The end of growth is why we need to re-invent our banking and monetary systems. Both have collapsed and won’t survive. Each have been founded on a single untruth: infinite growth. The bank bailouts and money printing are simply delaying what everyone knows: our old systems are bankrupt.
But the Earth isn’t bankrupt and will continue to provide for us in a reasonable manner. We just need to create the new banking and monetary systems that reflect this reasonable, sustainable way of nature.
Heinberg’s first book on Peak oil, “The Party’s Over” written in 2005 was fantastic and “The End of Growth” looks like it could couple the Peak movement with the Occupy movement.
Heinberg’s overarching message is that the current economic downturn is not temporary and that, because we have now reached fundamental, unalterable ecological limits, economic growth is gone for good…our entire economy is now fundamentally addicted to debt and to continued, indefinite growth. Oops.
Heinberg goes on to explain that because we’re reaching peak…well…peak everything, and because economic growth relies on natural resources and the Earth’s ability to process our wastes, this growth simply can’t continue. He says that our money has come to represent claims on goods and services that just don’t exist. Through debt and “fiat” currency, the amount of money in the world just gets bigger and bigger, while the Earth’s total stock of resources remains the same. Something has to give.
Unlike previous authors, going back to Thomas Malthus, then later Dennis and Donella Meadows, Herman Daly, and more recently, Tim Jackson and Gus Speth—to all of whom Heinberg gives their due—he’s not just saying that economic growth should stop or that it will stop. He’s saying that it in fact has stopped, whether we like it or not. Discussion in the popular media aside, this is not a choice. Physical laws dictate that all living things must stop growing at some point and, our adamant resistance notwithstanding, the human species has reached that point.
But haven’t we heard before how growth will stop because we’ve run out of resources? (Think The Population Bomb.) So far, it hasn’t happened. Innovation (say the business people), substitution (say the economists), and efficiency (say the scientists) have always allowed us to overcome any resource limitations and advance along the path of progress and growth—and they will continue to do so in the future. But Heinberg says, not this time. Today, innovation mostly just involves tweaking existing technologies. And some materials fundamental to economic growth—most notably fossil fuels—simply have no substitutes. And efficiency can be used to decouple energy use from economic growth only to a certain point.
The current economic system is one where the 99% compete against each other while the 1% enjoy the show and collect interest. This is also known as “divide and conquer” — guess who has been divided and conquered?
Our banking system institutes the desire to “beat” our neighbor in the economic game. We are taught very early that competition is healthy and required for a well-functioning free market. Money is a zero-sum game where if I win, my neighbor must lose. But this isn’t true if you control the money supply.
If you can create money from thin air, there is no need to compete. You just create more money and this is exactly what the central banking system does. It doesn’t worry about competition because they have none!
Other economic models are possible, like Altruistic Economics, and now is the time to wake up and see that the current system is bankrupt and unsustainable.
This video is a fantastic history of 12,000 years of economics boiled down to 25 minutes. In the end, we have the power to break free, if we have the courage to leave the prison which has become our home. The doors are wide open, only if we dare leave…
Source: Chaos Computer Club
This whistlestop re-telling of world economic history squeezes 12,000 years of history into 18 slides. Its focus is the changing nature of money and the rise of the monied class in US and Europe.
It outlines how the modern system of banking was instituted, how international organising allowed the power of the rich to gradually eclipse that of national governments, how war was managed for profit, and how the super-rich set about using the organs of the state in an effort to secure their position of control.
The following article is highly recommended because it connects the Occupy Wall Street movement with the vital knowledge of sustainability.
As public resources of the world increasingly get privatised — crony land deals that give valuable public resources to private business — there eventually comes a time when there are fewer public resources to loot than resources that already been privatised. I call this “Peak Privatisation”. At this peak, the number of displaced, redundant people outnumbers the capability of the Privateers to pacify them. I think we are seeing this today in the Occupy movement.
The controlling class does not know how to respond and the protesters don’t know what to demand or what to do with their time and energy as they “occupy” the privatised land. The long-term, non-violent solution to privatisation is sustainability, as this interview shows.
Whenever people are able to live sustainably from the land, they are independent and free.
The people who created the crisis in the first place will not be the ones that come up with a solution.
That is why we must pay close attention to those with another imagination: an imagination outside of capitalism, as well as communism. We will soon have to admit that those people, like the millions of indigenous people fighting to prevent the takeover of their lands and the destruction of their environment – the people who still know the secrets of sustainable living – are not relics of the past, but the guides to our future.
Check out this matchbox advent calendar. Amazing huh? Alas, at the time I was planning this all out I was stuck at home with no way of obtaining the requisite number of matchboxes. I then tried making my own origami matchbox/slide box, but they wouldn’t have been nearly as stable as the version that used authentic matchboxes. And then there was the issue of the time it would take to fold my own… it would have taken me weeks.
Other ideas I was kicking around:
Ones with with felt pockets like the one shown here.
