I'm sorry this post is so long - there were a lot of things that seemed to require a response at length, and it's been a few days since I've had a chance to post.
vincecate wrote:That documentary is not saying "ones we can eat", it is saying the main ones we are currently eating. In particular top predators. The ocean can make far more sardines than tuna. In fact, getting rid of top predators like tuna can result in far more small fish for us. We may see people moving toward eating more small fish. That is fine by me.
I am rather worried about making it through the next 3 years. I think there is a good chance there are less people alive on this planet 3 years from now. The personal payback for me trying to save the worlds fish just can't justify any personal effort or worry. I think there are still things I can do that can have a payback for me and my family over the next 3 years. So "worlds tastiest fish populations crashing by 2050" is just not that important to me right now. I think it is a perfectly rational position, even if you don't.
Actually, sardines are being fished into oblivion, too.
http://www1.american.edu/TED/sardine.HTM Sardine fishing has been uneconomical at least in the American pacific since the 50's because of overfishing. You seem to think that it is the case that when you drive an edible species into extinction, there is always another less preferable one to replace it. This is not true. Please believe that we can and do permanentely degrade the biosphere around us, and please believe that this is massively to our own detriment, and yours.
Isn't limiting yourself to a 3-year planning horizon kind of artificially narrow? I mean, I'd hate to survive with great difficulty for 3 years only to starve because of human-induced drought after 10. But even if we're only talking about 3 years, the collapse of world fishing stocks will become very serious within that time frame. If you can't see why, consider for a moment that we aren't talking about there being less fish, we're talking about there being essentially no edible fish in many places where they were formerly a major food source, including the entire Carribean basin. This condition will not automatically somehow self-correct; you seem to think thast other species will magically zoom in to fill the niche after we smash the environment, but this isn't so. Seafood stocks are being depleted at extremely nonrewnewable rates; nothing of even close to the same nutritional value will be available to replace the resources we are damaging. Anguilla's coral reefs are already in a state of precarious health, if I recall correctly, so an abrupt collapse is entirely plausible.
This is especially true given that major-league social and economic unrest in the United States, as predicted by generational dynamics and your stock market research, will cause the Superpower to have little attention to spare for silly small issues like overfishing in the Carribean. But that sea is already worked by an immense fleet of mostly Asian fishing boats, which is within a hair's breadth of crashing the fish population already. Given that there's going to be food shortages and possible starvation all over Asia, do you reall think that huge, well-equipped fishing fleets will restrain themselves from plundering your natural resources until they are all gone? This could easily happen within a year or two even without a financial crash - it has before.
Consider the case of Somalia. When Somalia's government collapsed in the early 1990's, international fishing fleets pounced, and destroyed seafood stocks off the country's coast within a few short years. The population of former fishermen were left with no means to feed themselves - how could they *not* have turned to piracy? There is no reason to think that this scenario is unique to the third world; for most of history since European contact, the Carribean has, ahm, not been a very peaceful place, and it is likely that we could be in for a return of that situation. If all the US government has to buy food and fuel for its navy is horribly devalued dollars, how will they stop the various armed, mechanized, hungry factions from looting all available natural resources? Coral reefs, once destroyed, are gone. The issue is ultimately global in scope - if there were fish left anywhere else, the starving masses of Asia could turn there for fish instead of coming after yours. But since nearly all major global fish populations have been severely depleted, there are only a few left. Your coral reefs aren't completely destroyed, yet - so they'll be coming for you.
