Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts

Wednesday, 5 January 2022

Collapse You Say, Part 10/Time for Change, Part 1: Money

Waves, rocks and ice on the Lake Huron shore

Earlier in this series (Parts 5 and 6) I looked at overpopulation and overconsumption and concluded that while both are serious problems, overpopulation is going to take decades to solve, while overconsumption could be addressed quite quickly. By reducing our level of consumption, we would reduce our impact on the planet and give ourselves time to reduce our population.

In my last post I looked at some of the unintended and negative consequences of the industrialization we've experienced over the last few centuries. I concluded that most of the blame for overconsumption can be laid squarely at the feet of capitalism, with its insatiable hunger to accumulate wealth, its inescapable need for endless growth, and its inability to tackle any problem that can't be solved by making a profit. These days some people are calling capitalism a "death cult", based on those characteristics and the fact that we live on a finite planet. I think they are quite right to do so.

Clearly, the blame for overconsumption should not fall on the supposed innate greed and materialism of individual, ordinary people. The upper classes (mainly capitalists) are superlative consumers and do a great deal of harm themselves. And their marketing efforts have turned the rest of us into pretty good consumers, too. Turn off their incessantly blaring marketing machine and things would be quite different—reducing consumption would look at lot more doable. We'd have a real chance of solving both of our major problems (overpopulation and overconsumption), getting ourselves out of overshoot and avoiding at least part of the die-off that is currently looming ahead of us.

It seems that at this point in this series of posts I am done trying to show that collapse is real and I'm ready to look at what we can do about it. And that is why I am changing the name of this series in the middle of it. It is, indeed "time for change". In truth, I probably should have made the name change starting at Part 7, but it's too late for that now.

Of course, many people in the "collapse sphere" will tell you that what we face is a predicament, not a problem—in the sense that it can't be solved, only adapted to. To those folks I would say, relax—I agree. My idea of a solution to the problems facing us is for us to adapt to them, and that adaptation will probably look a lot like collapse to many of you. We need to have fewer people, all consuming at lower levels that can be sustained by the biosphere, and we must start using up non-renewable resources at a drastically lower rate, until we can manage to replace them with renewables. To quote John Michael Greer, we need to get by with LESS—less energy, less stuff, less stimulation (entertainment). If we choose to do nothing, we'll get there via a brutally hard and deep collapse. But if we deliberately work at adapting instead of trying to save "business as usual", we can get there by a much gentler route, with a lot less grief, and with a better outcome at the end. Still involving major changes to our supposedly "non-negotiable" lifestyles, though.

At the end of my last post (months ago) I promised to tie up a couple of loose ends in my discussion of finance and government, and to talk about how to solve our overconsumption problem by getting rid of capitalism. Over these last few months, I've come up with a wealth of material on these topics and so what was to have been a single post will now be broken up into at least three: I'll be talking about money (finance) today, hierarchies (government) in my next post and what to do about capitalism in the one after that.

Money

Money is a tool and, like all technology, it is not neutral but is designed to be used by certain people for a certain purpose. Money is used by rich people to make more money—to accumulate wealth, and to control poor people. Sure, it can be adapted to other purposes, but I don't believe we can ever stop it from being used for those basic, inherent purposes.

If you study basic economics, you'll be told that money has three primary uses: as a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value. All three of those really just amount to keeping score in the complex game that is our economy. That score keeping is done in ways that facilitate the business of accumulating wealth. This helps those with lots of money get more of it, and works against those with little. We are told that not keeping score would be even worse, but the more I look into it, the less reason I see to believe that.

Capitalism started out with capitalists using their own money to build infrastructure (factories, mines, railways, etc.) to build stuff, which could then be sold for a profit. This soon changed to using borrowed money to do the same. The banks did very well on that, and before long the other capitalists saw that it is possible to use money directly to make more money, dispensing with factories and production of physical goods. This is known as "financialization" and while there are still lots of factories, making lots of stuff (much of it unnecessary), the financial sector is in some ways the business success story of the last century.

Unfortunately, our financial system creates money as debt, which must be paid back with interest. In order to do that, the economy must continually grow. If growth stops or even slows down, it collapses. At the same time, the eventual consequence of growth is also collapse.

The other primary use of money is as a tool for social control. Everything we need has been monetized—the only way to obtain the necessities of life (and much else) is to pay for them with money. Only a very few people live self-sufficiently today, outside of this system. The rest of us need money to live, and a job to obtain that money. In capitalist societies, most of the value created by your work goes to the capitalists, with as little as possible going to you as wages. This makes it challenging to get ahead.

