Protests Miss the Real Issue
The ‘proles’ are angry.
First we saw a populist uprising roughly centered on the traditional Republican/conservative view of too much government and too much tax. “The Tea Party”, not the original, which as Jon Stewart pointed out was a felony act(!), but the modern expression of anger about government intervention fueled, it turns out, by some very wealthy people (e.g. the Koch brothers), is composed of a seemingly disparate aggregation of right-wing malcontents. They now run the Congress, or at least so strongly influence it that it is a moribund institution.
Now the left rises to protest the wealth disparity that has been building for several decades and has culminated in Wall Street and banking in general stealing trillions of dollars from the middle and lower classes (the 99%). So, finally, we are seeing demonstrations. As with the Tea Party before them, they are the, essentially, disenfranchised whose votes seem to not count for anything anymore in our corporate owned political process.
Both groups share a similar problem with the conception of their protests, however. They both are expecting someone to do something, somewhere, to get the American economy “back on track”. They are protesting here and there because they believe somebody else is responsible for the mess and they want both justice and fixing the problems caused. They are both wrong on this count. There is no one to blame and there will be no fix.
Ultimately the decline of net energy per capita is at the root of all of our economic problems. Economists, business leaders, politicians, investors, and bankers have really just been responding to the cost-benefit structural contortions that have resulted in order to keep the profit engines working. They have had to take extraordinary measures to keep the sales going. Rising cost pressures, especially from high-energy consuming workers (and their families) in the US, and declining purchasing powers of those same workers was seemingly solved by moving manufacturing and some services off shore to lower wage populations. But, of course, since now more workers here in the US have even lower wage jobs, they also have become poor consumers.
Most of those people listed above deeply believe that it is corporate profits that trickle down (through jobs) to benefit all others. From the right, the thinkers believe the rewards lavished on the overlords are completely justified (don't tax the “job creators”). They believe this because, historically, it tended to be somewhat true. The capitalists received rewards in proportion to the risks they took and top managers earned high pay because they made things happen. The workers were lucky to have jobs.
From the left there is a deep belief that progress will always bring increasing rewards to society, which should be shared in some fair fashion. They are mad because they think it is this social contract that is being violated. And while they are right in one sense — the greedy really are taking more than their fair share — they are mistaken in the premise. With decreasing energy to do useful (economic) work there will not be material progress in the future. We are in decline (globally, in spite of the temporary burst of growth we see in China and India) and will be until the true bottom is reached.
Adaptation
I thought about this as I was working on the next blog in the series on future living — providing a map for the journey. What is taking place right now is completely antithetical to the sapient approach. Protesting with the expectation that we are going to “get our country back” is a distraction and a dangerous one at that. Understand that I completely get why people are climbing on the bandwagons. I certainly sympathize with their anger. But by holding onto the belief that somehow by taking this kind of action they are going to force the financial system and the political system to get us back to where everyone felt (somewhat) comfortable, say the apparent economic system of twenty years ago, they are wasting time yelling, camping out, and holding up signs. Would that they could realize the deeper and disturbing truth, they should be busy adapting their lives to the new reality — negative growth of material wealth.
I will be dealing with the issue of how those who really do understand what the future is about will be adapting their lives and expected standard of living so that they can continue to “make a living” in spite of a contracting economy. Material wealth, as it is currently conceived, is not the pathway. Learning to live by forming sapient communities and developing low tech skills, especially providing food security, is where the energy we have remaining should be spent. Protesting isn't getting the ground ready for spring planting.