If your survival plan includes some way of maintaining your existence in the midst of a dense urban population newly unable to afford imported food because of the social/economic collapse and unable to get local food because of the environmental collapse, while simultaneously fending off desperate, heavily armed criminal gangs from all over the region, then sure, go ahead and ignore overfishing and coral reef damage in your local area. But as for me, I wouldn't want to even think of trying that without a fortified bunker, an air force, a navy, and at least a batallion of heavily armed troops. Even then, it's an extremely dicey proposition, since raiding will be the only way to obtain enough water and fuel. Good luck.
higgenbotham wrote:I've studied this topic a lot too and maybe you can answer a question. With all the documentaries you watch and reading you do, maybe you've run across "The End of Suburbia" (I haven't watched it) or the concept that suburbia will be a wasteland down the road. With intensive gardening, wouldn't it be possible for every family to grow most of their own food on a suburban lot? You might want to check out urbanhomestead.org formerly path to freedom if you haven't already. Now I'm not saying the suburbs are the optimal arrangement and there may be other problems, but in a lot of areas of the country I think they are reclaimable.
No, suburan lots are mostly not big enough. I believe the average size for a lot is something like a third of an acre? You could grow a graden to supplement your diet with that, but not enough to survive. You can grow very nearly everything you need on not too much space, but people are definitely too close together to live sustainably and independantly in most suburban areas. I'd say that in a good climate with fertile soil, you can probably grow at least 85% if not 98% of what two people need on two or three acres if you squeeze a lot. If you don't want to squeeze at all you can grow it on ten acres for sure. After a quick Wikipedia crawl it seems like the average population density in the suburbs is about 3-5 people per acre, which is too high. This is not a big deal, however, since the population densities in the surrounding wide-open rural areas are a tiny fraction of that. If you've driven down a midwestern US highway recently, you will have noticed a ton of open space. Nearly all of that space is used is absurdly suboptimal ways, even just agriculturally, so we can get a lot more out of it than we are without hurting the land if we'd just be intelligent about it. Provided that we can switch to sustainable agricultural practices en masse before we devolve into complete anarchy or unbreakable tyranny, there is nothing to stop us from being able to feed everyone, but the urbanized areas cannot feed themselves.
For reference, metro Detroit, with a population of 4.4 million and an area of 2.5 million acres, has only enough land to grow about an eigth of what the city needs, or maybe a little more. If no one leaves, they will would still need to import 7/8ths of their food to survive. This is not really a big deal, since the population density of the rest of Michigan is much lower - 3.5 acres per person average, counting the cities. So, the cities can never feed themselves, but IF we can avoid an environmental collapse that severely reduces land fertility, we can definitely feed them easily.
Now, if, in some more dramatic (but sadly plausible) scenario, you were forced to try to make a perapocalyptic survival colony in an urban or suburban area, you'd need at least 5-10 city blocks for a group of 30 or so people, plus jackhammers or something to rip up all the pavement. New Orleans did thin out about that much or more during Katrina when I was there, so I guess you could if you had to, but ultimately urban homesteads are impractical outisde of extreme disaster scenarios. Which is not to say that those are unlikely - quite the reverse in fact. But the difficulties are such that I'd be very reluctant to bother trying to survive in built-up areas instead of just avoiding them. I can't think of anything important enough to justify the security issues that couldn't be more easily obtained by a transitory raiding party.
higgenbotham wrote:My guess would be that the largest (non-representative) group that could be put together for the purpose of violent attacks would number around 25; any number over that becomes unwieldy in my estimation, so I kind of doubt the infrastructure gets taken down internally as a whole.
Well, it's correct that 25 people is about the largest size for a single coherent group to function autonomously while maintaining secrecy. However, that's no limitation for a larger overarching organization - you use a cell structure. Your group of 25 people is hopefully divided into mini-cells of about 5 each who know each other very closely and are good at working together - many small tactical operations only need about 5 people. 1 or two people lead the cell of 25, with the sub-cells retaining a high degree of autonomy. There's no reason you can't just copy that cell structure five times over for a total of 125 people and appoint a captain. If you have more recruits than that, get five or ten captains, appoint some leaders, call it a batallion. This scales indefinitely. Provided that the control structure at each level knows the details as to the operations of the cells, the cells do not need to carry each other's secrets. Information security breaches can only affect operations below the highest level of the structure that's been breached, keeping leaks contained. In this manner, provided it is allowed a free flow of information between units and commanded in an intelligent manner, an insurgent network can amass large forces while remaining in the shadows, distributed and difficult to attack decisively. This is, in fact, one of the central lessons of modern warfare.