During my lifetime, it stopped being possible to save up enough money to buy large ticket items like an education, a car, a house and so forth. For most people, especially those without rich parents, such things are necessities and can only be had by going into debt to get the required money up front. And it is getting harder and harder to pay back that debt. But that debt must be paid back is a strong value in our culture. To declare bankruptcy and effectively have your debts forgiven means losing essentially everything you have worked for. This leaves us in a position of being under the control of the banks, with very little that we can do about it.

If you look closely, though, you'll see that while not paying debts has nasty consequences for the lower classes, people in the upper classes can often come to some other arrangement if their debts become too onerous. In particular, capitalists whose businesses fail often walk away with little or no consequences since those businesses are set up as corporations with "limited liability".

So, it's pretty clear that in any society that uses money (keeps score) and makes accumulation of wealth a goal, the result will be ever growing inequality between the upper classes and everyone else. In the past, many societies that used money and debt, even without capitalism in the modern sense of the word, found that for the lower classes debt grew over the years until it crippled society. That was because the lower classes played an important part in those societies and when they were crushed under a mountain of debt, the whole society was negatively affected. It was necessary to have a "jubilee" every so often and forgive debts in order to get things working again.

But under modern capitalism, that's never going to happen—the lower classes are, to an ever greater extent, seen as not having an important role to play. Much of traditional work has been replaced by automation. If we are crippled by debt, it doesn't immediately bring our whole society to a halt. Indeed, much of that debt is held by the upper classes, who see it as a benefit. For the rest of us, debt offers a means to allow us to continue consuming, borrowing money just to give it back to the capitalists, with little time for thought about long term consequences.

Most of us are like fish swimming in a sea of money and monetary concerns, unaware that there is any alternative. We are certainly told that there is not. But we need to ask ourselves if money and this whole "keeping score" thing is beneficial or even necessary? Is there any way we could manage to get by without money?

Economists will tell you that money was invented to get away from the inconveniences of barter. But anthropologists who have actually studied pre-monetary societies, would tell you that that is nonsense—barter was used rarely, mainly for trading with strangers. Inside a community, among people who know each other, there are ways of living without money or barter. We'll go into more detail on that in a bit.

Conservative moralists, who have a great deal of influence these days, are concerned about "moral hazard"—telling us that keeping score using money is necessary to maintain fairness, and make sure that people don't take advantage of each other. In fact, very few people do take advantage. And keeping score mostly leads to growing inequality, which is in itself unfair.

And, of course, accountants would have us believe that the whole of modern civilization would grind to a halt if their ledgers didn't balance.

That's all very convenient for those at the top who actually do benefit, but most of these things could be eliminated without hurting the rest of us. And what's really necessary could be rearranged to benefit us and not just the rich.

If we turn to the study of anthropology again, we find that quite frequently during our prehistory we lived in small egalitarian bands who did just fine without money and largely without keeping score. What little score keeping there was, was informal and aimed at censuring people who didn't share well, to prevent accumulation rather than facilitating it.

For such hunter gatherers getting an adequate supply of protein was often challenging and that is one reason why hunting larger game was done enthusiastically, even though it was often not very successful. Hunters were expected to share the meat when they did make a kill, and generally did so, without expecting thanks or any special treatment for making this contribution.

Scientists studying such societies have observed that altruism (sharing) is a strong part of the culture, and have been puzzled about how altruism could be selected for on an evolutionary basis. It would seem that any individual with an inclination to share would inevitably be taken advantage of by less altruistic people, and individuals with innate altruistic impulses would soon be selected out of the gene pool. And indeed they would have been, if selection was acting solely on individuals. But selection also acted on the level of bands, and bands whose members shared well did better and were selected for strongly enough that such behaviour was eventually evolved into human beings. Mutual aid is a powerful tool for achieving success in groups and a major factor in the evolution of many species, certainly including our own.

Even today one can observe that there is a great deal of benefit to acting on a basis of mutual aid, working together altruistically in groups. In societies such as ours where there seems to be an ethos against altruism (a la Ayn Rand), people still do act altruistically, often as if compelled to do so. This tends to reduce the effectiveness of money as a control mechanism, and so it is not popular with those in power, but it still happens. And even in large capitalistic companies, in those cases where people are still working together in groups, you will find a co-operative, egalitarian culture, because it is the best way of getting the work done. Of course, management prefers to isolate workers, so as to better control them. Solidarity is a dangerous thing, from management's viewpoint.

Hunter gatherers had very little in the way of possessions—their nomadic lifestyle didn't allow for much in the way of accumulation. So you might say that money would have been of little use to them anyway.

