Five Stages of Collapse

[johnbrickner]

Dmitry Orlov is an engineer. I like this guy because he wrote the 5 Stages of Collapse (yet, to read) and he thinks trans-oceanic shipping as we now know it will not exist in the future. He likes shallow draft (coastal) wooden hulled boats. Wooden boats mean bronze nails. Hummmm, pennies only seem to need a little metallurgy and silicon to become marine bronze. I am drawn to my past on and in the ocean.

A synopsis of his Five Stages of Collapse can be found here: http://www.countercurrents.org/orlov131108.htm

(edited to add this quote)

"In many places, it feels as if there just isn't that much left that's worth trying to save. If all the culture we see is commercial culture, and all the society we see is consumer society, then the best we can do is walk away from it, and look for other people who are ready to do the same."

Again, I hope you find it as interesting a read as I have.

[68Camaro]

I'll take a skim at the link. In the meantime I'll note that the 75/25 cupronickel alloy of US nickels would be far better for marine fasteners - it's a common marine alloy as is. US brass cents would translate best to bullets, frankly - one of the bullet makes uses the 95/5 cu/zn alloy now.

[68Camaro]

It's a 2008 article and he predicts a collapse (not the only one to do so), and at the time of the article the US is in the middle of that one - at the time of his writing he doesn't know the outcome of that or how successful TPTB have been at kicking the can further down the road. He's been watching this collapse for more than 20 years and he can't predict when it will kick over. He's also viewing everything through the lens of his experience with the Soviet Union, so we need to focus on how applicable that is. The Soviet Union did NOT have the power to kick the can that the US does. He makes good points but let's keep our own eyes open as well.

There are some very notable quotes, a few that struck me are extracted below. I don't know how original they are because I believe I've heard them from other places, if not thought of them myself, but he puts them all in one place, which is useful on its own.

...
Once international lenders balked at making further loans, it was game over.
...
[as something - he says oil prices, but could be anything] trigger[s] a recession, the economy starts shrinking, and a shrinking economy cannot sustain an ever-expanding level of debt. At some point the ability to finance oil imports will be lost, and that will be the tipping point, after which nothing will ever be the same.
...
One reasonable way of thinking about the timing is to say that collapse can occur at different times for different people.

I think his stages are mixed and intermingled, and I disagree with his order. I think the cultural compromise (I wouldn't call it collapse) comes first, then social, then political, then financial, then commerical at almost the same time as financial. I think the compromises in the first three have already happened, though they continue.

On financial collapse, which is the linchpin of the balance of his modern argument. There is more to come here. The markets obviously didn't collapse in 2008 - they came very near to it, both then and in mid 2010 - but TPTB averted the crises. In my view, the TPTB in US Treasury and the US FED have basically nationalized the financial markets by printing money with which to subsidize the big commercial banks, and the EU (and perhaps others). Their massive money printing has not yet resulted in runaway inflation because it hasn't flowed down to the people yet. Some of it is flowing in the form of loans and government spending and welfare gifts, but only a fraction. The balance is being used to purchase their own bonds, as well as assets and real estate, so the US has effectively bought trillions in distressed properties with some of their printed monies, and with more they have bought their own debt - which they can manage as long as they can manage the interest rate, which they are so far able to keep artificially low. So they have done a "brilliant" job at kicking this can down the road. Their hope is that they can continue to do so until the economy "turns around" or until the other horses in the glue factory get so sick that this one looks so good that people want to re-invest in the US. Good luck with that.