As for clothing, feeding, etc. without products made in China - not that hard in Germany, even if you throw in that everything has to be made within some arbitrary boundary - 100 miles, 500 miles, etc. And most of what you will be purchasing as food can be organic - no problem at all, as long as you don't want things like bananas or out of season produce.
Expat, ...snip...'Not that hard in Germany'?...snip...
Well, that is just fine. Americans can stop buying products made in China and purchase even more expensive items made in Germany? Perhaps you didnt read the original post? The topic is the falling dollar, not just against Chinese currency but aginst the Euro as well.
River, you make a good point. Try and buy American made clothing and see what you come up with (socks, sweats, and maybe some specialty items like bicycle clothing). Same goes for a lot of hardware, tools, household items. Even food (China owns 80% of the vitamin C market, for instance).
What some fail to see is that once a "skill set" is lost through job-outsourcing, it is that much harder to re-establish an industry. Some will no doubt try and point out that most manufacturing jobs these days don't require a big skill-set. To that I say: When was the last time you saw a job posting that said "No experience required?" Even relatively low-skilled workers have to have some familiarity with computers and machinery. Then, you've got your higher skilled workers -- machinists, woodworkers, etc. Tell me that you can teach those skills to someone in 30 days.
Nope. America is currently (and seemingly gleefully) hanging itself by the throat. When all is said and done, our entire economy will consist of people delivering pizzas to one another -- on bicycles, of course.
When all is said and done, our entire economy will consist of people delivering pizzas to one another -- on bicycles, of course.
I've got to disagree with this. I believe that as outsourcing and importing become less economical we will see skill sets in the US change to accomodate the needs (needs) of the population here in the US.
I believe we're going to see manufacturing, salvage, textiles, food production, etc come back to some degree, and hopefully soon while there are still folks around who can teach these things to the younger generation.
People won't be employed in the service industry much longer.
Salvage for sure. That will be a big one. I don't know if the woman who tried to avoid buying goods made in China thought about secondhand and thrift stores...If I need anything that is where I go first. However, once imported goods become harder to get, or people can't afford them, secondhand shopping will likely become more expensive or dry up altogether. How about salvage from landfills? Dumpster diving? AG
That's certainly where I see the future going. I plan to be in a business that relies on resurrecting old stuff in new forms when the economy changes.
For example, tools made from spring steel found on old vehicles. Metalworking will be a crucial skill, as will woodworking (tools usually have handles). As I've said before, the downslope doesn't have to be gloom and doom. I think this kind of work, while unprofitable now, could be enjoyable and lucrative in the post-peak era.
I agree. I think a solar powered forge would be ideal. One idea I saw for this was using old TV satellite dishes (the large ones) and coating it with reflective mylar. Here in Colorado where the sun is intense anyway this would be a great tool to help recycle and reform a lot of discarded materials. I could even imagine such a setup to melt down polyethylene and PETG bottles and reform into other shapes and building materials.
i think your mistaken. mythbusters made what you call a solar forge and it was barely able to light wood on fire, due to the way the parabola is shaped the hottest spot in it would be too close to the object to allow more then one to focus on the same spot without one shading the other from the sun.
leaving this alone it still would not generate enough heat for long enough to even soften iron let alone steel for blacksmithing. it /might/ be enough to soften decorative metals such as silver and gold.
I didn't see this episode and I can't tell from your description, but I don't think it sounds like they built it correctly. Putting mylar inside a dish in its original shape, which is what it sounds like they did from your description is not the way they are built.
You don't need a dish to do this, a square box would work I hear.
The parabola is made by use of a suction pump. The mylar is stretched across the frame and a seal is made. A small suction pump is used to draw the mylar back into the frame. You have to work out distances etc. But this is supposed to make a small point for a tiny hot beam. I found a website in Africa that has the design and comments by a builder who gives away the idea and plans.
Sounds like myth busters didn't get the full scoop,.. so to speak/
How did they build their unit.
"you can't make a foul ball fair by moving the foul line" Roger Maris.
I had read about the mylar vacuum parabola and the satellite dish on another blog/energy site. I confess that I didn't checked it out or actually think of the power density issue.
Many ideas to tinker with once we have more time on our hands. Old fashioned charcoal forges should work fine too.
To carbonize the steel you still want to add carbon to the mix. For plastic you don't need too much, but how useful is plastic if it breaks quickly?
Also to get a solar powered forge you would probably need a Fresnel lens 100mx100m (you would end up being able to focus ~2,000,000W, or 2 MW of heat flux onto 1 sq m at high noon.) excluding heat losses and transmission losses through the lens.
A projection-tv-sized Fresnel lens will melt a penny, according to unofficial testing in the parking lot at Science Surplus.
Melting points (deg C):
zinc
419.5
aluminum
660.3
silver
961.7
gold
1064.1
copper
1084.6
steel
~1370
I've only seen a few Mythbusters and haven't been impressed. A 8.5 x 11 in. Fresnel lens will cause wood to burst into flame with an audible (if tiny) pop.
Probably still cheaper to ship the spring steel to China for rework on an updated clipper ship. Like laundry back in the gold rush days.
Or better yet, exporting the springs to pay off your indenture/mortgage.
Seriously, I think economies of scale will still be in play. Large factories of unskilled labor will work with supervision and lots of jigs. As always, skilled craftsmen doing one-offs will be supplanted by semi-skilled foremen, jigs, and hordes of unskilled workers. Capital always wins.
It is certainly possible to train Americans to do these jobs in about as much time as it took 50 years ago.
The real reason for this is that the companies don't want to bother and when they can't get "qualified candidates" this is the excuse used to shut down the factory and send it to China, a decision made ahead of time.
