[KaiserJeep]

-snip-
My opinion is that the pros of living within the support-structure of BAU far outweigh the cons, with the most obvious example being jobs and access to advanced medical care. This is why current trends favor urbanization and why the boonies are increasingly a no-man's land of dysfunctional rejects (meth addicts, inbred yokels, etc...).

This is why, by and large, those pushing the rural doomstead approach are either already in retirement or don't have very promising job-earning potential to forgo or they have such extreme ideological positions that they'd make the sacrifice anyway, doom or no doom.

I just don't see it that way. The majority of hard drug users exist in urban areas, with few exceptions. The preponderance of violent crimes get committed in urban areas. The most grinding poverty exists in inner cities. The most extreme examples of government corruption, the most dysfunctional schools, the least access to medical care for the indigent and poor, and the most child abuse happen in our (already) decaying cities. The vast majority of homeless people already exist there.

The infrastructure of many cities is already near breaking, add a little doom and chaos and we will see cannibalism and violence step up notch by notch in those places. They are filled with those who are the least prepared to care for themselves absent the usual trappings of civilization. Nor will those in the cities have access to food, which can still be grown at reduced rates in the boonies without petroleum fuels, but can't be distributed very far.

We have explored this topic at length in the past. We decided that by using classic agrarian methods (or even trendier permaculture), about 20-25% of the urban populations need to be relocated to the boonies and put to work to feed the other 75% of that population.

It's a matter of opinion whether we are talking about rebounding feudalism or prison farms. The majority of productive farmland today is in corporate farms, probably doomed to return to desert and pasture without cheap fuels. That land portion which is most suited to less technical cultivation still exists in family farms.

There is little doubt that the boonies can feed themselves. The only question is how many clueless urbanites can be tolerated and absorbed. I would favor a system of mandatory service myself. After 20 years of childhood where one's parents feed you, you serve the next 20 growing food, and earn your retirement. Then you must do something we consider productive for your remaining life.

If this doesn't appeal to you, you could always choose to starve.

[ennui2]

We have explored this topic at length in the past.

Yep. It's one of those topics that can never reach any sort of conclusion.

From my vantage point, however, you have to look at overall quality of life as it is TODAY not in some population bottleneck which is still theoretical.

The average person doesn't care about the underlying agricultural productivity of their area. What they care about is what the job market, the dating pool, the nightlife, the schools are like. In all of these areas, rural america is lacking in a big way.

Anti-social misanthrope doomers don't about any of these things. They will home-school and foolishly rely on herbalism and not want to talk to their neighbors or visit museums or club. But this is not how most people set their priorities.

It's the whole Maslow's Heirarchy of needs thing.

Right now, since we all have more than full bellies we're looking for more than simple survival, and that's why people flock to population centers.

As people do this, it creates a serious darwinian draw-down in the boonies. Those who are left behind are the types of people you probably wouldn't want to hang around with in the first place, and that just fuels more and more people getting out of dodge.

[KaiserJeep]

I'm not talking about a "population bottleneck". Since we exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet around 2 centuries back, the world has been dying back to a sustainable level. Mankind has worked around this via cheap food, entirely dependant upon cheap petroleum fuels and petrochemical fertilizers/pesticides/herbicides.

The stuff we are running out of, that is. You remember the whole theme of PO.com? I don't believe in AGW, but I darn sure believe that running out of cheap FF's is fatal for most humans. So now there are 7+ billion humans in a world that will sustain 1 billion via sustainable agricultural methods.

Let me know how growing vegetables in your urban concrete jungle works out for you.

[Ibon]

During WWII there was a rationing of gas. My dad lived on a farm in Pennsylvania. He recalls that his family received a larger ration of fuel because they were farmers. He was very popular in high school with his town friends because he was the only one with gas.

If future constraints do lead to rationing and prioritizing food production people in rural locations with productive farm land may find themselves much better off than urban dwellers.

