Simplicity

[Pops]

To prepare for tomorrow, live it today.

That's been my mantra since the Planning forum began. The Archdruid, Orlov, etc preach the same. The Simplicity Institute is a website I just discovered (h/t Energy Bulletin) with a similar idea and a nice presentation.

Interestingly, the thrust at SI is a mixture of what I consider highbrow anti-consumerism and run of the mill peak oil doomerisim.

Here are som of their articles:
http://simplicityinstitute.org/publications

[dinopello]

THey should probably team up with the Slow Foodmovement, the Small is Beautiful movement (promoted by groups like this, and any number of culture shift groups, of which I support their basic philosophy. These groups, if they haven't already should band together in alliances. I am meeting with someone on the board of The Professional Futurists Society for something unrelated to that but maybe I'll ask him about the future. I suspect the future they see is much different (perhaps).

I do chuckle at the idea of returning to 'simplicity'. Many consumer gadgets and modern society constructs were supposed to make things simpler and in many respects they did. You flip a switch and light comes on, turn a dial and control the climate in your house, drive up to a window hand over some paper and get a full meal, easy peasy. We go on camping trips and just the basics consume the whole day - we have to plan where we are going to sleep to be near water and sheltered from the north winds, have to scour the forest for wood just to have some heat at night, washing your face, taking a dump is all a little more "complicated".

[Timo]

MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Erik Brynjolfsson on Monday warned that technological advancements were displacing workers at an ever growing rate.

“Technology’s always been creating jobs, it’s always been destroying jobs,” he told Current TV host Eliot Spitzer. “Ninety percent of Americans used to work on farms in 1800. Today it’s less than 2 percent. Now, all those people didn’t become unemployed, they went into new industries, like the auto industry that Henry Ford helped create and the work that Edison did and Steve Jobs and many others — whole new industries were created.”

“What’s different this time is [that] the scale, scope and speed of the technological change is so great that the jobs that are being eliminated are a much bigger share of the economy than the new jobs that are being created,” Brynjolfsson added.

While technological progress and automation had mostly replaced human laborers in the past, Brynjolfsson noted that advances in computers were displacing workers nearly all sectors of the economy.

In his book Race Against the Machine, Brynjolfsson and co-author Andrew McAfee argue that technology is contributing to unemployment and income inequality by destroying middle-class jobs.

“It is really every part of the economy, every job that is being affected,” he said. “And the speed of this change is much more rapid than the past.”

People are rapidly becoming obsolete for economic function. We're not people, per se. We're consumers. That's our only real purpose - to consume what machines make for us. Oh well. Let's all eat cake!

[dinopello]

People are rapidly becoming obsolete for economic function. We're not people, per se. We're consumers. That's our only real purpose - to consume what machines make for us. Oh well. Let's all eat cake!

Yeah, this is supposed to be the goal. Machines do all the work and we recreate and relax.



I'm down with that. I can sit and stare at clouds all day and be happy. But some are ambitious and want to have more than everyone else, so what are they to do ? It turns out, people pay people to be friends with them. I met a young lady who is an image consultant. And she works not for the hollywood elite, but young rich and not so rich men and women. She tells them what a good look is for them, and all sorts of other stuff. She is making good money. Am I an anachronism ? It just seems weird.

[Pops]

I was reading the oldest article on the list, the one linked at EB:
Resilience through Simplification: Revisiting Tainter’s Theory of Collapse

Basically Tainter said as Civ progresses it becomes more complex as a result of solving problems. This uses more energy and resources, leading eventually to diminishing returns until even treading water is too costly and the system collapses. Tainter's solution is to continually acquire more energy to keep the ball rolling other wise reduce energy use:

Voluntarily
Ration by Price
Ration by Force
Reduce Population
Wait for the Energy Fairy

The authors advocate voluntary reduction.

