[baha]

My current position is there is more than enough CO2 already in the atmosphere to end humans. My fascination with geology makes it hard for me to think short term. My personal lack of descendants means my only immediate concern is survival. I don't see peak oil as an existential threat. In fact, if we survive, the whole industrial revolution will be just a blip in the human story. If we don't survive it will be what ended us!

So the alternative is human survival and success...
Our most effective weapon is our minds. We only use it to the greatest effect when we are threatened with destruction. As weather events kill more and more people we will begin to see the threat for what it is and start spending the time and money needed to address the issue. All we are left with is geo-engineering so we will develop processes to remove CO2 from the air and sequester it underground. It will be based on natural processes. The end product (algea based slime) will be very similar to oil and will be injected into abandoned wells in Texas under supervision of the ROCKMAN. The existing wind farms will be used to power the process.

In the meantime small mirrors will be seeded into the arctic vortex to cool the local area and allow the ice cap to reform bringing the weather back into BAU. So Planty can safely go fishing.

Of course these processes will take at least 50 years to make a difference so the end population of 1 billion will have a much better chance of survival. Colonies on Mars will have to wait for the next technical revolution when we find a truly sustainable energy source. Unfortunately KJ passed on when the interplanetary shuttle suffocated on methane farts.

After another 1000 years the next Ice age will be unavoidable and we will dig all that shit up and burn it all over again

[baha]

I've got a better idea...we could just nuke Yellowstone or Campi Flegrei and the resulting Mega-eruption would cool the planet for several decades and kill off 6 billion people very quickly

[baha]

I forgot to mention onlooker and Ghung sitting in the background eating popcorn and giggling

[ralfy]

I would say the glitch is between 2. and 3. Even if oil peaks it isn't the death-knell to the global economy people say it is. Oil is a 3 factor product to begin with. It is a source of energy, a storage medium for energy and a pre-cursor product for other useful products. Even if it loses importance as a major source of energy it will still be important for 2/3. The question really is more about whether the global economy can replace oil as a source of energy. I think that it is possible because renewable energy can take a lot of the slack with respect to overall energy production, and alternative transport options will become increasingly important as oil becomes expensive because it will make other choices relatively better. Electric trains and cars as well as bikes can get people where they need to go, and what's better is that their production relies on electricity or coal.

Renewable energy has low energy returns and quantity. You will find more details in other threads in this forum.

[Squilliam]

I would say the glitch is between 2. and 3. Even if oil peaks it isn't the death-knell to the global economy people say it is. Oil is a 3 factor product to begin with. It is a source of energy, a storage medium for energy and a pre-cursor product for other useful products. Even if it loses importance as a major source of energy it will still be important for 2/3. The question really is more about whether the global economy can replace oil as a source of energy. I think that it is possible because renewable energy can take a lot of the slack with respect to overall energy production, and alternative transport options will become increasingly important as oil becomes expensive because it will make other choices relatively better. Electric trains and cars as well as bikes can get people where they need to go, and what's better is that their production relies on electricity or coal.

Renewable energy has low energy returns and quantity. You will find more details in other threads in this forum.

I am aware of what renewable energy can and cannot do. I am a veteran of The Oil Drum.

[ralfy]

I would say the glitch is between 2. and 3. Even if oil peaks it isn't the death-knell to the global economy people say it is. Oil is a 3 factor product to begin with. It is a source of energy, a storage medium for energy and a pre-cursor product for other useful products. Even if it loses importance as a major source of energy it will still be important for 2/3. The question really is more about whether the global economy can replace oil as a source of energy. I think that it is possible because renewable energy can take a lot of the slack with respect to overall energy production, and alternative transport options will become increasingly important as oil becomes expensive because it will make other choices relatively better. Electric trains and cars as well as bikes can get people where they need to go, and what's better is that their production relies on electricity or coal.

Renewable energy has low energy returns and quantity. You will find more details in other threads in this forum.

I am aware of what renewable energy can and cannot do. I am a veteran of The Oil Drum.

Then you know that it's not possible for renewable energy to replace oil.

[AdamB]

I am aware of what renewable energy can and cannot do. I am a veteran of The Oil Drum.