In China the people aren't born with magic machining skills either---they learn them on the job, like always.
The point being that they're given an entry-level job to learn them on.
The other point is that the 0.1% class in the USA has its future geared much more strongly with increasing prosperity in China over increasing or maintaining prosperity in the USA.
There is no actual shortage of labor and with a little bit of traning and education there could be plenty of people in the USA able to do just about any job. But not at 20 cents an hour.
MB: Haven't you heard? All problems will be solved when the average American wage is 20 cents an hour. Just ask the AntiDoomer (or any MSM mouthpiece). The important thing is to keep major banks loaning millions of dollars (unsecured) to their cronies in the "hedge" fund biz to play with (usually very poorly). Then they can be bailed out by the same "government" that figures 20 cents an hour is a fair wage.
There is a thing happening here in America that is like a tumbling house of cards in motion. We are seeing it in slow motion and making cutting remarks about which card will fall and land flat on the table next.
I work with people who are more than happy to get a low paying Hamburger joint job, because yesterday they were sleeping under a bridge and getting handouts for food everyday.
I have two such people living in my house right now, in my room. They fell through the cracks of our Glorious Service Economy. Chris, got hit by a drunk driver and is still trying to figure out if he will be able to keep his legs. If he had had insurance at the time of the accident and could have stayed in a hospital or nursing home for 4 to 6 months, his legs would have healed just fine and he'd be back on the roofs laying tiles. But the Drunk was un-insured and he had not worked at a job long enough to get insurance, even though he was making over 100 dollars a day at the job.
We are basically creating some of our own problems.
One of my platforms as someone asked a while back, is a form of socailized medicine. We need it, we should be able to have it, and we are the only country in the G-8 that doesn't. Freedoms should not mean free to die like a dog in the street. We have better PET laws than we have human laws in some places.
The problem is I don't see enough changes taking place in the next 10 years.
I see companies failing and then our economy failing to a point where we literally have demand destruction and don't need 20 million barrels a day anymore.
When will the credit fall out really hit, a Long time before the Next president takes office, but maybe things will hang on for just a while longer and more people will be in the soup lines at the StewPot on 9th and Cumberland in Little Rock Next year. I'll be the guy with the big wooden walking stick with sand colored yarn attached to it, Just ask for Charles, folks know me.
When I first came to America I was shocked by how uncaring the society was... the homelessness situation was really shocking... seeing all the poor and disabled turfed out to beg with humiliating signs of how god blesses those that donate them some spare change... disgusting...
i still think that the society functions in a permanent state of denial about so much (including for instance its foundation of institutionalised genocide) but the homelessness problem just lays bare the myth of a booming economy in which a rising tide lifts all boats... unless in that metaphor some people are not so much boats as limpets
--
When no-one around you understands
start your own revolution
and cut out the middle man
But this is getting pretty close to what we really need to be talking about. If the present levels of consumption are unsustainable, and if sustainability can only be achieved at a much lower level of consumption, then per-capita average income (and thus per-capita average wages) will also need to be at a small fraction of the present levels. We probably really will need to have some chunk of our workforce working for $0.20 (in 2007 dollars) per hour, and a lot of the rest of us will have to get by for not all that much more.
The 2006 per-capita income in Costa Rica was $4980, and to my way of thinking that is about as good of an endgame target that we can dare hope for. If we end up that well off two decades from now, we'll have really dodged a bullet.
That $4980 works out to slightly under $2.40/hour, given a 40 hour work week; at what might become a more realistic 60 hour work week, we are talking about an AVERAGE hourly wage of a little under $1.60. (Looking at it in terms of purchasing power parity looks a litte better: $10,770 per capita, or $5.18/hr @ 40 h/wk, $3.45 @ 60 h/wk. This compares with 2006 US $44260, 21.27/hr @ 40 hrs, 14.19 @ 60 hrs/wk.)
Will there be people working for as little as twenty cents per hour? You bet! There will obviously also be people working for more -- but not that many people (we can't all be "above average"!), and not all that much more.
This all raises a question: How do we restructure US society so that people can exist on these types of wages?
Obviously, even most people with above average income would not be able to drive anything like our existing automobile fleet on anything like a typical commute today; a very well off person might still be able to just manage it in something like a Prius, but that's about it. For almost everyone, it is going to have to be electrified commuter rail and/or biodiesel-fueld shuttle buses and/or NEVs and/or bike/trike and/or walking. In such a transport environment, people are obviously going to have to rearrange themselves so that their homes and workplaces are in closer proximity. Places (a.k.a. suburbs) located far away from ANY employers are going to have to decline and probably be largely abandoned; opportunities may be found in such places for building materials salvage and farmland reclamation. Population densities in those remaining areas located closer to employment opportunities will have to increase, through infill development, conversion of single family into multi-family housing, and sharing of housing by larger groups of related or unrelated people. People are going to have to get used to living in homes that are a lot darker and colder in the wintertime, and warmer in summer; they'll whine, but they'll live.
Food is going to have to take up a much higher percentage of that per-capita income. Under such circumstances, grass lawns will be something only the fortunate wealthy elite can afford to maintain. Most lawns will be come gardens, and community gardens will have to spring up on many a vacant lot. Beef is going to have to become a hugely expensive, rarely enjoyed luxury for most people, as diets typically shift farther down the food chain; most people will be subsisting on legumes, grains, vegies & fruits, with some dairy and very little meat (most of which will be poultry). Between the walking/bicycling, gardening, harder work, colder homes, and more expensive food, weight control will very likely become less of a problem. Nutritional deficiency and outright starvation will be an ever-present worry.
