My New Mind's Eye

Invasive Blackberries

2011-01-04T23:54:00.000-08:00

Midnight musings. Quick post before bed.

Had my first class tonight for "Concepts in Environmental Health." We (the class) weren't sure whether to be excited or scared when the prof Ken Still told us that he has studied and taught at Harvard, MIT and some other schools like that and therefore there will be substantial reading, "After all, you're not taking any other classes right?"

Super interesting class (so far), which is what makes the workload forgivable for me.

After class, I asked him about why "the city" went and sprayed the wild blackberry bushes across the street from the house and posted a sign, "Invasive Species have been treated here." Why? The berries were such a lovely treat when we first moved in this fall! This of course was before they were sprayed (unless they were sprayed last year). Having seen an abundance of pamphlets in the community center about eradicating invasive species, I thought "the city" must have some lofty goals to revive the more natural ecosystem here. I can see that. But why use chemicals to enhance the ecosystem? Apparently not all pesticides are "bad," according to Dr. Still and Dr. Schreiber.

But before Dr. Still brought up the rationale of protecting the environment/ecosystem, he said that the wild raspberries don' t fit into the "urban landscape." hmmm. They make the urban landscape yummier if you ask me. He's says that they aren't everyone's idea of what fits into the beautifully manicured lawn, plus they have thorns that could puncture a child's eye! Hence, "the city" wants to protect it's future generations by moving fresh berries further away (how is distancing children from seeing how food grows good for their wellbeing?) and acting as one big mother.

I'm being awfully sarcastic here, but Dr. Still was asking me to think big picture and from more perspectives than my own (without kids or a manicured lawn). Good idea. Looking forward to more concepts in environmental health.

And he gave me some tips where I can look for phone numbers to ask what they sprayed- most local USDA office for starters.

Sweet Dreams!

The Derivative Market Vigilantes (and why you should care!)

2010-11-20T08:03:00.000-08:00

Okay, this is a very interesting story that's unfolding behind the scenes, but before I can really speak to it, I need to describe how financial derivatives work, and why you should care.

A derivative is a contract that guarantees that one party (the buyer) will buy some commodity or asset (called the underlying) at an agreed upon price from the other party (the seller) on some agreed upon future date. This kind of financial instrument was originally designed to protect businesses from volatility. For example, a wheat farmer could sell a wheat derivative that would mature around harvest time, and be guaranteed a satisfactory price for his wheat. This would protect him/her against wheat prices that were too low make a reasonable income from the farm. Southwest Airlines was virtually the only airline that sailed unscathed through the reign of triple-digit oil prices in 2008, because it was a buyer of long-term oil contracts through the derivates market at what ended up being prices that were much lower than maket prices. These kinds of trasactions appear to me at least to be beneficial for both parties because they provide the kind of certainty and advanced planning that allows a business to run smoothly. And this would be fine and dandy if this is what derivatives really were all about.
Instead, there is a little shortcut in this contract called an option. This bit of convenience is actually the central problem...
"A futures contract gives the holder the obligation to make or take delivery under the terms of the contract, whereas an option grants the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to establish a position previously held by the seller of the option. In other words, the owner of an options contract may exercise the contract, but both parties of a "futures contract" must fulfill the contract on the settlement date. The seller delivers the underlying asset to the buyer, or, if it is a cash-settled futures contract, then cash is transferred from the futures trader who sustained a loss to the one who made a profit" (Wikipedia)
So the option allows the buyer and seller to simply settle the monetary difference of the contract, rather than for the seller to actually sell the underlying to the buyer. For the actual farmer, this might allow him to simply sell his grain to his local distributor for $10/bushel and then (let's suppose he entered into a $15/bushel futures contract), he could collect the extra $5 from the buyer of the derivates contract. While this may be more convenient than having to deliver the physical asset to the actual buyer, it changes the real nature of the trade. Suddenly, the seller doesn't have to actually be a maker or seller of the underlying asset. The buyer doesn't have to actually take possession of the underlying asset. In this scerario, the derivative is nothing but a bet between these two parties on what the future price of that good will be. In the event that the buyer wants to take physical delivery, the seller could act as a dealer by then going on the open market, buying the underlying asset in the open market, and then selling it to the buyer at the previously-agreed-upon futures price.
Less than 1 percent of futures contracts traded today are settled through physical delivery. The rest simply cash out between the parties for the difference. Since so few of these contracts actually deal in the exhange of the underlying asset, the trade in futures contracts is not limited to size of the physical market. I've read estimates of the size of the derivatives market that range from $600 trillion to over 1 quadrillion dollars. This is somewhere between 10 and 20 times the size of world GDP. The U.S. debt clock currently pegs it at $632 trillion. So while the supposed utility of the derivative contract is to hedge against volatility and provide certainty, due to the size of the market, derivatives actually act as volatility amplifiers. Small changes in the price of underlying assets lead to huge flows of money and can wreak havoc on institutions that have made poor bets. Through the use of derivatives, things like oil, wheat, cotton, gold, etc have become nail bombs. There are even derivatives contracts on non-tangible assets like currency and interest rates. Similarly to the case of physical goods, small changes in interest rates could cause massive transfers of wealth and cause great destruction just because of all the bets outstanding on them.
Anyone can buy and sell these contracts, and the biggest buyers and sellers are the huge investment banks and hedge funds, essentially gambling in the biggest casino in the world. These entities do not want to be involved in the physical delivery.
"Buyers of commodity futures contracts are obligated to take purchase of the underlying commodity when the contract expires. This could entail paying a large sum of money, since the margin deposit was only about 10 percent of the contract value and the balance would be due when the commodity was delivered. The trader would also have to arrange for the delivery and storage of the gold, corn, orange juice or whatever commodity the contract involved. Futures traders avoid the possibility of delivery by selling an offsetting contract or rolling the contract out to a future delivery month. Futures brokers do not want to go through the delivery process, so will contact traders to make sure they do not receive an unexpected delivery. Do not go on vacation with an open futures contract in your trading account. " (ehow.com)

So essentially, Goldman Sachs does not want to be responsible for actually conducting physical trade. That involves transaction, delivery, and storage costs, and such mundane real world transactions are no where near as lucrative as the pure bets!
There is a deeper problem, however. As should be obvious from the size of the derivatives market relative to the real economy, only a small fraction of the total outstanding derivates could be settled in physical delivery given that the trade in futures contracts are typically 10 to 100 times the size of trade in the underlying asset.
Enter J.P. Morgan. According to Max Keiser, J.P. Morgan has recently been involved in naked shorting the silver market through silver futures contracts. Naked shorting is borrowing money to take a short position (or a bet that the underlying asset will drop in price). In the futures markets, taking a short position is as simple as being the seller of the contract - because if the commodity drops in price relative to the agreed-upon futures price, you make money selling it at that higher price (or cashing out, as the case may be). According to Max, the J.P. Morgan short position contracts are covering $1.5 trillion in silver - much more silver than actually exists. Max has started a campaign that has gone viral on the internet called 'Crash J.P. Morgan, Buy Silver'. The idea is that by taking physcial silver off the market (and I'm not sure if he means buy derivitives contracts and demand delivery or if taking it off the market in other ways would obtain the same result) the price will be bid up and J.P. Morgan will not be able to cover its short position. If enough silver is taken off the market, it would expose the over-leveraged nature of the derivitives market and destroy the value of all 'paper silver'.
Here's Max:

Max also interviewed Jim Willie about an attempt by so-called 'gold vigilantes' to force the hand of these big banks that were trading all-of this mega-leveraged gold that essentially only existed on the margins:

This is the same exact principle as a run on the bank, but in this case, it is an attempt by wealthy foreigners to prevent Western banks from manipulating these assets. I think this is a battle that will remain behind the scenes because of the stakes involved, unless enough people become aware of things like this viral Crash J.P. Morgan campaign. But be aware - the crisis is coming. It is a crisis of confidence that has its roots in the ridiculously over-leveraged nature of the derivatives market -a market that dwarfs all other financial and real markets. Unless this leverage can all be unwound safely - and I'm not sure it can - this derivatives market is going to throw the world into financial turmoil. And keep in mind, it already has to some extent. Mortgage backed securities, and collateralized debt obligations (the so-called toxic assets that are the reason for all of the bailouts) exploded in nail-bomb fashion in 2008 and continue to spray their shrapnel through foreclosuregate and through the backdoor purchase of this garbage by the U.S. government. The reason the world fell to its knees due to falling home prices was due to the massively leveraged bets on those home prices.
Be forewarned. The finanical crisis is far from over and the world governments are running out of tricks to convince people that everything is stable.

Britain Adopts a form of my Unemployment Solution!

2010-11-08T22:08:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's true. I'm guessing they must have read my post!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11704765

A Real Solution to High Unemployment

2010-10-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

We are three years into the contraction of the broad money supply (otherwise known as the credit crisis). The disappearance of easy money in the real economy means a persistently high unemployment rate. As of October, the official government unemployment rate remains at a stubborn 9.7%, which of course, as of the 1990's conveniently leaves out several classes of people previously categorized as unemployed. The 9.7% only counts those that the government identifies as actively looking for work. By and large, these are people who really want jobs. The current stop-gap solution for these people is to apply for emergency unemployment compensation from the federal government. Congress keeps pushing back the limit for how long people can qualify for emergency unemployment, and rightly so, because there simply aren't enough jobs out there for all the people that have bills to pay and families to support. People by and large don't have savings anymore (which is really a mathematical consequence of capital accumulation in a debt-based monetary system) and you can't just let 30 million people and their families starve to death. Democrats thus insist on extension of unemployment assistance, while republicans rail against the disincentive to work engendered by free money. Isn't there a better solution then? Yes. A version of the solution I have in mind was enacted under Franklin Roosevelt's administration. It was headed by three temporary organizations, the Work Porgram Administration, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Civilian Conservation Corps. Unlike the idiotic 'stimulus' of the Obama era, which paid people in zombie job sectors to do work that didn't need to be done (i.e. paving over perfectly good roads) the WPA and CCC paid unemployed people a basic wage to perform vital infrastructure, energy, and conservation work - work that continues to provide value to the economy on a continuing basis to this day (think hydroelectric dams, irrigation systems, and the like).

These kinds of programs are derided by steadfast republicans, who view them as socialist - and who insist that private enterprise and free markets are best at allocating labor and resources. In most cases they are right, but in some critical cases, this notion is very wrong. To illustrate my point, think of traffic. Most major cities have some public transportation like buses and subways that are rather expensive and inconvenient, so most people end up driving to work. These cities tend to have many traffic arteries that are chronically clogged with cars. Traffic is funny. There is very little difference in commute time between a road network with very low traffic volumes and one with moderate traffic volumes. But something happens when traffic volumes increase above a critical threshold...traffic snarls to a standstill very quickly with the addition of each new car into the system. So here you have essentially a free-market system, where each participant can choose his/her method of getting to work based on transparent prices for fuel vs. commuting, and yet on the aggregate, a very suboptimal solution is achieved. Here in Portland, public transportation is heavily subsidized. It costs $4.75 to ride all the buses, light rail, and subway you want all day. Annual passes can be had for a pittance. There are stops at almost every block all over the city, and it is very fast and efficient to use. The result is that a huge number of people utilize this system, and those that do choose to commute via car benefit from the additional time afforded to them by the relatively free-flowing roads. This additional time on the aggregate has enormous value that more than makes up for the cost of the subsidy.