But many tribal societies practicing herding or even sedentary agriculture, who had more in the way of possessions, and more opportunity to accumulate wealth, often got along without money or score keeping as well. In some such cultures, when you compliment another's possession, the owner is obligated to give you that possession. Strange as it seems to us, this is the basis of exchange in these societies and it works just fine for them. Since everyone is subject to the same rules, being greedy backfires very quickly.

It has become clear to me that the concept of fairness is quite different between monetary and non-monetary cultures. Diametrically opposite, in fact.

In our monetary society, fairness means playing by the rules, rules that are intended to facilitate accumulation. Successful people are expected to accumulate wealth. Indeed that is our definition of success—we are taught to admire such people, and to aspire to be like them.

In pre-monetary societies, fairness meant behaving altruistically—sharing, being generous and serving the other people in your community rather than taking advantage of them. Because the groups were small, it was obvious to everyone when an individual failed to share and do their part, and such individuals faced censure from their fellows.

If they had kept score you would see that, over time, the rest of the community came to be more and more indebted to skilled people. To our modern eyes, it might seem like the less skilled were taking advantage of the more highly skilled, but they didn't see it that way. Indeed it was frowned upon for successful people to put on airs in such cultures, or to use their skills to accumulate wealth. They considered it their responsibility to support their community. It was seen as just what human beings do, to the extent of their abilities. And everyone expected that their needs would be seen to by their community, to the extent that was possible. The result of all this was strongly beneficial to the community as a whole, including those we might see as being taken advantage of.

If that sounds like communism to you —from each according to their ability and to each according to their needs—you're right. That is exactly what it was, and a good thing, too.

Occasionally, in our lengthy pre-historic past, the idea of money (or at least the concept of credit) was adopted by various cultures. It caught on pretty quickly because it could be used for all the "advantages" we've been discussing here. In some cases there were also built in mechanisms for redistributing wealth—things like potlatches, funeral feasts and so forth, so that inequality didn't grow destructively, and runaway growth didn't have its inevitable environmental effects.

In other cases where inequality was allowed to accumulated across generations, the mass of people soon caught on and rebelled, reverting to more equitable ways of organizing things. In still other cases, societal collapse resulted. And finally, in cases where neither of those things happened, you ended up with the societies that eventually developed into to our modern capitalist civilization. Sadly, by the time those who were on the losing end of such arrangements realized what was going on, it was too late—those at the top of the organization were firmly in control, and not interested in changes that would impinge negatively on them. We were stuck in the sort of societies we currently have. Which brings us to the subject of hierarchies, which I will get to in my next post.

What I am intending to suggest here is that there are ways of supplying the needs of a society without causing inequality to grow. And without needing the economy to grow endlessly beyond the capacity of the planet to support. The sort of examples I've mentioned here are only a very few of the ways this might be done and I believe we may yet come up with new ideas that work even better.

In closing, I should probably (for the sake of completeness, but with little hope of achieving it) make a few comments on markets and property.

Markets

At the most basic level, markets exist to place a value on goods and services. But never forget—the value of goods only needs to be determined because we are keeping score, and using money to do it. In any case, the supposed magic of the "free market" is largely theoretical. At best, it can only work when all the players involved have roughly equal power. In capitalism, the capitalists have considerably more power than workers and consumers, and love markets because they are open to manipulation and control. Being able to game the market actually creates many of the problems inherent to capitalism.

Property and Ownership

The concept of private property is central to enabling the accumulation of wealth. The strong take what they wish, have the power to hold onto it, and use it to generate further wealth. Civilization consists largely of having laws to protect the private property of the rich and a police force to enforce them.

In such a system, owners have the right to abuse their property and deplete its resources, with consequences that are currently beginning to come due the world over (climate change, habitat destruction, resource depletion). In a sustainable society, land and resources would be the property of the community as a whole and that ownership would be about stewardship not exploitation.

We should also be clear that there is a distinction here between private and personal property. Personal property consists of items that you use in daily life (like your toothbrush, and your shoes and clothes). A community might elect to extend personal property rights to tools, homes and garden plots. But if you take property rights much further, you end up with individuals having the right to exploit land and resources to their own benefit and the detriment of the community and planet as a whole. Which is exactly what we want to avoid.

During the last few months while I've been dragging my feet about writing for this blog, I've been reading a number of very interesting books, which bear upon what we are discussing. Here is a list of those books, along with a few that I've read previously, but that also have been a help.