Strangely juxtaposed with the Occupy Wall Street protests has been the death of Steve Jobs. I say strange because Mr. Jobs, while a great innovator and social force, was an anachronism. Just as the OWS protesters are missing the real problem, Mr. Jobs kept pushing the growth model, especially in terms of high rate churn of products, many of which were really geared to entertainment rather than real wealth production productivity. The almost continuous introduction of the newest, greatest incarnation of the iPhoneTM as an example, promoted and incited consumption of novelty just for its own sake. Did each incarnation really add anything to the real wealth of the world? Was the supposed increased functionality really that important? The model pushed by Mr. Jobs, and now emulated by so many other high-tech companies speaks to a world that is in rapid growth and high competition. And neither of these aspects are appropriate for the age we actually live in now. Like Congress, this model is moribund. The only reason it isn't yet following the rest of the economy in decline is that, being a relatively small portion of a typical consumer's expenditures, and motivated by the momentum of Wow-based buying, it just hasn't quite caught up with the dysfunctional aspects of a consumer economy. Moreover, the products actually are geared to helping consumers forget their other woes. As long as one can sport the newest model of iPhone, one can feel, for a little longer, like the world is still normal. But the angst of realizing otherwise will catch up, even with Apple.
Fortunately there are a (growing) number of groups who have realized the truth and are in the process of adapting (see, for example, Transition Towns). It starts with gathering enough information to recognize the problems. One has to adapt their thinking first. Then comes the need to adapt one's lifestyle. I think there is some time remaining for doing this with a minimum of pain. But that window of opportunity is closing rapidly. In fact if the OWSers and the Tea Partiers continue to disrupt or distract thinking by the rest of us, the window could actually close even sooner. Look at what Tea Party politics has done to our government (not that it was in great shape prior to their inclinations to shut everything down unless they got their way).
Still the Dream Lives On
As you might expect, Tom Friedman has a different slant on the juxtaposition of Jobs' death and the right and left protests (see: Where have you gone Joe Dimaggio?, Sunday, 10/09 New York Times - may be behind a pay wall). In his naive but very solid belief in technology and innovation he laments that our government doesn't do more to support the people, like Jobs, who will invent the technology that will solve all of our problems, including (in spite of the Second Law of Thermodynamics) our energy source problems, which he has tried to liken to the revolution in information technology (IT) as energy technology (ET) in spite of the two kinds of technologies being extremely different in terms of the governing laws of nature.
And that is the dream the protesters, and nearly everyone else can believe in. We've always invented our way out of stagnant or negative growth before. And as the non-sequiter logic dictates, therefore we always will. What is alarming to the Friedmans and even the proles who buy this story is that this time around there seems to be a slight hitch in getting these inventions done and out to the market (I doubt that the über wealthy are even paying attention). Blame government regulations. Blame corporate greed. Blame socialist agendas. Blame conservative blockages and stalemates in Congress. Blame too much tax. Blame too little spending. Blame too much debt. Blame too much timidity.
Blame anything but the real cause. The real truth is that we “consumers” had a binge beyond belief. And during that binge we used up the cheap energy sources. All that is left is the expensive energy. And after a while even that will be gone, in the sense that what is left of fossil fuels will simply be uneconomic to recover at any price.
I hope the OWS (and everywhere else) protesters are having a good time. I hope they enjoy the party while it lasts. I hope their high-on-group-action is a real buzz. I hope the Tea Party members of Congress are enjoying their current power. I hope the folk in the Middle East are getting high on freedom. Because, in the morning they will all have major hangovers when the Arab spring, the Tea Party summer, and the Occupy * fall will give way to the economic winter, and a very long one at that.
[EDIT: Corrected Jon Stewart's name spelling as per commentator's "gentle nudge" below.]
Excellent points as usual, George.
Most local and regional Transition folks I know are too busy with getting on with adapting to the post-growth epoch to allow the OWS episode to distract from the urgent work to be done.
Moreover, most self-satisfied urban/suburban bourgeois "Progressives" are more interested in keeping the big-gov't programs funded, including Boomer Progressives staring down end of life and being reliant upon the insolvent state at various levels to keep their high-entropy lifestyles intact until death.
BTW, I would not presume uneconomic growth to continue in China and India much longer. The Chinese and Indians are building out high-entropy, high-rise, net energy-intensive profiles for many of their major population centers that are reminiscent of growth in the West with oil at $6-$10/bbl. This development is utterly unsustainable, even laughable, especially in per capita terms after price effects. China and India are 40-80 years too late to the auto- and oil-based techno-economic model of growth; but they apparently don't yet know it.