And then there’s this one … slightly different and v.v.cute.
There’s the cookie sheet advent calendar (cute, I guess, but I can’t get past the cookie sheet thing…) Oh, and speaking of magnets, there’s this one, that can be affixed to a magnet board. Gorgeous huh?
Anyway, there are a lot of great ideas out there. (If you start googling you will be sucked into a vortex you might not be able to get out of, so consider yourself warned.) But I was considering an idea posted on the now-defunct Kiddley. What could be simpler than paper envelopes? This was something I could manage.
In the name of corporate profits, jobs and economic growth, products like light bulbs, automobiles, clothing and computers are designed to break. This is known as planned obsolescence.
The documentary below, The Lightbulb Conspiracy, is an interesting story about the real conspiracy between light bulb manufacturers in the 1930′s to limit the life span of bulbs to 1,000 hours. During the Depression, one Congressman even tried to make planned obsolescence the law of the United States. Well meaning, but insane.
For us to live sustainably, the things we make or buy for ourselves need to maximize their useful lifespan. This holiday season, buying quality second hand gifts at sites like eBay.ca is a good way to keep useful items out of landfill and in the hands of someone who will love them.
Sustainability is another word for “immunity from government tyranny.” We cannot possibly be “free” of something we despise, if we are still entirely dependent on it.
Believe it or not, growing your own food or visiting your local farmers market is more revolutionary and constructive than burning down your own city and killing security forces…
They need us, we don’t need them. That’s the big secret. We get our freedom back as soon as we take back our responsibilities for food, water, security, the monetary system, power, and manufacturing; that is independence. Independence is freedom, freedom is independence. We’ll never be free as long as we depend on the Fortune 500 for our survival.
Fixing these problems unfolding overseas starts with fixing the problems in our own backyards. Boycott the globalists, cut off their support, undermine their system, and they lose their ability to commit these atrocities. That will be a real revolution and it can start today. Not burning cities and masked rebels waving flags, but communities no longer dependent and fueling a corrupt system we all know must come to an end.
Where are farmer markets in Montreal? Jean-Talon is the city’s largest farmer’s market, but there are others.
The news around the world is making it clear that the current central banking/fractional reserve/crony capitalist system where wealth gets sucked to the top of the pyramid, is slowly breaking down.
Unfortunately, there is no hot replacement system waiting in the wings. Barter anyone? Yawn. Communes anyone? Scary. A return to gold-backed money? Possibly. Holographic power structures. Say what?
In any case, to start creating a NEW, sustainable economic system, we each need to hold a vision for the future that we desire to live in. Just sit down, close your eyes and make a wish; an intention for how you want to live in relation to people and the Earth. Then, with help from the universe, we can start to fill in the growing economic void and throw out the current system.
What we are witnessing is thus not another recession, but the end of the world capitalist system and the protests in the US against “Wall Street” may be an indication as good as any of this. One however gets the impression that as long as the old system survives there is no real opening to create a new world to replace it. To do so would be too much in conflict with the legality of the current dualist power structure and only after some kind of full collapse has occurred would people in general be compelled and inspired to create a new way of living and relating in the realms of politics and economics. To prevent such a new world from being born we can also be certain that when the collapse comes this will be presented by the powers that be as nothing but a temporary downturn.
THRIVE is an unconventional documentary that lifts the veil on what’s REALLY going
on in our world by following the money upstream — uncovering the global
consolidation of power in nearly every aspect of our lives. Weaving together
breakthroughs in science, consciousness and activism, THRIVE offers real solutions,
empowering us with unprecedented and bold strategies for reclaiming our lives and
our future.
A growing number of individuals believe our economic and societal status quo is defined by unsustainable addiction to cheap oil and ever increasing debt. With that viewpoint, it’s hard not to see a hard takedown of our national standard of living in the future. Even harder to answer is: what do you do about it?
Charles Hugh Smith, proprietor of the esteemed weblog OfTwoMinds.com, sees the path to future prosperity in removing capital from the Wall Street machine and investing it into local enterprise within the community in which you live.
“Enterprise is completely possible in an era of declining resource consumption. In other words, just because we have to use less, doesn’t mean that there is no opportunity for investing in enterprise. I think enterprise and investing in fact, are the solution. And if we withdraw our money from Wall Street and put it to use in our own communities, to the benefit of our own income streams, then I think that things happen.”
Although I don’t subscribe to the belief that Western civilization will collapse (it is more likely to wind down or power down slowly), there are two separate, active discussion groups on reddit, one for societal collapse, one for post-collapse each with useful discussions on a variety of useful subjects.
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post-collapse:
This Subreddit is for planning and preparing for what comes after a collapse of society. Head over to r/collapse for tips and info on preparing for the days leading up to and during any sort of apocalypse or general collapse of society as we know it.
On the end of the world as we know it. Crashes, disasters, wars and famines. Diminishing resources, decadent culture. The decline of civilizations, empires & societies. But not necessarily The Apocalypse.