The second sentence discredits the first. Not only did the Oil Drum not know much about renewables (not a surprise, it wasn't called "The Renewable Drum" after all), but it also turned out to not know much of anything about fundamental resource economics as they relate to oil. You might as well claim to have been a veteran of LATOC, when it comes to how reality treated the visions of those two blogs.

[baha]

The purpose of this exercise is not to analyze someone else's logic. But to gain insight into your own. What is your expected end game...and how can we avoid it?

[baha]

I just tried to access this thread and got a SQL error "too many connections". Does the system know me well or what? I think my argument against technology has pissed off the cloud

[evilgenius]

Because peak oil is so resistant to panic, and yet not resistant to planning, I'm reluctant to run headlong with it as the cause of either the next big failure or some downward trend that the world won't recover from. In addition, although I think climate change is the most pressing cause before mankind, it is not going to receive the kind of attention it deserves, by a long shot. There is something that is making great headway, however, while the risk associated with it is almost being totally ignored.

Only visionary people like Elon Musk are talking about how dangerous artificial intelligence could be for the world economy. I'm not talking about AI as some kind of rogue anti-human danger. I'm talking about how important people spending money is to any economy. People who don't have jobs don't tend to spend much money. The speed of the change that is coming to jobs is unprecedented. It could be that within five to seven years, for instance, there won't be a delivery or passenger carrying job left that isn't being done by some kind of automated vehicle. The same sort of job destruction could be coming to higher level professional jobs as well.

What people spend is what shows up eventually as earnings per share. There could be a massive revaluation of listed companies coming. Some companies are actually positioned to take advantage, like Facebook. Others are not, like JCPenny. In order for outfits like Penny's or Macy's to survive there will have to be an economic reckoning where both the real estate they occupy falls in value, so that they pay less for it every month, and they will have to find a way to become discounters, like Ross and TJMaxx are. They may also have to get away with paying less to employees. It's going to be harder and harder for brick and mortar to compete with online retailing once cheaper shipping because of fewer humans in the marketing chain becomes a reality.

You can only offset so many job losses with cuts in immigration. Those cuts will probably become more aggressive than anyone thinks right now. And if automation comes on as fast as it seems it may, those cuts may not be enough, though they will redirect people's attention from the root cause of what is going on.

I would look for the situation to reach toward an equilibrium, or at least to get worse at a rate that people find they can get comfortable with. Like Elon Musk, I would also look for a much higher average unemployment level. He runs his businesses within the belt that thrives on the innovative edge. There's plenty of capital there, and an expanding market. It's all those companies stuck in old models or burdened by huge pension liabilities that are going to suffer the most.

[baha]

Thank you EG, this is the reality we are living. The old business models are die-ing and the people who have lived by this model will be hurting.

We have to accept changes to the system. Single payer health care is a good example, we can no longer afford for insurance companies to take their cut off the top. And exorbitant pensions will die the death of failed corporations.

I can only hope the new models will be personal and not based on corporate entities. Connections will get us thru, not the free market...

[Squilliam]

We have to accept changes to the system. Single payer health care is a good example, we can no longer afford for insurance companies to take their cut off the top. And exorbitant pensions will die the death of failed corporations.

It's not just insurance companies. Everyone clips the ticket, so to speak.

1. Your doctors get paid twice as much as everywhere else.
2. Your drugs cost significantly more.
3. You have silly malpractice laws that no-one else has.
4. You spend significant sums on the wrong parts -- last 6 months of life (governments tend to be smarter).
5. Politicians have no incentive to reign in costs when they legislate how other people spend their money. It's even worse than spending other people's money because at least if the government spent the money they would feel more personally attached to saving money.
6. You have a silly meme that governments are inefficient at everything.
7. Insurance companies have costs/profit that governments won't worry about. Not so many forms to fill out when the government pays for everything for instance, and no need for call centres either.

[Revi]

I agree. We pay more for health care than almost every other country yet we get less of it. I have a pragmatic idea of what's coming. I think our present administration might speed things up a bit, but it looks like things are going to fall apart. I hope they don't accelerate the process by failing to vote on the debt ceiling, but we don't have much control over them. They are bent on destruction. It's like living with your drunken uncle. He's going to do some crazy stuff, and the best thing to do is to stay out of the way if you can!