We are talking about a future where the average closet only holds a few clothes, and a person might be able to buy (or more likely, make by hand) a couple new pieces per year; these will have to be durable and functional, forget the frivolous fashion crap. Entertainment will have to become more localized and simple - perhaps a few folks sitting on the front porch with someone playing a guitar, perhaps listening to a hand-cranked radio, perhaps reading a book borrowed from the library. Life will have to get pretty simple and basic for most people.
This is not the end of the world. There are many places in the world where people are living good lives in just this way. There are other places where people wish and pray that they had it even this good. The truth of the matter is: it really is good enough for anyone, including us. We truly don't need all the excess CRAP that is causing us to burn through the earth's non-renewable resources like maniacs.
Th challenge: How to get from here to there, while avoiding a crash to zero (a.k.a. extinction)?
One answer is to simplify, de-accumulate, and powerdown our lifestyles now; start living as if this already was the norm. The more people that do this, the smaller the problem.
Another answer is to not just educate people about the problem of PO, but also to put before them a vision of the future like this.
Obviously there are a whole cluster of policies that must be implemented as well, many of which we have discussed.
WNC: I have spent some time in CR-those numbers don't tell the whole story. Compared to the USA, IMHO $30000 a year in CR is equivalent to $120000 a year in the USA. With health insurance, property taxes, house insurance, car insurance,increased food costs, and greatly increased heating and A/C expense, IMHO, people would literally die in the USA on $1.60 an hour. The important thing is to make sure they are taxed even if they are making $1.60 an hour.
I have spent some time in CR-those numbers don't tell the whole story. Compared to the USA, IMHO $30000 a year in CR is equivalent to $120000 a year in the USA.
Your $30K:$120K proportion pretty much matches up with the $10,770:$44260 PPP numbers I posted - a 1:4 ratio. As a reality check: Could a US economy (and US energy demand) that is 25% of its present size be sustained by reasonably potential US renewable energy resources? My gut level guess is, yes.
Of course, there is a problem with trying to make such comparisons between countries. Places are different. CR is tropical and has essentially a 365 day growing season; except on the southern edge, most of the US is looking at something like 150-250 days max. That makes a big difference on the amount of food that can be produced per capita and per acre. CR also gets more rainfall than most of the US. It is also a tiny, compact country, the US is huge and sprawls. Of course, much of the US has winters requiring heating, CR doesn't. On the other hand, the US also has some advantages over CR: greater diversity in the range of crops that can be grown, a larger internal market, huge investments in health care & higher education, etc. While our manufacturing industry has been gutted, there is enough human capital still out there that a restoration of our ability to make most of the essential stuff we really need might still be possible, making us potentially more self sufficient than CR.
Nevertheless, I think that there is value in thinking of CR as a rough model of the type of target US society we can aspire to as a realistic best case. There was an article by Francois Cellier posted on TOD a little over a month ago, plotting countries by level of socioeconomic development and ecological footprint.
Cuba came in as the only truly sustainable society; unfortunately, there is so much baggage associated with THAT example that we might as well disregard it. However, CR was a very close runner up; Uruguay was close behind, with Ecuador, Dom. Rep., Phillipines and Thailand not much further behind. Those are all more palatable models. CR especially has an unusually positive image; of the seven countries I just mentioned, I have no doubt that CR would get the first place vote of just about anyone.
Since CR generates relatively positive vibes, it commends itself as a good model to visualize as we try to think about the future pathways we might choose. In terms of broad economic measures like per capita income, I really do believe that we are going to have to be looking at the CR level as just about the best case level at which we can have any realistic hope of stopping the slide.
Of course there will be differences. Almost anywhere in the US (or any formerly constituent parts thereof), a greater percentage of per-capita income will have to be allocated to winter heating, and maybe to food and to transport as well. This just means that there are going to have to be some aspects of material life in the USA (or constituent parts) that are going to be at a lower level than what is commonly enjoyed in CR. The per-capita budget pies for CR and for the USA will be sliced differently, but we need to be thinking in terms of similarly-sized pies.
With health insurance, property taxes, house insurance, car insurance,increased food costs, and greatly increased heating and A/C expense, IMHO, people would literally die in the USA on $1.60 an hour.
As I indicated in my previous post, some things are going to have to go.
A/C? Forget it, get a fan and a porch or shade tree.
Heating? Get used to 55-60F max indoors in the wintertime. Stock up on sweaters and long-johns and down comforters now - they will be available then, but cost a big chunk of the household budget. Increased numbers of people living in each housing unit will help (body heat, you know).
Health insurance? We're going to have to re-do the way we do health care - maybe not to the way Cuba does it, but the present system will be unaffordable. Different states or other constitutent successor units of the USA will undoubtedly experiment with different models, but all of them are going to end up with lower cost - and probably lower quality -- health care. There will probably be an affordable system of basic care that is good enough for most people, and there will probably continue to be elite-level care for elite-level patients for elite-level $$$. Some non-elite people with chronic conditions might need to just tough it out and live with it, and it might be worse than that.
Car insurance? Good news! No car = no car insurance! Some people might want bicycle insurance, but a very good lock and chain might be the best insurance you can get.
House insurance? We won't be able to afford to insure folks living in flood zones or along hurricane coasts or on active fault lines. Subtract out those high-cost risks and most property owners will probably continue to find some type of property insurance affordable and essential.
Property taxes? These can't keep going up. In fact, the entire government "take" at all levels will have to decrease substantially. As it is at the local level that most of the really important services are provided, this implies only one thing: The US Federal government is totally unsustainable, unaffordable, and will be only a memory of history in such a downsized USA. Best case, perhaps some sort of interstate or interregional compact can sustain some sort of very loose continental free trade area and regional security alliance. You can just about draw a line though every single item in the US federal budget, though -- it can't figure into a US economy that is only 25% of the present size. There would still be room for some local property taxes, and maybe for a very small local consumption tax as well.