Beyond this example, a whole class of economics is devoted to the situations that can be classified as a 'tragedy of the commons' wherein the rational decisions by each actor in the system (decisions made in order to maximize their own well being) leads to degradation and collapse of shared resources. In these situations, a government-regulated economic management of the shared resources maximizes the system's long term prosperity. Last year's nobel prize in economics was given to Elinor Ostram who concluded that 'tragedies of the commons' are best solved by local management solutions (i.e. local government institutions), presumably because they have the best understanding of the nuances of the problem, have the most direct stake in its solution, and are best positioned to minimize administrative costs. The point I am making here is that the WPA/TVA/CCC, although perhaps not optimal economic arrangements were brilliant solutions to high unemployment because they focused the energy of people desperate for work into constructive avenues that helped to manage resources and alleviate tragedies of the commons - roles that government economic entities are uniquely suited to do.

So what would a modern day WPA look like? Well, it could take many forms, but let me lay out what's going through my mind:

1. With certain exceptions for people with disabilities, etc, direct unemployment compensation is completely eliminated. If people want money, they have to find work.

2. A website is started by the federal government, with home pages directed by state or local governments. The purpose of the webpage is to connect people with temporary work that needs to be done with people nearby who are willing to do it. The labor for this work is heavily subsidized by the government. There are certain catches however:

3. The work location must be within a few miles of the worker's residence. Part of the reason we have high unemployment is that the broad economy is constrained by oil supplies, and market forces kicking people out of jobs is a very effective way to create demand destruction in the oil markets. This new batch of labor cannot put a strain on demand for oil.

4. The work must be certified in some way as accomplishing goals in several key focus areas such as A) Creating sustained future sources of income or value. This might include building a vegetable garden, building rainwater cisterns, energy supply projects, etc. B) Putting in place infrastructure that reduces demand for energy, especially oil. This might include weatherproofing old houses, building clothes lines, simple passive solar projects, making bike trails, helping with bike repair, etc. C) reducing pollution, waste or providing ecosystem services. This might include pulling weeds at a local farm to eliminate the need for chemical herbicides, or planting flowers that attract the good insects that eat the insect pests to eliminate the need for chemical pesticides. It might include building trails, benches, etc out of recycled materials. D) Urban renewal/making urban spaces more livable. This might include painting murals over graffiti'ed walls or building a city park where an abondoned parking lot now stands.

5. Each project must be either started by a local government agency, in which case it is fully subsidized, by a private individual or non-profit group, in which it is half-subsidized, or by an existing business, in which case it is 1/4 subsidized.

What this does is organically puts people back to work and helps to retrain a workforce to do real, constructive things for the economy. It retrains the workforce to use human labor rather than oil as a substitute for labor, which reduces oil consumption, lowers the cost of that oil for the rest of the economy in the process, and thereby enables further renewal of traditional private-sector jobs as overhead is reduced.

To some extent, the cheap, subsidized labor will steal work from private businesses, but this is an unavoidable cost, and should be far-outweighed by the benefits. These are designed to be temporary jobs for the unemployed workers, so their pay is low, say $10/hour, and they should therefore have every incentive to seek out better-paying work in the broader private sector. There will also be administrative costs in setting up such a system, but if the allocation and certification of labor is done on a small, local governmental level, it should minimize these costs.

Keep in mind, we are currently paying all of these unemployed people to sit on their hands. Why not pay them instead to rebuild our dying country?

Nick

Portland!

2010-09-29T21:18:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've written anything in here - and for good reason. Aisling and I have been busy setting up a new life down the Columbia from Richland on the 'wet' side of the cascades.

The moving process was a bit chaotic and disruptive, as moving processes tend to be (or at least they are for me. When I moved to Richland in February 2009, I spend every waking hour either at work or at home setting up the place and building new furniture). We moved in here nearly a month ago, and set about fast unpacking, reassembling homemade furniture, and I got to work as soon as I could building a garden. You see, it's Portland, and the winters are quite mild and wet here, so I have this idea that I can get a garden going for the winter in the yard we have here - growing crops that are cold weather resistant. More on that in a bit.

Most people back east think of Portland (and Seattle for that matter) as being coastal cities. Neither of them is. Portland is situated on the south end of the Columbia River where it is fed by the Willamette River. The Willamette cuts the city in half east-west. The east side is mostly flat, with the exception of a few odd buttes that poke up here and there. The west side, where we live, is exceptionally hilly. It contains the downtown area, which is flat on the North end, and hilly on the South end, and a mix of hills, streams, and the occasional incursion of the Tulatin Mountains, a low, mossy, forested range that leads out to the west. Portland itself is about 90 miles from the coast. Seattle is even further form the coast, especially by car.

Portland is a rainy city, to be sure. Its 40 inches of annual rainfall make it about 6 times wetter than Richland was. It's no wetter on aggregate, however, than Maryland was. The devil is in the details though. Whereas precipitation is spread out relatively evenly throughout the year in Maryland, the vast majority of it comes, in Portland late October through May (up to nearly 7 inches per month by December), as the figure below testifies. The heavy green line is rainfall and the heavy white is snowfall, compared to the similar colored dashed lines for Baltimore. The rain here is also generally lighter - falling more often as prolonged light rain and drizzle, rather than thunderstorms or downpours. The cooler half of the year, thus sees very little direct sunlight. The flip side of the coin is that the late spring through early autumn are spectacular. These times are punctuated by bright sunshine and very cool temperatures by summer standards. The temperature graph below shows that average high temperatures stay below Baltimore's highs except January-March, when they are warmer. Low temperatures likewise stay below Baltimore's lows during the summer, but are warmer than Maryland's lows from October to April. Humidity is low in the summer - the air tempered by the coolness of the Pacific. In the winter, however, the humidity is often near saturation and supports lots of moss.

As I mentioned, we moved into a place on the West side of the city, well above the downtown area, in a hilly, urban setting carved from intermittent dense forest that still clings to the sides of the roadways. There are many protected wooded parks around, providing plenty of trails for hiking and running - that is, when we're in the mood for hills, hills, and more hills.

Our house is the same square footage as our Richland townhouse, but on one story. It has three bedrooms instead of two, and we turned one into my office. I've started working from home, and am still getting used to it.

The verdict is still out on the telecomuting thing. It's the end of the fiscal year at PNNL, which means a mad scramble to finish projects and papers. When we first got here, we had to wait 10 days to get internet installed, which meant I was commuting by bike into the downtown area to work out of the conference room of the small PNNL Portland Office (not enough room for me). The house here also has an 800 square foot deck, which makes it nearly the size of the rest of the house! The bedrooms are rather small, but the living room and kitchen are quite large, compared to our old place.

The wooded nature of this area is going to make gardening a particular challenge, as only certain pats of the yard actually get much sunlight. The only good place was the side yard area. It's about 6 feet wide by 30 feet long, and slopes downhill from the main entrance of the house down to the deck. Aisling and I built a terrace system into the side yard.

This involved hours of first pulling up an anti-weed tarp that was laid down below an inch of mulch, tilling the soil and shoveling it into flat sections, building brick terrace walls, tilling some more, and mixing in peat moss and garden soil. The native soil is heavy clay, dry from the summer, and I thought it would benefit from some lightening and some nutrients to get it started. Hence the ready-bought soil and peat from Home Depot. In the beds we created, we've planted broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula, carrots and swiss chard. It will be interesting to see what comes up and what survives the cold weather. Already some things have failed to come up - and this is not due (at least not yet) to the poor weather or site selection. We have some blue jays that seem to be very fond of the tiny sapling leaves of these plants (especially the broccoli and carrots). The carrots nearly all came up, but are now nearly all gone. So...we'll see. The winter crops are just an experimentation, and I'll keep in mind the bird issue for the spring planting. In the meantime, I've also started lots of clover in the beds alongside the crops. Clover is supposed to fix nitrogen into the soil (meaning that it uses the sun's energy to convert atmospheric nitrogen to nitrous compounds in the soil). Nitrogen is one of the three key plant nutrients. So the cover crop of clover provides a very valuable organic fertilizing role.

Our first weekend here we took full advantage of the city and saw The Decemberists live in concert. They're a band from Portland that I like a good deal, and have been listening a lot to recently. I wasn't a big fan of the setlist, with the exception of some of the new songs they played off of an album they're putting together right now.

The next weekend, we went touring around the nearby farms doing lots of U-pick in the middle of harvest season. All-in all, we picked about 8 different types of fruits and vegetables, and bought ready-picked versions of about 10 other types. Much of last week was spent tirelessly canning and freezing the excess. We now have 8 jars of blackberry/raspberry jam, 8 jars of kernel corn, and 14 jars of tomato sauce to last us into the fall and winter - as well as a solid cache of frozen vegetables. The coolest things we got were golden raspberries (really tasty on the vine, but boy did they soften up fast!) and elephant garlic (garlic the size of large onions). We also got the best plums Aisling and I have ever had and some really delicious asian pears!

This past weekend, we enjoyed the last free weekend before Aisling started school by doing a 65 mile bike ride - out and back to the vista house - a lookout point on one of the most scenic vantages of the Columbia Gorge. Aisling nearly died on the way trying to impersonate a frog. (Okay,what really happened was that she was pretty sure she swallowed a bee and that it stung her throat on the way down. She was afraid it might swell and constrict her airway. Paramedics arrived on the scene at the vista house, and it eventually just turned into a slightly embarrassing- for Aisling - false alarm.)

We stopped at an amazing Thai place on the way back. Nothing much from the outside, but they lead you around to the back (in the summer) where the restaurant opens up into an outdoor patio canopied by grapevines. I was able to reach up while we were waiting for our meals and pluck fresh grapes off the vine into my mouth!

School is officially in session for Aisling as of this week. The beginning of 2 years of graduate school at OHSU. On Sunday, we both attended a potluck get-together with some people from her grad program. They mostly seem like some cool people, and we both look forward to counting some of them as friends.

On the Nature of Debt: A Baited Trap

2010-08-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

There are two excerpts I want to share about the nature of debt. Both are from my favorite site, www.theautomaticearth.blogspot.com. One is from one of the authors of the site, Nicole Foss (Stoneleigh) , and the other excerpt is written by another blogger who is quoted in one of their posts.

There are two ways to pay for expensive assets, whether you are a person, a business or a country. One way is through past earnings (savings) or through presumed future earnings (debt). Savings is tough. It requires discipline, frugality, and patience. These are real, hard won virtues. Debt requires nothing of you at the time you take it on. It's available now! Why wait! Is it any wonder that people have gravitated towards the enticing morsel on the mousetrap, rather than foraging in the wild? In a more balanced society, you might expect markets for large assets to be paid for roughly half in savings and half in debt. In our society, there are virtually no people who pay for houses with savings. Nearly everyone takes a mortgage. The coiled teeth of the trap have been hidden from our view in the past by selling us the notion that the debt is low-risk. That notion, however, is very sensitive to the assumptions that underly it. How reliable is your income, really? What emergencies might present themselves that divert the cash stream needed to pay back that loan? What happens when all you thought you knew about inflation and the change in value of your assets is thrown out the window. In these times, debt can be an extremely risky proposition. What happens if you try to buy a house out of savings, and something unexpected happens? Well, you go on renting for a while longer. What happens if you're trying to pay out of future earnings plus interest. In many cases, default - and the loss of all you thought you had. The trap is sprung, and the creditors get what they were really after.

Here's Stoneleigh: (http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2009/01/january-9-2009-dr-doomlittle.html)

Bailouts are NEVER for the little guy no matter what spin their proponents use to sell them to the public (who will be paying for them through their taxes). The role of the little guy in a Ponzi scheme is to be the empty-bag holder. This is the tragedy of our times, and there's nothing anyone can do to prevent it, whether or not they might want to. The losses have already occurred, but as yet still lie out of sight in illiquid 'asset' accounts supposedly worth hundreds of trillions of dollars, but actually worth close to nothing.