Debt, The First 5000 Years, by David Graeber

Hierarchy in the Forest: the evolution of egalitarian behavior, by Christopher Boehm

The Art of Not Being Governed, by James C. Scott

Against the Grain, a deep history of the earliest states, by James C. Scott

Living at the Edges of Capitalism: Adventures in Exile and Mutual Aid, by Andrej Grubacic

The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow


Links to the rest of this series of posts: Collapse, you say?

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Tuesday, 16 November 2021

What I've Been Reading, September and October 2021

Links

Above the Fold

Miscellaneous

  • Kim Stanley Robinson on the structure of feeling of this perilous moment, by Cory Doctorow, Medium
  • What Is Up With American Trucks? by Quinten Dol, Medium
    "We’re all suffering for your masculinity crisis."
    I'd say this is a case of vehicle manufacturers talking advantage of our innate, and often frustrated, drive to dominate. Culture takes advantage of those innate drives and uses them towards its own ends, in this case to make a tidy profit. And make no mistake, selling those trucks is a lot more profitable than selling smaller, more appropriate vehicles.
  • Review: A “Dune” Sanded to Dullness, by Richard Brody, The New Yorker
    "Whereas David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation turned Frank Herbert’s fantasy world into a visceral cinematic experience, Denis Villeneuve’s version remains in the realm of worthy principles."
    I read Dune in highschool,around 50 years ago, and have re-read it at least once since then, as well as most of the sequels and prequels, but not recently. Still, it seems this reviewer has got some of his details mixed up and is clearly a fan of Lynch's version.
  • Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Is A Future-Shock Masterpiece, by Chris Nashawaty, Esquire
    A more positive review. But I just have to say it, Dune is certainly not the best science fiction book I have ever read, and despite being praised for introducing a generation to ecological ideas, it makes at least one significant mistake, ecology wise. Only in an appendix does it address the question of where all the oxygen is coming from on Arrakis, and even then it doesn't answer the question of where the sandworms are getting the energy to release all that oxygen.
  • The Enduring Appeal of “Dune” as an Adolescent Power Fantasy, by Ed Park, The New Yorker
    "When you’re a teen-ager like Paul Atreides, it can seem like authority figures are always forcing you to do pointless, excruciating things."
  • Vikings lived in North America by at least the year 1021, by Bruce Bower, Science News
    "Scientists used tree ring data to more precisely date a UNESCO historic site in Newfoundland"

Coronavirus

Co-operation, Mutual Aid and Direct Democracy

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

  • David Graeber American Anarchist, Brian Rose interviews David Graeber on London Real
    "When I say the word anarchist you probably have an image of a bomb-throwing skinhead shouting slogans and facing down riot police. This week’s London Real guest David Graeber is going to change that image forever. A self-proclaimed anarchist, David is far more the picture of the soft-spoken, thoughtful academic than a combative activist. But David’s credentials as a campaigner and anti-capitalist thinker speak volumes."

Agriculture

  • The Myth of Regenerative Ranching, by Jan Dutkiewicz, Gabriel N. Rosenberg, The New Republic
    "The purveyors of “grass-fed” beef want you to believe that it solves meat’s environmental problem. But this is merely a branding exercise, not a climate solution."
  • Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable. The science tells a different story, by Joe Fassler, The Counter
    "Splashy headlines have long overshadowed inconvenient truths about biology and economics. Now, extensive new research suggests the industry may be on a billion-dollar crash course with reality."

Recipes and Cooking

  • Lost In The Sauce, by Nicholas Hayward, Medium—One table, One World
    "Sauce Hacks, Simple-Delicious"

Genetic Engineering

Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that this section was paid for by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its product. Millions of dollars are spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are equally safe. Sadly neither method of agriculture is even remotely substainable.

  • Panic-free GMOs, A Grist Special Series by Nathanael Johnson
    "It’s easy to get information about genetically modified food. There are the dubious anti-GM horror stories that recirculate through social networks. On the other side, there’s the dismissive sighing, eye-rolling, and hand patting of pro-GM partisans. But if you just want a level-headed assessment of the evidence in plain English, that’s in pretty short supply. Fortunately, you’ve found the trove."
    A series of articles that does a pretty good job of presenting the facts about GMOs. I plan to include one article from this series here each month.
  • GMO labeling: Trick or treat?, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
    "Many of the arguments against Washington state's GMO labeling initiative make sense. Here's why, despite that, it should pass."

Practical Skills

Writing Skills

Debunking Resources

These are of such importance that I've decide to leave them here on an ongoing basis.

Science

Lacking an Owner's Manual

The human body/mind/spirit doesn't come with an owner's manual, and we continually struggle to figure out how best to operate them.