My logic is to keep plans fluid. Make plans, but be ready to change them based on what's going on. I'm getting my passport renewed, and keeping bug out bags packed. We'll see...

[evilgenius]

People have been saying for a long time that healthcare in the US is in some kind of a bubble. What I've observed is that while front line skilled hospital positions and some high end doctor's office and clinical jobs seem to rate well in terms of a future other healthcare jobs don't have such a rosy outlook.

My personal experience is with observing what goes on in nursing homes and care facilities. Last night I asked a nurse if most of her CNA's have two jobs. She said, "Not only that, but I also have a PRN job."

Facilities like the ones I visit are a place where the industry is keeping wages low. Consequently, they seem staffed with a lot of immigrants, at both the CNA and nursing levels. It isn't the case that everybody is an immigrant, only that the numbers seem high compared to any other business within the regional economy. Other aspects of healthcare where wages are low, like portable phlebotomy, also seem stacked with immigrants. I deliver drugs to the facilities, and my job is also stacked with immigrants. Most of these people are pretty good people. They are the kind you want your society built from. Some of them do come from places where the country has been at war, though, and some of them have a very poor command of English.

It comes down to this, where wages are too low people who were born into a society don't want to work those jobs. Immigrants take up the slack. The question in healthcare is whether this practice is going on because of constraints upon the industry that keep it from offering high enough wages to attract natives, like inherent debt or a burden to return value to shareholders that could prove onerous to the long term health of said companies, or if this is just a way to maximize profits?

I'm not anti-immigrant. Projections I've seen say that the US will need many new immigrants to fill all of the jobs that will be necessary going forward in the face of a growing economy and a low native birth rate. They also say that there won't be enough people willing to move from where they were born to fill all of these positions globally, given that birth rates are falling in other places than the US. I do find it troubling, however, that an industry that has the reputation this one does for good jobs has this low wage sore that seems as if it could get worse. In ten years will you wonder about the relative qualifications of the tech who is leading you through your exam because of suspicions aimed at their origin or quality of communication (which may stem from making an economic class distinction and extending it into those areas) and not certification? In ten years will that tech be a robot?

[evilgenius]

I was just reading Jim Kunstler's blog, Clusterfuck Nation. His current post gets into healthcare. He cites the work of what he characterizes as a 'clerical' administrative group of people as the prime problem in a system of healthcare denial. He further elaborates that he thinks the fear of eliminating so many jobs in that group which have middle class wages attached to them is part of the problem. I think one of the comments to his blog is telling, in that it said the way to kill cancer is to starve it. I think that is telling because I believe this whole mess started when employees were allowed to contribute to medical plans pre-tax. This allowed employers a way to offer employees higher wages, so to speak, without having to pay the employer side of employment taxes. They could contribute more to health plans and it would look like a wage increase to the employees, while not costing the employer as much as an actual wage increase would.

The thing I liked about Obamacare was that it tried for some kind of price discovery when it came to healthcare. They tried to post costs and coverages. The fault in that, of course, was that it did nothing about procedural price discovery. Nor did it glimpse into medical supply price discovery. None of the 'rackets' which suck at the teat of what has been made huge by pre-tax incentive are being called to task. Not Kunstler's administrators, and certainly not everything else that doesn't rely upon an actual market for the establishment of its price.

There are two widely divergent marketing models at stake here, that of the paperclip and the Rolls Royce. Healthcare has been using that of the Rolls Royce for some time. In Kunstler's blog he states that he believes the system could devolve into a locally based clinical type of system. He doesn't believe that is inevitable, but he offers it as a possibility. What's he's doing is seeing the efficacy of the paperclip model to provide healthcare to people. I don't know if the local clinic model is the best way to arrive at that, but I do think we need more of that. What we have now is a thing, the Rolls Royce, that seeks what the drivers, those who control what happens at the margins, have to offer. Those people have a lot more than the rest of us because the form of capitalism we believe in allows such a concentration of wealth at the top. There remains enough operation in the middle, even though many do go bankrupt, to extend the thing out to the margins. Eliminate pre-tax contributions and that middle fat might decrease just enough that Kunstler's administrators realize they have to arrange their businesses the paperclip way.

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/racket-of-rackets/