Survive- The Economic Collapse
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kenneth boulding
economist
/1910-1983/
<
dmitri orlov
engineer & writer
/2010/
<
jacques attali
economist
/2010/
<
richard heinberg
writer
/2003/
The post-collapse world will be completely different from the one we know, so different that it is, perhaps, pointless to try to describe it. Economic collapse and its consequences can best be studied in the experience of countries that have undergone great crises in the recent past: the Soviet Union, Argentina, Zimbabwe, and Weimar Germany are a few examples. Certain tendencies can be identified. It is also interesting to read science-fiction authors or look at movies that depict a post-apocalyptic world. We may mention Neville Shute’s On the Beach, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, René Barjavel’s Ashes, Ashes, David Brin’s The Postman, James Howard Kunstler’s World Made by Hand, Albert and Allen Hughes’s The Book of Eli, John Hillcoat’s The Road, George Miller’s Mad Max, Larry and Andy Wachowski’s The Matrix, Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men, Arnaud Lerrieu’s Happy End, among many others, as well as the television series Jericho, Survivors, and even The Walking Dead, along with sensationalist fare like Doomsday Preppers, and The Colony.
The Role of the State
With the economic collapse, governments will be unable to function. They will have no more (or very little) revenue and will be totally discredited. With the energy crisis, the governments of large countries will no longer be able to control their territories. It is possible that the state, or organizations claiming to be the state, will continue to exercise a form of government over a reduced territory while waiting for the end of the crisis. De facto autonomous regions, those not plunged into chaos, will preserve a relative degree of authority thanks to their organization and the maintenance of order.
Businesses and Trade
Long logistical chains having broken down, all businesses will become local once again and will try to obtain the parts and materials they need on the spot. In those businesses that do survive, because they produce useful things, salaries will be paid sporadically or in kind. Such salaries will likely not be enough to live on, and people will have to cope with this, as is already the case in Greece since the downturn of 2011. Wealth will consist in access to assets and physical resources like food and drinking water, and to intangibles such as relations and networks. Even if you have physical gold and silver, which will likely be recognized as money, real wealth will consist above all in know-how: understanding how to cultivate a garden, how to locate a spring for digging a well, how to find batteries and solar panels, etc. In contrast to the industrial farms, which will have to reduce their acreage due to lack of fertilizer and gasoline for their machines, the small farms that survive will do very well thanks to their knowledge and manageable size.
Many craftsmen (e.g., blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, instrument makers, etc.) make tools that today are considered obsolete, but which will become useful again; they possess know-how that will allow them to continue producing, if they find themselves in a secure environment.
Those who have land can permit certain families to settle on it and be nourished in exchange for their work. It will be in the interest of these land owners to know how to defend their domain against looters—they may even employ militias. It will be a return to a sort of feudal system.
The day when the ATMs stop working, banks close, and the stock exchange shuts down, people will still have needs. So there will, of course, be exchange, trade, and barter. We will see people trying to sell everything they have that is not vitally important; toys, furniture, and clothing will be considered worthless assets in this context, whereas other assets will suddenly be worth a great deal: rifles, ammunition, wood for heating, food, medications and medical supplies, soap, etc. We will see people like you and me sifting through trashcans. Moreover, in a situation of hyperinflation, no one will want paper money. Why exchange something useful, say, bread or a scarf, for a pound of dollars or euros that are no longer worth anything?
The Law
In the context of an economic collapse, it is quite possible that the judicial and police systems will soon be totally absent. After a shorter or longer period of chaos, a new order will gradually be put in place. Laws, prohibitions, and their enforcement will become local again. The legal code will be easy and quick to read. On the other hand, in the absence of a penitentiary system, punishments will be swift and severe. No one will be concerned any more with the psychological reason for criminal acts, but only the acts themselves and their consequences for the community. Finally, there is a great risk that the egalitarian society of the 20th century will disappear and that a redefinition of the ideas of citizenship, rights, and duties will leave a large part of the population outside the decision-making process.
Trades and Occupations
The trades and occupations that continue to exist will be much less numerous, less varied and specialized than those we see today. They will be determined by competence and concrete, immediately useful knowledge (most credentials and the “killer résumé” will cease to have much value). First of all, there will be the trades involving primary production:
fishing, agriculture, gardening, hunting, and gathering will be done by those who possess the know-how and the traditional tools, and who have no need of machines that require gasoline or oil;
the production of alcohol and drugs will be very lucrative, for persons used to those substances will be even more desperate than they are today, and a large part of the population will need to forget the trauma they have suffered;
stock breeders, trainers, shearers, and slaughterers of animals, as well as those in the food preparation trades—butchers, bakers, pastry makers—will flourish;
trades related to cereal production, such as milling, will once again be important.
