dolanbaker wrote:DesuMaiden wrote:MonteQuest wrote:dolanbaker wrote: The world could easily operate in a similar fashion as today with half the oil that it does now, EU/Japanese style fuel efficient cars, car pooling more efficient logistics, cut out unnecessary travel. A 50% cut in consumption is not that difficult to achieve.
Nonsense, impossible to implement without a depression without end. The entire industrial/financial complex would unravel. Capitalism and fiat currencies have no plan B. There is only growth. Without growth, the debt cannot be serviced. Without new loans the money supply deflates.
Conservation is a self-imposed recession requiring reduced economic activity, massive job losses, loan defaults, etc, much like we witnessed in the 1930's.
That 50% cut in consumption is a lot of somebody's job.
According to Richard Heinberg in the movie Oil Smoke and Mirrors, capitalism will cease to exist after peak oil is reached because once oil production starts to decline, economic growth becomes impossible. And capitalism cannot function without growth. Without economic growth, capitalism will collapse. What will replace capitalism I don't know. But capitalism will cease to exist as a result of peak oil.
In it's current (or pre2008) form it can't survive, but it will evolve to exploit the changes to survive.
Don't write it off, the stakes are too high for the benefactors to let it go quietly.
I think that we're likely to find that the debt based monitory system will be replaced by a credit based system that can work in a zero growth scenario.
Instead of money being leant into existence, money being created when a government borrows from a bank to pay for services and repays with interest. The money instead is created by the government and spent into existence and taxed out of the system to preserve the value of the currency, such a system does not need growth to function.
But ultimately it will be spent on goods and services, and the more money there is the more of the latter needs to be created. An increase in goods and services requires more energy and material resources.