[dohboi]

So, what do you think. Is it against our basic nature to turn away from the conveniences complexity brings, even to avoid a catastrophic collapse? I'm looking for examples from history including the present. There are of course the Amish. There were lots of counter-culture folks in the '60s and '70s who were at least aspiring to that.

But whole countries? Empires? The whole world?

People often point to the Edo period in Japan--obviously mostly top-down.
Tainter himself mentions a period in the Byzantine Empire, but that was also top-down and a response to economic and military pressures.

(Not that I am necessarily completely against all top-down approaches, but that is different from the picture most people have in the simplicity movement.)

More bottom-up would be the Indian Swadeshi ('Self-sufficiency') Movement of Gandhi that involved boycotting British products by making homespun and other dyi products. This, and perhaps the Luddite and Arts and Crafts movements are perhaps the best prototypes for the kind of thing people have in mind.

Just as in Gandhi's movement, the people have the power to bring down the ff juggernaut by refusing to use their products, or trying to use them to the absolute minimum. Of course, it would have to be world wide, or efforts in one are will just lead to people buying the fuels more cheaply elsewhere.

Is there a modern-day Gandhi on the forum who is willing to start this international movement?

[Pops]

Sorry boi, never was much at history, but I do think we are adept at adaptation :^)

By definition adaptation is a reaction,
something that is changed or modified to suit new conditions or needs

So, we evolved as adapters and simply having a discussion about how past 'arrangements' have come and gone says a great deal.

Do I think we'll all go Thoreau? Not a chance. But we'll all get simple one way or another. Some will be priced out – they are already, some use will be forced out by government action as with CAFE standards or high taxes and many countries are already aging so maybe that curve is bending a little. I really doubt we'll do much voluntarily.


I'm not a meditator, counting the leaves on the trees as my mind wanders on some poetic meander is not my thing so the part of the sale about the joys of nothingness don't strike a cord. I like to do stuff, garden, build, etc and the more time I can get away from a 'job' to do things the better I like it. $20-30k /yr is just right for me but of course I've already been through my acquisition phase, had my boat and cars and parties, etc.

Like I said in the OP, the SI site is a blend of "highbrow anti-consumerism" and doom. The highbrow part relates to my feeling that most folks who've never had much in the way of consumer goods probably aren't going to elect to embrace simplicity voluntarily. If that makes sense. IOW a person needs money to not worry about money, needs their nest feathered before flying,

Another part of this is the whole idea of Jeavons paradox. I don't want to derail the thread on that argument except to the extent that either through voluntary simplicity or rationing of whatever sort, the reduction in demand that makes energy prices lower than they would have otherwise been is a double benefit to the volunteer where it is merely a chimera to the BAU guy. The volunteer reduces his dependence preemptively and reaps the reward of lower dependence as well as lower expense, the BAU guy mistakes the lowered price for a signal of, well, BAU returning.

[kublikhan]

I was reading this one: PEAKOIL,ENERGY DESCENT, AND THE FATE OF CONSUMERISM

When we also bear in mind how cheap oil has been in the past, this analysis gets more remarkable still. Even at today’s price of around $100 per barrel, which historically is extremely high, this is really a very cheap form of energy. One only needs to imagine offering someone $100 for 8.6 years of labour to realise that even today’s so-­‐called ‘expensive’ oil is still amazingly cheap.

THE ECONOMICS OF PEAK OIL
Although the intricacies of peak oil economics can get very complex quite quickly, the basic dynamics can be easily grasped and conveyed. The first point to note is that there has always been a very close correlation between energy supply and economic growth, which should really come as no surprise. Quite simply, productive activity takes energy, and many studies and events have demonstrated that when energy supply has not met demand, economies suffer, often to the point of recession.

when energy prices increase, expenditures are re-allocated from areas that had previously added to GDP, mainly discretionary consumption, towards simply paying for the more expensive energy. In this way, higher energy prices lead to recessions by diverting money from the economy towards energy only. The data show that recessions occur when petroleum expenditures as a percent of GDP climb above a threshold of roughly 5.5%

If economic growth is indeed dependent on energy prices in this way, then we are truly approaching a momentous turning point in the human history. For two centuries the dominant narrative of human progress has been based on economic growth, but if it turns out that the world cannot significantly decouple growth from energy use, then any stagnation in the supply of energy may very well represent the ‘end of growth.’ This is something that is going to change the world so fundamentally that its foreseeable arrival ought to be taken very seriously indeed. Unfortunately, most people, including the world’s leaders, remain firmly entrenched in a macro-economic paradigm that seeks growth without limit.