A predatory lending structure has been sucking the wealth out of ordinary people through debt enslavement for a long time, by encouraging them to buy far more than they could actually afford on margin (ie with borrowed money). That is a recipe for paying far over the odds for everything, while the financiers collect the excess - an excess collected preferentially from those near the bottom of the income scale, who were most likely to carry a perpetual credit balance at a predatory rate. This is how credit bubbles form - a combination of predators and all-too-willing prey that doesn't understand the nature of the trap. Hansel and Gretel and the witch's Gingerbread House comes to mind, minus the escape at the end.

Unfortunately, it was easy to entice people into debt slavery, as the offer of access to material goods is always hard to resist, particularly when it seems like everyone else is enjoying new-found wealth. It doesn't take long to convince people that they deserve to have a large home, multiple cars and all manner of consumer goods, or to convince them that they are somehow inadequate and that their children will suffer if they don't participate in the consumer culture. The relentless marketing barrage played on our insecurities, conveying a message that happiness and social status could, and should, be bought.

A situation where ordinary people are able to buy anything on margin is historically very rare, as credit is normally only extended to those who do not need it. The last several decades have been an aberration, largely due to an increasingly reckless attitude towards risk. For ordinary people, low interest rates led them to believe that huge debt burdens could be sustained so long as the budget could be stretched to cover the monthly payment. For those higher up the financial food chain, the process of securitization created the appearance that risk could be passed on ad infinitum, until it ceased to exist. Unfortunately, low interest rates are a trap, and securitization, instead of minimizing or eliminating risk, actually magnified it into a systemic threat.

In terms of mortgages, even those that seemed conservative in recent years were not. In the latter stages of a credit bubble, even a deposit of over 50% and a monthly payment that could be covered by one of two salaries is a recipe for deep trouble. We are looking at a collapse of property prices and a huge rise in unemployment, which will combine to cause an unprecedented amount of negative equity, defaults and foreclosure, and, thanks to leverage, the resulting loses will snowball, further undercutting the supposed value of financial assets. The 'conservative' mortgagees are mostly just as trapped as those who over-extended themselves further.

Even those who own homes free and clear will find that, in a frozen property market, they can not move to where the jobs are, or to a more suitable property with some self-sufficiency potential. If they lose their jobs, they may lose their homes through being unable to pay the sky-rocketing property taxes that municipalities will introduce in a desperate attempt to fill the gaping holes in their own budgets. This is why we suggest that people generally rent rather than own (unless they own a homestead free and clear). Renting amounts to paying someone else a fee to take the property price risk for you, and that is a very good bet under today's circumstances. Rents will fall a long way in a deflation, and although landlord default is always a possibility (perhaps meaning more than one move), that risk is preferable to losing the bulk of one's assets in a property price collapse.

The middle class has been comprehensively fleeced by the debt trap, and the consequences for social stability will be extremely unpleasant once the chickens come home to roost. Except for a few of the super-rich, we will all share in the misery to come, and none of us can expect a bailout. Whether we've been gorging ourselves on the Gingerbread House or merely nibbling at it, we now find ourselves in a cage.

And here's Dan W.:

(http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2009/01/january-25-2009-all-those-creeps.html)

As a little kid I was always fascinated by apparent contradictions, paradoxes and illusions. I marveled in the revelation that the only way to free oneself from a “Chinese Finger Trap” was to push one's fingers forward, toward each other, instead of pulling them apart---which of course was utterly counter-intuitive, and which also was why the trap was really so ingenious, because as people pulled harder and harder and the trap squeezed tighter and tighter and the anxiety grew and grew, finding the actual solution became a virtual impossibility. I so-enjoyed, as a stoned young schoolboy, holding a pencil loosely between my thumb and index finger and shaking my arm up and down and making the pencil look like it was wobbling and bending. I still don’t totally get how that works, and I haven’t smoked pot in decades!

Now, as an adult, my appreciation for contradictions, paradoxes and illusions has become even more profound, for I have come to believe that our ability as a species to accept truths that seem contradictory and/or paradoxical---and subsequently to choose consciously not to fight against these seeming contradictions but instead to accept them and hence use our acceptance as a route of escape from our own intransigence---may in fact save us from our ourselves.

OK, so back to the economy.

The paradox of riptides: The paradox of riptides is pretty obvious. Struggle to overcome the riptide by fighting against it and swimming directly into it and you die. Swim perpendicular to the tide, thus eventually freeing yourself from the rip current, and then with relative ease return to shore.

Our political and financial leaders believe that they can fight against the economic rip tide in which we find ourselves. They believe that our survival is predicated on the earnestness and intensity of our struggle against the current “tide”. Our leaders also think that we can return to the same shore from which we were unceremoniously dragged out to sea by the financial rip tides that we are currently experiencing. They think that a return to the beach means a return to 5% per annum growth and low single-digit unemployment and thousands of new 10,000 square foot homes and thousands of new brands of cereal on the shelves of our super-markets and 75 inch HD TVs in every home. In this way, Obama and Summers and Rubin and Frank and Dodd and Pelosi and all of the actors in Washington and New York are not only swimming against the rip currents, they are trying to swim back to a beach that simply no longer exists. That beach, the one built with trillions in debt and no capital production, is gone. It is a mirage destroyed by the mathematical realities of a world in which debt and gambling replaced production and savings, thus eroding the system to the point of complete extinction.

Remember, surviving a rip current means accepting the fact that a paradigm shift is inevitable. One cannot survive the perils of a rip current by swimming back to the same spot on the shore from which one was rent. One must swim parallel to the shore, only returning to solid ground once the rip current has relented. And so, playing out the metaphor even further, when the swimmer---the survivor---returns to the beach, it is not the same beach from which he first departed. It is a different place on the shore. Survival is predicated upon accepting the fact that a return to the same shore is simply impossible; that a new shore must be explored, and that this new shore must be accepted not for how it can be manipulated and exploited, but for what is has to offer.

In the current economic crisis, our survival intact means accepting the mathematical reality that we cannot return to the same point on the beach from whence we came. We must accept the following THREE realities in order to make it through this catastrophe at least somewhat whole:

Growth is deadThe days of 5%, even 3% GDP growth are over. In a country that produces virtually nothing, and in a country in which 72% of GDP is a measure of debt-based consumption, growth is a misnomer, a fallacy, an illusion created by those in power to perpetuate a system that makes them rich whilst simultaneously robbing the rest of us of our futures. Any attempt to “return” to the days of growth is but a lie---it is fighting against the realities of the current: sure suicide. And the choice of a few to fight against this reality eventually leads the rest of us into the waters against our will. Many of us are willing to accept smaller lifestyles, smaller homes, less in the way of uniquely American extravagances. But many are not. And of course the majority of those who are not willing to accept such new realities are the ones on Capitol Hill and on Wall Street, and they’re killing us. They are going to fight for their mansions and HD TVs and their lattes at Starbucks and their 8-cylinder sedans and their central air-conditioning , and when they eventually drown---which is mathematically inevitable---they’re going to take us down with them.

Banking is dead. Banks have been exposed to the world as usurious middlemen who play absolutely no productive role in society. In a smaller world, communities will develop their own “banking” solutions to help facilitate commercial interactions without levying useless, criminal interest rates upon participants in the system. Attempts to revive and save the global banking system will be met with violent revolution.

Money as debt is dead This is the biggie. In the same vain as #2, the system of “money as debt”, the system that has brought us to the point of societal collapse, is also dead in the water. And yet everything we hear from the powers that be is that our economic recovery is entirely based upon our ability to not only get the system of credit and lending and debt flowing again, but to find ways to expand this system so that “growth” can occur. Of course this is the penultimate delusion, as lending and debt and credit have absolutely nothing to do with growth; in fact, the current system of “money as debt” is productive of collapse rather than growth in that it is a total fallacy; growth based upon consumption of goods and services whilst simultaneously all capital is summarily destroyed.

A system based upon lending and credit and debt implies several apparent realities: (a) That the economy experiences growth, and the subsequent creation of “wealth”, based predominantly upon charging interest on the monies created and lent out, (b) that the system functions when those receiving said loans are both willing and able to service both the principle and interest of those loans, and (c) that the system perpetuates “successfully” when the exponential growth of debt can be serviced through the production of concomitant amounts of fungible capital. But as has been demonstrated on several previous occasions, the aforementioned characteristics that drive a “money-as-debt” society are fatally contradictory. Maintaining serviceable debt in an economy in which REAL growth is a fallacy is a mathematical impossibility. It is, as the metaphor demonstrates, suicidal.

How do we get our leaders to accept reality? And if our leaders continue on such a suicidal course, when does it become our legal and justifiable responsibility to remove them from their positions of power? How do we compel our leaders to recognize the changing currents, and to join us in finding peace and relative prosperity on new and pristine shores rather then fight the suicidal battle against the forces of nature?

Six Perspectives on Collapse - Part 4: Empires and Ponzi Schemes

2010-08-12T07:08:00.000-07:00

In school and in the media, we are taught lies, half-truths and simplifications about how the world works. History is generally presented as a series of unrelated events. Foreighn world leaders are presented as good or evil, and terms like 'rebels', 'terrorists', 'drug lords', and 'guerrillas' are used to describe various groups without a true understanding of how these groups come about and what drives them to do the things they do. The U.S. and Western Europe is always presented as a force for good, while 'terrorists' are cast as comic book cartoon 'enemies of freedom'.
We are encouraged to view America's role in foreign policy as one of a benevolent police force, standing up for basic human rights and abstract concepts of democracy and freedom. This is a role that gained legitimacy from America's heroic role in defending human rights and sovereignity from the clutches of war, empire, and social Darwinism during World War I and World War II. It is a view that has been peddled by every president since that time, even as it has become less and less true. Today, it is increasingly difficult for U.S. leaders to maintain this facade. Iraq and Afghanistan have formed gaping cracks in this facade. Americans, for the first time since Vietnam are starting to see the ugliness and inconsistencies behind their country's foreign policy. Much like an iceberg, however, the visible part is only the tip. The real story goes much deeper. John Perkins' 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman (EHM)' goes a long way to illuminating the whole structure beneath.
John Perkins, through family ties to the National Security Administration was recruited into the ranks of an international consulting company called 'Chas T. Main' or MAIN for short, in the early 1960s. MAIN played a bridging role between the business and government in what Perkins refers to as the 'corporatocracy', an unholy cabal between industrialized governments, big corporations, and banks. The corporatocracy is a predatory entity that drives a new global empire. Contrary to popular notions of 'free trade' and ideals of poverty reduction and development of third world countries, the corporatocracy enforces exploitation, desperation, modern forms of enslavement, and vast transfers of real wealth from resource-rich 'developing' countries to resource-poor (in relation to demands for those resources) 'developed' countries. At heart, the reason for this exploitation is easily explained. There simply aren't enough natural resources to support first-world standards of living across the rest of the world. Our way of life relies on too much energy, mineral, and material wealth. This essentially zero-sum relationship describes the driving force behind empire-building, going back into ancient history. If one country is to prosper, it means it must co-opt the resources of other countries. In pre-industrial days, these resources were mostly in the form of human labor,food and precious metals. Today, the resources are expanded to also include oil, natural gas, water, and other minerals. In the past, the exploitation was impossible to hide, was obvious, and out in the open. Today, the exploitation is exceedingly subtle and insidious. As John Perkins describes,

"The subtelty of htis modern empire puts the Roman centurions, the Spanish conquistadors, and the eighteenth- and nineteenth- century European colonial powers to shame. We EHM's are crafty; we learned from history. Today, we do not carry swords. We do not wear armor or clothes that set us apart. In countries like Ecuador, Nigeria, and Indonesia, we dress like local schoolteachers and shop owners. In Washington and Pairs, we look like government bureaucrats and bankers. We appear humble, normal. W visit project sites and stroll through impoverished villages. We profess altruism, talk with local papers about the wonderful humanitarian things we are doing. We cover the conference tables of government committees with our spreadsheets and financial projections, and we lecture at Harvard Business School about the miracles of macroeconomics. we are on the record, in the open. Or so we portray ourselves and so are we accepted. It is how the system works. We seldom resort to anything illegal because the system itself is built on subterfuge, and the system is by definition legitimate."