Higgenbotham wrote:There may be attacks on certain areas or certain entities. By about 2015, at least I estimated at one time, DNA sequencing and synthesizing technology may become cheap enough and available enough for a "lone wolf" to release a pathogen that takes the system down. This or some version of it is I believe to be the most likely "black swan" breakdown mechanism. Check out this article and let me know what you think (in general) on this topic:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00580.html
Damn, I didn't know about that. In general, I think that is fucking scary as hell, is what I think. :\ I'm not really that worried about Al Qaeda using something like this, since as an international terrorist group they're 99% boogeyman. A crazy biologist cooking up something in his basement to kill us all seems unlikely but can't be ruled out. I wonder just how many people out there are capable of doing this, though? Maybe we can just pay those people well and keep them in a good mood.
I'm more concerned, however, that a government might release a gengenieered pathogen to reduce a rebellious populace. I could see either China or the US government deliberately releasing such a thing into US and other cillian populations, but only under conditions of extremely extreme outrageous crisis. That might serve as a terrifying end-game to any resource or dominance conflict that erupts in the next decade or so. Epochal wars do have a habit of being ended with revolutionary new superweapons, and that would certainly serve as a nice mechanism to fix the malthusian crisis. I haven't given this eventuality enough thought, it seems. I'm not at all certain what measures we could take to minimize the effects of such an event, but it definitely bears thinking about. Thanks for sharing.
higgenbotham wrote:I'd estimate the system requires about 3% real growth to sustain itself. That hasn't been achievable since about 2005. That's the reason for all the bubbles and $1 trillion plus deficits. The most likely general breakdown mechanism in my view is that out of necessity people find other living arrangements. As an example of what I'm taking about, there's a little known publication called Traffic Volume Trends that tabulates the vehicle miles traveled in the US. At the end of each monthly publication, there is a long term graph of vehicle miles traveled. I'd be interested to see what you think of this too. It tells me that younger people may be finding ways to live without a vehicle for the very first time, either out of preference or out of necessity. Anecdotally, I'm finding that this is true. Housing and automotive is the backbone of the current economy, so if people increasingly find other arrangements the existing economy will collapse of its own dead weight and something new will take its place.
The switch away from urban housing and heavy fossil fuel use will happen, but I suspect it will be driven less by choice and more by necessity as conditions continue to deteriorate in most inhabited areas. This is an ongoing process that's been happening for a long time. It's not surprising to me that young people are finding ways to to do without vehicles - it's because we're dramatically poorer than average for the population; we can't afford it. I'm about 25, and most of my peers are broke, so we have to make do. I know a lot of couples, including me and my partner, who started with one car for each person but have dropped to one functioncal car per couple in the last few years, because we couldn't afford the upkeep on the other vehicle. For people who live alone in the same income braket, it can really be hard to keep a single car in operation by yourself while trying to survive. This is already a huge drag on the economy, and it will only get dramatically worse. I hope we can switch to other arrangements deliberately before the bottom falls out, but more likely the system will collapse only when enough people are *forced* out, which trend is now starting to really gather steam.
One other thing I've noticed recently - more and more cars on the road, even nice ones, have serious dents and dings, and worse damage more and more often. I think this is happening because people no longer have enough disposable income beyond what they need to survive. Fixing a car after an accident can be hundreds of dollars, and where once people might have been able to afford that once every few years, now they can't. So we can see the process of the system smashing up before our eyes, but thus far people seem to be trying to 'man up' and muddle on rather than changing their behavior.
As a side note, the behavior of those with power in the coming years will decisively shape the new system that arises after the old one collapses. A positive outcome is...unlikely, to say the least. Unless we can sieze control of history and enact a sane system in a popular revolution, (hopefully a peaceful one... ) the 'something new' that arises will be a ruthless, technocratic tyranny dominated by an unaccountable private global elite.