The global economy simply cannot withstand the economic impacts of high oil prices – primarily because so much trade is now international and therefore dependent on oil for the transportation of goods. But when oil prices get so high that the economy cannot function – which is what happened in 2008 – the economy struggles to grow, and this reduction in economic activity means a reduction in oil demand, and this reduced demand makes the price of oil crash also. This is what happened after the crash in 2008, and it is what happens whenever the demand for oil is reduced because of economic recession. Low oil prices, however, then aid economic recovery, but as economies recover from recession and begin to grow again, this puts more demand pressure on stagnating oil supplies, and the cycle repeats itself. In short, oil prices increase till economic breaking point, economies crash, which leads to a crash in oil prices; the low oil prices then facilitate economic recovery, which puts more demand pressure on oil, leading prices to rise till economic breaking point, and so and so forth. This increasingly severe cycle of bust-­‐recovery-­‐bust is what we should expect in coming years and decades, and as oil supplies decline, economic contraction is what we should expect and prepare for. The world is unlikely to escape this unhappy cycle until it transitions beyond a growth-­‐based economy and breaks its addiction to oil.

CONCLUSION
The transition away from consumer lifestyles toward some form of post-­‐consumerist lifestyle will be a truly fundamental shift in how the global consumer class lives, involving a significant reduction in material standards of living and a necessary reconceptualisation of what ‘the good life’ entails. Living more simply, in terms of energy and resource consumption, has both an external and an internal dimension.

To sum up: This paper has argued that consumer lifestyles have a time limit and that time is running out. We may even be living in the age of ‘peak consumerism,’ which can be understood as the point at which the energy and resource intensive consumer lifestyles widely celebrated today begin their inexorable and terminal decline. Consumerism is a social experiment that has failed for various reasons, but arguably the most pressing failure is its fatal reliance on a depleting non-renewable resource.

This marks the dawn of a new age, an age in which ‘simpler lives’ of reduced energy and resource consumption will eventually be imposed upon us by force of geological, environmental, economic, and perhaps even geopolitical forces. It would be wise, therefore, to prepare ourselves for this future – psychologically, socially, economically, and politically. The worst way to respond to this looming reality, but which is the dominant response today, is to pretend that our inheritance of oil is never going to deplete despite sustained consumption and increased demand. With consumerism on its deathbed, it is time to dream a new dream – a post-­‐consumerist, post-­‐petroleum dream – and we should recognise that we are now under considerable time pressure to realise this new, simpler form of life.

I like how it starts by talking about the incredible energy bounty in oil. One barrel containing the equivalent of 8.6 years of human labor, and by implication oil's true economic value is many times higher than $100 a barrel. This is a point some posters here continually like to harp on. They like to argue we can simply cut out 'wasteful' oil consumption and continue BAU. That's where the rest of the paper comes in handy, explaining how this is a fantasy. Our economy depends on cheap oil to run. Cut out those 'wasteful' activities, and it causes recessions. This is something Montequest used to harp about alot back in the day. Our entire economic model depends on growth fed by cheap energy. Take that away, and it falls apart. Its going to take a hell of alot more than cutting out 'wasteful' oil uses to change this. It is going to take an economic paradigm shift. I am guessing society is not going to voluntarily move much this way. But it will eventually happen one way or another. Still, nice to be prepared on the personal level.

[glaucus]

Pops wrote:

To prepare for tomorrow, live it today.

Allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment.

I'm on board with the idea that energy descent and climate disruptions will cause society to simplify. I also agree that this will be a messy, uneven process with peaks and valleys and periods of crisis and stabilization. This process, call it the long emergency, or transition, or the long descent, catabolic collapse, sawtoothed decline, 'collapse', etc. all suggest roughly the same prescriptive behavior: because society is in the process of simplifying that each individual (or community) should voluntarily simplify to be more well-prepared when simplification comes home to roost in your neck of the woods.

However, I have a few doubts about the efficacy of this program. For starters, the future is to a large extent unknowable - we don't really have a clear understanding of what simplicity will look like in the context of our predicament going forward. Now, surely the trends are in place for resources like water, energy, and food to become a whole hell of a lot more expensive in the future. In response, the simplification mindset naturally concludes that to offset this eventuality it would behoove each one of us to learn to garden, for example, if not farm.

The problem is that this sort of commitment - that is, quitting your day job for work as a farmhand, as an example - is very costly today, regardless of the future value those skills might have tomorrow. In other words, the central problem with transition is that it asks you to live in the future while implying that you can continue satisfying the requirements of the present.

The risk is that by quitting your job, you've lost bidding power for the goods and services that are still available today in a market economy still runs on money. Not to mention making ends meet - paying bills, taxes, rent, etc. By attempting to live in a future world where chasing after a paycheck isn't the first priority, you forfeit your ability to outbid the poor when the chips are down for real.

In other words, as energy, food, etc. gets more expensive, it's the people with jobs in the industrialized world - those who manage to make it through the successive rounds of musical chairs - who will get that food because they will be able to outbid those who are poor, regardless of how they got there (voluntarily or involuntarily).

Second, the simplification movement seems to eschew relying upon highly abstracted and hyper-specialized jobs and education in favor of jobs that are hands-on, and more generalized that don't require a lot of formal education. In other words, it suggests that generalization will win out over specialization. But I'm not so sure that's going to be the case universally. I think there's an argument to be made that doubling down on specialized college degrees (regardless of the cost) might be the long-term smarter play for years to come rather than graduating from high school and trying to make it as an HVAC repairman or a similar career. Again, just looking at the numbers, college grads have much higher income and employment rates than high school grads. Would you be willing and able to tell your 18 year old to forsake college on the gamble that this relationship will turn on its head in a predictable way on a favorable timeline? I doubt it.

Third, the simplification movement doesn't really address what happens to those folks with highly-specialized careers after societal collapse occurs, other than suggest they would turn into zombies or some such. Perhaps it's the case that these individuals who have achieved very much within the current structure of society will employ the same skills they honed over the course of their career to the 'new game' whatever it happens to be?

In other words, what's to stop over-achievers in today's world from over-achieving and out-competing me and you in tomorrow's world? Jamie Dimon is obviously very proficient at playing the 'human game' these days. Now, he and his ilk are bastards for sure, but perhaps they are hard workers that would outwork you and me at the 'new game' in the future?

I have more, but I'll stop it there. You get the idea. The point is, why put your eggs in a basket that isn't yet on the table? Perhaps it is the smartest play to stay in the formal economy for as long as possible so that you give yourself as many outs as possible when the ship does go down (at which point you have a much clearer idea of the lay of the land than at present).

[/devil's advocacy]

[Pops]

Of course 'ride the ride 'till it stops' is the default argument, because after all, how else is a person to grab the brass ring?

I guess the voluntary simplicity argument is that the brass ring is really just a plastic chachka not worth grabbing. Even replacing the chachka with a Big Berky or bug-out farmstead or whatever survivalist gizmo changes nothing because a person is still addicted to the consumerist lifestyle and the ride.

If you don't have a big house and 3 cars and on and on you can work much less and live much more is point a, point b is that living way below your means allows your means to shrink way down without affecting your living.