Perkins was hired by Main, and due to his specific skills and vulnerabilities, he was recruited into an elite group at the firm, who understood the true machinations of the firm and its relationship the broader corporatocracy, which it supported, and which supported it. Despite only having a B.S. in business administration, Perkins soon became head economist at MAIN. Perkins' role was to come up with intentionally inflated economic projections for third world economies, should they choose to accept large loans for infrastructure projects from U.S. or international development banks, like the IMF and World Bank. As Perkins describes: "Like our counterparts in the mafia, EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure - electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston, or San Francisco. Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest. If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia, we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money, and another country is added to the global empire."

So the point is that these loans form the basis for permanent economic enslavement of the debtor nations to the creditor nation, and form the basis of negotiations for more obvious forms of imperial conquest. This doesn't mean, however, that the decision to partake in these projects (based on false premises, as they are) is subject solely to the sovereign decisions of the debtor countries. If the subject country refuses to accept such loans, the corporate global empire resorts to progressively subversive tactics. First, a coup or assassination is attempted against the 'stubborn' government. The model for first-world-directed modern coups was based on a model developed in Mossadegh's Iran in the 1950's. Basically, CIA operatives and corporations find groups within the country who are opposed to the current government, supply them with weapons, and pursue other means to foment uprisings, overthrow the 'stubborn' government, and install their own corrupt puppet government who then capitulates to the demands of the empire. If this is not an option, the same thing can be accomplished through assassinations. The more plausible deniability in these assassinations, the better. The preferred method is to have the foreign president die in a mysterious plane crash. If all this fails, the last resort is traditional war, as was the case in Panama, under the first Bush administration, and Iraq, under the second Bush administration.

Today, we can see the inevitable results of these more obvious forms of subjugation. Iraq's oil reserves were recently split up, and new oil fields are being developed all over the country by Shell, BP, Exxon and Chevron. In Afghanistan, geologists recently announced that Afghanistan has a trillion dollars worth of mineral resources (including rare-earth metals needed for renewable energy and high-tech industries) that are newly ripe for the picking. This new wave of obvious exploitation, however, belies a truth about foreign policy today: The subtle, cheap, and effective tactics of John Perkin's EHMs are becoming increasingly ineffective. There are simply not enough new, easily exploitable countries left to maintain the increasing flows of third-world wealth into the first-world. Continuation of 'growth' in the U.S. demands ever greater amounts of military spending on new wars, and continued maintenance of older, more reliable sources of subjugation. This is why, even under the new Obama administration, which promised the end to the hawkishness of the Bush Administration, military spending has continued to increase. To cut the spending, would be to forfeit these exploitive relationships and condemn the U.S. to economic contraction. The trap is set for the U.S., however, because to maintain the flows requires an ever growing slice of the nation's income be devoted to its military. This is a classic case of declining marginal returns on empire, as outlined in Part 1 of this series for the case of the Roman Empire. The hyperbolic nature of the continued drive to maintain empire is painfully obvious. The U.S. spends as much on military as the rest of the world combined. The next largest military spending (China's), is 8 times smaller than the U.S.'s.

The latter stages of empire here, represent a form of Ponzi dynamics - those that underly fraudulent pyramid schemes. Ponzi dynamics occur when the continuation of a financial or administrative structure is dependent upon the continued buy-in of larger numbers of new entrants. At first this relationship appears to be stable, but as the supply of new entrants into the scheme is finite, these structures always end in collapse. The Automatic Earth has a wonderful essay on the ponzi dynamics of empire from 2008, titled 'From the top of the Great Pyramid'. Quoting from that essay:

"Everyone has heard of pyramid, or Ponzi, schemes. In their simplest form they are short-lived deliberate frauds where a small number of existing members are paid from the buy-in of a larger number of newer members until the supply of newer members is exhausted, whereupon they collapse. Typically, the founders, and perhaps a few others who got in early and out before it was too late, end up making a lot of money at the expense of later entrants, who end up holding the empty bag. There are always many more losers than winners. What most do not realize, however, is that Ponzi dynamics are far more pervasive than people think. There are many human systems that ultimately rest on the buy-in of new entrants, and every one of them will ultimately meet the same fate, although it can take far longer for complex constructions than for simple pyramid frauds.

What allows a more complex pyramid to last for longer than a simple one is a supplementary source of funds to pay members, besides merely the buy-in of newer members. The more such sources there are, legitimate and otherwise, the more complex the pyramid can become and the longer it will last, as the apparent on-going success of early entrants will attract many more new ones. There's nothing like seeing one's friends and neighbours seemingly making a lot of easy money for a long time to eventually overcome the mental defenses of even the most skeptical.

Following the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, there was a spate of such schemes - notably MMM in Russia, Caritas in Romania, Jugoskandic and Dafiment Bank in Serbia, TAT in Macedonia, and VEFA Holdings, Xhafferi, Populli, Gjallica and several others in Albania. They were the topic of my academic research at the time. All of these lasted for quite a long time, and some paid out spectacular returns for much of that time. For instance, the Albanian funds , or quasi-banks, began by paying out 3-5% per month over a 6 month term and were eventually paying out 10% per month (and briefly much more as an interest rate war ensued very late in the game).

They were able to do this temporarily because the income from the buy-in of new entrants was supplemented by revenue from drug smuggling, oil sanctions busting, money laundering, gun running, human trafficking and a thriving trade in car theft from across Europe. There was some revenue from legitimate business interests, but not much in a country that survived mainly on a combination of remittances and politically supported criminal activity. Ironically, Albania was the darling of the IMF at the time.

Over time, approximately 80% of the Albanian population was drawn into the pyramids, often selling their only real property in order to invest and then depending on the pyramids for all their income. When the inevitable happened, the vast majority of the population was completely dispossessed. Although many had realized that there was something too-good-to-be-true about their 'investments' they had succumbed to greed "in the belief that they were in the hands of properly structured criminality", as The Guardian newspaper put it in February 1997. The population believed, erroneously, that there was an implicit guarantee from the government, which was conspicuously and intimately entwined with the activities of the various funds.

In the developed world, there are many examples of pyramid dynamics where there is no intent to defraud at all - where even the founders really don't understand the underlying logic of their business model taken to its logical conclusion. Direct marketing, for instance, is essentially pyramid-based - depending on an ever-increasing network of sales people, each of whom receives a percentage of their income from those they can attract into the business. If these businesses can no longer grow by attracting new salespeople, then they are ultimately finished, but as they cannot grow perpetually (or eventually everyone in the country would end up making a living selling these products to each other), they are inherently self-limiting. They can last for many years thanks to legitimate business revenues, but not forever. Early entrants will always do very well, at the expense of later ones, and the last tiers will certainly lose their stake.

Large economic bubbles, typically formed in dominant economies during periods of manic optimism (see McKay's Extraordinary Public Delusions and the Madness of Crowds), have the same underlying dynamic. Without continual buy-in from new money - new investors or more money from existing investors - they cannot grow, and when they can no longer grow, they will collapse. Although grounded initially in legitimate business activity, they morph into structures where one has to question the motives and understanding of key individuals. In some cases there may be intent to defraud, but what is far more common is a characteristic recklessness as to the risks those in control are prepared to take with other people's money.

In their latter stages, such structures hollow out, feeding on their own internal substance as they lose the ability to attract new investment. In the terminal phase, there is the appearance of great wealth, but it is virtual, and therefore extremely ephemeral. The next step is implosion, as the virtual wealth disappears - where the claims to wealth generated through leverage that exceed the amount of underlying real wealth are extinguished en masse. Enron was a prime example, and on a much larger scale, so is the derivatives market. Bubbles, like all Ponzi structures, are inherently self-limiting and will always collapse in the end.

At the largest scale, empires are also grounded in pyramid dynamics, which is why they too have a limited lifespan. They grow by assuming control, either politically or economically, of new territories, positioning themselves to cream off surpluses from an ever-expanding geographical area in a form of involuntary buy-in. In the past political control through invasion or physical colonization was more common, but latterly globalization has enabled the development of a sophisticated system of economic control based on international debt slavery, supplemented with economic colonization for the purpose of resource extraction. Both resources and financial surpluses, in the form of perpetual interest payments, could be efficiently extracted from the periphery and accumulated at the centre, where they led to the development of an unprecedented level of socioeconomic complexity.

Such wealth conveyors in favour of the economic centre, at the expense of the hinterland, are the very heart of empire, but without continual expansion to feed rapidly developing central complexity, they eventually fail, leaving the centre unable to sustain its existing complexity level. As with economic bubbles, empires hollow out in the latter stages, consuming their own substance in a catabolic manner in order to compensate for the inability to strengthen wealth conveyors sufficiently quickly to keep pace with the expanding requirements of the centre.

As the hinterland is increasingly stripped of wealth and resources, and burdened with the increasing environmental impact of its own exploitation, an increasing fraction of it is left too impoverished to sustain a minimum level of internal order. In modern times we speak of failed states without realizing why many of these states are failing, or the impact that an increasing number of failed states will ultimately have on our own standard of living.

Wealth conveyors are breaking down, and no amount of financially squeezing the population in the central economies can compensate for the loss of that ability to accumulate wealth from virtually the whole world. The vast majority of the central population will be brutally squeezed as the elites try to hang on to their own privileged position, but this can only sustain a very small, and rapidly shrinking, fraction of the population, and at great cost.

We are living through the collapse of the final - and all-consuming - economic bubble at the end of the American empire."

What is the catabolic consumption, described in this essay? The global corporate empire does not explicitly serve the interests of the citizens of any given county. It is only the case, that we, in the U.S., in good times for the empire, are subject to a process whereby a rising tide lifts all boats. We benefit indirectly from the massive flows of resources to the first world from the third world. As the global corporate empire becomes stretched increasingly thin, and is more and more hard pressed to find new sources of wealth abroad, it responds by using predatory tactics to make up for the lost wealth within its own country of origin - essentially consuming itself, as it goes after the very sources of wealth that sustain its power. This takes the form of things like sub-prime mortgages and other predatory loans, other deceptive forms of business practices and marketing, bailouts, and other free sources of unearned income from the federal reserve, running the Wall Street casino that systematically funnels wealth from unwitting institutional investors to the high frequency trading arms of big banks - all transparent forms of continuing the illusion of growth, and making up, at least on paper, for the loss of other income streams. Why are these subprime mortgages and unearned income catabolic, you may ask? Well, right now, the U.S. government finds itself squarely in the very same debt trap that the third world was forced into in the past. Its debt levels have reached a point where they are unserviceable. The interest on the national debt alone will make up such an enormous chunk of the government's income stream, that it will become a ludicrous proposition to ever pay off that interest. Right now, old debt is being paid off by new debt, because that's the only way to continue the system. As more and more new debt is required, at some point, there will be no willing sources of new debt. Right now, the current big funder of our debt (besides China, as the media is so apt to point out) are our very own banks. They are sucking money out of the government to maintain their balance sheets at the cost of throwing the government into deeper and deeper stages of Ponzi-collapse. When the banks' sub-prime mortgages fail, the government steps in and bails out those same banks, and to do it requires ever more debt. We are watching the end-game of this process play out, and no amount of government insistence on things as laughable as 'sustainable recoveries' is going to change the inevitable outcome of this process.

