<Jamais Cascio: Peak Oil vs. Global Warming The Oil Drum Andris Piebalgs : getting a sense of proportion>

182 comments on Peak Oil and Economic Growth: Where Do We Go From Here?

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Will on March 28, 2008 - 12:43pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I am reminded of the Pacific Northwest Indian pot-latch tradition. Status was not what you owned but what you gave away. Very interesting tradition. Leadership was directly connected to generosity.

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thomas deplume on March 28, 2008 - 1:36pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Even with the potlatch tradition someone somewhere had to produce what was given away.

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Will on March 28, 2008 - 2:10pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

True. But the tradition ensured that leaders were accumulating social wealth, not resource wealth. The fascinating thing was that the participants were producing surplus solely to re-distribute it.

This is fundamentally different from our model where surplus is converted to markers and then hoarded. Well... "invested" is the polite word.

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HankF on March 28, 2008 - 6:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

You'd think that in a steady state economy there would be no such thing as surplus.

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eric blair on March 29, 2008 - 6:32am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Plenty of surplus if one has far less people than what the local biosphere can provide.

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stevemon on March 28, 2008 - 2:40pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

That's fine if the things you give away were produced by you but perhaps the chiefs gained their status by giving away things that they appropriated from others.

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RBM on March 28, 2008 - 8:56pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

perhaps the chiefs gained their status by giving away things that they appropriated from others.

Seeing as how you don't provide a link, I'd have to call that statement one of casting aspersions.

Here's
a google return with a snip about
revival from one of those returns:

One way the First Nations revived the Potlatch tradition was by having the Commissioner's Potlatch, which was first held in Whitehorse in June of 1998. There were representatives from all the Yukon First Nations, as well as Northem British Columbia, and the Northwest Territories. This event was well attended by Yukoners and visitors alike. This has since become an annual
event.

I'd just guess that there wasn't much "appropriated from others", if any.

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182 comments on Peak Oil and Economic Growth: Where Do We Go From Here?

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