My first rule is Don't Buy, learn to enjoy life with less. I used to make good money. Learning to not predicate my happiness and self worth on stuff is a real challenge, at least for me. Acquisition I think has a deeply rooted place in our psyche, maybe it's an American thing? We're all still nouveau riche.

So while I think the site in the OP is thinking voluntary simplicity is the way to prevent the collapse of society, I look at it as a way toward personal preparedness in the face of a collapsing society that will never volunteer to let go.

Villagers in a far-off land wanted to capture monkeys. So one ingenious person thought of cutting a hole in a coconut and stuffing peanuts in it. Then he placed the coconut in a tree frequently visited by monkeys.
Within minutes of putting the coconut in the tree, a monkey wandered by, smelled the peanuts, crawled up the tree and put his hand inside the coconut. As villagers approached to nab the monkey, the monkey couldn’t climb down the tree because he was clutching the peanuts inside the coconut and his hand was stuck.

Stumbled over this abandoned blog post while looking for an image to steal, it is quite nice. Thanks Jessica, wherever you are.

[Loki]

Interesting post Glaucus. I don't really disagree with the main gist of your argument, though I did quit my day job in the city and move to the country to work on a farm more than two years ago. I don't advocate that others follow my example unless they're already inclined to do so. But if so inclined, by all means take the jump. I haven't regretted it for a second.

Your argument about the opportunity costs of voluntary poverty and the self-sufficient lifestyle is absolutely valid. That's a tough nut to crack, really depends on personal situation (age, health, spouse, children, IQ and education, etc.). But you present somewhat of a false choice: (1) rake in the dough doing your well compensated hyperspecialized job in the city or (2) move to the country and become a peasant.

A more realistic choice for most working Americans is (1) desperately cling to a job you may or may not like hoping to keep from falling too far behind in the rat race, or (2) do something else, which could include farming but should at the very least involve growing/fixing/making as much of your own “stuff” as possible and learning to do with less.

The question, at least in my mind, is what the average working schlub should do in the face of economic collapse and catastrophic climate change. Voluntary simplicity/poverty is a viable option. Voluntary poverty will always be a fringe position, but poverty (voluntary or otherwise) may not be so fringe soon enough. “Collapse now and avoid the rush,” as John Greer puts it.

In other words, as energy, food, etc. gets more expensive, it's the people with jobs in the industrialized world - those who manage to make it through the successive rounds of musical chairs - who will get that food because they will be able to outbid those who are poor, regardless of how they got there (voluntarily or involuntarily).

And those who don't make it through the musical chair game will be involuntarily impoverished should economic collapse proceed. Involuntary poverty is a different beast than voluntary poverty, far more wrenching.

If folks want to continue playing musical chairs, I won't begrudge them. My crystal ball isn't any better than theirs, the American Dream may very well limp along for decades, hyperconsumerism, suburbs, SUVs, and loads of white-collar jobs for the rest of my life. In which case my decision to become a peasant will represent a somewhat significant opportunity cost, at least in terms of lifetime earnings. Not that my pre-farming earnings were anything to brag about.

More important to me is life satisfaction. I personally love farming. Also love canning, making cheese, feeding my pigs, worrying over my sunflower crop, chasing the chickens back into the coop, and all the other peasant stuff I do every day. I do worry about the long-term financial viability of this lifestyle, though. Peasantry doesn't pay very well. The “voluntary” and “involuntary” part of poverty sometimes gets blurred.

We're living in some seriously interesting times, to be sure. How we respond depends in large part on our personal proclivities and situation. Everything we do is a gamble. But I don't think it'll hurt anyone, no matter their situation, to entertain the notion that they may be a lot poorer than they'd like in the not-so-distant future. It's already happening for many, many Americans.

[glaucus]

Pops wrote:

Of course 'ride the ride 'till it stops' is the default argument, because after all, how else is a person to grab the brass ring?

