[americandream]

Osborne is bound to say that. The Germans are better off sticking to making cars.

[Newfie]

We are focused on growth, which derives from the Puritian work ethic.

This "ethic" holds that to do good you need to work hard and be efficient. To not do so is unholy.

That may have been all well and good when we were striving to fight off the Indians and locusts, but in today's Western world it's not going so well.

And herein lies one of the nasty and confusing bits about contraction. Working hard today is not a good thing, but it will be required again in the future.

When we work hard today, we are driving hundreds of ff slaves. We appear to be highly efficient simply because we have so much power at our command. In the process we are doing tremendous damage.

So, for the near term, Western culture would do well to propagate idleness. To learn how to burn less ( contract our economy and foot print) we need to learn to be contrpemplative and physically idle. That's not an easy thing because we are all hardwired to be "helpful" to the tribe.

It is ironic that some of the people doing the least damage to our environment would be the jobless, homeless, idle folks, prisoners even. So the next time you see some slacker, just remember that he is a valuable role model for contraction.

Yet, in the future, after contraction, once we loose our energy slaves, then we will all need to go back to manual labor of tilling the soil, sailing the ship, etc. life will be hard once again, maybe not as hard as it once was, if we can retain some of our learnings.

Then, once again, the Puritian work ethic will be useful.

Just not now.

[americandream]

Yet, in the future, after contraction, once we loose our energy slaves, then we will all need to go back to manual labor of tilling the soil, sailing the ship, etc. life will be hard once again, maybe not as hard as it once was, if we can retain some of our learnings.

Then, once again, the Puritian work ethic will be useful.

Just not now.

Regression WILL trigger hereditary privilege and these years will indeed seem enlightened in that primeval hellhole: I guess one consolation will be that by that stage, we will not have conscientised enough to save the planet and the return of feudalism will be brief.

[Newfie]

It looks like China is dumping a lot of cheap steel, which is helping put the ship breakers out of business.

http://gcaptain.com/is-this-the-end-for ... aktqvlVhBc

[onlooker]

http://www.ecoshock.net/downloads/ES_Snyder.mp3
Good interview of this former attorney of how he sees the economy and its prospects.