My dad's farm back in the 30's and 40's was hard labor. Dairy cows, raised chickens, cash crop tobacco, grew corn, big kitchen garden, geese. These small farms in todays economy are not viable. If constraints bring high value back to basics my dad's farm could end up being economically quite viable again. Compared to their urban brethren they may even end up comparatively wealthy.

[shortonoil]

"So now there are 7+ billion humans in a world that will sustain 1 billion via sustainable agricultural methods."

If populous is proportional to the overall economic state (and it should be), we could expect at least a 35% decline in the population over the next two decades.

[Ibon]

To me a day without a campfire, beautiful scenery, and a cup of coffee to start the day, is a failed day.

We get enough visitors to confirm that there are still enough folks that want to seek out the natural elixir of a beautiful view, a starry night, an old growth forest. Unfortunately it maybe also true that we are breeding a generation of urban and cyber individuals who do not even have enough organic common sense to be able to esteem what you are mentioning here.

Maybe this is fortunate though. There is a part of me that welcomes the extreme dysfunction of your average cyber citizen where nature and the organic world is increasingly an abstraction, where self reliance is being surrendered over to a deep cyber dependency that gains a control on more and more aspects of ones life; your livelihood, entertainment, social interactions, even increasingly ones sexual pleasures. I am watching and observing the organic hijacking of the mind by the cyber world, the ubiquitous mobile devices that constantly distract one away from the organic world and succeed in keeping you tethered to cyber contacts. The content of which is mostly mediocre. I find this fortunate because this keeps most humans satisfied with so little without even knowing it. That is very advantageous for those of us that can stand outside witnessing the disintegration.

[KaiserJeep]

As I have said in the past, the human species is becoming cybernetic. In this we are unlike humans in all prior history, and our cultures and mores and beliefs are evolving in a online and largely virtual reality. Those mobile networked devices don't have to be implanted in your skull to make you effectively a cyborg, I see people with bluetooth earpieces having conversations with nobody, Pokemon Go players giggling at virtual characters, and yesterday at the local bakery (my coffee and sandwich hangout) somebody had a tiny printer on the table, printing pages from his phone while attending a virtual meeting. When implants do come along people will sigh with relief, not having to carry stuff around.

I don't even want to carry a cell phone. I do carry around a medium tablet, an E-reader with about 250 books in it. It has WiFi but I only turn it on to download the next book in a series I am reading. I partition my life that way, and sit in front of a real computer with a real keyboard and monitor when I want to network.

The urbanites are the most committed to the virtual world of the web, perhaps because there is so few alternatives in their lives. I mean, what is the point to walking through a park if you are going to talk on the phone, play an online game, or actually work while you are there?

For all of his five years here and over 3600 posts, I don't think E2 actually believes in Peak Oil. Perhaps he did once, but he's not gonna change anything in his life, ever. It will come as a rude shock when he can't buy food at a supermarket at any price.

[Tanada]

During WWII there was a rationing of gas. My dad lived on a farm in Pennsylvania. He recalls that his family received a larger ration of fuel because they were farmers. He was very popular in high school with his town friends because he was the only one with gas.

If future constraints do lead to rationing and prioritizing food production people in rural locations with productive farm land may find themselves much better off than urban dwellers.

My dad's farm back in the 30's and 40's was hard labor. Dairy cows, raised chickens, cash crop tobacco, grew corn, big kitchen garden, geese. These small farms in todays economy are not viable. If constraints bring high value back to basics my dad's farm could end up being economically quite viable again. Compared to their urban brethren they may even end up comparatively wealthy.

The other method was a lot safer in the legal sense, there was no rationing of Kerosene. Add a little gasoline and some pure distilled alcohol and Viole' ICE gasoline substitute. Model A fords were also very popular because with a simple carburetor adjustment they burn strain ethanol with no issues. Henry Ford designed them that way so farmers could grow their own fuel.