Our Community Garden - Progress and Lessons Learned: Part 3: Fruiting and Early Harvest

2010-08-02T20:43:00.001-07:00

It's now early August, and the garden is starting to look like a factory. The corn is the dominant feature of the plot. 25-30 tall stalks ranging from 5 to 7 feet tall are clustered around the center of the garden. I expected going in that 1 seed would yield 1 stalk that would grow 1 ear of corn. Not the case. The oldest corn plant in the garden is currently boasting 4 stalks and a total of 7 ears.

The older plants never grew as tall as the newer ones. One of the things that I think I am learning from this year is that the early plants seem to be smaller in stature. I think it must have to do with their early growth phase being slowed/interrupted by cold weather. The plants that were allowed (by virtue of warmth) to grow fast from the get-go eventually eclipsed the older plants (with the notable exception of the cauliflower, which I'll discuss later.) On the flip side, it is the older, smaller plants that are bearing fruit earlier. The two 5 foot corn plants are full of ears that are maturing rapidly, while their statuesque younger brothers have only recently sprouted some small ears that will likely be ready in a few weeks or so. I've harvested two ears so far, and the first of those two brought another lesson. It was only about 1/3 filled out with kernels, in a very scattershot manner. At first, I thought this meant that the kernels popped in sporadically (like popcorn!). Two conversations changed my mind about this and helped me to see what had probably happened. Our friend Landon mentioned that he had heard that each of the little string-like hairs that protrude from the top of the ear are connected to an individual kernal port, and if that hair isn't seeded with pollen, the kernel won't come. Our neighbor Paul, who used to be a corn farmer verified that the corn kernels come in all at once. Now this was one of the first two corn plants, and is relatively isolated in the garden. At the top of the corn stalks, a giant plant hand sprouts and eventually drops pollen.

This apparently happens in a short period of time (a few days). So this isolated plant must have dropped its pollen and only some if it made it to its target. If it had been part of a denser cluster of corn, planted all near the same time, the chances would approach 100% that each kernel would find some pollen because of the flurry of pollen activity in such a dense area.
Anyway, the second ear I picked came from the same plant, and was fully filled out. It was delicious!!

While stunted in stature, most of the tomato plants are growing green tomatoes of various sizes.

My plants aren't nearly as big or productive as James's are (James from my work is using about 20 square feet in the Northwest corner.) Despite being almost fully shaded from the sun by my enormous corn, James's tomato plants are growing along quite swimmingly. He's probably got 2-3 times the total number of tomatoes growing as I do. A persistent garden pest, old Brer Rabbit has been terrorizing the tomatos though. Have no doubt, Brer Rabbit is a spoiled bitch of a pest. He will come up and nibble a little corner of a tomato, then go over to another one and nibble a little corner of it and so in. In the process, he eats about 5% of each tomato, and leaves them all rotting on the vine. I've caught old Brer Rabbit 3 times in my garden. Each time, I hop over my fence, and he bolts like a bat out of Hellman's for the little hole he just gnawed in the fence (damn you, cheap (but free!) plastic mesh! This last time, I was fed up with his meddling, and reinforced the fence with pieces of barbed metal mesh I found lying around, concrete blocks, and clods of thorny tumbleweed. It's pretty ad hoc, but I'm hoping it will deter old Brer at least enough that he decides it's not worth the effort and munches on someone else's food instead. I'd really like to get a good harvest of tomatoes that I can make into some sauce and can it for the winter.
Another casualty of Mr. Rabbit was the cauliflower. He didn't go for the prize in the center, but he and his clan systematically ate the green leaves of the growing cauliflower, leaving it a skeleton. Only on the more mature plants did the leaves regenerate themselves enough to sustain production of a ball of vegetable. Some cauliflower plants were gnawed down to the roots and died. So it looks like we'll get two heads of cauliflower out of the garden. They are both getting rather large.

I'd pick one now if I wasn't already receiving a huge head of cauliflower every week in my CSA box. The first week after the cauliflower disappears from the box, I'm harvesting!
The big loser this year looks to be the melons. True, I do have a few tiny watermelon bulbs that have finally sprouted, but the melons were frustratingly slow in laying down vines of leaves, and never grew those leaves to full size.

While some of our neighbors and some other gardeners in the community garden have large watermelons growing by now, we've just got the little buds. I'm not holding out hope for a harvest there, but we'll see ;) I suspect that part of the problem might have been a soil that wasn't acidic enough. According to a book I just got on organic gardening, melons need a low-PH soil to flourish. I want to ask some people who have big melons what they did. I might not get a chance next year to apply the lessons, though. I'm not sure how melons will do in a cooler climate like Portland. We'll see!

Battelle Softball - End of the Regular Season

2010-07-29T21:16:00.000-07:00

Well we finished off the regular season pretty strong. I had 12 hits in my last 14 at-bats and Aisling had 3 hits in our last two games. Despite floundering a bit in the middle of the season, we finished off the regular season by beating the league's only undefeated team by way of the mercy rule (winning by more than 10 runs after 5 innings).

Next comes the playoffs. It's a week-long double-elimination tournament the third week of August. Stay-tuned.

Six Perspectives on Collapse - Part 3: John Michael Greer's 'The Ecotechnic Future'

2010-07-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

I've been a follower of John Michael Greer's writings for some time now. He maintains the blog 'The Archdruid Report', in which he's spent much of the past two years critiquing modern society, from the dual perspective of ecology and a compendium of modern and ancient history. In addition to being one of the prominent social critics of our time, John Michael Greer's online resume presents him as a 'futureologist.' He is the elected leader of the Ancient Order of Druids in America. while you might be tempted to think of the druids as that strange cult that built Stonehenge, their 'religion' is nothing very radical. It's a belief in the spirituality of nature and built around ecology and natural cycles. In addition to this odd role, Greer is a scholar of the occult, and has written books on magic, secret societies, and UFO's. Greer brings some of this discussion into his blog, but it always seems that the purpose of these diversions is to present rational explanations or to explain that what our culture has portrayed as something magical or mystical actually was actually very down-to-earth. Wizards, according to Greer, arose in the wake of the fall of Rome, and were really just renaissance men; engineers, ecologists and social scientists rolled into one. They were highly treasured by leaders in such dark times for their advisory role on very tough questions of the day. Superstitions, according to Greer, can be generally defined as bits of conventional wisdom that have been divorced from their original source of meaning.

'The Ecotechnic Future' presents a rather unique perspective on collapse. It begins with the assertion that human societies are ecologies. This is only really a contrarian viewpoint from the perspective of Western narratives of manifest destiny and of technology enabling us humans to rise above and to conquer nature. Greer's perspective, I would argue, however, is patently true. The fact that we have successfully managed different natural systems for our benefit in the past does not mean we are immune from the natural world or that we are not completely dependent upon natural earth systems for the maintenance of those same societies.

Greer discusses human ecologies in terms of archetypical natural ecologies that undergo periods of succession (or seres). In succession, a new ecological space is first taken up and overrun with an R-selected species. R-selected species grow very fast, use up resources very quickly, but are ultimately unsustainable. In his example of the formation of an old-growth forest, these would be the weeds and undergrowth that first fill an ecological void. As competition for resources becomes important, however, these R-selected species gradually get outcompeted by more energy-efficient K-selected species, like the tall trees, that grow very slowly, but eventually form a climax community that is long-lasting. The longevity does not imply permanency, however. Over time, changing environmental conditions may favor a new R-selected invasive species that would then take over, before the ecosystem transitioned to a new sere of entirely different K-selected species. This process typically occurs in nature on the time frame of centuries or millenia. Greer presents this same dynamic as driving the rise and fall of human ecologies. Writes Greer, "Modern industrial society is the exact equivalent of the first sere of pioneer weeds on a vacant lot - fast growing, resource hungry, inefficient, and at constant risk of replacement by a more efficient K-selected seres as the process of succession unfolds...As it exists today, modern society can best eb described as a scheme for turning resources into pollution as fast as possible. Resource depletion and pollution aren't accidental outcomes of industrialism. They are hardwired into the system: the faster resources turn into pollution , the more the industrial economy prospers, and vice versa. That forms the heart of our predicament. Peak oil is just one symptom of a wider crisis - the radical unsustainability of a severely R-selected human ecology - and trying to deal with the peak of worldwide petroleum production without dealing with the need to move to a broader sustainability will simply guarantee that other symptoms will take its place." This is Leibig's Law of the Minimum applied to industrial society. Oil is the limiting factor on the continued growth of our current society, but were we to be endowed with endless oil, another limiting factor would crop up close on its heels; fresh water, pollution, material shortages, etc. But as it is, oil is the key to understanding the unavoidable transition. Oil, as an energy form is unique and irreplacible. It exists in a concentrated and stable liquid form. It's energy density is tremendous. It can be transported very easily, and thermodynamically, speaking, all the work is already done. Relatively little energy has to be spent on converting the fuel into a useful form. Renewable fuels don't have many of these characteristics, and their much higher price tag reflects the fact that their use is not compatible with the profligate use of energy in today's industrial world. The high energy, water, and land costs, as well as the astronomically high costs of changing to new energy infrastuctures essentially dictate that they will not be used to run the same sort of society in which we currently inhabit (but may find important niches for critical uses of energy).

Greer goes on to present his own view of how the seres of human ecology will change in the near and off into the far distant future. The next sere, which we are currently moving into, according to Greer, is scarcity industrialism. It will be defined by a world still largely hanging on to its old methods of doing things, but gradually, the less productive or marginally economical uses of oil will disappear. We'll likely stop using oil to transport cheap goods around the world. People will drive smaller cars, and plane travel will revert to more of a luxury than a mainstream mode of transportation. Jobs will spring up closer to places of residence, and so forth. Worldwide decline in consumption will be forced to occur at the rate of an additional 4-5% each year, once the full force of oil decline sets in.

As oil becomes critically scarce, the world will be forced to transition to a sere that Greer calls A Salvage Society. In such a society, it won't make economic sense any longer to continue to produce new things and mine new metals. The existing, built infrastructure will then serve as a wonderful repository of raw materials and 'embodied energy' (or energy already spent on the mining, concentration, and production). Skyscrapers, for example, may become a source of salvage for new uses of metals - molded into other, more adaptive forms. Writes Greer, "In the ruins of th old Mayan city of Tikal, excavations have unearthed traces of the people who lived there after the Maya collapse. In this quiet afterword to the city's history, the palaces of the lords of Tikal became the homes of a little community of farmers and hunters who scratched out a living in the ruins of the city and made their cooking fires and their simple pottery in the midst of crumbing splendor. The same thing appears in dead civilizations around the globe. The logic behind it, though, has not often been recognized: when a civilization breaks down, the most efficient economies are most often those that use its legacies as raw material."

The ultimate end goal of these periods of sucession is, hopefully, a climax human ecosystem that Greer calls the 'ecotechnic society'. This society, Greer envisions as a completely sustainable society that uses key technical knowledge and skills to form a new sustainable society. But don't get too excited. This is envisioned to be far into the distant future, when we're all dead, and after many wrenching changes have be wrought. In the meantime, mankind will be driven economically through the other stages, and will have to go through the long processes of adapting its scale (depopulation), its cultures, and its knowledge base. Greer suggests that the best way to drive progress towards an ecotechnic future is to encourage human adaptations that follow the same process as evolution. "Some basic guidelines for adaptive approaches can be sketched out here. First, an adaptive response is scalable- it can be started and tested on a small scale, with modest resources, and scaled up from there if it proves successful. Second, an adaptive response is resilient-it remains useful under changing conditions, and can respond creatively to pressures. Third, an adaptive response is modular - it can be be separated into distinct elements, which can be replaced at different scales and technological levels. Finally, an adaptive response is open- it does not demand assent to any particular ideology or belief system, but rather works with many different ways of thought and life."

