USA, and no I’m not a citizen of USA. But that doesn’t mean the USA would be immune from industrial and societal collapse when others around it have met their fate.
In a country (USA) with ~120 guns for every 100 citizens it’s not difficult to see how guns would play such a large part as supply lines fail along with manufacturing, over time, that’s weeks, months, years, decades even.
I’m not sure if you’ve read Kurt Dahl’s book “An American Famine” as you mentioned guns and ammo, and they do play a large part in the story along with who’s the most wily and brutish, also you don’t seem to have taken account of marauders. Whilst the story is obviously fictional, much of it, noted in the book is based on human psychology and past history of human survival. One such historical reference with regard to cannibalism is 1846-1847 Donner Party stranded by snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Cannibalism is a complex issue. Faced with starvation and a kill or be killed situation, hopium, morals and beliefs, in this context play their part. You brought up the plight of “Palestinians and Sudanese are starving to death without eating each other.” Whilst the suffering in Gaza and Sudan is immense and demands urgent global action, cannibalism hasn't occurred because of strong religious prohibitions, and partial aid access, and in both regions, effective law enforcement whilst undermined by conflict, competing armed groups, and limited state capacity and International actors playing roles in stabilisation, so it’s not completely lawlessness.
From the lack of affordable (EROEI) energy and critical tech minerals along with global heating the predicaments of the poly and meta-crisis will force humanity into the bottleneck of ecological overshoot and the great simplification resulting over time humanity regressing down a series of Seneca cliffs before plateauing in a 17th century feudal lifestyle before finally becoming extinct.
Whatever you put forward Walter as industrial civilisation and human society maintaining cohesion, I’ll just say ain’t gonna happen🤔
The US uses a tremendous amount of energy per capita. About twice what Germany and France use and four times that of Spain. Therefore they have farther to fall than these three European countries once a grid-down or stoppage of fossil fuel scenario is in play. You can make the same argument for African countries. Greater dependence on fossil fuels makes for a more precipitous decline and collapse once fossil fuel supply chains break down. Also, the US is a hypercomplex economic system rather than a complex economic system. The US cannot handle a contraction in GDP or any other metric you wish to use. It will just collapse, rather than endure a nasty contraction like other countries. We left the US in 2018. Once we stepped off the plane in Europe, our energy footprint dropped dramatically.
You appear to be edging towards my Doomist view of the future Walter.
“The US cannot handle a contraction in GDP or any other metric you wish to use.”
But not just the US, Global Industrial Civilisation cannot handle a contraction in GDP, the economic system’s not designed for regression, just taking Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics for example it’s an idealists fantasy.
Europe through a lack of cheap energy and materials is being forced into deindustrialising, at a time when AI will reduce white collar jobs, Europe’s between a rock and a hard place.
If you have the opportunity to remain in the US but chose Europe that could well turn out to have been a bad move, but then maybe like me you’re of an age where you’re heading towards deaths end, so doesn’t matter.
You used the word “metric”, so based on metrics regarding food production, energy resources, and geographical isolation, a few developed Western countries have the potential to be largely self-sustaining. The top candidates, often noted for their low population-to-land ratios and high resource availability, are Canada, Australia, the United States, and New Zealand. What you don't believe me, then check it out with your favourite web browser, or AI assistant.
At every opportunity Walter, along with and whoever ‘we’ are, should go out into the great outdoors, enjoy what nature provides for free, whilst we still can🤔
Your arguments lack nuance. There are quite a few differences between industrial civilizations. As a former IT guy, I assume you have at least a nodding acquaintance with calculus. Consider the difference between a complex society, which uses a growth model to even out the ups and downs of the economy over time - a rising tide lifts all boats. This is based on acceleration, or the 2nd derivative. Now consider - even if just for a moment - that the US has moved into hypercomplexity, as measured by the 3rd derivative or acceleration of acceleration. Going faster and faster on a rising treadmill, like when you take a heart stress test in the lab.
I lump the UK in with the US in this hypercomplex category. I am inclined to add Sweden too, but I don't know enough about Sweden's economy and have only been there briefly. I am well acquainted with conditions on the ground in some other countries. What I see in Germany and France are contracting economies that still have a safety net. Merz and Macron are dummies, to be sure, but the stability of their underlying safety nets keeps the populations satisfied enough that the social mechanisms work. This is not true in the US that does not have an adequate social safety net, even with a growing economy. It helps to be a social scientist to understand how the social mechanisms provide leeway to cushion the effects of idiotic governmental policies. But you don't have to be a social scientist to see differences in all these countries and their adaptations on the ground. As I say, your arguments lack nuance.
As for the land issue, a low population-to-land ratio doesn't mean much. I grew enough food on a small farm to feed several people back when I was a market gardener. There are many people still doing this. Even retired and at the age of 75, I grow plenty of food to feed ourselves and give some away. Plus I am building up my soil for future generations. And if you widen your scope a bit and look at differing countries in Asia, there is plenty of food grown on small plots to feed a much higher population-to-land ratio. Do a little more research on how small farmers actually feed most of the world and how the Amerikan methods of farming 1) destroy the land and 2) focus on wasteful production, distribution and marketing methods.