Food? As I indicated, this will be taking a larger slice of the personal budget pie. If food prices go up, people WILL change how they eat. If beef is unaffordable (which it will probably have to be, it is way too energy and land intensive), people will switch to chicken, then to beans. Also, people can just eat less; most of us should anyway. As I said, maintaining a lawn of grass will look absurd under such conditions, so the lawns will be dug up and the potatoes and other garden crops will go in. Very few people will be able grow 100% of their own food, but there will also be very few people that could not participate in growing SOME of their own food, and very few that will be able to afford to avoid doing so.
The CR - US comparison is apt in another way, ironically. Both economies are propped up by cheap foreign labor, Nicaraguan in CR and Mexican (and other) in US. A colleague of mine is working on this, I don't have quantitative data on scale at hand.
Heating? Get used to 55-60F max indoors in the wintertime.
Bah. Piker. 45F. Ya sleep in a sleeping bag. Live like the Japanese sit-coms...where the joke is how the family is gathered around the heated table and one of persons really needs to go to the bathroom but doesn't want to leave the heated table.
Hyperinflation can and probably will wipe out all debts.
Those birds flying out of your bottom are pigeons, aka flying pigs.
As surely as water tends to flow down hill, the dollar will tend to lose value in the future. Look at the history of the Mexican peso over the past sixty years, and then I think we'll have some notion of the future of the dollar.
(Historical note: For centuries the Mexican peso and the U.S. dollar were exactly equal, both based on the same weight of silver in a dollar and a peso--because each were derived from the same original Thaler that evolved into the Spanish "piece of eight," i.e. eight bits. I would not be surprised to see the Mexican peso again worth exactly the same as a U.S. dollar.)
I would not be surprised to see the Mexican peso again worth exactly the same as a U.S. dollar.
If they coin their pesos in more pure silver as they once did, and there is some consideration to try and do that, it would then be worth a lot more than our toilet paper of a dollar.
Don, that only works if your wages rise with inflation. What happens if wages do not rise with inflation? In other words, what happens if one section of society is being indexed for inflation (having sufficient dollars to buy the same goods regardless of increasing price) while other sections of society do not get increased dollars yet are expected to perform the same work while living on less and less?
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett Into the Grey Zone
Some wages will rise to keep up with inflation, but most will not. This is how real wages will be drastically reduced. See the classic, "The German Inflation of 1923."
Here are some incomes that I believe will not keep up with inflation:
1. Social Security benefits.
2. Medicare benefits.
3. Private pension benefits.
4. Government salaries of all kinds.
5. Retail wages.
6. The incomes of people in the discretionary sector, everybody from lawyers and psychologists right down to the bottom rungs of pizza delivery people and street prostitutes.
Here are some incomes that I think will keep up with inflation:
1. Chemical engineers.
2. Petroleum geologists.
3. Bicycle mechanics.
4. Skilled people in manufacturing, e.g. tool and die makers.
5. Sailing instructors;-)
taxes tend to be a fixed percentage of income, it is unlikely that would increase strongly in a strongly inflationary period, as it would (probably) be political suicide to push through large tax increases during a time of financial hardship.
Unfortunately there are 2 other options - the government pays for 'stuff' with borrowed money, or the government stops doing 'stuff'. This is one of the problems with going bankrupt - all the options hurt, compared to maintaining the overspending of the past.
Governments have essentially two different ways to raise money:
1. taxes
2. inflation
To a large extent, these two techniques are substitutes for one another. You want to reduce inflation, then raise taxes (which allows for a restrictive monetary policy). Or if you don't raise taxes, then just have the government "print" more money and run ever more humongous deficits, which is what creates inflation.
Note the great popularity of increasing and unexpected inflation among debtors. In the U.S., we have plenty of debtors--who vote. Creditors can and probably will be thrown to the wolves; too bad for savers.
My thoughts also. It's what we have seen so far-stagnant, or falling wages when job export considered, versus increasing commodity, healthcare and real estate prices. How does 10-20 an hour buy a 200K to 300K home?
>Hyperinflation can and probably will wipe out all debts.
A large percentage of US household debt is variable (ARMs, Credit cards, etc). As inflation picks up so will the interest rates on those debts. Hyper inflation is also bad for a nation dependant on energy imports used for its factories and transportation systems.
>I would not be surprised to see the Mexican peso again worth exactly the same as a U.S. dollar.)
They'll both likely meet at zero, since as the dollar declines and mexico energy exports disappear the value of the peso will also fall. There are a lot of manufacturing jobs in Mexico that produce goods sold in the US. Plus a lot of Mexican immigrants (illegal and legit) send money in USD back to family members still living in Mexico which help support local mexican commerce.
As depletion kicks into higher gears, Washington will become even more useless and states will begin to take action on their own. I think that the US federal gov't will lose power and probably serve more like the UK monarchy does today. I think we can already see some signs as states like California are taking action on issues that Washington ignores. Probably in the next couple of years will see more pull back from more states as the try to work out their own solutions to thier problems. Birth of the "Divided States of America". I doubt we'll see states officially announcing sucession from the union but an steady erosion of authority away from washington, and into state gov'ts. If states start issuing their own currency the US as a union ceases to exist.
As for clothing, feeding, etc. without products made in China - not that hard in Germany, even if you throw in that everything has to be made within some arbitrary boundary - 100 miles, 500 miles, etc. And most of what you will be purchasing as food can be organic - no problem at all, as long as you don't want things like bananas or out of season produce.