China's fixed investment is nearly 50% of GDP, with exports contributing 20-25% (down from 30-35%). Total debt to GDP is now $7 to $1, with debt-induced fixed investment growing 15-25%/yr. (a doubling time of 33-55 months)!!!
China's fixed investment and debt to GDP constitutes the largest such bubble in world history as a share of GDP (not counting human ape population growth being "the" largest bubble in history going back to the onset of the Industrial Revolution and accelerating since the Green Revolution).
The Great China Crash is a global event few are expecting.
Posted by: Bruce | October 09, 2011 at 05:52 PM
George,
As Max Planke famously quiped:
" Science advances on funeral at a time."
This could also be applied to the social paradigm.
At least give the young people a little credit for waking up and trying to do something, anything.
Up until now they have been glued to their IPOD (or pick your hand held electronic entertainment device).
Maybe the death of Steve Jobs was by divine design of an aware universe and symbolic as a wake up call to the young to at least stop going down the wrong road and prepare for something else.
Things will change as the numbers of the old order dwindle through death and the numbers of the new order increase as they come of legal age or more importantly come to the "age of reason".
You can never convince the status quo to change. You either have to force them (never happen in this age of high technology weaponry, this is not 1776 when my gun was as good as your gun etc.)
So each day the balance of power shifts ever so slowly to the new ways of thinking through the inexorable process of life and death.
How have you been?
I e-mailed you seperately on your Gmail account. I hope it is still functional.
Posted by: porge | October 09, 2011 at 06:20 PM
Bruce,
Your point about Chindia being way too late vis-a-vis net energy is spot on.
The debt to GDP comparisons that you draw mean nothing.
Money and debt are both contrivances of the human mind and thus illusions.
The only things that really matter are resources chief among them energy.
Posted by: porge | October 09, 2011 at 06:34 PM
correction to my first comment drop "either" from line 15.
I am a anal retentive mood!
Posted by: porge | October 09, 2011 at 06:37 PM
The current system is going to have to be dismantled before a sustainable system can self-organizae out of the rubble. And Adbusters, a very savvy, eco- and systems literate organization, is the original organizer of the OWS movement. So the OWS movement is far from incoherent. It is good to see the American public finally develop a little backbone, because we're going to need it.
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/85/open-letter-ecological-economics-movement.html
Steve Jobs death could represent the death of our subconscious hopes that technology will save us from our quandary. I have wondered at the strong response to his death, and whether his death is a proxy for the death of our hope for a renewed expansion of our iFuture, instead of a great transition?
Posted by: Iaato | October 09, 2011 at 06:49 PM
But that's not very useful if they have no clue what to do or what the situation really is.
Historically, when civilizations have collapsed, it has typically been some fundamental cause, usually ecological overshoot, that triggered their collapse. But the immediate events that did it almost invariably involved mass uprising of people unhappy with declining living standards, people who were totally clueless (just as their leaders were) of the real reasons for why their standard of living was declining, but who were naturally unhappy about it.
Almost every single mass protest you are going to see from now on will be of that variety and that's not a good thing. The majority of OWS protesters do not at all understand how exactly Wall Street control the government (which people should be definitely protesting against), but they are out there protesting because there are no jobs and the economy is in shambles. Wall Street has been controlling the government for decades - why weren't they protesting against that back then? Because they didn't understand it and they weren't hurting financially at the time. They still don't quite understand it and they understand our global ecological overshoot even less.
That's not going to happen. When they system gets dismantled to rubble, with it goes all the knowledge of cosmology, physics, biology, ecology and everything else that is absolutely required for a sustainable system to be constructed. People like George exist only because there was a complex societal system that could afford to have them around doing research, teaching and thinking about things. Once the system is gone, they will be gone too and with them most of the knowledge. Again, history provides plenty of examples - Rome collapsed and we only have fragments of the intellectual legacy of the time preserved, the rest was lost.
You can not build a sustainable society based on ignorance and illiteracy, all you have left in such a case is the biological nature of humans and human nature is inherently unsustainable.