Higgenbotham wrote:PS I checked the graph near the end of the latest Traffic Volume Trends and it goes back to 1985. However, the database goes back further and you can see that even through the oil crisis of the 1970s (when gasoline took up a larger percentage of the family budget at times), traffic volume did not decrease for very long before it went to new highs. I realize there are other reasons traffic volume may be decreasing such as more online banking and fewer trips to the bank but given the pattern of the graph that does not appear to be the whole story.
I'm no expert, but if traffic has beeing decreasingly lately, I'd wager that the cause has a strong relation to the relative prosperity of the middle and proletarian classes. Real incomes for the middle class and everything below it have stagnated since the late 70's, and they drive most of the cars. During the 80's and 90's, those people had at least a little money and were driving more and more. Between 2000 and 2008 they had a lot more money, but it was mostly imaginary monopoly money. Now that the game is back in the box and everyone below upper middle class is either stinking broke or working for the government or both, the very low productivity and consqeuent poverty of most US consumers is becoming evident, which is probably some of why they're driving less. Traffic figures might also bear some relation to consumer spending numbers, which could support this conclusion.
OLD1953 wrote:That population density is what the reply was based on, rolling back to the earliest days of informed agriculture, which is what you are stating, requires a human population of no more than a billion planet wide. That is, assuming there will be no use whatsoever of redistribution of minerals or fixation of nitrogen besides bacterial action or natural electrical events. (I spent a LOT of my life as a farmer, on a KY hill farm, doing this exact thing, I fully understand the limitations and practicalities from a real world standpoint. We COULD feed a large number of people with say 15% as farmers, rather than 5% or less, with the rest living in cities and turn to a more recycle oriented agriculture, but we CANNOT put 90% on the land and feed a large number, people take up too much space, it's an inefficient use of the area. Moreover, if you really wanted to maximize production, you'd be using/doing things that got put aside a long time ago, such as carbon monoxide fuels, which is the universal "green" tech that nobody seems to care about. )
I'm not at all proposing that we roll back to the earliest days of agriculture. I'm proposing that we abandon the old mechanized techiques of the vanished industrial age, which are everywhere on earth causing drought, famine, and environmental degradation, and turn instead to a modern reinvention of enduring techniques that have served humans for thousands of years. It's not like it's just me talking about this - there's a whole movement towards sustainable agriculture all over the world. Perhaps some research is in order for you - it seems like your information on agriculture is badly out of date. Given that industrialized agriculture has reliably lead to environmental damage and consequent greatly reduced yields and crop failures globally, how ELSE would you propose to feed everyone without the adoptation of sustainable techniques? There is simply now way. How can we still pretend that there is nothing wrong with industrialized monoculture farming when Russia's wheat production has completely collapsed due to human-induced drought and land degradation, as has Australias, when North American and Indian agriculture are crippled and barely hanging on, when China's once-fertile farmlands have been converted into sterile wastes? Why do you think the 'Fertile Crescent' is now a desert? Either we switch to a system that works, or we all starve, SOON.
These environmental abuses are just as much a part of the generational dynamics system as anything else. As the Boomers and Gen-X-ers came into power, they allowed new abuses of the environment just as they allowed new financial and corporate abuses. But when your society is immensely powerful, screwing with the environment has more dire consequences than screwing with the economy....
All of this was predictable. In 1991 I wrote a book, Sixty Seconds That Will Change the World, about the consequences of a major earthquake in the Tokyo area, and discovered that the rest of the world would come off far worse than Japan. US treasuries would have to be sold to meet insurance claims and pay for rebuilding, resulting in falling bond prices and rising interest rates. The yen would then rise as these overseas savings were repatriated.
