Wednesday, 22 September 2021

What I've Been Reading, July and August 2021

Links

Above the Fold

Miscellaneous

Structural Violence

Black Lives Matter, Race, Racism

Coronavirus

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

The New Fascism, the Far-Right 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 (maybe just a few years) 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.

Collapse

Responding to Collapse,

Climate Change, or rather, actually, Global Warming

Recipes and Cooking

  • The Secret to Making your Good Soup Glorious, by Malky McEwan, Medium
    "A top chef let me in on this trick and science agreed with him"
    This is essentially the same trick my wife taught me. Or if you end up frying the soup ingredients in a frying pan, be sure to deglaze the pan and put the resulting liquid into the soup. There is a lot of flavour there you don't want to miss out on.

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.
  • A 16th-century Dutchman can tell us everything we need to know about GMO patents, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
    "Today's agribusiness patent holders have locked out innovation. The annals of maritime exploration offer a way out. Really! "

Practical Skills

Writing Skills

American Politics

  • Biden’s Invisible Ideology, by Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
    "The President has deployed an exasperating but effective strategy to counter Trumpism."

Canadian Politics

Linguistics

Dancing on Graves

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.

  • The Sexiest Things You Can Ever Do for Her, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium
    "Guaranteed to blow her mind, anytime."
  • The system of mathematics I wish I had known long ago, by Theodorrism, Medium
    "Go on. Learn. Do this for yourself."

    • Gender and Sexuality

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

    Education

    Humour

    These are great times for political satire.

    Books

    Fiction

    Non-Fiction

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    Saturday, 24 July 2021

    What I've Been Reading, June 2021

    Links

    Above the Fold

    • Our Civilization is Dying Because It’s Addicted to Fossil Fuels, by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimonia
      "Why We Need to Treat Clean Energy as Our Moonshot, Or Everything Collapses"
      Umair is right that our civilization is dying because it's addicted to fossil fuels. But he's wrong about finding a clean alternative. Even if we could, it would create as many problems as it solved.
    • No, We Can’t Just Leave Assholes Alone Anymore, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium
      “Left unchallenged, assholes took over America—along with most of the world. Now this class of assholes dominates our politics. They steer our economies. They run our media. They dole out promotions to other assholes, and punish anyone for trying to do the right thing. They tell us what to do and how to think. Now they’re even trying to tell us how to vote, and how to love.”
    • The Myth — and Liability — of America’s Obsession with Rugged Individualism, by Scott Galloway, Medium—Marker
      “The Ayn Rand image of the solo entrepreneur — Hank Rearden toiling alone in his laboratory to invent a new kind of steel — is a pernicious deception.”
      Many of my fellow Canadians will feel smug that we suffer much less from toxic individualism than the USA, but being better than the USA is a pretty minor achievement.
    • If You Think Socialism’s Unaffordable, You Don’t Understand Capitalism, by UmairHaque, Medium-Eudaimonia
      “How Hidden Hyperinflation Left Americans Broke, and What to do About It”
    • We Can’t Afford for Everyone to Have Their Own Opinion Anymore, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium
      “It’s getting us killed.”
    • Why the American Right is Having a Meltdown About Race, by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimonia
      “How White Rage Happens, And Why It Still Defines American Life”
    • Lies and honest mistakes, by Richard V Reeves, Aeon—Psyche
      "Our crisis of public knowledge is an ethical crisis. Rewarding ‘truthfulness’ above ‘truth’ is a step towards a solution"
      "Working against this constitution are the forces of what Rauch labels ‘troll epistemology’. Trolls seek not the truth, but the destruction of an enemy, ideological or personal. Trolls not only fail to display the virtues of sincerity and accuracy, they work in precisely the opposite direction, deliberately offering up distorted visions of reality, based on cherry picked information."