  • How do you handle a situation where someone shows up empty handed to a potluck and then wants to leave with a load of leftovers? by Karlea Morallo, Quora
    Chock this up to the concept of mutual aid—one of the most powerful ideas in human culture.
  • How to maintain a healthy brain, by Kailas Roberts, Aeon-Psyche
    "Adopt these lifestyle changes and you will not only sharpen your mind today but also reduce your risk of dementia later on"

    • Books

    Fiction

    Non-Fiction

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    Wednesday, 21 October 2020

    What I've Been Reading, September 2020

    Links

    Above the Fold

    Miscellaneous

    • Neither nasty nor brutish, by Cathryn Townsend, Aeon
      "The Ik – among the poorest people on Earth – have been cast as exemplars of human selfishness. The truth is much more startling."
      This article makes some very good points about selflessness and generousity as basic human traits.
    • The self is not always selfish: Mary Midgley takes on Richard Dawkins, video interview with Mary Midgley on Aeon
      I don't agree with everything she says, but yes, selfishness is certainly not the central element of human fitness, just the opposite.

    Coronavirus

    Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

    Collapse

    • Here’s What The Real Future Probably Looks Like, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium
      "It’s not all starships and robots."
      The author is clearly not a kollapsnik, and is missing out on some of the basics, but even so she is catching on surprisingly well.

    Responding to Collapse,

    • Mutual Aid, RBG, and Where We Go From Here, by Dawn Allen, Legal Reader
      "Our rights never should have rested in RBG’s hands alone. The recent surge of mutual aid groups may help prevent that situation in the future."

    Resource Depletion, formerly (and still including) Peak Oil

    The change in title stems from the fact that it's not just oil that is peaking.

    Climate Change

    Economic Contraction and Growing Inequality

    • Forget Shutdowns. It’s ‘Demand Shock’ That’s Killing Our Economy, by James Surowiecki, Medium—Marker
      "Gyms, restaurants, and movie theaters are all reeling for the very same reason"
      Evidently, declining surplus energy is not the only thing that can cause economic contraction. The current pandemic is quite effective, and "opening things up" doesn't help much when people are still concerned about exposing themselves to a very real risk.

    Energy

    Agriculture

    Genetic Engineering

    Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that this section was paid for by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its product. Millions of dollars are spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are equally safe. Sadly neither method of agriculture is even remotely substainable.

    • Panic-free GMOs, A Grist Special Series by Nathanael Johnson
      "It’s easy to get information about genetically modified food. There are the dubious anti-GM horror stories that recirculate through social networks. On the other side, there’s the dismissive sighing, eye-rolling, and hand patting of pro-GM partisans. But if you just want a level-headed assessment of the evidence in plain English, that’s in pretty short supply. Fortunately, you’ve found the trove."
      A series of articles that does a pretty good job of presenting the facts about GMOs. I plan to include one article from this series here each month.
    • Elephant in the room: Why getting the GMO story straight is so hard, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist

    American Politics

    Debunking Resources

    These are of such importance that I've decide to leave them here on an ongoing basis.

    Pseudoscience, Quacks and Charlatans

    Gender and Sexuality

    There is No God, and Thou Shall Have No Other Gods

    I don't think I've made any secret of the fact that I am an atheist, but I may not have made it clear that I think any sort of worship is a bad thing and that believing in things is to be avoided whenever possible. Indeed, I do not believe in belief itself. That's what the "Thou shall have no other gods" is about—it's not enough to quit believing in whatever God or Gods you were raised to believe in, but also we must avoid other gods, including material wealth, power and fame.

    Further, many people today (including most atheists) follow the religion of "progress", which is based on the belief that mankind is destined to follow a road that leads from the caves ever upward to the stars, and that however bad things seem today, they are bound to be better tomorrow due to technological advancement and economic growth. This is very convenient for those who benefit most from economic growth, but it is hardly based on any sort of science and leads to a great deal of confused thinking.

    Poverty, Homeless People, Minimum Wage, UBI, Health Care, Affordable Housing

    Humour

    Books

    Fiction

    Non-Fiction

    Didn't finish any non-fiction books this month, but I'm working my way through a couple of good ones and hope to finish one or maybe both by the end of October.