Greer identifies a problem solving approach which is most compatible with this form of organic adaptation, that he calls dissensus. Dissensus is the opposite of consensus. It is the idea that everyone should be allowed to have different ideas, implement them on their own, and let the cream rise to the top. It is counter to typical government solutions that seek consensus towards a particular solution and pursue that solution dogmatically, usually on large scales. The dissensus approach resembles commonly held notions of how private businesses should survive by creative innovation and risk. Some will survive long-term, and some will fail - that is the ideal nature of such a system. Greer's proposition then is not necessarily so novel, except that it runs counter to another commonly held ideal that is central to our culture: the worship of the archetypical tragic hero. The tragic hero in stories relies on grand plans ad ideologies, and put everything on the line for an ideal. The romanticism associated with the tragic hero underlies a lot of decisions that we collectively make as a society and is the basis for hope and grand dreams. But as Greer points out, the tragic hero always dies in the end. Greer offers the comic hero as an alternative. The comic hero muddles through life, making wrong turns, "stumbling cluelessly through situations with no grander agenda than coming out the other side with a whole skin...unlike tragic heroes, they do usually come out alive on the other side, and often bring the rest of the cast with them." Besides following a more organic approach towards problem solving, the comic hero approach is also better able to succeed because of the shifting landscapes in the future. As Greer puts it, "Those who try to plan an ecotechnic society today are in the position of a hapless engineer tasked in 1947 with drafting a plan to produce software for computers that did not exist yet."

Much of the rest of Greer's book is devoted to understanding how various aspects of out lives and societies fit into the context of the sea change ahead of us; dispelling myths, suggesting positive avenues to pursue, and suggesting which mores can be thrown out and which should be saved. This discussion is broken down into seven sections:

1. FOOD: Greer laments the fact that industrial agriculture treats soil as a barren infertile matrix, that is pumped with artificial, and unsustainable quantities of nutrients and despoiled with dangerous chemicals. The industrial approach is anathema to the natural ecosystem approach that is so central to Greer's druid beliefs. In the industrial food production model, nutrients are treated as a raw material that must be mined, and treated on the tail end as garbage to be disposed of. Sustainable food production on the other hand must close the nutrient cycle. The gist of his argument is that there are proven, safe and effective ways to turn plant waste and human and animal waste into valuable fertlilizers, restoring the nutrients lost from the agricultural process. They rely on composting and humanure techniques. I personally find the concept of humanure very intriguing. I've witnessed first-hand from the Cheapeake Bay Foundation's composting of human waste that once the composting process is complete, the remains smell very benign. Greer mentions that the harmful bacteria which make our wastes smell are destroyed in the heat given off by a proper compost pile.

Greer suggests that the organic farming revolution represents a huge step in the right direction, and one of the few movements towards sustainability that is really gaining large-scale traction.

2. HOME - A shift needs to be made from designing homes for aesthetics and uniformity to letting form follow from function. Homes need to work with natural processes and the sun to provide the right thermal conditions with a minimum of external energy input. Homes need to be designed that are responsible for producing some of their own energy. There are cheap solutions for some of these things, as Greer points out, like straw-bale walls that are stable and weatherproof, and provide 3 times the thermal insulation of typical stud walls. The unfortunate predicament that we are in is that we will be more or less stuck with much of the housing stock we currently have, as the complete replacement of much of today's cities and suburbs would be prohibitively expensive, in energy terms.

Greer insists on the importance of home economics - learning to produce valuable things for consumption by th family within the home, rather than seeking to pay for externally-created goods with earned income outside the home. We, as a society, says Greer, need to learn how to be proficient in a wide range of different skills, or else we are liable to fall into the 'specialization trap.' To illustrate the dangers of becoming overly specialized, Greer gives an example from the fall of Rome: "The pottery works at La Graufesenque in southern Gaul, for instance, shipped exquisite products throughout the western empire and beyond it. Ceramics bearing the La Graufesenque stamp have been found in Denmark and Eastern Germany, hundreds of miles past Roman frontiers. Good pottery was so cheap and widely available that even rural farm families could afford elegant tableware, sturdy cooking pots and watertight roof tiles. All this ended when Rome fell. When archaeologists opened the grave of a sixth-century Saxon king at Sutton Hoo in eastern Britain, the pottery they found told a stark tale of technological collapse. Had it been made in fourth century Britain, the Sutton Hoo pottery would have been unusually crude for a peasant farmhouse; two centuries later, it sat on the table of a king. What's more, most of it had to be imported because the potter's wheel dropped entirely out of use in Britain - one of many technologies lost in a cascading collapse that took the island down to levels of impoverishment more extreme than anything since the subsistence crises of the middle Bronze Age more than a thousand years before...Huge pottery factories like the one at La Graufesenque, which used specialist labor to turn out quality goods in volume, coud make a profit only by marketing their wares across much of a continent, using far-flung networks of transport and exchange to get products to consumers who wanted pottery and had denarii to spend...The political implosion of the Roman Empire thus turned an economic advantage into a fatal vulnerability. As transport and exchange networks came apart, the Roman economy went down with it, and that economy had relied on centralied production and specialized labor for so long that no one knew how to replace it with local resources."

So a practical solution that Greer proposes is to keep one family member employed in the home economy. When the home economy can be made productive enough, it can lessen or negate the burden caused by the lack of a second income stream. This feeds back into the dire need for better architecture. Making the home a productive place depends on having a properly sized kitchen and space for craftsmanship, room to garden, good lighting, etc.

3. WORK- Greer's views on the future of work mirror those of economist Jeff Rubin. The two factors (Economies of scale and cheap labor) that have driven globalization in the direction of fewer and fewer, larger and larger business manufacturing goods on the other side of the world will gradually be overcome by diseconomies of distance. Transport, (and I would add, especially overland transport) will become very expensive, which will spell a gradual end to cheap products made overseas. Declining fossil fuel availability will mean market-driven prioritization of what still makes sense to be made far away, and what, out of sheer necessity, must be made locally, with minimal energy inputs. An economy is a system that takes in energy, raw materials, and human labor and produces the necessities and luxuries of human existence. For much of human history, the energy input to the system existed primarily as inputs to the human labor component (i.e. food). The past 100 years has seen a sweeping change in the balance of inputs. technology, and especially cheap energy has facilitated the substitution of most of the human labor input with energy. A very many people in the past decades have worked at jobs that were purely superfluous positions designed to find additional ways in which to flounder the abundant energy at our disposal. As cheap energy becomes increasingly scarce, a balance will be restored between these three inputs. Not only will the manufacturing come home again, but labor, especially for tasks that aren't strictly necessary, or aren't done particularly efficiently by fossil-fuel powered machines will return to being performed by human labor. Here are the careers that Greer envisions will be in high demand during deindustrialization:

-local trades (he gives examples of butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, soap an beer makers)

-engineering of low-tech transportation networks, like railroads and canals

- salvage trades (demolition, recycling, small appliance repair, etc)

- ecologists (those who understand how to use natural flows and cycles to perform many of the societal functions that fossil fuels use today. For example, replacing insecticides by natural methods of attracting the predators of unwanted pests, and creating swales for flood prevention)

ENERGY- much of this section is devoted to dispelling myths about technology, energy, and progress. He discusses the innovation fallacy, common among economists that innovation can always trump resource limits. He notes that Nazi Germany had the most innovative technology on the planet, but one of the biggest factors in its defeat was a lack of oil. The Germans developed coal to liquids technology during the war to provide liquid fuel for the ongoing war. This technology actually had a negative net-energy, meaning it took more energy to mine, transport, and process the coal into liquid fuel than was avaiable in the fuel itself. The only value in this process was the form of the fuel. The airplanes required liquid fuel. The process, however, was enormously expensive in energy terms, and only made sense in a war economy. In a normal economy, the lesson is that technical feasibility is much less important in novel energy technologies than net energy is. Net energy is very strongly correlated with energy price, and for good reason. Many people advocate very strongly for nuclear energy, and forsee breeder reactors as the solution to our energy problems, and don't understand why we're not building more nuclear plants. The answer lies in its low net energy, and therefore, prohibitively high price. Next, Greer brings up the issue of infrastructure. Often new energy sources are touted that could take the place of petroleum. Such a transition runs into the paradox of produciton: "If energy prices are high because supplies are limited, the obvious solution is to increase the supply by producing more energy. At the same time, if this requires replacing one energy resource with another that cannot be produced, distributed, or consumed using the identical infrastructure, the immediate impact of such a replacement will be to raise energy prices, not lower them. The direct and indirect energy costs of building the new energy system become a source of additional demand that, intersecting with limited supply, drive prices up even further than they otherwise would rise." When energy prices are already so high that they are causing economic turmoil, this becomes quite the predicament, indeed. The only way out, is to invest first in large-scale conservation programs that can free up the required energy. The point of this whole discussion is that conservation will take a much more prominent role in the coming years than any large-scale switch to a new energy source will.

COMMUNITY - Like many other writers on peak oil, Greer stresses the need to reinvest ourselves in our communities - to develop local networks that have some reasonable level of division of labor. Greer has as much contempt for the idea that one's personal solution to peak oil should entail a flight to isolation as he does for the sprawling mega-cities of today's industrial world. Greer offers that a city of 20,000 to 200,000 people, situated in an agricultural area might provide the optimal backdrop for a post-peak world.

CULTURE - The main point to be made here is that culture IS memory. "An authentic culture roots into the collective experience of a community's past and from this source draws meaning for the present and tools for the future. Thus, culture is a constant negotiation between the living and the dead, as new conditions call for reinterpretation of past experience and redefine the meanings that are relevant and tools that are useful. When a society gives up on these negotiations and abandons the link with its past, what remains is not originality, but stasis, in which a persistent set of common assumptions and popular narratives are rediscovered and rehashed endlessly under a veneer of novelty. Even the most hackneyed notions can count on being described as new and innovative ideas unlike anything anyone has thought before...[An example] is the profusion of claims that everything will be all right if only the right people are given unchecked power. This sort of thinking has become unpleasantly common in some parts of the alternative scene...The arguments used to justify these schemes differ only in minor details from the ones used by defenders of aristocratic privelege in 19th century Europe...There is a way out of this paradox of unoriginal originality though its at least as paradoxical: the way to get genuinely new ideas is to deliberately learn and value the old ones." One of the main purposes of Greer's book is actually to promote actively passing on the valuable parts of our culture and the lessons of the past through the coming collapse of industrial society. He notes that during past collapses, it is often this kind of informaiton that is lost. We only have the knowledge of Greek philosophy because the texts of Greek scholars were transcribed and kept in monastic libraries. Otherwise, this knowledge would have never made it to the renaissance, and would not have provided the background for which the founders of our own country, like Thomas Jefferson, constructed the rules by which our society operates.

Housing Hunt in Portland

2010-07-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

I'm on a mission in Portland to find a home for Nick and I for our first year here. Started a post last night, saved it, but can't find it this morning.

Last night it hit home that our top criterion are garage, garden and proximity to OHSU. Using these keywords, I found 4 new places to check out today.

http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/apa/1859746411.html

http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/apa/1857670303.html

http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/apa/1857006520.html

http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/apa/1858125927.html

I have appointments this afternoon at the two houses. The downside is that they are both $1095, (a score of -6.9 points) which is close to our budget cut-off of $1100.

Please let me know if you think they're worth it!

