Collapse

[johnhemming2]

Tom Watson has a greater understanding of the issues that concern people on the ground than Jeremy Corbyn (that does not take a lot of doing). Angela is quite bright, but I have not noticed her say anything beyond the run of the mill political so called debate stuff - which she does well, but so did William Hague.

[3rdRock]

Tom Watson has a greater understanding of the issues that concern people on the ground than Jeremy Corbyn (that does not take a lot of doing). Angela is quite bright, but I have not noticed her say anything beyond the run of the mill political so called debate stuff - which she does well, but so did William Hague.

Thanks for your tuppence worth John.

I can't say that I've been particularly impressed by either of their televised performances to date and Tom's taste in music leaves a lot to be desired. Apparently he likes a band called 'Drenge'.

[johnhemming2]

He does play guitar, but I have never played with him. Hence I don't know that much about his music. He tended not to be involved with the parliamentary music scene. Angela also plays guitar I believe, but I am not so sure.

[Blue Peter]

If you look at history, there's a period of prosperity, usually left led, then a swing to the right, then collapse, then further moves to the right/nationalism, then a war. That's likely where we're heading

My elder son's studying Weimar and 1930s Germany. I've told him that he's going to see it all played out live in front of his eyes

Damn! Now I've forgotten that quote by Santayana or someone,


Peter.

[Lord Beria3]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/07 ... n-j16.html

This report outlining how the majority of youth in the developed world have seen stagnant or declining wages since 2005 (peak of global conventional oil production a coincidence?) is alarming for future social and political stability.

A significant majority of the population in 25 of the world’s most advanced countries experienced declining or stagnating incomes between 2005 and 2014, according to a McKinsey Global Institute report released this month.
An estimated 540 million to 580 million people, 65 to 70 percent of the population of those countries, had real incomes that were flat or fell during this period. These countries, whose total population is 800 million, account for half of the world’s economic output.

Never before in the post-World War II period has such a large section of workers in the advanced capitalist countries faced such a decline or stagnation in income. In contrast, during the period between 1993 and 2005, the study estimates that only 2 percent of the population in the same countries experienced similar conditions.

The authors of the study are clearly concerned about the political impact of this unprecedented change, particularly on the new generation of the working class. Hence the study’s title: “Poorer than their Parents: Flat or Falling Incomes in Advanced Economies.”

The study points out that the sharp decline in wage and salary income was only partly offset by government transfer payments, with the result that some 20 percent of the population in the countries studied saw an actual decline in real income during the decade ending in 2014. The mechanisms varied from country to country, from the Swedish welfare state spending to the extended unemployment benefits and food stamps provided in the United States, although these have largely expired.

The study warns that declining economic growth makes the continuation of such transfer payments increasingly problematic: “Over time, declining earning power for large swaths of the population could limit demand growth in economies and increase the need for social spending and transfer payments, even as tax receipts from workers with stagnating incomes limit capacity to fund such programs. The impact could be more than purely economic, however, if the disconnect between GDP growth and income growth persists.”

In the cautious bureaucratic jargon of the McKinsey researchers, “more than purely economic” carries a freight load of meaning: it signifies the recognition by this business think tank that the deterioration of working-class living standards has revolutionary implications.

[RenewableCandy]

I've a copy of "Decline of the West" and believe me it's heavy going. But still fascinating...the chapter about Mathematics includes a section called "Dread and Longing"

[raspberry-blower]

Here's some more light reading

Michael Synder: The Day the Lights Go Out and the Trucks Stop Running

So what would you do if “normal life” suddenly came to an end and you no longer had access to food, water or power?

How would you and your family respond?

Hopefully you would continue to act in a civilized manner, but history has shown that many people would not.

[raspberry-blower]

Some more light reading:

Indy: "Society could end in less than a decade" warns academic

“But this is a science-based forecast, not a ‘prophecy’. It’s based on solid social science.”

He said peaks and troughs in society were inevitable, citing “impersonal social forces”, which bring “us to the top; then comes the inevitable plunge.”

He also blamed the development of “elite overproduction”, which causes wealth gaps in society to widen and the poor to become increasingly alienated.

Been here before although the peak resource constraints, climatic catastrophe and population overshoot has never been quite so acute. Given the brain dead goading of a nuclear superpower - namely Russia although China also fits the bill - the chances of a nuclear conflagration has never been higher.

[woodburner]

The possibility of a nuclear skirmish will mess up the system, but I doubt it will cause a population crash on the scale needed. Social "science" is a grandiose claim for something which I don't see as a science. It is not posibble to do the experiments to prove the theories, or more correctly if it is a science, to conduct an experiment in an attempt to disprove the theory.