I think we all agree that Japan would not do this if they could avoid it, because they understand that they depend on the US-centric system. However, it's much more realistic to think that China might cause a problem like this deliberately. Given that they see themselves as a challenger to entrenched US global hegemony, and are carefully and laboriously preparing secret plans to attack the US and drive it out of SE Asia and the nearby Pacific, it would fit well into their plans if they started dumping dollars first. They may HAVE to, in fact, since their agriculture is collapsing this year and next year they will be very stretched for food. If China can't sell enough exports on the global economy to cover the cost of having to import basically ALL of their food, and eventually they won't be able to, then they will have to use their stock of dollars. Other countries will almost certainly get in on the sell-off to avoid having their dollar stocks devalued. But the Chinese must know that if they do this, the blow to the US would be severe, and eventual retaliation likely. So, to avoid the wrath of the wounded giant, China must strike decisively and first.
My guess is that the first winter that China doesn't have enough food, - which may very well be NEXT winter - they will be forced to start dumping dollars. Other countries will get in on it to avoid devaluation of their dollar stocks, and the dollar will collapse. The US treasury won't be able to cover the cost of additional borrowing and will have to print money to pay for all the bonds. At this point the hyperinflation scenario will kick in. I'm not sure if maybe Vince knows how fast this will go more precisely, but I'd guesstimate that prices in the US would rise 5-10x within six months or so just from the increase in the money supply, plus an acceleration factor from rising inflation expectations. The effects of this on the US economy and social system would of course be absolutely brutal. Other states and actors will take advantage of this situation to the maximum extent that their power allows. I won't go into the details of my own projections too much unless someone wants to hear them, but having spent some long months studying Chinese military theory and history, and having analyzed the modern military preparations of the great powers in connection with their cyclical military histories, I think I'm on solid ground to say that World War is likely within a year of this, or more probably within six or seven months. This should give John the conflict he's expecting. China will probably win.
higgenbotham wrote:An interpretation that I think should be watched for is: Participants in the market seem pretty well divided into one group that expects a low near the end of this month and another group that expects a low this week and a new high between about mid April and early June. Therefore, if a panic setup were to occur, it might require that the market move higher, following the pattern of the 1987 chart. This would cause the first group to cover their shorts and the second group to get on board for the new high they expect, providing impetus for the 7 percent or so rally. At this point, the first group is seeing an "early" low and the second group is geared up for a new high in their predicted time frame. This would be the crash setup. If the market were then to head lower, it would provide the fuel for the bottom to fall out toward about April 18, consistent with the 1987 daily pattern. Another thing I'll make note of. Often times bad things happen right around April 19 for some reason (as they often do around October 19 which are on opposite sides of the calendar). Just off the top of my head: Waco, Oklahoma City, Virginia Tech, and the BP oil spill all occurred within a couple days of April 19.
Thus far it seems like you're right - the market is trying really hard to fly into the stratosphere, but the doubters are forming a significant headwind. See how sluggish the rally is today compared to yesterday? Judging by yesterday and today it seems like you're spot-on. If we see stocks rally 7% or so in the next couple of weeks, as seems very likely, I guess we should all hold on to our hats for a possible crash around April 18th - which is the full moon, by the way, as was Febuary 18th when the market peaked.
Around the begining of the year I set on my own expectations, based partially on the 1940 markets. I thought that the first couple of months of this year would be 'risk-on' because of QE2 and the market would keep rising, then in March and April we should see an increasingly sharp downspike as perceptions of risk spread through the memetic pool, and possibly risk of a flash crash. Thus far everything seems to be proceeding according to projections. As people begin to get out of fantasy land and realize the economy is totally blown, the markets start to panic. But in the aftermath of the downspike, after some kind of fake-ass lame policy response from the globalist regime, we should get another upspike in May and June, if only because QE2 is still blazing away and risk comes back on. After another peak towards the end of QE2, everyone should start really panicking in earnest, so I'm guessing risk will turn back off for approximately July and August and there will be a big selloff. Another, bigger but even less useful policy response from the regime should stabilize things for a moment, but not for long or with much solidity. That should result in a kind of Wil-E-Coyote moment for the markets around September and maybe October. Then there will be a huge crash.
Does this jive with your expectations, anyone?