Posted by: Georgi Marinov | October 10, 2011 at 06:50 AM
Georgi,
Every major social change in history is characterized by the disenfrnachised masses being led by disaffected intellectuals...........The leaders aren't invovled yet.
They will eventually get more organized.
As to losing all our accumulated knowledge......no way... this is not the ancient times when the burning of the Library at Alexandria represented the loss of all knowledge.
In our time there are many redundacies and the knowledge has been diffused over the entire planet.
Now, I agree that it needs to be in some hard form and not just stored as bits and bytes but think about it... there is literally information written everywhere.
Whether we will be able to use it or apply it is another matter of course.
Your last statement I think gives too much weight to the lower and mid brain and discounts the thinking brain.
Too many people know too much and your example of Rome doesn't take into account that back then everyone believe in superstition and magic and science wasn't even a mainstream discipline.
The mind of the average person 2k years ago would be unrecognizable to any of us today.
My 2 cents.
You are free to pick at it.
Posted by: porge | October 10, 2011 at 07:34 AM
You bet, Georgi, I'm worried about maintenance of information too. But a sustainable society does not necessarily mean advanced, unfortunately. We will end up either sustainable in whatever form that takes, or extinct. That is thermodynamic certainty. The problem with our information system is that it is too digital, vulnerable to electricity problems. Ditch the Kindle and start saving books.
We'll see if this OWS movement gets hijacked too? The Adbusters leader group is probably small. The original Teabaggers movement started on Wall Street in the same way, out of Denninger's Ticker Forum. It got hijacked almost immediately by corporate interests for corporate manipulation. I'm really afraid we're headed for bad form of fascism. Did anyone catch the Immelt interview on 60 minutes last night? Worth a look.
Speaking of research, a good conference is coming up, George. Warm and sunny in january.
http://www.emergysystems.org/conference7.php
Posted by: Iaato | October 10, 2011 at 08:39 AM
Great discussion this!
I am rattled with our collective insouciance.
I am also wondering if there are energy conferences happening which really and truly show the energy scenario as it is. What are the guys at the big corporations thinking? They would know every bit of what this discussion is about... What are they sitting silent for? Are these management folks so self-delusional? It isn't rocket science to do the calculations...
I am thinking about the Petroleum Minister of India... I don't have words right now...
Good nite.
Posted by: Siddharth Soni | October 10, 2011 at 09:42 AM
NW Permaculture Convergence, Oct. 13-16 in Portland, OR:
http://nwpermaculture.com/
Requirement: Restraint for the aversion to body piercings, "body art", dreadlocks, and people with names like Brush, Oz, Stone, and Tree.
The neo-primative/neo-tribal future is emerging, and it's, well, "interesting". It is said that one must embrace the future; but, if you do, be careful about encountering sharp instruments. ;-)
Posted by: Bruce | October 10, 2011 at 10:04 AM
Actually, we are in much worse shape when it comes to preserving knowledge today than they were in the past
1. We have been moving lots of from paper from into electronic form, and in electronic from it will almost no chance to survive the collapse
2. We have developed such level of specialization that there are practically no people who have even a superficial grasp of all important areas.
To preserve the knowledge, you have to not only preserve the books but also the people, for books without people who know what's between the lines is better than no people but is ultimately not enough. However, when knowledge has been partitioned into hundreds and thousands of subfields and sub-subfields, it will be very difficult to do so.
I second what you say about books. But, a sustainable society that is not advanced is an extinct one in the long run.
The big picture is the following:
Here we are no this planet and we know that even if live in a perfectly sustainable way, sooner or later some major cataclysm will occur and we will be wiped out. Or if it doesn't, 500 million years from now, the planet will be dead because the Sun will become too hot. This means we need to get out of here somehow if we want to survive longer. As far as we can tell based on our current knowledge of the laws of physics, it is physically impossible to do so, but the fact that it is unlikely that we will be ever able to do so does not change the fact that we have to try (otherwise we're extinct with 100% certainty). But civilization is one-shot affair on a planetary level - if we fail there won't be another one rising from the ashes because we will have exhausted all the resources necessary for it to develop.