    Miscellaneous

    Coronavirus

    Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

    The New Fascism, the Far-Right 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 (maybe just a few years) 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, or rather, actually, Global Warming

    • This is Why We Should Stop Calling it Climate Change, by Umair Haque, Medium—Eudaimonia
      “The Words 'Climate Change' May End Up Being The Biggest Lie Ever Told”
    • This Is What the Earth’s Climate Will Look Like in 2050, by Julia Slingo, Medium—One Zerp
      “The future under climate change can seem frighteningly vague and variable. A top climatologist explains what to expect in 2050.”
    • Debunking 25 arguments against climate change in 5 sentences or less (each), by Fallacy Man, The Logic of Science
      "Climate change is arguably one of the most misunderstood and controversial topics among the general public. Misinformation abounds, and many people are left debating whether or not we are causing it, and even whether or not it is happening at all. Among scientists, however, there is no serious debate, and there hasn’t been for many years. The evidence for climate change is extremely solid, despite what many blogs and politicians will tell you. Therefore, I want to try to correct some of that misinformation. Yesterday, I posted an extremely lengthy article debunking 25 myths and bad arguments about climate change. Today, I am posting the same information, but in a much more condensed form. I have attempted to address each argument in under 5 sentences. Obviously I had to leave out a lot of information, so if you want the more detailed explanations, please see the original post (each short response is accompanied by a link for the full-length explanation)."

    Gardening

    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.
    • Soil proprietor: Do GMOs promote dirt conservation? by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
      " Genetically engineered crops are supposed to make it easier for farmers to protect the earth by plowing less. But the record is spotty."

    Practical Skills

    • How to Free Up Space in Gmail, by Boone Ashworth and Lorne Goode, Wired
      “Google offers 15 GB of free storage with every account, but many users are hitting the limit. Use these tips to clear some room, and tidy your inbox while you're at it.”
      I've had a gmail account since shortly after gmail cameout, but I only recently switched to using gmail for all my email. Lots to learn.

    American Politics

    Dancing on Graves

    Debunking Resources

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

    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

    • The Rent’s Too Damned High, by Cory Doctorow, Medium—Gen
      “A human right, commodified and rendered zero-sum.”
    • Here’s Why You’re Broke, According to Wealthy Americans Who Skim My Articles, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium
      “The view from the top is judgmental.”
      “These people are straight up bullies, and what they need more than anything is a hard punch in their pocket books. They need to be reminded that all their 'hard won success' was supported by an infrastructure that no longer exists for the vast majority of Americans.”

    Humour

    These are great times for political satire.

    Books

    Fiction

    Non-Fiction

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    Tuesday, 29 June 2021

    What I've Been Reading, May 2021

    Links

    Above the Fold

    • No. This is a Genuine Revolution - Interview with Graeber by Evrensel Newspaper, by David Graeber and Pinar Öğünç, Libcom.org
      This interview is about Graeber's impression of Rojava after visiting there.
    • Learning My Left From My Right, by John Halstead, Gods & Radicals Press
      "We have witnessed the creep (and sometimes the sprint) of fascism in recent years into the center of American political life, and yet most people still have no idea what fascism is—much less its opposite, anarchism. (Even some on the left are confused.) Fascism will continue to shape our political future in the coming decades, so we need to educate people, in terms that they can understand, without the jargon or theoretical minutiae, about hierarchy and the state, and the possibility of a world without either. This is the lesson I learned after having my work co-opted by fascists: It is not enough to articulate a critique of capitalism—as I did in my article about distributism; if we do not also clearly distinguish ourselves from the fascists, then we will end up losing the debate to both."
    • Divide And Brainwash: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix, by Caitlin Johnstone, Caitlin's Newsletter
      "One of the biggest challenges for a developing anti-imperialist, at least in my experience, is learning to differentiate between those who actually want to end the oligarchic empire and those who just want the empire to act a bit more cosmetically nice than it does. These are two completely different positions, especially because the latter is pure fantasy: you cannot have a globe-dominating unipolar power structure that doesn't use violent force to maintain that world order. Yet the two groups often wind up moving in overlapping circles."
    • It’s Time To Ditch The Abundance Mindset — It Paves The Way to Inequality, by Jessica Wildfire, Medium
      "We need collective growth, not just personal."
      "If you’re one of those positivity wranglers, maybe it’s time for you to shut up and listen. Follow some of that advice you give about having an open mind and hearing hard truths."
    • What would happen if the world stopped shopping? by J. B. Mackinnon, Fast Company
      "Fast fashion is destructive and exploitative—and yet millions of people rely on it for work. In a new book, J.B. MacKinnon explores these complexities."
    • How equality slipped away, by Kim Sterelny, Aeon
      "For 97 per cent of human history, all people had about the same power and access to goods. How did inequality ratchet up?"
    • The Poorest in Society are Not Worth Saving, by Adebayo Adeniran, Medium
      "Despite the yawning chasm between the haves and have nots and the perpetual gaslighting of the poorest in our midst, why do the poor keep voting against their interests?"
      "I am sorry that I have to say this, for as long as the poorest continue to vote against their interests, they aren’t worth saving — they should watch as the NHS is being dismantled and privatized to silicon valley, post Brexit or see how much smaller their world is about to become without the ECHR acting as a bulwark against the insatiably rapacious excesses of the tech giants."
      I have remarked many times about poor Americans voting Republican and poor Canadians voting Conservative. Here, at some length is an of similar behaviour in the UK.