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    Sunday, 12 July 2020

    What I've Been Reading, May and June 2020

    Links

    Above the Fold

    • How Many are Going to Die Because Trump Surrendered to Coronavirus? by Umair Haque, Medium--Eudaimonia
    • Calling overpopulation concern ‘ecofascist’ is absurd and harmful, by Olivia, Empathy Conservation
      "There’s a disturbing new trend of associating concern about human population growth with fascism and racism. Here’s why this is hugely damaging to people and planet."
    • 32 Pictures That Show What White Privilege Looks Like, by Dave Stopera and Matt Stopera, Buzzfeed
    • The Plan Is to Save Capital and Let the People Die, by Hamilton Nolan, Common Dreams
      "Whether Americans know it or not, their government is not working for them. Their government is working on behalf of capital. Humans are now a mere second-order, instrumental factor to be considered based on how it affects capital."
    • How Much Do We Need The Police?, by Leah Donnella, NPR Code Sw!tch
      Almost everything we use the police for could be better dealt with in other ways, ways that would address the underlying problems and solve them.
    • The Surplus Energy Economy—an introduction, by Tim Morgan, Surplus Energy Economics
      How the economy really works.
    • Green economic growth is an article of ‘faith’ devoid of scientific evidence, by Nafeez Ahmed, Medium—Insurge Intelligence
      "Crack team that advised UN Global Sustainable Development Report settle a longstanding debate with hard empirical data"
      "Decoupling is therefore not a truly scientific concept. It is, instead, merely an “abstract possibility that no empirical evidence can disprove but that in the absence of robust empirical evidence or detailed and concrete plans rests, in part, on faith. "Instead of focusing on the mythology that we can continue business-as-usual, we need to find ways to mobilise both technology and fundamental restructuring of our economies and production relations to transition to new forms of prosperity. As Jason Hickel of the London School of Economics has shown: “Over and over again, empirical data shows that it is possible to achieve high levels of human welfare without high levels of GDP with significantly less pressure on the planet. How? By sharing income more fairly and investing in universal health care, education, and other public goods. The evidence is clear: When it comes to delivering long, healthy, flourishing lives for all, this is what counts — this is what progress looks like."
    • Resources for a Better Future—Decoupling, by Timothée Parrique, Un Even Earth
      But the title should have been decoupling debunked. And a good job done of it, too.

    Miscellaneous

    Black Lives Matter

    • Black Lives Matter
    • Violence Never Works? Really? by Tim Wise, Medium—Equality
    • Opinion: Maybe That Police Station Shouldn’t Have Broken the Law, by Kevin Tit, The Hard Times
    • Letter from a Region in My Mind, by James Baldwin, The New Yorker
      "From 1962: 'Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.' "
    • When Gandhi Was Wrong, by Rafia Zakaria, The Baffler
      "There is no universal resistance strategy"
      Much in this that I don't agree with. It is important to realize the MLK eventually came around to the idea that violent protest may be the only way. Throughout history, much has been achieved through violence, and very little through peaceful protest. And I say this as a man who has no great love for violence.
    • Antifa, explained, by Zack Beauchamp, Vox
      "But it’s one thing to say some members are doing this stuff — a “faction of a faction,” as Bray puts it — and another to argue, as O’Brien does, that antifa is behind the overall tumult. The former is a reasonable suspicion based on antifa’s track record, the latter a political move designed exclusively to provide moral justification for a police crackdown on peaceful protesters."
    • This ‘Equity’ picture is actually White Supremacy at work, by Sippin the EquiTEA, Medium—Race
    • Structural Violence, Wikipedia
      A new term that I have just recently become familiar with and which neatly describes much of the oppression going on today.
    • Life and times at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, by Shane Burley, Roar Magazine
      "Following a long tradition of left revolutionary praxis, protesters in Seattle have declared a cop-free autonomous zone in the heart of the city."

    Defund the Police

    Coronavirus

    Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

    The New Fascism, and Antifa

    I hear a lot of well educated people saying that the people some of us are calling fascists don't meet all the criteria for being "real" fascists. Others have even accused us of calling anyone we disagree with a fascist. I predict that a few decades from now those same people will be saying they wish they hadn't been quite so fussy with their definitions, and had acted sooner to oppose these "new fascists", even if they weren't identical to the fascists of the twentieth century.

    Resource Depletion, formerly (and still including) Peak Oil

    The change in title stems from the fact that it's not just oil that is peaking.

    Climate Change

    Agriculture

    Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that this section was paid for by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its product. Millions of dollars are being spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are equally safe. Sadly neither method of agriculture is even remotely substainable.

    Recipes and Cooking

    Genetic Engineering

    Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that this section was paid for by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its product. Millions of dollars are spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are equally safe. Sadly neither method of agriculture is even remotely substainable.