Ash =)

Great CNN video on urbanites switching to farming

2010-07-22T09:58:00.000-07:00

I love the young guy in here who went to Yale, became an investment banker on Wall Street, and then ditched it all for Organic Farming -selling his wares at a farmer's market in Baltimore. He's much happier for the change - and in my opinion, the world is a better place for it.

Six Perspectives on Collapse - Part 2: Joseph Tainter's 'Collapse of Complex Societies'

2010-07-06T21:16:00.000-07:00

Joesph Tainter's 1990 book 'The Collapse of Complex Societies' is a very complete and seminal work in the study of civilizational collapse. Tainter came from a background as an archaeologist, and now is a professor in the department of Environment and Society at the University of Utah.

The book at times reads like a textbook, which makes sense coming from an institutional academic like Tainter. The book is built off of a phenomenal literature review on all of history's theories of collapse, spanning a dozen different themes, and philosphers from Plato to Toynbee. Tainter offers a critique of each of the major themes of collapse, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses, before finally presenting his own thesis.

Tainter is a bit like the Stephen Hawking of collapse - searching for a grand unified theory of collapse. He comes to disdain most of the major themes of collapse in the literature review with the exception of economic explanations of collapse, which he deems to be the strongest explanatory theme. Tainter's own economic thesis is built on a four statements that are built upon each other:

1. Human societies are problem solving organizations

2. Sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance

3. Increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita and

4. Investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem-solving response often reaches a point of declining marginal returns.

To put it in another way, societies tend to pursue increases in complexity as a problem-solving response, but after a certain point in time, each new unit of investment in various forms of complexity yields a lower return (benefit) to society, compared the same unit in a previous time. When the return on these marginal investments in complexity falls below certain critical thresholds for a society, the society becomes trapped because there is not enough surplus to cover the expanding costs that come with these increases in complexity. After a certain point, brute economic forces dictate that problems either go unsolved or are solved by solutions that engender reductions in complexity (breaking up of the political structure and beuaracracy, breaking up of the state into smaller pieces, abandonment of expensive construction and maintenance of infrastructure, reduced population, etc).

Tainter explores this thesis in detail for three collapsed societies, which he intentionally picks at three vastly different scales, to illustrate the universal applicability of this theory. On the small scale is the Chacoan Society of present day New Mexico, on the medium scale is the Classic Lowland Maya, and on the large scale is the Roman Empire.

Tainter concludes his book by arguing how the valid components of other theories of collapse can be subsumed under his economic theory of collapse and discussing the implications for today's globalized society.

This post is going to be pretty long because I want to dive into some degree of depth into many of the different chapters of the book which I found illuminating. I'll start with the literature review, broken down into the host of themes that exist in the literature. I'm giving this section special attention because it essentially allows me to expand this series beyond the six perspectives into many more, if only superficially.

1. Depletion of cessation of a vital resource or resources on which the society depends

This theme conists of two subthemes - the depletion of a resource base due to human mismanagement and the more rapid loss of resources due to an environmental fluctuation or shift in climate. Here are various excerpts:

Mesopotamia (R. McC. Adams,1981): "When powerful regimes pursued policies of maximizing resource production, complex irrigation systems were developed that were beyond local abilities to manage and repair. State control was required. When the political realm proved unstable, dangers of salinity increased and the possibility loomed for sudden, catastrophic fluctuations... Impressive accomplishments were built on an unstable political base, and at the expense of increasing ecological fragility. When revenues dropped, the costs of agricultural management remained stable or increased..."

The Roman Empire (Waateringe,1975): "Large markets, the Pax Romana, road networks, and centralized administration created a situation in early roman times where food shortages could be alleviated to a greater degree than previously. The subsequent opportunities to profit from agriculture led to intensification and surplus production. Population consequently increased, leading to still greater demands for food and then to agricultural exhaustion...Deforestation led to erosion, the most readily accessible minerals were mined, lands were overgrazed, and agriculture declined. Food shortages and population decline sapped the empire's strength."

Tainter's own observation is that dealing with resource uncertainties is a common activity of complex societies, and may be one of the things they do best. He thinks that research must focus n the characteristics of the society that prevent an appropriate response rather than on the characteristics of the depleted resource.

2. The occurrence of some insurmountable catastrophe

These generally consist of one-time natura events like hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Tainter observes that "Complex societies regularly provide for catastrophes and routinely experience them without collapsing. If the society cannot absorb a catastrophe, then in many cases the characteristics of the society will be of greater interest, obviating the catastrophe explanation." Essentially, he is saying that catastrophes can provide the final straw that undoes an already weakened society, but any economically healthy society should be able to provide for rebuilding after catastrophes strike.

3. Insufficient response to circumstances

Interestingly, this is one of the conclusions to come from Jared Diamond's 'Collapse'. Various other expanations along this line are presented as well;

Flannery and Rappaport (1977): "Self-sufficiency and autonomy of local systems are reduced as specialization increases. As special-purpose subsystems become increasingly differentiated, stability declines. Disruptions occurring anywhere will be spread everywhere, whereas in less complex settings, a society would be cushioned against disruptions by less specialization, less interlinkage between parts, and greater time delays between cause and ultimate outcome."

Phillips (1979): "Efficiency...leads to inflexibility in resource allocation. [Early on], a large proportion of the new resources will be used in non-critical or low-return ways. This has the consequence of creating a hidden reserve that can be used for emergencies, for such non-critical activities are suspendable in a crisis. But through time, social and political institutions emerge that use this resource base more efficiently (fully). Eventually, most resources are allocated to support of 'efficient' institutions, leaving no reserves or flexibility in resource allocation."

Elman Service's 'Law of Evolutionary Potential': "The more specialized and adapted a form in a given evolutionary stage, the smaller its potential for passing to the next stage" (This seems to me to essentially be a restatement of the law of diminishing returns that Tainter bases his own thesis upon!)

R.N. Adams (1975): "Rigidity and conservatism result from investment in controlling major energy sources." I see this as saying that societies become unwilling to walk away from major sunk costs, even when it is prudent.

Renfrew (1979): "Under stress, complex societies lack the option to diversify, to become less specialized. By doing more of what may have caused the problem in the first place, the breakdown of the system is made inevitable." Under the same umbrella, Ferraro (1914) argues in regard to Rome "A situation developed in which the problems of cities were treated with a dose of the very remedy sure to aggravate things: furhter expenditures on the cities and more taxes on agriculture. Ultimately this system exceeded its tolerance and collapsed"

Along the line of Jared Diamond's thesis, Conrad and Demarest (1984) argue, in regard to the Inca, "Ideological factors which were beneficial early in the histories of these empires became maladaptive later"

Friedman and Rowlands (1977) present an explanation for tribal societies that seems like an eerie rewording of present-day problems: "Competitive feasting in tribal societies gives an incentive for surplus production. By the acquisition of captive external slaves and internal debt slaves, a conical clan forms in which one descent group promotes itself to chiefly rank. The expanding chiefdom, practicing perhaps swidden agriculture, will inevitably collapse due to declining productivity in an economy demanding accelerating surpluses."

Tainter is a little more sympathetic to these views. He organizes them into

A. the Dinosaur model, where a coplex society is seen as a lumbering colossus, fixed in its morphology and incapable of rapid change Locked into an evolutionary dead-end, it represents an investment in structure, size, and complexity that is awesome and admirable, yet highly maladaptive. Interestingly, this fits exactly with my discussion of the cementing of adaptations.

B. The runaway train model - A complex society is seen as impelled along a path of increasing complexity, unable to switch directions, regress or remain static. When obstacles impinge, it can continue only in the direction that it is headed, so that catastrophe ultimately results.

C. The house of cards model - suggests that complex societies, either as a rule or in certain kinds of environments, are inherently fragile, operating on low margins of reserve, so that their collapse is inevitable.

Tainter's response is that these may be true, but are insufficient explanations. He asks the question "Why might societies develop these characteristics?"

4. Other complex societies

This is essentially the explanation that societies collapse due to interactions with other competing societies. Tainter argues that conflict between societies more often leads to cycles of expansion and contraction than to collapse.

5. Intruders

This would be the case of the overthrow of a complex society by various barbarians.

Tainter wonders in this case why barbarians would destroy a civilization if it is worth invading in the first place. More concretely, he asks the question, 'Why would a larger and more complex society be defeated or overthrown by a simpler one?' Obviously further explanation is required.

6. Class Conflict, societal contradictions, elite mismanagement or misbehavior

This is one theme that really spans the centuries. Plato believed proper government to be a balance of democracy and despotism, with an excess of either leading to decay.

Ibn Khaldun (14th century): "Dynasties run their course from accession to fall in three to four generations...When taxes are low, the population is more productive and tax yield is greater. Yet as the dynasty evolves, increased spending on luxury leads to higher taxes. Eventually taxes become so burdensome that productivity first declines, then is stifled. As more taxes are enacted to counter this, the point is finally reached where the polity is destroyed."

G. Vico (18th century): "In a civil society, discord fanned by demagoguery leads to the abandonment of civic responsibilities for the pursuit of individual goals. This in turn leads to barbarism."

M. Olson (1982): "In complex societies, special interest groups promote their own welfare above that of the state. The resulting damage leads to national economic weakness."

Jankowsa (1969) on Mesopotamian collapse: "Jankakowski constructs a scenario where trade within the neo-Assyrian Empire and tribute imposed on subject countries brought advantage only to Assyria: any goods bought from subject countries were purchased with their own tribute. The subject countries then had to seek alternative trade routes, avoiding Assyrian commercial centers. Increasing economic differentiation of regions was in 'cntradiction' to the predatory policy of the Assyrian Empire. As this contradiction grew there came to be more traffic along new trade routes, and less along old ones."

Tainter states "We cannot cite collapse as a function of greed if greed itself is not fully understood. To the extent that elite self-aggrandizement is controlled by social, political, and economic factors, then it is these factors that are relevant to understanding collapse."

7. Mystical Factors

Tainter, as a scientific academic, is particularly disdainful of any mystical approaches to understanding collapse, essentially arguing that they present no causal framework for understanding the factors that lead to collapse. These theories are pretty far-ranging, from Saint Augustine to Hegel, to Spengler and Toynbee. Many of them embrace cyclical models of civilization, ascribing to them the stages of the life (infancy, adolescence/growth, adulthood/flourishing, senescence, death). Many others like Toynbee, Schwietzer, and St. Augustine focused on the moral and ethical character of a nation as implicating its collapse. A common ground between most of these philosophers is the idea that a society can be roundly imbued with character traits that define its identity or its trajectory along some postulated cycle. These are definitely part of an age-old (Think Noah and the Ark; God's punishment for society's loss of morals as a metaphor for collapse) approach of stereotyping of an entire society according to a perceived zeitgeist. Of course, there are usually grains of truth behind every stereotype, and there can certainly be internal and external factors that drive cyclical generalized human behavior. So I think these theories should not be wholly waved off as Tainter does, but we should seek to understand what factors drive these cycles.

8. Chance concatenation of events

This is somewhat of a minority view that argues that certain societies collapsed due to the simultaneous and random nature of various harmful events or processes. Tainter argues that all of history can be seen as a chance concatenation of events, and that concatenation of negative random factors happens far more frequently than collapse.

9. Economic factors

As I already mentioned, Tainter views these as the strongest explanatory themes- ones that break down collapse into discussions of changing cost/benefit ratios. He states that economic models identify a causal chain between the controlling mechanism and the observed outcome.