    Miscellaneous

    The Other News

    News that is being ignored by North American mass media

    Structural Violence

    Suddenly, "liberal" is a dirty word

    And with good reason, it seems.

    • The Centrist Delusion: ‘Middle Ground’ Politics Aren’t Moderate, They’re Dangerous, by Raoul Martinez, Novara Media
      "In a world of competing narratives serving competing interests, there’s always a temptation to gravitate to the political centre ground, the would-be midpoint between two apparent extremes, with its aura of moderation, reasonableness and realism. After all, isn’t the truth supposed to be ‘somewhere in the middle’, a composite of competing claims? The simple answer is no. Not in science and not in politics. When there are two opposing sides to a debate, sometimes the midway position is empirically false or morally abhorrent. In every civilisation, the centre ground of political opinion has been home to dangerous, inaccurate and oppressive ideas."

    Coronavirus

    Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

    The New Fascism, the Far-Right 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 (maybe just a few years) 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.

    Economic Contraction and Growing Inequality

    Agriculture

    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. (This month it's two closely related articles.)
    • In the insecticide wars, GMOs have so far been a force for good, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
      "Plants engineered to produce their own bug-killing toxins really have helped farmers cut the use of nastier chemical insecticides. "
    • Roundup-ready, aim, spray: How GM crops lead to herbicide addiction, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
      "Herbicide-resistant crops make it easy for farmers to rely on hefty quantities of weedkiller. Then the weeds evolve, and we have to up the ante."

    Practical Skills

    American Politics

    Debunking Resources

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

    Science

    • Nova in Cassiopeia brightens suddenly, by Bob King, Sky & Telescope
      "A star in the constellation Cassiopeia that flared into view during mid-March has erupted to naked-eye visibility. Catch it while you can!"
    • Practical science at home in a pandemic world, by Daren J. Caruana, Christoph G. Salzmann & Andrea Sella, Nature—Chemistry
      "There are plenty of online resources to ensure that learning can continue for students who cannot access universities during a pandemic, but what options are there for practical aspects of science courses? Daren J. Caruana, Christoph G. Salzmann and Andrea Sella offer a manifesto for home-based experiments."

    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.

    Gender and Sexuality

    • The Fight for Partial Freedom in Vietnam, by Mèo Mun, libcom.org
      At the start, this piece seems to be about far left politics, but read a little further and you'll see it's really about LGBTQ issues. And of course, the two go together rather well.

    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.

    • Is Belief in God a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? by Tessa Schlesinger, Medium
      This article raises an interesting question, and ends up justifying belief in God, but not belief in religion. As it happens, I disagree, and see no justification for either.

    Books

    Fiction

    I re-read several books by Steven Gould this month. Books which I find myself coming back to about once a year. Nothing profound, but a good distraction.

    Non-Fiction

    I finally finished reading A Peoples History of the United States. And I am over half way through Hierarchy in the Forest, by Christopher Boehm.

    • Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, by Christopher Boehm
      "Are humans by nature hierarchical or egalitarian? Hierarchy in the Forest addresses this question by examining the evolutionary origins of social and political behavior. Christopher Boehm, an anthropologist whose fieldwork has focused on the political arrangements of human and nonhuman primate groups, postulates that egalitarianism is in effect a hierarchy in which the weak combine forces to dominate the strong."
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    Thursday, 20 May 2021

    Collapse You Say, Part 9: Unintended Consequences of Industrialization

    Sunset Over Lake Huron

    In my last post I looked at some of the factors that made industrialization possible, and with it the huge growth in consumption that now threatens the continued survival of our civilization.

    During the industrial age all those factors interacted in complex and unpredictable ways, producing not just the intended results (more wealth and power for the already rich and powerful), but also a variety of unintended, and in many cases unwelcome, consequences. So much so that at this point the switchover to fossil fuels as an energy source, and the industrialization that it enabled, is starting to seem like a mistake for all but the small number who have profited the most from it. Unfortunately, while many people are beginning to have an inkling that something isn't right, very few have any idea what it might be.

    Some of these unintended consequences are contributing to collapse in general, others are specifically related to the issue of overconsumption. So as not to lose sight of the big picture, I am going to talk about both.

    Resource Depletion, declining surplus energy

    When it came to fossil fuels and various other mineral resources, we used the low hanging fruit first. That is, the highest quality and easiest to access resources.

    Those days are over and, while there are still large quantities of hydrocarbons in the earth's crust, they are, for the most part, in forms and locations that are much more difficult to access and which provide less surplus energy. Starting in the 1970s our economy has been confronted, for the first time since we started using fossil fuels, with reduced availability of surplus energy. Despite everything governments and central banks have been able to do, real growth has slowed. This has caused problems for our financial system, as we'll see in more detail in a moment.

    Fossil fuels were a one-time windfall of abundant surplus energy. That is now gone and there's no going back to the way things were. We used that windfall in such a way as to leave relatively little in the way of a positive legacy. All the available alternative, renewable energy sources have a significantly lower EROEI, providing much less surplus energy. Not enough to sustain economic growth of the sort we have become accustomed to. Probably not even enough to maintain our high tech civilization.

    Depleted reserves of many important minerals are also going to make it difficult to maintain that civilization.

    Depletion of non-renewable resources is a very serious problem which we hardly take seriously at all. Economists assure us that we can always find substitutes for anything that is becoming depleted, but they are flat out wrong. There are many things for which there just aren't any practical substitutes—fossil fuels, copper, and phosphorous being high on the list.

    There are many things we can do to reduce the rate at which such resources are being depleted, but eventually we will still run out. It seems to me that this will necessitate significant changes to our supposedly non-negotiable lifestyles.

    Resource depletion is, of course, a result of overconsumption, rather than a cause.

    Climate Change, Ocean Acidifcation

    When fossil fuels are burned, carbon that was trapped underground million of years ago is released back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 is a greenhouse gas and increased amounts of it in the atmosphere are leading to a variety of changes in our climate—mainly heating, but also shifting of rainfall patterns and more and heavier storms. CO2 is also strongly absorbed by the oceans, resulting in ocean acidification, with negative effects on many of the oceans' ecosystems.

    Methane (CH4, natural gas) is also a significant greenhouse gas. Quite a lot of it leaks into the atmosphere between the well head and where it is finally used. And higher temperatures release methane from where it is currently trapped in permafrost and undersea deposits of methane clathrates.

    The effects of climate change, such as rising seas destroying shoreline properties and agriculture suffering from heat and drought are going to be very hard to cope with in the years to come, and will be a major factor in the continuing collapse of our civilization.

    Climate change is also a result of overconsumption, rather than a cause. Many of the negatives effects of overconsumption actually show up as climate change.

    Pollution, Habitiat Destruction, Ecosphere Damage

    Of course greenhouse gases are a form of pollution, but there are many other types of pollution resulting from industrial activities, which have had negative effects on the planets ecosystems and will continue to do so for a long time yet.

    The spread of mankind across the globe and more recently the spread of the large scale agriculture and forestry needed by our population, has resulted in the destruction of habitats for many species, and a decrease in biodiversity.