[copious.abundance]

LOL, funny thread. I think HARM gets it, but doesn't really get it. It's not that the .1%, or TPTB, or the Illuminati, or the Fed, or whatever other entity you prefer to give credit/blame for, who is "able" to maintain some kind of status quo. It's that what he/she regards as the "status quo" is, in and of itself, self-sustaining. It needs no secret, powerful agents pulling some purse strings to keep it going; rather, it keeps going because it is a self-reinforcing and self-correcting system that will naturally pick up where it left off even after some large interruption. Think of a forest after a forest fire -- the forest will grow back. There is no controlling entity pulling some purse strings to make it grow back after the fire, it simply does that because that's what forests do. Life is a force unto itself. And so is an economy.

95% of the people on this forum seem to think that civilization, or industrial civilization, or modern capitalism, is/are an entity controlled by some sort of super-powerful elite, or something to that effect. Well I'm sorry but that's why this 95% are going to be constantly frustrated: The reason why things don't collapse as they envisioned is because they simply do not understand the nature of civilization and economics. If you believed that all of modern civilization was some sort of artifice being held up by an elite, you may naturally think this elite will lose control of it at some point and the whole thing will come tumbling down (I might note that communism was an actual example of such an artifice that did, in fact, eventually come tumbling down, but that's not what we're talking about here since communism is nearly extinct by now). Unfortunately for this 95%, that's not how the real world works. If this 95% of the forum understood the reality that industrial civilization is more like a forest than like communism, it would make perfect sense that:

2016 house prices would have equaled --much less surpassed-- their 2007 peaks ... oil production would have exceeded the late 2000's peak, or that fracking would drive U.S. oil production to a second peak ... or that we would be experiencing an oil glut with prices ~$35/BBL

Anybody who understood how these things really worked would not be surprised at any of that. Only doomers (and even ex-doomers) who think civilization is a controlled entity are going to be surprised at what has unfolded.

[SumYunGai]

LOL, funny thread. I think HARM gets it, but doesn't really get it. It's not that the .1%, or TPTB, or the Illuminati, or the Fed, or whatever other entity you prefer to give credit/blame for, who is "able" to maintain some kind of status quo.

This thread is a total straw man. Not all "peakers" believe that TPTB really control anything anything. Some "peakers" see civilization as a gigantic complex non-linear system operating within the biophysical universe, driven by, and subject to, the laws of thermodynamics.

So, what would your argument be if the thread were titled: "Peakers Underestimate the Stability of the System"?

It's that what he/she regards as the "status quo" is, in and of itself, self-sustaining.

Not exactly. The system is sustained by a constant flow of energy.

It needs no secret, powerful agents pulling some purse strings to keep it going; rather, it keeps going because it is a self-reinforcing and self-correcting system that will naturally pick up where it left off even after some large interruption.

Sort of. The system is what is called self-organizing. Early economists noted the tendency for the economy to self-correct. They called it the invisible hand. But that doesn't mean that the system is impervious to catastrophic collapse. In fact, it is guaranteed to happen as total immediately available energy falls.

Only doomers (and even ex-doomers) who think civilization is a controlled entity are going to be surprised at what has unfolded.

Only deniers who think that the system is infinitely self correcting are going to be surprised by what happens next.

[ennui2]

I doubt that ominous "next" you're speaking of will happen in only 4 years the way you predict, though.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Some "peakers" see civilization as a gigantic complex non-linear system operating within the biophysical universe, driven by, and subject to, the laws of thermodynamics.

The system is sustained by a constant flow of energy.

Well for the earth, there is an external continuous large energy input from the sun. And the sun is why green energy sources powered (ultimately) by the sun, like solar, wind, waves, etc. are very promising, in the aggregate, as the fossil fuels become depleted over time, and it becomes ever more obvious that burning those fossil fuels has nasty and expensive externalities.

Also, for many millions of years to come, the sun makes the worries about, for example, the second law of thermodynamics not such a big deal on earth. And no, I'm not denying the eventual heat death of the universe.

Of course, if the meme is all doom all the time (or in your case, within four years as the current prediction), well, doomers can't admit that if we're going to blame thermodynamics, now can they?

[Ibon]

As I have said in the past, the human species is becoming cybernetic.

This is one phenomenon where there is no debate whether this is natural or caused by mankind!