It will, however, cost a fair bit.
Expat, ...snip...'Not that hard in Germany'?...snip...
Well, that is just fine. Americans can stop buying products made in China and purchase even more expensive items made in Germany? Perhaps you didnt read the original post? The topic is the falling dollar, not just against Chinese currency but aginst the Euro as well.
River, you make a good point. Try and buy American made clothing and see what you come up with (socks, sweats, and maybe some specialty items like bicycle clothing). Same goes for a lot of hardware, tools, household items. Even food (China owns 80% of the vitamin C market, for instance).
What some fail to see is that once a "skill set" is lost through job-outsourcing, it is that much harder to re-establish an industry. Some will no doubt try and point out that most manufacturing jobs these days don't require a big skill-set. To that I say: When was the last time you saw a job posting that said "No experience required?" Even relatively low-skilled workers have to have some familiarity with computers and machinery. Then, you've got your higher skilled workers -- machinists, woodworkers, etc. Tell me that you can teach those skills to someone in 30 days.
Nope. America is currently (and seemingly gleefully) hanging itself by the throat. When all is said and done, our entire economy will consist of people delivering pizzas to one another -- on bicycles, of course.
I've got to disagree with this. I believe that as outsourcing and importing become less economical we will see skill sets in the US change to accomodate the needs (needs) of the population here in the US.
I believe we're going to see manufacturing, salvage, textiles, food production, etc come back to some degree, and hopefully soon while there are still folks around who can teach these things to the younger generation.
People won't be employed in the service industry much longer.
Tom A-B
"When all is said and done, our entire economy will consist of people delivering pizzas to one another -- on bicycles, of course."
Is that a step up or down from selling ourselves houses with borrowed Chinese Money, which is the current economic model?
Salvage for sure. That will be a big one. I don't know if the woman who tried to avoid buying goods made in China thought about secondhand and thrift stores...If I need anything that is where I go first. However, once imported goods become harder to get, or people can't afford them, secondhand shopping will likely become more expensive or dry up altogether. How about salvage from landfills? Dumpster diving? AG
That's certainly where I see the future going. I plan to be in a business that relies on resurrecting old stuff in new forms when the economy changes.
For example, tools made from spring steel found on old vehicles. Metalworking will be a crucial skill, as will woodworking (tools usually have handles). As I've said before, the downslope doesn't have to be gloom and doom. I think this kind of work, while unprofitable now, could be enjoyable and lucrative in the post-peak era.
Tom A-B
I agree. I think a solar powered forge would be ideal. One idea I saw for this was using old TV satellite dishes (the large ones) and coating it with reflective mylar. Here in Colorado where the sun is intense anyway this would be a great tool to help recycle and reform a lot of discarded materials. I could even imagine such a setup to melt down polyethylene and PETG bottles and reform into other shapes and building materials.
i think your mistaken. mythbusters made what you call a solar forge and it was barely able to light wood on fire, due to the way the parabola is shaped the hottest spot in it would be too close to the object to allow more then one to focus on the same spot without one shading the other from the sun.
leaving this alone it still would not generate enough heat for long enough to even soften iron let alone steel for blacksmithing. it /might/ be enough to soften decorative metals such as silver and gold.
I didn't see this episode and I can't tell from your description, but I don't think it sounds like they built it correctly. Putting mylar inside a dish in its original shape, which is what it sounds like they did from your description is not the way they are built.
You don't need a dish to do this, a square box would work I hear.
The parabola is made by use of a suction pump. The mylar is stretched across the frame and a seal is made. A small suction pump is used to draw the mylar back into the frame. You have to work out distances etc. But this is supposed to make a small point for a tiny hot beam. I found a website in Africa that has the design and comments by a builder who gives away the idea and plans.
Sounds like myth busters didn't get the full scoop,.. so to speak/
How did they build their unit.
"you can't make a foul ball fair by moving the foul line" Roger Maris.
I had read about the mylar vacuum parabola and the satellite dish on another blog/energy site. I confess that I didn't checked it out or actually think of the power density issue.
Many ideas to tinker with once we have more time on our hands. Old fashioned charcoal forges should work fine too.
This works pretty good:
http://www.technologystudent.com/energy1/solar4.htm
To carbonize the steel you still want to add carbon to the mix. For plastic you don't need too much, but how useful is plastic if it breaks quickly?
Also to get a solar powered forge you would probably need a Fresnel lens 100mx100m (you would end up being able to focus ~2,000,000W, or 2 MW of heat flux onto 1 sq m at high noon.) excluding heat losses and transmission losses through the lens.
A projection-tv-sized Fresnel lens will melt a penny, according to unofficial testing in the parking lot at Science Surplus.
Melting points (deg C):
I've only seen a few Mythbusters and haven't been impressed. A 8.5 x 11 in. Fresnel lens will cause wood to burst into flame with an audible (if tiny) pop.
If the forge isn't hot enough, use multiple lenses and mirrors. Be sure to check out Random Destructive Acts via Focussed Solar Radiation.
Probably still cheaper to ship the spring steel to China for rework on an updated clipper ship. Like laundry back in the gold rush days.
Or better yet, exporting the springs to pay off your indenture/mortgage.
Seriously, I think economies of scale will still be in play. Large factories of unskilled labor will work with supervision and lots of jigs. As always, skilled craftsmen doing one-offs will be supplanted by semi-skilled foremen, jigs, and hordes of unskilled workers. Capital always wins.
It is certainly possible to train Americans to do these jobs in about as much time as it took 50 years ago.
The real reason for this is that the companies don't want to bother and when they can't get "qualified candidates" this is the excuse used to shut down the factory and send it to China, a decision made ahead of time.