I'm not talking about vanity or winning pissing contests with your peers or keeping up with the Joneses. I'm talking about the practical value of keeping a job for as long as possible as the primary economy contracts over time. Keeping a well-paying job and pairing it with a commitment to living well below one's means is a good strategy for establishing an emergency fund, paying down debt and setting a bit of money aside for the future.

All I was trying to get at is that all these ideas about quitting one's job in favor of much lower-paying farmhand jobs with no health benefits just isn't a good strategy - particularly in the short term. The truth is that the most workable transition will likely be doing the same things as the unaware peak-oil folks, except spending a whole lot less, and knowing this way of life won't last forever.

We in the peak-oil community flatter ourselves that we have special information on what's coming, and to some extent we do. But the timing and shape of things to come is likely to be unpredictable all the same.

There's just not a whole lot of practical sense in living in a future that isn't here yet. Heck, I think I heard it from you first Pops that losing your job is an instant ticket to collapse. Why not try to put that off as long as possible while preparing as best you can in the meantime, doing stuff that will be valuable regardless of the future? Things like getting in shape, establishing/maintaining good social networks with friends, family, and neighbors, paying down debt, learning practical skills as time allows, are good no matter what. Maybe even getting in good with local elected officials might be advantageous, too.

[Pops]

All I was trying to get at is that all these ideas about quitting one's job in favor of much lower-paying farmhand jobs with no health benefits just isn't a good strategy - particularly in the short term.

That is more or less a strawman, glacus. I didn't even remotely suggest people move to the country, like Loki I never do. In fact I try to discourage people from moving to the country unless they have been working toward it (or away from it - ) for a long time. I grew up in the country and never really liked living in town and though I got hooked on the money I was always trying to get back. For me an old house to work on, a few acres and a shop to try an make a few dollars with is a perfect life now, PO or no. But that's me.

Did I post a link to the 5 Rules thread?
My 5 are: Don't buy, dont borrow, don't specialize, don't go hungry & don't be dependent.

Not a thing about straw in the teeth, muck on the heel or bad dogs on a chain. A person so inclined and adept could easily follow my rules in a 5th floor walk-up in Manhattan. I guess, I wouldn't know how but lots do I suppose.

A person must feel like it is worth foregoing all the chachkas - either to save the world, or failing that, to learn to live in the next. If you don't think it's worth it because you have no concerns about the world vis a vie the scenarios outlined in the papers I linked in the OP or see any downside to the current two-income, 40-60 hour week, work to retire to die set-up, then obviously me arguing the point isn't going to change your mind. And surprising though it may seem I'm not trying to, I gave up on changing minds years and 5 or 6 thousand posts ago.

Changing minds isn't my aim.. opening them maybe...

[glaucus]

Loki wrote:

I don't advocate that others follow my example unless they're already inclined to do so. But if so inclined, by all means take the jump. I haven't regretted it for a second.

I commend you for doing so, Loki. I really wish I had the freedom to take the jump myself but the fact is that I'm locked into the system for the foreseeable future. Years ago I made a commitment to the Federal gov't that I would pay back thousands of dollars in student loans in exchange for an education. Though I see the futility of the system I'm ensconced within, I intend to see that agreement through.

The perverse dilemma as I see it is that, though the system is failing, everything is still denominated in dollars and prices are dictated by what the market will bear. The frustrating thing is, if you don't sell your time for the most money possible, you are unable to compete with those that do.

Loki wrote:

Involuntary poverty is a different beast than voluntary poverty, far more wrenching.

I suppose this is correct. The psychological ability to at least tell yourself that you're in control of the situation is powerful to be sure. I believe those who may best bear the indignities of the collapse will be those who can simultaneously psychologically know that this way of life will come to an end eventually while living within it during the here and now as best they can. That's a tough balance to maintain, and for many (myself included) it will likely result in frequent bouts of cognitive dissonance.

Pops wrote:

That is more or less a strawman, glacus. I didn't even remotely suggest people move to the country, like Loki I never do.