    Elsewhere in this series I have said quite a bit about the carrying capacity of the planet and how growth of human population and consumption has resulted in our overshooting that capacity. The important thing to understand is that when we overuse the services provided to us by the biosphere, the biosphere suffers and it's carrying capacity decreases, making the overshoot even worse.

    Pollution, habitat destruction and biosphere damage from overuse are all effects of overconsumption.

    The "New" World

    The so-called "new" world was, of course, not empty. The history of the European colonization is largely a story of the oppression, and in some cases outright genocide, of indigenous people by Europeans. While it is convenient to pretend otherwise, this is still going on and has a destructive effect on societies that continue to let it happen. This too is an effect of overconsumption, albeit somewhat indirectly.

    The Financial System

    The financial sector of the economy provides services to do with managing money. But what is money, anyway? If you've studied economics, you were told that money is used as a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value. That's more or less true, but the most important thing about money is that it can be used to make more money. That's how businesses operating in the financial sector make their profits. It's also what drives growth, or perhaps "necessitates growth" would be a better way of putting it.

    In a rapidly growing economy there is a great demand for money to build new infrastructure. Existing money is insufficient, so that demand can only be provided using credit, and "fractional reserve banking" is the solution. This simply means that banks are allowed to lend out more money than they have on deposit, usually by a factor of ten. Money is created (out of thin air, basically) when a bank makes a loan. So, in one very important sense, money is debt. Today that is the only way that new money enters the economy. In order to make a profit, banks require debts to be paid back with interest, using money to make money. And by the way, when a loan is paid off, the money essentially disappears, back where it came from.

    Where does the money to pay the interest come from? Well, you might say, if a business is profitable, it will be earning more than enough money to pay the interest. True, but where does the money it earns come from? From other businesses and people, who have taken out loans which also have to be paid back with interest. And of course, the money for that interest comes from yet more loans.

    As long as the economy is growing, this works just fine. But if growth slows a point is reached where profits fall off and businesses struggle to make loan/interest payments. They are understandably hesitant to take out new loans and banks are reluctant to issue them. If this goes on, eventually businesses can't get credit to finance their day to day operations, and with no new money entering the system they can't pay the interest on their loans. Businesses start to default on their loans and if enough loans are in default, banks themselves start failing.

    Banks can reduce their interest rates to allow for lower rates of economic growth, offering cheap credit to stimulate growth, but when interest rates have been reduced close to zero, little more can be done. Over the last few decades the robust economic growth we had previously experienced was replaced by market bubbles (fake growth) and the crashes that happen when those bubbles burst.

    All this is why financiers, business men, politicians and even many working class people are so concerned about maintaining economic growth. But economic growth means growth in consumption, and has lead to our current overconsumption problems. It seems that in order to address those problems we will have to stop economic growth and actually experience "degrowth", until our consumption reaches a level that the planet can support on a sustainable basis. In order to do this, we need a financial system that doesn't break when growth stops.

    It is important to understand that, despite all this talk of money, what really drives the economy is surplus energy. It seems ironic to me that, after forcing growth in the economy for the last few centuries, the financial system is now struggling because of reduced surplus energy, a situation brought about by overconsumption caused by growth. So, clearly, the financial system is one of the causes of overconsumption.

    Throughout the history of the blog I have been talking about these three factors: resource depletion (including Peak Oil), environmental degradation (including Climate Change), and a financial system that drives growth, and can't cope with degrowth, as being the main causes of collapse. I could stop here, but it has become clear to me that overconsumption is also contributing to collapse and there are a number of other factors that cause overconsumption. We need to have a closer look those factors if we are going to figure out how to get them under control.

    Capitalism and Industrialization

    Industrialization was achieved largely using a system called capitalism. It consists of an upper class who own the means of production and a working class who do the work involved in the production.

    Based on their ownership of the means of production, the upper class claims the right to the majority of the profit from that production, even though they do very little of the work involved. The working classes are paid either a wage based on the time they spend working or a piece rate based on the quantity of production they do. In either case, the owners try to pay as little as possible in order to maximize their profits, and since the working class has no other way of making a living, they can co-operate or starve.