In China the people aren't born with magic machining skills either---they learn them on the job, like always.
The point being that they're given an entry-level job to learn them on.
The other point is that the 0.1% class in the USA has its future geared much more strongly with increasing prosperity in China over increasing or maintaining prosperity in the USA.
There is no actual shortage of labor and with a little bit of traning and education there could be plenty of people in the USA able to do just about any job. But not at 20 cents an hour.
MB: Haven't you heard? All problems will be solved when the average American wage is 20 cents an hour. Just ask the AntiDoomer (or any MSM mouthpiece). The important thing is to keep major banks loaning millions of dollars (unsecured) to their cronies in the "hedge" fund biz to play with (usually very poorly). Then they can be bailed out by the same "government" that figures 20 cents an hour is a fair wage.
i'll take it in stride, but if inflation is above the rate of wage growth, soon we will be back at 20c/hr real wages.
There is a thing happening here in America that is like a tumbling house of cards in motion. We are seeing it in slow motion and making cutting remarks about which card will fall and land flat on the table next.
I work with people who are more than happy to get a low paying Hamburger joint job, because yesterday they were sleeping under a bridge and getting handouts for food everyday.
I have two such people living in my house right now, in my room. They fell through the cracks of our Glorious Service Economy. Chris, got hit by a drunk driver and is still trying to figure out if he will be able to keep his legs. If he had had insurance at the time of the accident and could have stayed in a hospital or nursing home for 4 to 6 months, his legs would have healed just fine and he'd be back on the roofs laying tiles. But the Drunk was un-insured and he had not worked at a job long enough to get insurance, even though he was making over 100 dollars a day at the job.
We are basically creating some of our own problems.
One of my platforms as someone asked a while back, is a form of socailized medicine. We need it, we should be able to have it, and we are the only country in the G-8 that doesn't. Freedoms should not mean free to die like a dog in the street. We have better PET laws than we have human laws in some places.
The problem is I don't see enough changes taking place in the next 10 years.
I see companies failing and then our economy failing to a point where we literally have demand destruction and don't need 20 million barrels a day anymore.
When will the credit fall out really hit, a Long time before the Next president takes office, but maybe things will hang on for just a while longer and more people will be in the soup lines at the StewPot on 9th and Cumberland in Little Rock Next year. I'll be the guy with the big wooden walking stick with sand colored yarn attached to it, Just ask for Charles, folks know me.
sorry to hear your malody, hope all turns out well!
When I first came to America I was shocked by how uncaring the society was... the homelessness situation was really shocking... seeing all the poor and disabled turfed out to beg with humiliating signs of how god blesses those that donate them some spare change... disgusting...
i still think that the society functions in a permanent state of denial about so much (including for instance its foundation of institutionalised genocide) but the homelessness problem just lays bare the myth of a booming economy in which a rising tide lifts all boats... unless in that metaphor some people are not so much boats as limpets
--
When no-one around you understands
start your own revolution
and cut out the middle man
But this is getting pretty close to what we really need to be talking about. If the present levels of consumption are unsustainable, and if sustainability can only be achieved at a much lower level of consumption, then per-capita average income (and thus per-capita average wages) will also need to be at a small fraction of the present levels. We probably really will need to have some chunk of our workforce working for $0.20 (in 2007 dollars) per hour, and a lot of the rest of us will have to get by for not all that much more.
The 2006 per-capita income in Costa Rica was $4980, and to my way of thinking that is about as good of an endgame target that we can dare hope for. If we end up that well off two decades from now, we'll have really dodged a bullet.
That $4980 works out to slightly under $2.40/hour, given a 40 hour work week; at what might become a more realistic 60 hour work week, we are talking about an AVERAGE hourly wage of a little under $1.60. (Looking at it in terms of purchasing power parity looks a litte better: $10,770 per capita, or $5.18/hr @ 40 h/wk, $3.45 @ 60 h/wk. This compares with 2006 US $44260, 21.27/hr @ 40 hrs, 14.19 @ 60 hrs/wk.)
Will there be people working for as little as twenty cents per hour? You bet! There will obviously also be people working for more -- but not that many people (we can't all be "above average"!), and not all that much more.
This all raises a question: How do we restructure US society so that people can exist on these types of wages?
Obviously, even most people with above average income would not be able to drive anything like our existing automobile fleet on anything like a typical commute today; a very well off person might still be able to just manage it in something like a Prius, but that's about it. For almost everyone, it is going to have to be electrified commuter rail and/or biodiesel-fueld shuttle buses and/or NEVs and/or bike/trike and/or walking. In such a transport environment, people are obviously going to have to rearrange themselves so that their homes and workplaces are in closer proximity. Places (a.k.a. suburbs) located far away from ANY employers are going to have to decline and probably be largely abandoned; opportunities may be found in such places for building materials salvage and farmland reclamation. Population densities in those remaining areas located closer to employment opportunities will have to increase, through infill development, conversion of single family into multi-family housing, and sharing of housing by larger groups of related or unrelated people. People are going to have to get used to living in homes that are a lot darker and colder in the wintertime, and warmer in summer; they'll whine, but they'll live.
Food is going to have to take up a much higher percentage of that per-capita income. Under such circumstances, grass lawns will be something only the fortunate wealthy elite can afford to maintain. Most lawns will be come gardens, and community gardens will have to spring up on many a vacant lot. Beef is going to have to become a hugely expensive, rarely enjoyed luxury for most people, as diets typically shift farther down the food chain; most people will be subsisting on legumes, grains, vegies & fruits, with some dairy and very little meat (most of which will be poultry). Between the walking/bicycling, gardening, harder work, colder homes, and more expensive food, weight control will very likely become less of a problem. Nutritional deficiency and outright starvation will be an ever-present worry.