[UndercoverElephant]

Where do we go from here? We get poorer, in every sense of the word, insecurity and inequality increases. For the UK and Western Europe in general I don't foresee the kind of civil and military unrest evident in the Arab Spring, our population is too old, unarmed, geographically segregated and our security services still effective. Kunstler's Long Emergency provides a useful framing, as does Orlov's 'Reinventing Collapse'.

The older generation will die off, perhaps going their graves cursing as it turns out that the rest of society isn't willing to pay for their old age. But they won't engage in physical unrest. What happens next largely depends on to what extent the rich and powerful are conscious of the mounting collection of pitchforks. In the past, they have often been sufficiently insulated from the harsh realities afflicting the rest of society that they failed to see the pitchforks coming. We have discussed this at length on this board: the most likely outcome, if the rich and powerful do not start sharing some of the pain, is the rise to power of populist "right wing" nationalists who are willing to stick up for the working class poor. We are already seeing the beginnings of this.

Ultimately it won't make any difference though. In the end it comes down to overpopulation and a decreasing carrying capacity: one way or another the human population must start to fall, and then continue to do so until some sort of balance is restored between humans and the rest of the biosphere. And we all know the mechanisms by which this will happen: wars, starvation, disease. Probably quite a lot more of all three of them.

I personally expect it will be a combination of slow grinding collapse with occasional lurches downward caused by things like the emergence of seriously antibiotic resistant versions of old diseases and widespread failures of specific important crops. But there's also a possibility of something much bigger like the complete collapse of the global fiat monetary system, or (and there was a Horizon program on this last night) a cascade failure of satellites due to exponentially increasing amounts of space junk. The thing is that if modern civilisation is already weakened and vulnerable, something like that could have a much more devastating effect than it would if civilisation was basically sound and stable.

[woodburner]

Interesting you mention the space junk prog. While I was watching it I was thinking it could cause a very fast collapse of the system. They gave an apparent linear preprediction of a major collision every five years on average, with the explanation that that was an average so it could happen earlier. I thought that the amount of debris wil increase exponentially, so in a few years collisions may be more frequent.

[UndercoverElephant]

Interesting you mention the space junk prog. While I was watching it I was thinking it could cause a very fast collapse of the system. They gave an apparent linear preprediction of a major collision every five years on average, with the explanation that that was an average so it could happen earlier. I thought that the amount of debris wil increase exponentially, so in a few years collisions may be more frequent.

None of the proposed responses to the problem do anything more than buy some more time. The seeds of destruction, especially for low earth orbit, are already sown. There's already millions of small bits of junk and tens of thousands of larger bits, further collisions are inevitable and more stuff is being launched all the time. Unless somebody comes up with a way of systematically clearing this junk up - and there's nothing remotely like this proposed so far - then it seems to me that it can only end one way, and that is a "Kessler" cascade failure. It is simply a question of when, not if, this will happen. And yes, the rapid and total loss of all low earth orbit satellites would be a devastating blow to techno-civilisation. It would take out the vast majority of communications and surveillance satellites, as well as the ISS. Very hard to predict the consequences of that, but it isn't likely to be anything good.

[woodburner]

Would put an end to internet forums. If the dick-brained politicians and others get their way to scrap terrestrial radio and send it all digital, it will put an end to "radio" too. I know there are land based transmitters to provide the final link, but the digital bit will involve more internet traffic, and the internet will be toast. Better learn morse code and become a radio ham.

[Little John]

I have just watched that Horizon program. It seems to be inevitable, as you have both said, that a cascade failure is coming and it is just a case of when not if. Also, from everything else I have just read, following a Keppler cascade failure, it would be many years before all LEO objects naturally burned up in the atmosphere and it could take literally millennia for objects at higher altitudes.

All of the above being the case, my guess is if there was a Keppler cascade failure then, although the risk to rocket launches that passed straight through LEO would be tiny, the days of mass LEO satellites would be over for at least a generation if not significantly longer.

Which leads onto what kind of alternative is available for modern telecommunication systems. It seems to me, it would have to consist of cables spanning the oceans to join up the continents and then pretty densely situated line-of-sight radio-relay-stations (one every 80 square miles, on average, for high frequency radio-waves, as I understand it) and/or optic-fibre and other cable-based, data-transmission technologies on those continents. In other words, it would be doable. But would be much more logistically difficult than is the case with satellites. In particular, a lack of satellite technology would have a significant impact on the efficiency of mobile telecommunication systems such as are required by an armed force in a constantly changing theater of war.

[woodburner]

Just as well. The military solution is always destruction. They can use guns and bombs, and a few other things, all of them destructive, but nothing useful. Look at Iraq, Palestine and Syria. Doesn't matter which side, they all destroy. Less communication would muck them up a bit. They wouldn't be able to get supplies so easily, as without modern communications, air transport would be ******. Not only the military, the UK would be seriously short of food as lots comes in by air.

PS it's a Kessler cascade. Keppler was someone else.