You are missing the boat by not focusing on real energy metrics. I will give you just one example, for which I have years of good data. I was able to produce 2.5-3.5 kilocalories of food for each kilocalorie of fossil fuel and human labor input from 2005-2018. In my retirement I am still able to get a ration of 1.5-2.5 kcal for 1 kcal of fossil fuel and human labor input. US industrial agriculture uses 10 kcal of fossil fuels to produce 1 kcal of food. Even in retirement, my methods are still 15 to 25 times more efficient in energy use than industrial agriculture. I have gone on at length on these topics for years and written three books on the problem AND solutions that are doable by anyone willing to get off their dead asses and out from behind their computers.
To be blunt Barry, you don't have method or theory or a working hypothesis or data. All you have are conjectures from what you read.
Walter, I still have the silver and gold coins I bought at your recommendation 15 years ago. It's not a lot, but it's not nothing. Thank you. I hope you are well.
Chris Clugston has written the book (three actually, magnificently researched and presented) on this materials scarcity for decades now, but pundits never seem to want to credit other authors for doing the work before them.
He's not available in All The Usual Places™.
That may be why he doesn't get quoted so much.
Where do you get his books?
Excellent read. Your point about the diesel required to mine and ship all these resources is especially important and often overlooked. So many people act as if we can just flip a switch and that the government can push buttons to magically increase the supply in a cheap way.
Additionally, I’m skeptical of certain renewable forms of energy like solar making a big impact on our overall energy output long-term, however, I was listening to a grid specialist the other week who was in the same camp but said that solar is by far the quickest way to add additional capacity to the grid. That was some important context that I was missing
Adding too much solar energy to a power grid can be detrimental because traditional grids were designed for one-way, consistent power flow from large power plants, not for thousands of intermittent sources acting at once. When solar generation is high but demand is low, the system faces, voltage issues, potential blackouts, and economic inefficiencies.
Here is why too much solar can be bad for the grid:
1. The "Duck Curve" and Over-Generation
As solar installations increase, the demand for traditional, baseload power (like coal or gas) plummets during the middle of the day, creating a "belly" in the demand curve—known as the Duck Curve.
Rapid Ramping Issues: As the sun sets, solar output stops, and electricity demand peaks simultaneously. Traditional power plants must "ramp up" extremely fast to fill this gap, a process that strains infrastructure and, if not handled correctly, can lead to blackouts.
Minimum Demand: When solar production exceeds local demand, the grid becomes unstable, akin to "cycling on a bicycle when it's moving very slowly," making it hard to keep the system balanced.
2. Grid Instability and Voltage Problems
The grid relies on consistent, predictable power. High solar penetration brings, unpredictability.
Voltage Spikes: A surge of excess power from rooftop solar can drive up the voltage on local power lines, exceeding safe limits and causing appliances to run inefficiently or become damaged.
Tripping Components: To prevent damage from these, safety systems can cause transformers to "trip off," leading to localized blackouts.
Loss of Inertia: Solar panels generally lack the rotational inertia provided by conventional generators, which keeps the grid stable. A grid with too little inertia is more susceptible to frequency disturbances.
3. Economic and Operational Inefficiencies
Negative Electricity Prices: During the peak sunny hours, there is sometimes so much power that the price of electricity turns negative. This means generators have to pay the grid to take their electricity.
Curtailment ("Spilled Energy"): When the system cannot handle the excess power, operators are forced to turn off or disconnect solar panels—a process called curtailment—resulting in wasted energy.
Infrastructure Strain: The surge of power often goes back to the grid, overloading transformers and power lines that were not built to handle reverse power flow.
4. Need for Costly Upgrades
To accommodate more solar, massive, expensive upgrades to poles, wires, and energy storage systems (like large-scale batteries) are required to keep the grid stable.
Solutions to these issues include increasing energy storage (batteries), developing virtual power plants (VPPs) to manage demand, and, in some cases, implementing "sun taxes" or two-way tariffs to incentivize exporting energy only when it is needed most.
Australia struggling with oversupply of solar power
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-17/solar-flooded-australia-told-its-okay-to-waste-some/104606640
Another excellent essay reminding us that we live in a material world. It was good to see you on The Great Simplification. You look so young! You give me hope that the skills I wanted to acquire as an engineering student in the 1980s, especially how to repair electronics and motors and how to communicate without the internet, are still useful. Thank you.
You left out the most important part: how much silver do you own?
A couple of years ago Bald Guy Money (no kidding - that is his YouTube channel) suggested preparing for the future by gradually stacking up 5 ounces of gold and 200 ounces of silver. I think that is good advice.
Reading I was thinking about a reason all oil won't be completely mined is people eventually won't risk oil-in-hand for unknown oil deep underground. Silver will experience similar, if not worse. As you point out, people hold silver as stored value. They won't give it up for silver for industrial uses. What would anyone trade for it?
Net-net, your story is more about the growing battle between silver hoarders and silver users. Declining supply might be the least of our problems ;)
"They won't give it up for silver for industrial uses".