We are talking about a future where the average closet only holds a few clothes, and a person might be able to buy (or more likely, make by hand) a couple new pieces per year; these will have to be durable and functional, forget the frivolous fashion crap. Entertainment will have to become more localized and simple - perhaps a few folks sitting on the front porch with someone playing a guitar, perhaps listening to a hand-cranked radio, perhaps reading a book borrowed from the library. Life will have to get pretty simple and basic for most people.
This is not the end of the world. There are many places in the world where people are living good lives in just this way. There are other places where people wish and pray that they had it even this good. The truth of the matter is: it really is good enough for anyone, including us. We truly don't need all the excess CRAP that is causing us to burn through the earth's non-renewable resources like maniacs.
Th challenge: How to get from here to there, while avoiding a crash to zero (a.k.a. extinction)?
One answer is to simplify, de-accumulate, and powerdown our lifestyles now; start living as if this already was the norm. The more people that do this, the smaller the problem.
Another answer is to not just educate people about the problem of PO, but also to put before them a vision of the future like this.
Obviously there are a whole cluster of policies that must be implemented as well, many of which we have discussed.
WNC: I have spent some time in CR-those numbers don't tell the whole story. Compared to the USA, IMHO $30000 a year in CR is equivalent to $120000 a year in the USA. With health insurance, property taxes, house insurance, car insurance,increased food costs, and greatly increased heating and A/C expense, IMHO, people would literally die in the USA on $1.60 an hour. The important thing is to make sure they are taxed even if they are making $1.60 an hour.
Your $30K:$120K proportion pretty much matches up with the $10,770:$44260 PPP numbers I posted - a 1:4 ratio. As a reality check: Could a US economy (and US energy demand) that is 25% of its present size be sustained by reasonably potential US renewable energy resources? My gut level guess is, yes.
Of course, there is a problem with trying to make such comparisons between countries. Places are different. CR is tropical and has essentially a 365 day growing season; except on the southern edge, most of the US is looking at something like 150-250 days max. That makes a big difference on the amount of food that can be produced per capita and per acre. CR also gets more rainfall than most of the US. It is also a tiny, compact country, the US is huge and sprawls. Of course, much of the US has winters requiring heating, CR doesn't. On the other hand, the US also has some advantages over CR: greater diversity in the range of crops that can be grown, a larger internal market, huge investments in health care & higher education, etc. While our manufacturing industry has been gutted, there is enough human capital still out there that a restoration of our ability to make most of the essential stuff we really need might still be possible, making us potentially more self sufficient than CR.
Nevertheless, I think that there is value in thinking of CR as a rough model of the type of target US society we can aspire to as a realistic best case. There was an article by Francois Cellier posted on TOD a little over a month ago, plotting countries by level of socioeconomic development and ecological footprint.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2534
Cuba came in as the only truly sustainable society; unfortunately, there is so much baggage associated with THAT example that we might as well disregard it. However, CR was a very close runner up; Uruguay was close behind, with Ecuador, Dom. Rep., Phillipines and Thailand not much further behind. Those are all more palatable models. CR especially has an unusually positive image; of the seven countries I just mentioned, I have no doubt that CR would get the first place vote of just about anyone.
Since CR generates relatively positive vibes, it commends itself as a good model to visualize as we try to think about the future pathways we might choose. In terms of broad economic measures like per capita income, I really do believe that we are going to have to be looking at the CR level as just about the best case level at which we can have any realistic hope of stopping the slide.
Of course there will be differences. Almost anywhere in the US (or any formerly constituent parts thereof), a greater percentage of per-capita income will have to be allocated to winter heating, and maybe to food and to transport as well. This just means that there are going to have to be some aspects of material life in the USA (or constituent parts) that are going to be at a lower level than what is commonly enjoyed in CR. The per-capita budget pies for CR and for the USA will be sliced differently, but we need to be thinking in terms of similarly-sized pies.
As I indicated in my previous post, some things are going to have to go.
A/C? Forget it, get a fan and a porch or shade tree.
Heating? Get used to 55-60F max indoors in the wintertime. Stock up on sweaters and long-johns and down comforters now - they will be available then, but cost a big chunk of the household budget. Increased numbers of people living in each housing unit will help (body heat, you know).
Health insurance? We're going to have to re-do the way we do health care - maybe not to the way Cuba does it, but the present system will be unaffordable. Different states or other constitutent successor units of the USA will undoubtedly experiment with different models, but all of them are going to end up with lower cost - and probably lower quality -- health care. There will probably be an affordable system of basic care that is good enough for most people, and there will probably continue to be elite-level care for elite-level patients for elite-level $$$. Some non-elite people with chronic conditions might need to just tough it out and live with it, and it might be worse than that.
Car insurance? Good news! No car = no car insurance! Some people might want bicycle insurance, but a very good lock and chain might be the best insurance you can get.
House insurance? We won't be able to afford to insure folks living in flood zones or along hurricane coasts or on active fault lines. Subtract out those high-cost risks and most property owners will probably continue to find some type of property insurance affordable and essential.
Property taxes? These can't keep going up. In fact, the entire government "take" at all levels will have to decrease substantially. As it is at the local level that most of the really important services are provided, this implies only one thing: The US Federal government is totally unsustainable, unaffordable, and will be only a memory of history in such a downsized USA. Best case, perhaps some sort of interstate or interregional compact can sustain some sort of very loose continental free trade area and regional security alliance. You can just about draw a line though every single item in the US federal budget, though -- it can't figure into a US economy that is only 25% of the present size. There would still be room for some local property taxes, and maybe for a very small local consumption tax as well.