    Capitalism and Industrialism as a cause of over consumption

    The main goal of capitalism is to facilitate the accumulation of further wealth by the upper class. Unfortunately, "enough" is not a concept that enters into it, as capitalists are always looking to grow their enterprises and increase their wealth. Indeed, in modern public corporations, stockholders are liable to object if growth is not speedy enough. And, of course, as I said in the last section, the way our financial sector is organized forces capitalists keep to growing their enterprises.

    Industrialization has allowed us to produce ever more goods ready to be consumed. As long as there is a demand for those goods, the economy will grow. I suspect that at the start of the industrial age, when most manufactured goods were still made slowly and laboriously by human muscle power, there was a good deal of pent up demand for those goods. As we industrialized, factories were able to make goods more cheaply and in great quantities. It wasn't long before there was a problem of over production, or under consumption, depending on how you look at it.

    In addition to that, the nature a factory is to produce large amounts of one particular thing, and once you've invested in a factory, there had better be a market for that thing, whether anyone really needs it or not. This results in the "supply push" model of business, driven by the need to pay off investments in production equipment, and of course, to accumulate more wealth.

    Many strategies have been devised to increase consumption, so as to keep up with production, and ensure the flow of wealth into the capitalists pockets. Today these include, but aren't limited to, the following:

    • consumerism, where people are encouraged to see themselves defined in terms of what they buy, and to justify their existence by buying more
    • marketing, or the manufacturing of demand, especially for new and supposedly better goods
    • fads, fashion, collecting
    • planned obsolescence
    • frequent technological upgrades
    • deliberate waste
    • greed seen as a good thing

    All these strategies to drive consumption have messed with our heads to the point where most of us consumers have a very strange world view. For example, when discussing how to consume less, many of us are liable to start by asking what we need to buy in order to do that. I mean, how else would you solve a problem than by buying something?

    Initially, working class people were underpaid and weren't a major force of consumption. It took a long time and a great many strikes to stop the upper classes from thinking of the working class as anything but workers. Sometime in the middle of the twentieth century, working people, at least in the developed world, finally came to be seen as consumers as well as workers, and in some cases were even paid enough to consume effectively. Of course, this only increased our overconsumption.

    But even so, capitalists are still their own best customers, the champions of consumption. Globally speaking, the upper classes, the top 10% by income, do about 60% of the consuming. The bottom 50% of people by income only do a little over 7% of the consuming. So it is clear where any attempts to curb overconsumption must focus. Lest we get too smug, though, it is sobering to remember that the top 10% includes about 800 million people—most of the people in the developing world, including most middle class people and even many working class people.

    This is also why it would do no good to get rid of poor people, even those whose population is growing quickly. They consume so little that they simply aren't a factor in our overshoot problem.

    In any case, we all must do our part to stop goods piling up at the output of factories, and to keep service providers busy. The way the system is set up, failure to do this leads to the shutdown of factories, layoffs, unemployment and, worst of all, reduced profits for the owners. (Sarcasm, yes, but also factual.)

    So, capitalism is the driving force behind overconsumption, and as such is causing the slow collapse we've experienced over the last 50 years or so. But capitalism has other negative effects on society as well.

    Negative Effects of Capitalism on Society

    Under feudalism there was a web of obligations flowing in both directions. Yes, serfs had to work for their lords. But since there was no other way of getting the work done, the lords had to provide the serfs with a way to feed, clothe and house themselves. This mainly consisted of providing access to a "commons", where serfs could grow crops and graze livestock for their own use, gather firewood and so forth. The level of use of the commons was closely regulated, either by the feudal lord or the community that relied on that commons, so there was no "tragedy of the commons".

    Under capitalism there is no such web of obligations. The commons was soon enclosed by capitalists who saw it as an under used resource, and proceeded to over use it (a real tragedy). The only way remaining for working class people to satisfy their needs was to buy them from the capitalists using money they earned working for the capitalists. If the capitalists overproduced and the demand for labour went down, workers got laid off and the owners had no obligation whatever to support them.