Then, the trades related to caring for man and beast:
doctors or medical aides capable of treating the commonest illnesses, capable of carrying out surgical operations or treating wounds with massage or manipulation (sophisticated and efficient operating theaters will no longer be available, and neither will complicated medications);
midwives and obstetricians;
herbalists, botanists, old-fashioned pharmacists and other trades involving knowledge of medicinal plants, their effects, and how to apply them;
veterinarians who know how to care for animals and assist with their birth.
Among the most important trades will be those related to making and fixing tools, clothing, and machines:
artisans of all kinds, rope makers, saddlers, weavers, dyers, carpenters, ironworkers, glass blowers, potters, etc.;
metal workers, substitute part makers, machine makers, and repairmen;
solar-panel repairmen, wind-turbine repairmen, battery makers, and others concerned with sources of electricity;
masons and stonecutters, woodcutters and woodworkers, house builders, and repairmen.
Other trades will be those involving access to resources:
trades requiring knowledge of safe places (hiding places, grottos, etc.);
trades requiring knowledge of how to get access to water (well drillers, etc.);
trades involving managing access to natural resources that can be tapped through manual labor (getting old salt, coal, copper, and asphalt mines running);
trades involving knowing how to recuperate things
of value and knowing where to find them (digging through abandoned villas and cities that have become open-air mines for materials, parts, etc.; this will require competence in cabinetmaking, scrap-iron working, masonry, as well as foremen to manage all these manual laborers and unskilled “hands” who help with the heavy lifting);
trades involving the knowledge of how to use hand tools.
Another important category will be educational trades, probably involving apprenticeship rather than intellectual training.
Itinerant trading involving boats, barges, or carts will probably be a dangerous profession, but very lucrative. Less risky will be markets that will be installed locally or regionally, where communities can exchange goods, parts, agricultural products, seeds, etc. All these trades, rare today, will surely be the salvation of those who can master them—at least insofar as they are not threatened by looters and thieves or put under the control of organized-crime syndicates. For this reason, another important category will be security trades: people able to ensure the safety of goods, tools, territories, and persons. Policemen, soldiers, prison guards, etc. will need a source of revenue and will use their skills by exercising violence, either by defending or attacking. (Some of them know how to create a need for their own profession: if you do not employ them to protect you, they will likely be the ones attacking you).
Undoubtedly, many other trades will also exist. But they will all be much more “primal,” much closer to the real sources of wealth, than today. It is imaginable that service professions will disappear—or be limited to prostitution, for example, which for many women may become the only means of survival, as was the case in the large cities of Europe throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. There will be no more office work, no more white-collar employees as productive units in long logistical chains of production. As for those unable to be useful in any special way, their only recourse will be physical labor; it will be very difficult and monotonous for former civil servants, marketing and communication strategists, accountants, bankers, lawyers, notaries, politicians, psychologists, academics, journalists, social workers, etc.
The Family
Although many families today have fallen apart, atomized, or involve only one parent, many will get back together. Several families may group themselves into common manors or clans in order to share resources, costs, and the tasks related to heating, housework, security, and the education of children, as well as the search for and production of food.
Travel and Transportation
With the high price and scarcity of oil—perhaps even its effective disappearance in many regions—our travel habits and our means of transportation will change completely.
Air travel will be the first to disappear, with the discount airlines leading the way. All civilian and military aviation will follow. Using a motor-powered vehicle will become a luxury reserved for the wealthiest people, who can still afford gasoline. The culture of the middle-class SUV or mini-van will vanish altogether. In the absence of continual maintenance, road conditions will no longer be assured. This regression has already started in the United States, where, according to the Department of Transportation, 18 percent of the highways are in poor condition and 29 percent of bridges have structural weaknesses and are in a dangerous condition. Once roads and bridges have been abandoned, our transportation system is finished. Without automobiles, ground transportation will be carried out essentially on horseback, with donkeys or dromedaries, or by wagon. The railroads will work with steam or electrical trains, which can keep going for a while yet, as long as tracks can be secured against theft and attacks. Maritime transportation, especially along rivers, although reduced, can continue to exist. The most efficient means of personal transportation will be the bicycle. A large part of the population has bicycles either working or in a reparable state. With carts in tow, the bike will be the 21st-century means of transportation. Great care will be taken of them.
The Cities
Over the recent course of history, the urban way of life is the factor that has most changed people’s living habits. And what changes! Detroit, the “Motor City,” was the seventh richest city in the world in the 1950s. Today, the population of its downtown area is out of work, mostly illiterate, and living amid the ruins. Without automobile transportation, towns will rapidly change their appearance and way of operating. First of all, we will see the end of suburbs and industrial zones, which will quickly give way to pastures for cattle, sheep, and goats. The fate of the suburbs will be tragic: they will be filled with the unemployed; they will be looted and then systematically dismantled under the control of gangs or organized crime. Gradually, nature will take over again, as it has done in the town of Prypyat, near Chernobyl.
