PowerSwitch

In the upcoming crisis (like 3 to 5 years after the crash) do you think "The System*":

Will survive with some minor modifications.
It is likelly to be replaced by some sort of extreme right or left ideology.
Will not survive at all
Other

*By system I mean the way in wich society is organized and ruled, that is: politicians, democracy, taxes, jobs, laws, rules, rights etc,

I think it will not survive. It is designed to be runed on oil and besides, there is too many people against it (and right now we are living the good times), criminal behaviour, depression/anxiety, welfare leaches, domestic abuse, gang violence, drug abuse... all those are natural unconscious responses and a desperate attempt to try to escape the system itself. As soon as things go downhill, unemployment, scary food prices, terrorism... the unrest will grow and we'll see more of those cases, when chaos strikes I'm sure sabotage will come into place making the whole thing fall down. If the economy is gone then everything will be gone with it too.

kevincarter wrote:In the upcoming crisis (like 3 to 5 years after the crash)

What's the difference between crash and crisis?


Peter.

Good question, by crash I ment when the time when Oil Peak breaks down the economy, making it crash, like the 1929 crash. By crisis I ment the time that comes imediatelly after that happens and that can last for a very long time.

I think the very core fundamentals will survive for a long time, in some form.

There are 2 powerful groups in the uk, politicians and business leaders, they will not want either to loose power or loose their (very high) personal stds of living.

I think they will use what tools they have to both keep some sort of system in place that the public has to tolerate and to paint propoganda about why we got there and what will happen in the future ("..the governements policies therefore will allow the Uk to kick-start it's economy in the next fews years leading to an end to this unfortunate but short term crisis").

Imagine that virtually everyone is out of work - if the gov does soimething that means people have a roof over their heads and basic food rations then the public will support them in some form, esp if they taste life without gov support for food or shelter.....

The business leaders will still want basically what they want now - a system that gets them money and people that do work for them. They will work with (or pressure) the gov to make sure this happens.

A left or right idiology will help with the propoganda - someone to blame can help your cause. But the underlaying idiology will be controlling-elite-capitalism.

No one can seriously think that the big players in the UK today are going to move out of their ?10m houses and set up a one-man market stall selling spuds - this will never happen, these people will fight to make sure it never happens to them, even if it's what the rest of will have to do.

The pretend-economy at national level will be painted as sometihng like we have now, in practice most of us will operate within a totally different economy with barter, favour and alt currencies as "liquidity".

When a complete collapse occurs, I think that the ruling, upper-class/boss-class will try to keep control, with the armed forces and former police working for them. On the other hand, with no economy, what could the ruling-class offer them? They'd be able to just take whatever they wanted. The monarchy may go on in some form, (long after the rest of the nation's royalists forget them) due to protection by extremely patriotic, military types who still see the Queen, et al, as little gods.

The worst case, I think, (and forgive me for wheeling out a 'Mad Max'-style cliche), will be ex-police and armed forces types banding together and using their remaining firepower and/or sheer brute force to just dominate a 'serf' class and just take whatever is produced by them. It will either be in return for some protection from other marauding outside groups, or else, they'll be itinerant bandits, turning up each harvest time to take the 'lion's share', and killing any that stand up to them, just like the bandit gang in 'the Seven Samurai'.

It seems obvious to me that the political class will try to retain
control (ie. a source of revenue through taxation) by introducing
electronic ID cards and rationing of all key resources, not just petrol
but food, luxuries and travel privledges. It will be an attempt to micromanage the
country for an austerity campaign similar to the one we had in
WWII. It will probably use some similar justification (war on terror)
or invent some new enemy to fight a perpetual war against (where
did I read of a society like that ? I think it was back in 1984...)

In practice I don't think they will succeed. If nothing else the electricity
supply will become too flakey to run all the ID monitoring systems.
The fall will be too fast for the government to
set up the level of control needed. Central government will
wane but not disappear entirely as more and more people fall out of
the taxation system. Only the professional classes like doctors and
the police will contribute significantly to taxation, and hence to
direct influence on government. Most people won't bother to vote,
and then realise one day that there haven't been any elections for the
last couple of decades...

I suspect we will go back to a more fuedal model, based on land ownership. This is still a very powerful
class in the UK, the Gentleman Farmer never really went away, and
still can muster a large following, remember the million person
Countryside Alliance march a few years ago?

It is designed to be runed on oil

This is not true. The system is based on money, not oil. While the oil is running out, those that can profit from it will milk it to the last drop.

But before it runs out (ie now), they will be busy looking at whatever is the next thing that will make them lots of money. You underestimate their intelligence if you think they will just use up all the oil and then go, "Oh bugger, we seem to have used all the oil. Now we have nothing to profit from..."

The system is based on money, not oil.

We, the people that live in the system, stay alive thanks to oil. I mean food, goods and water are all obtined or provided to us by oil, without it we can't have no food, goods, transportation of those or heat. And there is also a current that belives that money is a symbol for oil.

I agree that they sure will try to find the next thing that makes money, but they will face something different this time. An angy starving mass that has never before known hunger. The question is, will the system survive to that? I'm sure money probably will, but will the system do it also?[/quote]