    • Panic-free GMOs, A Grist Special Series by Nathanael Johnson
      "It’s easy to get information about genetically modified food. There are the dubious anti-GM horror stories that recirculate through social networks. On the other side, there’s the dismissive sighing, eye-rolling, and hand patting of pro-GM partisans. But if you just want a level-headed assessment of the evidence in plain English, that’s in pretty short supply. Fortunately, you’ve found the trove."
      A series of articles that does a pretty good job of presenting the facts about GMOs. I plan to include one article from this series here each month.
    • Genetically modified seed research: What’s locked and what isn’t, by Nathanael Johnson , Grist—Panic Free GMOs
      "Monsanto gets a lot of pain in the public press, but they are the company that interacts the best with public scientists — they have always been on the forefront of pushing public research forward."

    American Politics

    Debunking Resources

    These are of such importance that I've decide to leave them here on an ongoing basis.

    Lacking an Owner's Manual

    The human body/mind/spirit doesn't come with an owner's manual, and we continually struggle to figure out how best to operate them.

    Poverty, Homeless People, Minimum Wage, UBI, Health Care, Affordable Housing

    Humour

    These are great times for political satire.

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    Tuesday, 3 March 2020

    Responding to Collapse, Part 16: Shortages of Money, Part 1

    A few posts back I said that shortages of electrical power, diesel fuel and money will be at the heart of the troubles that lie ahead for small remote communities as collapse progresses. I am interested in that sort of community because that is where I am recommending that you take refuge in order to ride out collapse (and where I have already taken refuge). I've covered electrical power in parts 10 to 14 of this series and diesel fuel in part 15, so that leaves money for this post and the next one.

    We'll be looking at shortages of money from two angles here. First, in this post, shortages that occur when you have money on deposit at the bank, or credit prearranged with the bank, but can't access it due to problems with the banking system. Second, in the next post, shortages that occur when you have trouble earning enough money to live on because of problems with the economy.

    The song says, "money makes the world go round". You could certainly be forgiven for believing that, especially given the increased commodification of everything that has been going on, and the growth of the financial sector of the economy in the last few decades. I don't agree, though. Drawing from the writings of Dr. Tim Morgan on "surplus energy economics", I would say that it is energy that makes the world, or at least the economy, go round.

    We'll get back to the role of energy in the economy in my next post, but first let's look at money itself. Money is really just a system of tokens we use as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value.

    Conventional economists tell stories about how before money was invented, people had to barter for what they needed but couldn't produce for themselves, and this was very inconvenient. In fact, as an anthropologist would tell you, barter was used only on those rare occasions when they were trading with strangers, and often with the intent of gaining a (possibly unfair) advantage. They were strangers, after all.

    Most people usually dealt only with people they knew and didn't want to cheat. In small groups (less that Dunbar's number) there was no need of money since people just did what was needed, didn't attempt to keep precise accounts it, and accumulated little of value to store. This was primitive communism which worked on the principle of "from each according to their ability and to each according to their needs."

    As people began to live in larger groups, it proved useful to have some way of keeping track of transactions with people outside one's immediate group. I'm not going to go into the historical details here (read Graeber's book if you are interested), but eventually we arrived at the system we use now.

    Today money is created when a bank loans it out as debt. The main thing about money created as debt is that it can increase flexibly as the economy grows, where money based on precious metals is limited by the scarcity of those metals. In order to make a profit, which is after all the reason for their existence, banks insist that those loans have to be paid back with interest. This means that the economy must continually grow in order to cover that interest. As long as the economy is growing, this system works quite well. Indeed that is why we adopted it, to accommodate the growth stimulated by fossil fuel energy.

    Only a tiny fraction of money ever exists as coinage or bank notes—mostly it just consists of entries in the banks' accounting software. Coinage confuses the issue of what money really is, since coins at least appear to be made of precious metals. Many people believe that money based on precious metals (gold, silver) has some real value, because of their rarity and the difficult of mining them. They call our modern debt based money “fiat currency” because its value is based solely on your confidence in it. I disagree. Take gold as an example—it has some limited industrial use because of its low electrical resistance and high corrosion resistance, but its current high market value is based almost entirely on what people think it is worth. In fact all money is an abstraction and its value is based only on what value people agree to give it.

    Indeed the financial sector of the economy is largely based on trading in money itself as well as stocks, bonds, and derivatives. Much of the so called wealth in the world is based on these things, and their value is almost entirely based on public confidence in them. If the confidence evaporates, so does the wealth.