    Capitalism can't even attempt to solve problems where the solution doesn't involve making a profit. Such issues are ignored or, at best, left for government to solve. Even providing what is needed by the populace is only an indirect result of capitalistic production, and if it becomes unprofitable, capitalists stop doing it.

    Capitalists feel entitled to an ever growing slice of the economic pie. As long as the economy was growing fast enough, they could have that and everyone else could see some improvement in conditions as well, since the whole pie was growing. But for the last few decades while economic growth has slowed and capitalists have still insisted on taking a growing slice of it, what remains for the rest of us has continually decreased, and economic inequality has increased significantly.

    To be clear, all of us in the developed world are going to be consuming a lot less, either deliberately in an attempt to get overconsumption under control, or unintentionally because we've refused to recognize the reality of collapse and it has continued whether we like it or not.

    But with the capitalist fixation on economic growth it is certainly a lot harder to do anything effective about over consumption.

    Government

    During the industrial era many countries switched from aristocracies to some form of representative democracy. Government of the people, by the people, for the people. But this did not make as big a change as one might think.

    Because of the need to fund election campaigns politicians find themselves very much beholden to the rich (mainly capitalists). Not only are capitalists incapable of addressing any problem who's solution would stop them from making a profit, but they make sure that government doesn't try to implement any such solution. These plutarchs, hidden behind representative democracies, are short sighted enough that they are unwilling to do anything to slow growth or reduce consumption. The difficultly we are having in implementing any real solutions to climate change is just the most obvious example of this.

    Other countries have ended up under totalitarian dictatorships, which tend to be poor and in need of financial support. So the same thing happens, with those who lend them money actually in charge.

    To sum up what I've been saying today about overconsumption—it is not a result of innate greed, not a failing of the human race as a whole, but rather caused by a capitalistic upper class bent on maintaining economic growth and the accumulation of wealth at all costs, with no thought of the negative consequences that await us down the road. They have convinced most of us, and themselves as well, that growth and consumption can go on forever on a finite planet.

    There are still a few loose ends from the sections on finance and government, but we'll deal with those next time. That discussion will lead us into the main thrust of my next post—what to do about overconsumption.


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    Thursday, 13 May 2021

    Collapse you say? Part 8, Factors which made industrialization possible

    Half of next winter's firewood,
    still to be hauled to the back yard and stacked neatly.

    In my last post I discussed a number of issues (needs and wants, human nature and politics) that I felt we needed a grasp of before I could go on with the rest of this series. If you haven't read that post yet, it might be a good idea to read it before going on.

    Earlier in this series, I identified ecological overshoot leading to the dieoff of much of the human race as a serious problem looming ahead of us. A problem that we are failing to address. Both overpopulation and overconsumption are major contributors to this situation, but overconsumption is the issue which we have the most chance of addressing in time to make a difference—to get us through the bottleneck we are facing. It will, however, require a fairly major change in attitude for many, if not most, people. I think we need to understand why we are overconsuming before we tackle this problem, and that is going to be the subject of my next few posts.

    Our economy has grown significantly over the last few hundred years, since 1700 or so, during what might be called the "industrial age". With it affluence and consumption have increased as well, at least in the developed world, to the point where this is no longer a blessing, but a serious problem. The confluence of a number of factors have made this possible, and I'll be spending today's post discussing those factors. In subsequent posts we'll look at the consequences of industrialization, how this has led to overconsumption, and what we might do about the problem.

    Surplus Energy

    I must give a nod to my Peak Oil friends and acknowledge that fossil fuels have played a key role in enabling economic growth during the last few hundred years of our history.

    For any particular energy source, it takes a certain amount of energy to access that energy. Surplus energy is what's left over to be used, and it's what makes an economy work. The more surplus energy, the greater the potential for economic growth.

    In pre-industrial economies, mechanical energy comes primarily from muscles (human or animal) and to a lesser degree from wind and falling water. Heat energy comes mainly from burning biomass (firewood, peat, dung, straw, etc.) and to a lesser degree from the heat of the sun. None of these energy sources provided enough surplus energy to drive strong economic growth.