I admit my example of the person giving up gainful employment and moving to the country as a farmhand is fanciful. But I used it because that's what I hear from some folks as to how to best deal with ongoing collapse. I'm not suggesting that you or Loki or many others in the peak-oil aware community propound this strategy. I just wanted to bring up some practical challenges to doing so.

Pops wrote:

A person must feel like it is worth foregoing all the chachkas - either to save the world, or failing that, to learn to live in the next. If you don't think it's worth it because you have no concerns about the world vis a vie the scenarios outlined in the papers I linked in the OP or see any downside to the current two-income, 40-60 hour week, work to retire to die set-up, then obviously me arguing the point isn't going to change your mind.

Let me remind you again that I was playing devil's advocate before. Of course I believe forsaking the 'stuff' mentality is the smart play. Perhaps my aim was off when I posted. I guess an unexamined assumption on my part was to assume that to live under the auspice of voluntary simplicity/poverty one must forsake his/her role in the musical chair game (aka his/her job in the primary economy). Do you believe this to be the case?

I guess what I am suggesting is maximizing flexibility for as long as possible - whatever that looks like. The more options someone can maintain is probably going to be most successful. That way, when a specific aspect of the collapse descends on your doorstep - be it hyperinflation, food shortages, energy outages, high gas prices, job loss, pandemic, nuclear attack, zombie infestation, etc. you have several outs by which you can sidestep it. By committing early to THE WAY (whatever you believe it to be), a person limits their outs and their flexibility to deal with the specific dimension of collapse that could visit them. Obviously I need to develop this idea more, but that's the central heart of it.

[Pops]

Let me remind you again that I was playing devil's advocate before.

Sorry, I really should use the third person when making my grand pronouncements, bad habit.

Of course I believe forsaking the 'stuff' mentality is the smart play. Perhaps my aim was off when I posted. I guess an unexamined assumption on my part was to assume that to live under the auspice of voluntary simplicity/poverty one must forsake his/her role in the musical chair game (aka his/her job in the primary economy). Do you believe this to be the case?

I admire folks who really can live below their means, who can focus on living a small, independent life, I never could. For me personally it is hard to not focus on the game when I'm in it. But then I have a hard time enjoying contentment, I'm probably ADD, lol, because I just can't leave well enough alone.

When I was young I worked in ag and construction. Both are reliable in their unreliability and so reinforced my childhood influences to be frugal and stock up when times are good. But once I started a salaried job at about 24 and began receiving a regular paycheck I also began going into debt, living paycheck to check, etc – why not? the check would always be there on Friday. I stayed on the wheel for about 20 years until 9/11, the impending credit & RE bubble and PO kinda woke me up. I cashed out my imaginary equity and paid cash for some land in an area that had not inflated ridiculously (it could have just as easily been an apartment over a retail shop in a small "sustainable" city) and started living on about a quarter of my previous income.

I won't put my experiences in the rat race on everyone but by the same token I'm not egotistical enough to think that I'm completely unique. I mean I know people who are pretty frugal and do live below their means but that doesn't mean they are in any way immune to the kind of rapid step down we saw in 08 and are still experiencing. I know virtually no one besides myself who could lose their primary source of income and be OK. I do print graphics from home, raise beef, do "handyman" type odd jobs for neighbors and I'm trying to build into a small u-pick garden. Obviously I do each part time and each is only a part time income but each could be (and at times has been) ramped up fairly easily to make up for a shortfall in another. The point is I'm not dependent on any one for my entire livelihood, that of course is the chink in the staying flexible argument, anyone entirely dependent on one full time income is definitely not flexible simply because they don't have the time to devote to an alternative.

So, just as an example of staying flexible lets say instead of bugging out back in '04, I'd have kept my old income, which was above average, and my old location, which as it turns out was inflated to beyond reason and maybe even refi'ed my loan from a 10 year payoff at a high payment to say a 20 year payoff at a lower payment. Today I'd have no equity, actually I'd have lost some or all of the amount I put down back in '97 because prices have fallen that far. I'd more than likely have lost the house as well - no matter what the payment - simply because my income (B2B graphics/marketing/blah) would have shriveled to zip with the local economy and as well I'd more than likely have blown my savings trying to keep what I had.