    I would define wealth as an enforceable claim of ownership on things with real value, or an enforceable claim on future productivity, yours or someone else's. The value of money in the bank or investments, is based on a claim on future productivity, and if that productivity decreases, so does the value of your claim on it. And, of course, if your claims become un-enforceable, as they might if the financial sector or society itself experience disruption, your "wealth" is worth nothing.

    In the last few decades the switch over from primitive communism to modern neoliberal capitalism has been just about completed. The idea of an "immediate group" has largely disappeared, much to our loss, and money mediates almost all relationships, even to some extent within nuclear families. This means that we are very much dependent on the systems which provide us with money, and via that money, the necessities of life.

    Today most of us access the cash we have on deposit at a bank via an automatic teller machine (ATM) or less commonly via a human teller at the local bricks and mortar office of our bank. And more and more we use debit cards to eliminate actual cash altogether, accessing our bank deposits directly at point of sale terminals. Many of us also have credit cards allowing us to access credit up to a prearranged limit at ATMs or point of sale terminals. Some of us, who are undertaking rennovation projects or operate small businesses for instance, have arranged lines of credit at the bank, at much lower interest rates than credit cards. This form of credit is usually accessed via cheques or online transfers.

    But having cash on deposit or prearranged credit is no good if you can't access it. Ready access to money relies on infrastructure that can fail quite easily. A local grid failure or damage to communications cables can knock out ATMs, point of sale terminals and the banks themselves—you may have noticed that, when you are dealing directly with a human teller, they are making entries in a computer while dispensing or receiving cash. Cash itself has to be delivered regularly to both ATMs and banks and shortages of diesel fuel or storms closing the highways can stop those deliveries.

    Financial crashes, recessions or depressions can cause banks to fail and take your money down a financial black hole with them. And during such crises the banks who don't fail get very cautious in their dealings with each other and the public. This is like throwing sand in the gears of the economy, and makes the situation worse. In such an event, you can except that your access to credit will dry up and that even your access to cash on deposit will be limited, since the banks will be concerned about nervous people deciding to withdraw all their money, in what is known as a "run on the bank". The banks, of course, don't have enough cash on hand to cover all the deposits that people have made, and would likely limit you to taking out only a few hundred dollar a week, at most.

    The simplest preparation for these sort of problems is having a chunk of cash on hand, enough to see you through a few days or weeks at the worst. And having a stock of food and other essentials on hand so you don't need so much money to spend in times when the banking system isn't working.

    A lot of people seem to think that a long term failure of the financial sector would be the end of the world, or at least of the economy, and believe that it is the form that collapse will take. But remember an economy is just a system in which the things people need are made and exchanged. Among small numbers of people who know each other (or can quickly come to know each other), and certainly in emergencies, it is quite possible for such activity to continue without anyone keeping track of it. The thing, of course, is to have close to hand the resources from which to make what is needed. In large population centres, once shipments stop, this quickly becomes difficult. In small agricultural communities, it need not be so much of a problem.

    In communities of more than a couple of hundred people, it would be useful to print and issue a local currency and set up accounting systems separate from the no longer functioning banks. The idea that we can't get by without banks irks me—they currently have a monopoly on the services they provide and on which we depend—and they make a generous profit in that business. If they can no longer do their job, then we should feel free to replace them as needed.

    As my regular readers know, I believe that collapse is actually something that happens quite slowly, has been going on for the last 50 years or so, and will be continuing for years or probably decades to come. But, when it comes to money, I can see why many people seem to have their hearts set on a fast collapse. Such a collapse would be much harder, of course, but at least your creditors, landlords, etc. would be collapsing with you and wouldn't be able to come after you for what you owe them. Leaving you free to concentrate on the business of survival.

    In a slow collapse there will be a period of time (already started, actually) when the banks and landlords still want their pound of flesh, but many people no longer have jobs, or good enough jobs, to pay them.

    That will be the subject of my next post.

    As I have been writing this post, the corona virus, COVID-19, has been spreading over the world. I've done a fair bit of reading on it recently, and I am getting disgusted with the amount of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) that is being spread around by people who stand to gain by attracting more visitors to their websites. This is uncertainly not conducive to an intelligent response.

    This a new disease and there is much we do not yet know about it, much that we will only know after the dust has settled. I think this sort of uncertainty is going to be characteristic of many of the challenges we will face as collapse deepens. My hope is that this blog will be conducive to a calm and constructive response to such challenges. Here are a few links that I hope will help when it comes to responding to COVID-19:

    That last link is behind a paywall, so I'm including a link with advice to help you get past paywalls in general.. Just part of my anarcho-communist approach to life.


    Links to the rest of this series of posts, Preparing for (Responding to) Collapse:

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