Food? As I indicated, this will be taking a larger slice of the personal budget pie. If food prices go up, people WILL change how they eat. If beef is unaffordable (which it will probably have to be, it is way too energy and land intensive), people will switch to chicken, then to beans. Also, people can just eat less; most of us should anyway. As I said, maintaining a lawn of grass will look absurd under such conditions, so the lawns will be dug up and the potatoes and other garden crops will go in. Very few people will be able grow 100% of their own food, but there will also be very few people that could not participate in growing SOME of their own food, and very few that will be able to afford to avoid doing so.
The CR - US comparison is apt in another way, ironically. Both economies are propped up by cheap foreign labor, Nicaraguan in CR and Mexican (and other) in US. A colleague of mine is working on this, I don't have quantitative data on scale at hand.
Heating? Get used to 55-60F max indoors in the wintertime.
Bah. Piker. 45F. Ya sleep in a sleeping bag. Live like the Japanese sit-coms...where the joke is how the family is gathered around the heated table and one of persons really needs to go to the bathroom but doesn't want to leave the heated table.
No joke, that kills old people here in Japan all the time.
Apparently its a huge strain on the old ticker to leave your heated table (kotatsu) and walk across the house to a freezing cold bathroom.
But its not all bad. We do have heated toilet seats :-)
This all raises a question: How do we restructure US society so that people can exist on these types of wages?
The only way that we can significantly reduce wages in the US is to have all internal and external debt wiped away.
That will be right after the pigs start flying out of my butt.
Hyperinflation can and probably will wipe out all debts.
Those birds flying out of your bottom are pigeons, aka flying pigs.
As surely as water tends to flow down hill, the dollar will tend to lose value in the future. Look at the history of the Mexican peso over the past sixty years, and then I think we'll have some notion of the future of the dollar.
(Historical note: For centuries the Mexican peso and the U.S. dollar were exactly equal, both based on the same weight of silver in a dollar and a peso--because each were derived from the same original Thaler that evolved into the Spanish "piece of eight," i.e. eight bits. I would not be surprised to see the Mexican peso again worth exactly the same as a U.S. dollar.)
If they coin their pesos in more pure silver as they once did, and there is some consideration to try and do that, it would then be worth a lot more than our toilet paper of a dollar.
Don, that only works if your wages rise with inflation. What happens if wages do not rise with inflation? In other words, what happens if one section of society is being indexed for inflation (having sufficient dollars to buy the same goods regardless of increasing price) while other sections of society do not get increased dollars yet are expected to perform the same work while living on less and less?
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
Some wages will rise to keep up with inflation, but most will not. This is how real wages will be drastically reduced. See the classic, "The German Inflation of 1923."
Here are some incomes that I believe will not keep up with inflation:
1. Social Security benefits.
2. Medicare benefits.
3. Private pension benefits.
4. Government salaries of all kinds.
5. Retail wages.
6. The incomes of people in the discretionary sector, everybody from lawyers and psychologists right down to the bottom rungs of pizza delivery people and street prostitutes.
Here are some incomes that I think will keep up with inflation:
1. Chemical engineers.
2. Petroleum geologists.
3. Bicycle mechanics.
4. Skilled people in manufacturing, e.g. tool and die makers.
5. Sailing instructors;-)
I'll bet taxes keep up with inflation.
taxes tend to be a fixed percentage of income, it is unlikely that would increase strongly in a strongly inflationary period, as it would (probably) be political suicide to push through large tax increases during a time of financial hardship.
Unfortunately there are 2 other options - the government pays for 'stuff' with borrowed money, or the government stops doing 'stuff'. This is one of the problems with going bankrupt - all the options hurt, compared to maintaining the overspending of the past.
Inflation is a hidden tax.
Governments have essentially two different ways to raise money:
1. taxes
2. inflation
To a large extent, these two techniques are substitutes for one another. You want to reduce inflation, then raise taxes (which allows for a restrictive monetary policy). Or if you don't raise taxes, then just have the government "print" more money and run ever more humongous deficits, which is what creates inflation.
Note the great popularity of increasing and unexpected inflation among debtors. In the U.S., we have plenty of debtors--who vote. Creditors can and probably will be thrown to the wolves; too bad for savers.
My thoughts also. It's what we have seen so far-stagnant, or falling wages when job export considered, versus increasing commodity, healthcare and real estate prices. How does 10-20 an hour buy a 200K to 300K home?
>Hyperinflation can and probably will wipe out all debts.
A large percentage of US household debt is variable (ARMs, Credit cards, etc). As inflation picks up so will the interest rates on those debts. Hyper inflation is also bad for a nation dependant on energy imports used for its factories and transportation systems.
>I would not be surprised to see the Mexican peso again worth exactly the same as a U.S. dollar.)
They'll both likely meet at zero, since as the dollar declines and mexico energy exports disappear the value of the peso will also fall. There are a lot of manufacturing jobs in Mexico that produce goods sold in the US. Plus a lot of Mexican immigrants (illegal and legit) send money in USD back to family members still living in Mexico which help support local mexican commerce.
As depletion kicks into higher gears, Washington will become even more useless and states will begin to take action on their own. I think that the US federal gov't will lose power and probably serve more like the UK monarchy does today. I think we can already see some signs as states like California are taking action on issues that Washington ignores. Probably in the next couple of years will see more pull back from more states as the try to work out their own solutions to thier problems. Birth of the "Divided States of America". I doubt we'll see states officially announcing sucession from the union but an steady erosion of authority away from washington, and into state gov'ts. If states start issuing their own currency the US as a union ceases to exist.
The end of the War of Northern Aggression.
:-)