[SeaGypsy]

Some "peakers" see civilization as a gigantic complex non-linear system operating within the biophysical universe, driven by, and subject to, the laws of thermodynamics.

The system is sustained by a constant flow of energy.

Well for the earth, there is an external continuous large energy input from the sun. And the sun is why green energy sources powered (ultimately) by the sun, like solar, wind, waves, etc. are very promising, in the aggregate, as the fossil fuels become depleted over time, and it becomes ever more obvious that burning those fossil fuels has nasty and expensive externalities.

Also, for many millions of years to come, the sun makes the worries about, for example, the second law of thermodynamics not such a big deal on earth. And no, I'm not denying the eventual heat death of the universe.

Of course, if the meme is all doom all the time (or in your case, within four years as the current prediction), well, doomers can't admit that if we're going to blame thermodynamics, now can they?

There's plenty more universes where this one came from. (A point in infinity).

[copious.abundance]

This thread is a total straw man. Not all "peakers" believe that TPTB really control anything anything.

Well, that's true, but that's why I said 95% of the people on this forum, as opposed to "all." Maybe I should have been more generous and said 90%.

So, what would your argument be if the thread were titled: "Peakers Underestimate the Stability of the System"?

I was merely responding to the original poster, who did, in fact, regard the system as some sort of artifice being held up by TPTB. If the OP had titled the thread as you suggested and gave an argument in line with that title, I probably wouldn't have responded at all.

Not exactly. The system is sustained by a constant flow of energy.

There is no shortage of energy on the earth, solar system, or universe. See Outcast_Searcher post above.

Sort of. The system is what is called self-organizing. Early economists noted the tendency for the economy to self-correct. They called it the invisible hand.

No qualms with that.

But that doesn't mean that the system is impervious to catastrophic collapse. In fact, it is guaranteed to happen as total immediately available energy falls.

Uh huh, right. Now, how long have I been hearing that?

Only deniers who think that the system is infinitely self correcting are going to be surprised by what happens next.

Uh huh, right. Now, how long have I been hearing that?

I'm continually amazed at the ability of some people to be wrong time and time again, over and over, and learn absolutely nothing from it. They keep predicting some imminent catastrophe which doesn't arrive at the expected time, and when that happens, they just kick their predictive can down the road and keep repeating the same thing over and over and over and ...

[SumYunGai]

Not exactly. The system is sustained by a constant flow of energy.

There is no shortage of energy on the earth, solar system, or universe. See Outcast_Searcher post above.

Silliness. The world economy runs on the total immediately available energy. The energy sources you mention do not supply enough of that. We can't seem to collect enough sunlight to do the job, and the energy from more remote locations in the universe is hardly worth discussing at all, is it? None of it will do any good as total energy continues to decline because of the depletion of fossilized sunlight.

But that doesn't mean that the system is impervious to catastrophic collapse. In fact, it is guaranteed to happen as total immediately available energy falls.

Uh huh, right. Now, how long have I been hearing that?

I have no idea. This is the first time we have spoken about it. Your non answer just dodges the important point.

Only deniers who think that the system is infinitely self correcting are going to be surprised by what happens next.

Uh huh, right. Now, how long have I been hearing that?

You disappoint me, copious. I really thought you would have more to say on the subject.

I'm continually amazed at the ability of some people to be wrong time and time again, over and over, and learn absolutely nothing from it. They keep predicting some imminent catastrophe which doesn't arrive at the expected time, and when that happens, they just kick their predictive can down the road and keep repeating the same thing over and over and over and ...

Yeah, never mind.

[ennui2]

You disappoint me, copious. I really thought you would have more to say on the subject.

Sorry nobody can post as much as you do.

Quantity != quality, BTW.

[regardingpo]

You disappoint me, copious. I really thought you would have more to say on the subject.

Sorry nobody can post as much as you do.

Don't make him make another chart.

[ennui2]

I could easily chart his posts. He posts more than anyone else. I actually have a fulltime job to tend to, unlike him.