Not always true. Back in the 80s, when the silver price went to $35 oz ($133 today), lots of people sold silver jewelry and flatware to get the money. The price then declined to $6 oz and remained pretty stable for years.
Yes! We must also remember one of the biggest industrial uses of silver was photography. I believe that had more to do with silver's decline. Not to diminish your great comment, but people sold silver sitting in their drawers, as you pointed out. Today they'd be selling the emergency fund. A different psychology.
I will assume many of your readers are aware of the Ed Conway book - the Material World (https://edconway.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-material-world) which was out 2 years ago.
This covers so much ground in terms of all of the basic raw materials we rely on and how interlinked they all are across the globe and, more vitally, how delicate those systems are.
I love to go really big picture with all this stuff... like this book, looking at it top level, then go really small and bring it back to super local level, individual level... basic survival, what materials we need, I really think there needs to be some of national / global citizenship sort of thing to teach everyone about raw materials, the sources of things, show them the complex web of layers and levels required to get a single product they use.
Even a very simple thing like practising zero waste for 1 month ... like throw away nothing, not even food scraps, everything has to be used, it really makes you appreciate the amount of 'stuff' that is wasted... and absolutely everyone should be taught how to grow food and how bloody hard it is (depending what you’re growing) and how to adapt to super localised diets - what can you grow easily in your local climate and get used to eating those sources of food etc. This sort of educational activity really should be happening right now.
Aside from all of that. I have absolute faith that humans are incredibly adaptable creatures and innovators and inventors and when the comfort and ease at which materials can be extracted and sourced gets too difficult, then the need to innovate really kicks in. We always find alternative solutions to things in every 'crisis' and 'collapse'.
I also believe that all of the evolutionary lessons we have learned are still hard baked within us... just because we have experienced extremely high levels of comfort and security and safety and lack of disease etc for a tiny blip of all of human existence all of the lessons and skills learned from all of our previous generations are still within our DNA and make up and will be there to serve us when we absolutely require them.
We are hard wired to take the easy route, always, it makes total sense... but as things get harder we of course adapt. We are a species that knows how to survive... of course... doesn't mean all will survive... naturally that's not how it works in life... I guess the grief of the massive amount of loss will be one of the things we need to adapt to as so many people are now sheltered from the discomfort of violence and death, but I think it will come back easy enough, it wasn't even that long ago, when it was reasonably common for still borns etc even in advanced western economies... people just got on with it.
Solid piece. Thank you.
Brilliant analysis on the thermodynamics of silver. You correctly identified that Silver is no longer 'money' but the 'blood of industry.'
However, there is a second layer to this crisis: Geopolitics. You mentioned that 70% of silver is a byproduct of copper/zinc. What’s missing is who controls the smelting of those base metals. It's not the US, and it's not Mexico anymore. It's System B (China).
We are not just facing a 'Bronze Age Collapse'; we are facing a 'Geopolitical Chokepoint.' The West (System A) prints the money for the Green Transition, but the East holds the physical keys to the furnace.
I analyzed this exact 'Industrialization of Precious Metals' phenomenon recently. It’s not just about depletion; it’s about leverage. [My early work: From Precious Metal to Industrial Necessity] https://chinarbitrageur.substack.com/p/from-precious-metal-to-industrial?r=71ctq6
Yeah, I don't know why he isn't around anywhere anymore.
His books are self-published (which I'm a great believer in)- "Blip" was especially trenchant and profound.
He had some posts on resilience.org, where I know you have long commented, and one or two Youtube speeches.
Copper paste for PV Modules comes with degradation and also cost pressure for thinner frames and then you get more damages … we may see the bottom of cheap PV. What do you think about Phyto and bacterial mining in combination of weathering?
So, who or what did the "pump and dump" recently on silver? Two billionaire brothers did this years ago from TX. Same scenario? Hmmm?
This story will evolve further through March. CME is supposedly short by 300 million oz of silver needed for delivery by the end of the month. The Shanghai physical metals market hasn't enjoyed the same crash... supposedly. And apparently, Silver has been anointed a reserve asset by several BRICS members. Oh, and the endless stories about the solid state batteries being a thing and needing loads of silver... seem to have entirely vanished.
It's a wonderful time to own shares in popcorn producers... I'm sure.
I think that there actually was not enough physical silver in the U.S. and U.K. vaults to satisfy the paper claims that holders understandably made when the price went up. Those who did hold physical silver claims moved them to Shanghai, who had to close their silver market for two trading days to prevent it from being manipulated, too. Also, China began restricting export of silver and silver products January 1st, causing importers in the west to panic. So yes, I believe you are correct.
Vital resources like these minerals and precious metals are quite finite. Capitalism demands endless growth, so how do we plan on feeding the endless machine? It is impossible.
It was John Locke, one of the first economists (if we shall add him to this basket), who considered silver and gold to be a source of value
interesting article by Claude Roche on Locke's Theory of Money, introductory note
https://web.archive.org/web/20170301093850/http://jean-pierre-voyer.org/Locke-Roche.htm
Thank you for the sane information.