So the only rational thing would have been to downscale accordingly so that we preserve an advance technological society for as long as we can and invest everything into research so that we can at least attempt to colonize space, or make sure it is really impossible. Even if it was possible to transition to a low-tech future not reliant on fossil fuels, we will have lost the evolutionary game at that point.
Posted by: Georgi Marinov | October 10, 2011 at 10:43 AM
Georgi, I suspect that the colonization of space is impossible, if nothing else given the sheer scale of net energy required for vast the distances vs. human scale.
Consider the notion that extraterrestrials have visited the Earth. Were a civilization to have harnessed the necessary equivalent energy of a star to travel between solar systems and galaxies, the size of craft would likely be so immense that our planet would not even register as existing on their instruments. It would be akin to our walking on a sidewalk and never noticing the microscopic organisms as we trample them by the millions. An extraterrestrial craft would likely vaporize us in its wake.
As to downscaling to preserve a sufficiently technologically advanced and sustainable remnant of humans, I agree that this is the only rational objective, and I suspect that many similarly disposed thinkers would agree. But how do we get there?
If we allow the natural processes of entropy, famine, disease, infant mortality, war, genocide, and other forces to take their toll, it could take decades or even centuries to reduce the population to sustainable remnant. How would the technologically advanced, and presumably sapient, remnant persist at the necessary level of complexity, net energy and density, and so forth?
Are we not forced to consider that one or more select groups of techno-sapients (to coin a term) would be compelled, if not obligated for the sake of the survival of the sub-species, to take actions heretofore considered unacceptable, if not unspeakable?
Is there a scientific rationale to justify the necessary means to accomplish the mass culling of the "unselected" members of the species? Who decides who dies, how, and when?
Further, is there an obligation by those who will not be selected to voluntarily submit to being childless and to a premature, albeit preferably humane, demise?
Thus, rather than colonization of space beyond our finite, spherical planet, a better objective might be to reconstitute Spaceship Earth with a more fit crew and sustainable course to continue the space flight for as long as as possible, knowing that the inevitable destination is extinction.
What might the cultural zeitgeist consist of for a species that consciously and humanely acts to cull the vast majority of its excess population within a generation or two? Death cults? Glamorization of dying young? Stigmatizing the aged or glorifying their dying? Recreational drugs designed to result in painless death? End of life as an extended holiday ending in drug-induced oblivion?
Posted by: Bruce | October 10, 2011 at 12:08 PM
When water supplies are privatized and sold to the highest bidder, when local food production is regulated in favor of the corporate giants, when the City, State, and Federal commons are sold off to fund the dying gasp of the government, we will wish we had done just that little additional bit to take back control from the Plutocrats. If you truly believe you can keep your sapient little community out of the clutches of Corporate Greed, more power to you. I am skeptical.
Posted by: George Girod | October 10, 2011 at 12:25 PM
George Girod, allow me to follow up with your implication that we face a privatization of vital resources.
With 40-85% of US financial wealth and 25-50% of US income concentrated to the top 1-10% of US households (avg. household incomes of $140,000 to $350,000 and up and net wealth of ~$1M to $3.5M and up), and disproportionate proportion concentrated still further by Pareto to the top 0.1-0.4% of US households, firms, households, and gov'ts owe primarily the top 1-10% of households and more so by assets to income of the top 0.1-0.4% of US households.
This concentration of wealth by definition implies that the collateral backing the loans extended by the top 0.1-1% to 10% is by now virtually everything of economic value, including structures, land, water, waterways, ports, rails and roadways, and other mineral resources should the top 0.1-1% to 10% (who combined pay 75% of all federal income taxes) decide someday to foreclose on "the public" for inability to make good on debt service to the top 1-10%.
Thus, given that private uneconomic growth is no longer possible and gov't insolvency is assured, it is not at all inconceivable that the top 0.1-1% could eventually make claim on virtually everything of economic value, seizing everything and having the action affirmed by the Supreme Court and enforced by military force.