Downtown areas will contract and become more densely populated. Survivors will regroup in order to better defend themselves and use the remaining resources more efficiently. Many towns, artificially constructed in the middle of nowhere (Milton-Keynes, in the UK, among thousands of examples, comes to mind), will empty out rapidly; so will vast regions opened up only through automobile traffic. The scarcity of electricity, broken elevators, and inadequate water pressure will make the upper stories of apartment blocks uninhabitable. Skyscrapers will be gradually abandoned, remaining as witnesses to the days of abundant fossil energy. The cities that will best be able to survive are those with obviously strategic locations: near ports or bridges, on the major travel routes, easy to defend, etc. Parks and their lawns will be transformed into gardens, but will not produce enough to nourish everyone; hierarchies will be established, often by violence, to manage access to them. Generally speaking, the population of cities will live amid filth, and their numbers will diminish rapidly. Cities with hydroelectric plants, or close to remaining fossil resources, such as Dallas, Texas, or Ploieşti, Romania, will enjoy extraordinary advantages because they will be able to continue operating their water purification stations, sewers, water systems, electricity, etc. These cities will attract everyone else’s envy and greed.
Religion
The crisis will mark the great return of religion, as well as religious violence. Religions organized on a global scale will have problems maintaining cohesion and internal structures; sects will multiply. Certain religions will try to give simplistic explanations of the crisis and the sufferings of the world. Groups that imagine themselves to be the strong arm of a vengeful God will be full of passionate intensity. On the other hand, once the worst of the crisis has passed, the fact of living in smaller communities closer to nature will bring about a return of mysticism and natural spirituality, perhaps even Paganism. A re-enchantment of the world will occur, replete with symbolic stories and tales of the marvelous, as nature will again become a site of meaning, and not just a resource for exploitation.
Racial and Ethnic Tensions
Unfortunately, when times are tough, humans have a tendency to look for someone to blame, rightly or wrongly. Such scapegoats are often found among religious, ethnic, racial, social, or behavioral minorities. Once the social net disappears, and in a situation of chaos and anarchy (whether spontaneous or encouraged by authorities wishing to maintain power), victims are quickly chosen:
Immigrants, who risk having blame focused on them through the amalgams: immigrants = job loss; immigrants = drug traffic + crime; immigrants = lower salaries. In other words: immigrants = the cause of the crisis;
For refugees: refugees = costs; refugees = new illnesses; refugees = eat our bread, etc.;
A religion or religious group, stigmatized because of its practices, real or imagined;
A racial or ethnic minority, often immigrants or refugees with different customs;
Well-organized minorities enjoying a lot of material success thanks to networking and powerful lobbies, increasingly conspicuous. Once you draw the equivalences Wall Street Bankers = crooks and Wall Street Bankers = majority Eskimo, it’s easy to draw the invalid conclusion Eskimo = crooks. (And bankers can easily be replaced by lawyers, media, politician
s, big business, or any other social or professional category at risk of being designated the source of the problems);
The Baby-Boom generation. The young especially will curse their grandparents and show very little consideration for them once they are left penniless due to the collapse of the economy and welfare state.
Alas, there is nothing new under the sun. The real danger is not so much spontaneous violence, which is rare and marginal, but rather demagogues taking advantage of it all. Politicians are always ready to seize any opportunity for strengthening their power. The possibility of mass persecutions, ethnic cleansing, even genocide, cannot be discounted. The risk will be greatest in fragile, ethnically diverse societies with racist undercurrents.
Sanitary Effects
Many of the medical and sanitary advances of the 19th and 20th centuries may be lost due to lack of crucial medications—factories no longer working and supplies no longer being available. With stress and privations, people’s immune systems are going to be weakened. Opportunistic illnesses, such as viruses, will spread quickly and will probably kill more than civil unrest and wars. Especially in cities and refugee camps, we can expect sanitary crises and epidemics that will cause millions of deaths.
Psychological Effects
Beyond the physical effects of an economic collapse, the psychological effects will be enormous and traumatic. Millions of people, who used to be rich, will not understand how and why their wealth has evaporated. In modern times, fortunes are, at bottom, nothing but abstract representations, series of 0s and 1s in a computer; when bank computers fail, financial fortunes will cease to exist. These people, tucked away in their lovely but useless villas, prisoners in their luxury apartments, without food or water, are going to be caught destitute. The shock will be especially strong when they recognize that without money, their influence on others is no longer what it was. Worse, the rich, or those perceived as such, will be blamed for the situation and will be targets of popular vengeance; they will suffer humiliation and violence.