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'The world is looking like the 17th century under the mercantilism when countries saw economics as a zero-sum game. They exported as much as they could to get gold, and erected enormous [trade] barriers.'
This is nothing but a return to nationalisim...which I have been predicting for some years. Nationalisim and trade barriers have led to many wars. Now, with peak everything in our faces, the odds of wars caused by trade barriers are sharply increased. Empires have used wars to pry open and exploit foreign markets forever.
Nationalism and trade barriers will arise again, no doubt, and possibly new empires. But with less and less energy from "fossil" sources, the damage that can be done will decrease and the size of empires will shrink back. Is that the best we can come up with-- less worse? Are human beings any smarter than yeast -- or is the human race itself fundamentally a zero-sum game?
Looks like we need a new paradigm! Cascading Empires has led us to where we are now, but previous empires were based on unrenewable resources -- first on forests, then coal, now oil -- all "fossil" fuels compared to the lifetime of human beings. (Trees can be planted, of course, but forests cannot be renewed with the relentless pressure applied by human civilization).
The Oil Drum frequently has well-thought out posts that point to the possibility of a less dismal future, but it seems so hard to translate thought into action.
"...but it seems so hard to translate thought into action" which is why many of us are not counting on some governement entity to save the day. Although it might futile, the three other families on my rural road have taken indivdual action and have discussed what we have to do as a group when TSHTF. It's far, far from perfect. However, it is "something" and far better than waiting.
Todd
The same thing is happening among my neighbors.
Dmitri Orlov describes something similar during the breakdown of the Soviet Union--solutions springing from the bottom, rather than imposed from the top.
Look at this cool site the State of Minnesota put together to help people plan for disasters. It lists disaster by type and helps you put together survival kits.
http://www.codeready.org/getinformed.cfm
I saw Matt Simmons speak before the MN Legislature. One point that he made was that we don't really know the minimum operating level of our fuel system. In a panic situation it could go dry very quickly. That has prompted me to start a long term food storage plan.
Dried foods in combination with a water purification system are ideal in many ways. TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein,) if stored correctly, has a shelf life of dozens of years, and in my opinion, isn't all that bad. I keep a large supply of it on hand and use in my day to day cooking. If you use this stuff in Hamburger Helper or similar, you don't notice as much that you're not using real ground beef but a vegetable protein.
~Durandal (http://www.wtdwtshtf.com)
According to Tainter, the top will be cut off from the bottom due to collapse of the complex interactions of empire. Solutions arising from the bottom historically are pretty brutal -- that would appear to be the case in the Former Soviet Union -- though the only thing I know about that is what I read. The 13th - 15th centuries in Europe seem to have been characterized by the kind of banditry we associate with failure of central governments.
The population of North America supposedly lived in a peaceful Eden, undisturbed for millennia, until the Europeans arrived. Seems unlikely. Is something like that actually possible?
I forsee interesting challenges ahead.
There needs to be both. Survival efforts in the FSU were just that, and many didn't. You have better models in Cuba and Venezuela. Whatever complaints you might have about these gov'ts, they have both have tried hard to prevent the worst. The complaints against Cuba are that it hasn't succeeded in providing much more that a minimum material existence. But its accomplishments in health and education are considerable.
A hostile gov't will defeat the efforts of even the most skillful survivalists -- if nothing else, they'll tax and repossess your little tract in the woods. But getting together with neighbors is certainly a very good idea no matter what.
While I need to brush up on my understanding of the characteristics of mercantilism, I don't think a return to nationalism and a return to mercantilism are the same thing. The idea that there is underway a shift in thinking to a notion that 'economics [is] a zero-sum game' is very interesting. This has not been the line used to quell dissatisfaction among the unwashed. It appears to me as the antithesis of the ruling dogma (whatever ideas some or all rulers have kept close to their hearts) and as such represents a shift with revolutionary potential. If I see your wealth as a guarantee of my poverty, then I may undertake a different course of action from that I would probably accept if instead I see you as an example to follow.
Mercantilism was, as I recall, born of an era, in which privilege was historically supported by the idea of divine right. Today, privilege is supported by a regime of property rights, among other things. Will anything be sacred if the prevailing wisdom shifts to the idea that economics is a zero-sum game?
I agree. And the system of private property rights is justified to the masses by the promise of economic growth for everyone (even if some get a LOT more economic growth than others...) So what incentive do people have to stick with this system if we only can look forward to declining standards of living and attacks on our existing wealth so as to maintain economic growth for the powerful?
Are economic direct democracy (workplace councils) and political direct democracy possible outcomes of peak oil and the dilemma between clinging to the old system of imperialism, resource wars, exploitation, etc., and taking direct (and often local) power over the resources that we control (instead of sending our taxes off to the vampire-like Maloch that is the corporate welfare state and its ethanol/automobile-philia subsidies) to instead create a sustainable and wealthy "eco-technic" society for all?
Your outlook is very 18th century. Do you want to tell the masses they should have no rights on their property?
In times of chaos and scarcity, mankind has always fallen into brigandage. The post peak oil world will be no different. First the current illusion of control and 'authority'(i.e. police protection) will fall away. When it becomes obvious to the less law abiding types, as they are able to 'get away with' more and more, the developed world will once again be subject to brigands. Most of the less developed world has never been without them. Nearly all of our major cities already have them in poorer areas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigandage
Before "Judge Dredd" was ever a movie, it was a comic strip in the British magazine 2000 A.D. The Dredd strips were great - they were about a hypothetical future, not better, not worse, just different. Crowded, so a lot of people were housed in huge buildings, like Twin Towers big, and of course these blocks would have "block wars". And people'd do things to try to feel like they mattered, like Chopper did, first as a notorious graffitti artist then as a hoverboard champ. It was off to the juve-cubes for him for a while! Judges were human too, although Dredd was a pretty hard case. Fascinating stuff, and I doubt any but a few of us hardcore-ex-fans remember those strips now. One of the topics touched on was that there'd be "wreckers" who'd take some old vehicle(s) and wreck 'em at some pinch point in the road out at the edge of the city, and then plunder those stopped by the wreck. And the Judges would go in and mop them up, but it was not a problem that would go away, merely be controlled to some degree.
This was all written/drawn about in the 1980s.