    At the start of the industrial age the demand for firewood was getting ahead of the forests of Europe, and those in need of heat were forced to turn to coal. This was fairly easy to do since there were deposits of coal on or near the surface of the land, and it got the industrial revolution off to a good start.

    Coal was followed in the latter half of the late 19th century by oil and in the twentieth century by natural gas. All are still being used in large quantities. The high level of surplus energy from these fossil fuels enabled the building of our industrial civilization.

    Technology

    Soon enough after the start of the coal age colliers were forced to dig deeper to satisfy demand, and when they went below the level of the local water table, it was necessary to pump the water out of the mines before they could be worked. This unprecedented demand for mechanical energy soon resulted in the development of heat engines that could convert the energy of burning fuel into mechanical energy. Once that energy was available, we found a great many other things to do with it beyond just pumping water out of coal mines. This included railways and various sorts of factories where steam engines and eventually electric motors replaced muscle power.

    Before industrialization, most goods had been made in small shops employing only a few people, or in peoples' homes, using almost entirely muscle power. The availability of manufactured goods was limited by this and there was significant pent up demand. So the new factories found strong demand for their products.

    The "New" World

    In the late Renaissance and early industrial periods Europeans "discovered" several new continents that they had not previously know about. They ruthlessly moved in to exploit the wealth of these "new" areas. This gave industrialism a boost in terms of lands that it could treat as empty and natural resources waiting to be developed.

    Social Structure

    It seems to me that any egalitarian society, faced with the prospect of industrialization, would probably have decided it wasn't worth the trouble—the great possibilities for amassing wealth just wouldn't have held that large an attraction, given the amount of work involved for the majority of the people to benefit just a few. And indeed such societies were colonized and still haven't been successfully industrialized.

    At the other end of the political spectrum, totalitarian societies may well have been too inflexible and at least initially rejected industrialization because of the amount of change it entailed, the unwelcome challenge to the existing order of things. And indeed, during the process of industrialization, inflexible aristocracies were eventually overthrown or reduced to mere figureheads and replaced with ruling classes friendlier to industrialization.

    Europe seems to have had just the right combination of an upper class at least some of whom (particularly rich merchants) saw change as an opportunity to amass great wealth and hungry lower classes with no choice but to work for the upper classes. Especially after the enclosure of the commons left them with no way to be self sufficient.

    Preindustrial wealth mainly took the form of productive land, and there was only so much land available. Industrialization offered many new sources of wealth—things like mines, factories, railroads, banks, etc.

    Capitalism

    The new upper classes soon became what we now know as "capitalists". Capitalism is an economic and political system which exploits the labour of the working class and facilitates the accumulation of wealth by rich capitalists. It had existed in a nascent form before but really blossomed during industrialization. Indeed capitalism and industrialization went hand in hand and reinforced each other.

    The Financial System

    The financial sector of the economy provides services to do with managing money. It had already existed for some time, but what it really needed was a rapidly growing economy to enable it to use money to make more money in a really effective way. The high surplus energy of fossil fuels made such growth possible. As with capitalism, finance and industrialization went hand in hand.

    Government

    The state, with legal systems and police to enforce the concepts of possession and property and to enforce claims, in the form of debt, on others' productivity, was, as always, primarily the servant of the upper classes. Practically every government in the world was eager to support the capitalists and financiers in their effort to industrialize.

     

    Unintended Consequences

    During the industrial age all these factors (and many others) interacted in complex and unpredictable ways, producing not just the intended results (more wealth for the rich and powerful), but also a variety of unintended, and in many cases unwelcome, consequences. So much so that at this point the switchover to fossil fuels as an energy source, and the industrialization that it enabled, is starting to seem like a mistake to all but the small number who have profited most from it. Some of these unintended consequences are contributing to collapse in general, others are specifically related to the issue of overconsumption.

    I'll be going into detail on that in my next post.

    I expect many will find this a short and unsatisfying post (I certainly do), but the alternative was making this the first section of a very long post, so I decided to stop here and continue next time with what I hope will be the more interesting part and not discouragingly long.


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