The rentier plutocrats would have every rational justification needed for doing so under the provisions of commercial law ("private property" of persons) and Supreme Court precedents, leaving the overwhelming majority of the rest of us without recourse owing to our inability to own capital and the legal standing it provides under commercial code.
Posted by: Bruce | October 10, 2011 at 01:17 PM
Bruce,
The military is comprised of the have nots.
Do you really think they are going to point guns at their own family and friends?
Posted by: porge | October 10, 2011 at 01:50 PM
Bruce - then I guess that the only hope is to own personally all the resources you need for survival and then hope that the people at the top don't exercise eminent domain.
I guess my DVD with Gutenberg books is a good investment in a future without commons, at least until the ebook readers die. Open Source Ecology will preserve some of our mechanization to our benefit.
I am aware of the impact of peak everything on the economy and the constraints it involves. Adding in the true (not whitewashed) impact of abrupt Global Warming and the future is grim indeed. Of course, if the economy collapses thoroughly and soon then the worst of climate change can be avoided and at least some portions of the planet may be habitable for the roughly .5 Billion people then extant.
I have been struggling to understand exactly what zero economic growth really means other than the economy as a fixed (or gradually declining) sum game in which a given form of productivity is apportioned by demand to a fraction of the GDP. Growth of one area demands contraction of another. With the current wealth inequity carried forward survival of more than a few percent of the US population is unlikely.
Posted by: George Girod | October 10, 2011 at 02:01 PM
Porge - According to the Heritage Foundation the military is not comprised primarily of have-nots.
Instead "Members of the all-volunteer military are significantly more likely to come from high-income neighborhoods than from low-income neighborhoods. Only 11 percent of enlisted recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth (quintile) of neighborhoods, while 25 percent came from the wealthiest quintile. These trends are even more pronounced in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, in which 40 percent of enrollees come from the wealthiest neighborhoods-a number that has increased substantially over the past four years. "
Now, that said, the survivalists (usually right wing) have encouraged the military to become "Oath Keepers" and take a pledge not to turn their armaments on their neighbors. How well that works when instigators incite violence and civilians start taking pot shots at troops is anybody's call.
Posted by: George Girod | October 10, 2011 at 02:31 PM
So you are trying to tell me that the military isn't mostly from the bottom 90%???
This isn't about "quintiles" anymore.
It is about 10% at the top verses 90% at the bottom.
And on top of that I don't beleive any of the published statistics.
I was in the military for 8 years and I am telling you straight that most of the enlisted were from families of modest means or just plain poor.
Isn't the Heritage Foundation a right wing think tank???
Can you say "propaganda"??
I believe 1/2 of what I see and none of what I hear.
I am well familiar with The Oath Keepers
Posted by: porge | October 10, 2011 at 02:51 PM
by the way I wouldn't even call it a volunteer military. I would call it a poverty draft military.
Posted by: porge | October 10, 2011 at 02:53 PM
"The military is comprised of the have nots.
Do you really think they are going to point guns at their own family and friends?"
Not only will they point their guns, they will fire, rape, plunder, and justify it by way of survival and self-superiority of force of will and arms during a time of crisis.
It is not difficult during a time of crisis and durable privation to condition and reward a strong sense of martial superiority by way of numbers and force among young males. Demand of them loyalty, courage, and results, and reward them with food, drink, warm, dry shelter, females, and the admiration of their peers, and you have a force that will walk into and on fire for you.
Execute a few here and there for insubordination, endangering others, and disloyalty to make examples of them to reinforce the discipline for good measure.
Select an undesirable social group or groups to be singled out for derision and to blame for difficult times and let the boys take out their frustrations on the out-group, for example, banksters, intellectual apologists, immigrants, and the like today.
Mind you, I am not advocating such a system but describing some of the more common characteristics of the martial/warrior mentality one finds in the the world today and throughout history.
Posted by: Bruce | October 10, 2011 at 02:59 PM