Granted, I lived near ground zero of the credit/mortgage bubble and collapse (Modesto CA) and I was self employed but if a person takes any of the nasty economic scenarios even somewhat seriously, the greater bust or even the creeping collapse from steadily rising oil and cetera, the step down in '08 could be just the top riser in a whole flight of steps down. The people impacted will of course begin with the most vulnerable and progress up the ladder of vulnerability.


Geeze, from the length of that post you'd think I get paid for tapping out blah-blah on po.com!

[vision-master]

The quick and the dead?

Maybe if you started looking a spiritual connection instead, Simplicity would be shown old pops buddy........

[Loki]

I do print graphics from home, raise beef, do "handyman" type odd jobs for neighbors and I'm trying to build into a small u-pick garden. Obviously I do each part time and each is only a part time income but each could be (and at times has been) ramped up fairly easily to make up for a shortfall in another.

That's a great income diversification strategy. Income diversification is a goal of mine, but unfortunately I'm still totally dependent on a single paycheck. I try to make up for it by growing/canning/freezing a lot of my own food and various other self-sufficiency projects, not to mention just plain doing without. But if I lost that biweekly paycheck I'd be SOL in a few months.

I've entertained a few notions about side enterprises. I did a couple fruit tree pruning jobs this winter, not much to speak of. Also inoculated a few dozen shiitake logs, the fruits of which I can sell through my employer's restaurant accounts; the logs won't bring in much cash when (if) they start fruiting, but it's a start, and it's easily expandable if there's a demand.

My main problem is that I just lack that good ol' fashioned entrepreneurial spirit. I know a few people who have it, and I greatly admire it, but I personally just hate hustling. I like the paycheck.

If I lost my current paycheck I'm pretty sure I could find another job on an organic veg farm here in the valley, skilled organic farmworkers aren't in oversupply. But I might not get another paycheck until the beginning of next season, which would wipe me out financially unless I found a temporary cash flow to see me through. That's the gray area between voluntary and involuntary poverty I was talking about earlier.

My Plan C is to live for free in my RV on someone's land and hand farm an acre or two, subsistence plus a small cash income. I think I could pull it off now if I had to, but it would necessitate more deep poverty and hustling than I'd like. I've come across a few local ads placed by people with rural properties looking for someone to land sit, or to pitch in on an existing homestead. Not my first choice given the cash flow limitations of a situation like that, but I've been working on a production plan and have been considering investing in some tools and equipment (walk-behind rototiller, drip line system, etc.), just in case.

If it came down to going back to the city or hustling a living as a market gardener, I think the latter may win out, despite the step down in socio-economic “status.” I'd probably laugh if 6 years ago someone told me I'd be dirt-farming trailer trash, but it's actually a rather satisfying life. Kind of Bohemian, only with hard physical labor, and not insignificant amounts of mud, shit, piss, and blood.

[vision-master]

What do you think at the end of each day?

Does your spirit grow, or die a little more?

[SeaGypsy]

Loki, I was very nearly there a few years back. Had the RV and heaps of free places to camp with excellent ag land.

The biggest problem was the amount of absolute garbage involved in 'Organic Certification'. People were (are) able to register Dieldrin and DDT soaked land as organic after 2 years of application of organic systems, whilst I could not register pasture which had never had any chemicals on it, regardless of soil test results showing the totally contradictory nature of this club's rules. Without being registered as organic, there was no way to compete with the supermarket chains as a small scale farmer. Organic registration doubles the realised return. I got the total sheets with the clowns running the show and went on to other things.

Could always go back to it. Loved the lifestyle, lack of stress, simplicity and rootsy people in the country. Did not much like being stuck in one place for what seemed like it would be forever, due to the financial implications.