Tainter presents his 'declining marginal returns on investments in complexity' thesis by presenting empirical evidence of declining marginal returns in our own society as evidence that this a generalized process. He states that 'The law of deminishing returns is one of the few phenomena of such regularity and predictability that economists are willing to call it a law...Complexity is a solution to percieved problems, and its facility in resolving these problems is based in part on its ratio of benefits/investment. Where this ratio is unfavorable, complexity is not a very successful strategy." Among the evidence that Tainter presents are various marginal productivity curves for agriculture. Increasing investments on agricultural intensification (i.e. increased yeield per acre) lead to diminishing returns (in the from of crop yield/labor hour) on each additional unit of investment (labor hours/acre). He shows a steeply declining curve in the number of patents issued per scientist/engineer, suggesting that as the most easy to conceptualize and develop inventions are patnted, each new (and more tchnically challenging) patent requires an ever larger pool of scientists and engineers. In health, he shows a steeply declining curve of Life expectancy/national health expenditures, suggesting that historicaly increasing costs in health care have produced much smaller and smaller increases in life expectancy (and an update for today: it has been cited by many mainstream news outlets that today's children in the U.S. are actually expected to live shorter lives than their parents. ) So in this particular case, the marginal product according to this index is perhaps negative. In education, Tainter shows how an increasing fraction of GDP and increasing $/capita has gone towards education, which is directing its pupils towards higher and higher levels of specialization. Tainter presents a further graph demonstrating sharply declining degrees/dollar spent on education. Tainter says "General education, which occurs early in life, is of the most lasting, widespread value. It is also attained at the owest comparative cost. Later, mor specialized training is considerably costlier. Its benefits may apply only to narrow segments of the society, while its costs are spread throughout the system. It may institutionalize rigidity where flexibility is called for." This is the whole concept behind the idea of 'The knowledge burden,' and if I have time, I'd like to devote a post to that because it dovetails nicely with the discussion of declining marginal returns in education.

The controlling mechanism behind these processes is easily understandable. In a fixed domain, whether it is an agricutural field or the set of possible inventions or the development of energy production, there are two important tenets:

1. There is some theoretical limit to what can be produced or achieved. In other words, in the agricutural field, there is some maximum theoretical yeild of a given crop, based on the best possible seed variety, distributed in the right way, with the crop optimally encouraged to grow. Limits do exist, while costs in pursuit of those limits have no theoretical limit themselves.

2. Solutions are generally pursued in the order of the highest to the lowest cost/benefit ratio. This is inherent in energy production. The large, easy to access oil fields are the ones developed first, followed by progressively smaller and/or harder to access and process oil sources. Same for wind power. The wind sites with the best wind resource, closest to the areas of electrical demand will be the sites developed first. This at some point may leave more marginal wind sites, farther away from population centers, requiring increased supportive transmission infrastructure.

For most situations, there is a third factor, that can initially cause the marginal productivity curve to increase. This can be variously be thought of as technology or the learning curve. As societies become better or more efficient in their pursuit or development of complex solutions. They may come to use better tools on more appropriate scales. Eventually though, the countervailing forces of natural limits and increasingly expensive marginal solutions cause the marginal productivity curve to reach an apex and then decline. When this situation occurs in many spheres of economic activity, it means that the society has to allocate more and more of its productive resources (surplus) towards investment in solutions that will in the future provide less of that same surplus. The ensuing process of escalation is what is inherently responsible for ultimate collapse (at least according to Tainter, and I would argue that this is probably true in most cases of collapse; those that don't have obvious/catastrophic explanations. Surely, for example, this framework does not apply to the Aztecs who were overwhelmed by the conquistador invaders with their ironwork technology).

Tainter explores the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Classic Lowland Maya, and the Chacoan society under this framework. Below, I'll summarize how the fall of each civilization fits into the context of declining marginal returns on investment in complexity.

For the Roman Empire, Tainter implicates declining marginal returns on investment in empire as the main controlling factor in its decline. Rome illustrates a very classic empire, using military force to expand the borders of its empire. Territorial expansion for an empire bears the economic cost of military investment, but yields the spoils of plunder, slaves to perform free labor (either physical slaves, or in today's empire, debt slaves), and annual taxes/tributes from the conquered peoples. According to Tainter, " Under this kind of payoff, Rome's conquests were economically self-perpetuating. The initial series of victories, undertaken as a mater of self-preservation, began increasingly to provide the economic base for further conquests. By the last two centuries, B.C., Rome's victories may have become nearly costless, as conquered nations footed the bill for further expansion." This was the initial phase of increasing marginal return on investment.

The mechanism for collapse is the following: initally, Rome sought to conquer the most economically advantageous civilizations - those that were nearby, and relatively indefensible. The fact that they were indefensible meant that the investment in military strength on the part of Rome could be relatively minimal in the pursuit of the conquest. The fact that they were nearby meant that fewer continuing costs had to be paid in continued coercion and legitimization in order to maintain the status of the conquered state as a Roman tribute colony. It also meant that the surplus and tribute, paid primarily in agricultural output (agriculture was 90% of the Roman economy) didn't have to be transported as far. Food transport costs greatly reduced the net benefit to Rome of the surplus of distant colonies. Tainter writes "A wagon load of wheat,for example, would double in value with a land journey of only 480 kilometers, a camel load in 600 kilometers. Land transport was so costly and inefficient that it was often impossible to relieve inland famines; local surpluses could not be economically carted to areas of shortage." Progressively, the territorial expansionary policy incurred higher military costs, at lesser and lesser benefit, and at progressively higher costs of maintaining the resulting empire.

The symptoms were clear, at least in retrospect: "Military costs strained finances. Septimus Severus increased pay of troops to 400 denarii per year. His sucessor, Caracalla, raised it to 600, while by the end of the Severan dynasty it stood at 750...The expenses of government were steadily increasing out of proportion to any increase in reciepts and the State was moving steadily in the direction of bankruptcy... [In a 50 year period during the height of the empire], there were at least 27 recognized Emporors, at least twice that many usurpers who were killed , and at one time thirty claimants to the throne." An increasingly insolvent empire needed increasing amounts of money to maintain its troops and pay for activities that promoted legitimization of the empire (or in other words suppression of discontent) including, among other things, the "dole", which is essentially a universal monetary handout to the populace. (The term "bread and circuses" is also a reference to legitimization activities of Rome) It had to pay for these increasing costs with fewer and fewer surpluses, beyond the point of insolvency. Its only way to do this (using gold and silver currency, with limit rates of extraction) was to debase the currency - reformulating the coins as a mixture of the gold and silver with more abundant base metals (in the end debasing the gold and silver down to 5%). The result of continued massive debasement to essentially cover up insolvency was hyperinflation. "in Egypt (which at the time was subsumed by the Roman Empire), from which the best documentation has survived, a measure of wheat that in the first century A.D. sold for six drachmae, had increased to 200 drachmae in 276 A.D., 9000 in 314, 78,000 in 324, and to more than 2,000,000 drachmae in 334 A.D." During periods of high returns on investment in complexity, the empire was able to manage crises, but as the costs to maintain the empire rose precipitously, it was increasingly powerless against stress surges. Plagues of diseases and barbarian incursions racked the empire. "The tax burden was such that peasant proprietors could acumulate no reserves, so if barbarians raided, or drought or locusts diminished the crop, they either borrowed or starved." This led to widespread abandonment of otherwise productive farmland, further exaccerbating problems related to lack of surpluses. At the end of the empire, the taxes and the government's administration were so oppressive to the population that in many places, the invading barbarians were hailed as saviors, rather than as invaders, and the Western empire rapidly reduced in size and extent. In the end, only the Eastern empire remained, and at much reduced levels of complexity.

The discussion of the Mayan and Chacoan collapse are somewhat shorter. They are similar to one another in their contributing factors, although at different scales. Both the Chacoan and Mayan societies existed in regions of high geographical redundancy, meaning that each region does not have very much diversity in soil, temperatures, rainfall, terrain, or ecosystem types.

In the Chacoan society of New Mexico, the redundancy applied to the vast center of the San Juan Basin. Along the circumference of the basin, sharp terrain features and elevation differences provided geographic diversity. In the Mayan region (Yucutan), however, the geogaphic redundancy extended across the region.

The consequence of geographic redundancy is that rainfall, temperatures, and thus agricultural output tend to be nearly identical across the redundant area. The Mayans engaged in an 'energy averaging' system, whereby cities with agricultural surpluses would trade food for luxury items and other necessary goods. In some seasons one city would have a surplus, and in other years, it would have a deficit, and other cities would have a surplus (despite the redundancy). This surplus was not a matter of having more favorable weather or terrain, but simply having enough available land to produce more food than the city needed. What changed this situation was population growth. Tainter notes "As a population impinges on the capacity of its food production system, fluctuations in productivity become increasingly consequntial [in geographically redundant areas]." So there was a declining marginal productivity of each new member of the labor force, as arable land became fixed (constrained), and intensification of agricultural production on already productive land has declining marginal returns. What really kicked collapse into overdrive, however, was that the Mayan cities sought to relieve food shortages in uniformly lean agricultural years by raiding other Mayan cities. The result was investment in another form of complexity - monumental construction. The famous Mayan pyramids and temples were essentially built as deterrants to raiders. Paintings on the temples depicted the brutal torture of prisoners. The temples thus gave a stark visual impression of a formidable city with a strong and cruel defense. A sort of arms race ensued. Temples and pyramids started poping up, and as time passed, they became bigger and bigger and bigger. Thus, more and more had to be expended on temple construction, just to keep up with neighboring cities. This increasing cost came with the same benefit in terms of deterence (thus a declining marginal return). Eventually, the cost became too much to bear (as the labor to construct the buildings came at a cost of even more food for the laborers), and collapse proceeded rapidly. Tainter notes "Even as construction ceased at the major centers, many small sites began to erect monuments for the first time. Between 830 and 909 AD, 65 percent of monuments were erected at minor sites. More than 40% of the centers that erected monuments at this time did so for the first time. Often, this was the only monument such sites dedicated before they, too, were swept up in the collapse."

As I mentioned before, the Chacoan society had the same problems with geographical redundancy, but had the advantages of diversity on the periphery. In the Chacoan case, declining marginal returns set in because initially, new sites would pop up on the periphery, increasing diversity, but as this ring became fully populated with settlements, new sites were limited to the redundant interior of the basin. Thus each new city decreased the overall diversity of the region. This region had much more year-to-year and long-cyclical variation in rainfall and temperatures, and thus was more vulnerable than the Maya to redundancy.

Tainter's framework for understanding collapse offers an economic perspective that is really useful in 'seeing the forest from the trees.' It provides a very concrete economic lens through which to view various components of economic growth. Rather than seeing growth and advancing technology as a uniformly wealth-producing feature of a society, it is much more useful to dig deeper into cost-benefit ratios of growth and to recognize patterns of declining marginal returns. In this light, I'd like to post the following graph, which in this context, I believe, has serious consequences for the solvency of our monetary system which can be seen in this context as approaching collapse (and whether a broader collapse would follow requires further discussion. I'll conclude this series of posts with a more complete analysis of our present day society.)

One of the key concepts of the book is that the return on investment does not have to be negative to precipitate collapse. As an engineer, I often see net-energy analysis that proports (implicitly or expliciti that because a form of energy production yields more energy than it takes to produce, it is a viable alternative to, oil, say. The reality is that civilization functions on surpluses, and increasingly complex civilizations need larger and larger surpluses. So even with positive returns on investment, if the return is declining, it can reduce surpluses sufficiently to hamstring many of the essential functions of a complex society. If enough of the economy is experiencing declining marginal returns, not enough of the economy is compensating with increasing marginal returns, and the society is not resilient enough to change its behaviors or become more efficient at utilizing its surpluses, then collapse of some form is imminent.

One final point that Tainter makes in his own conclusion is that the notion that collapse is necessarily a bad or undesirable thing is a notion that has its roots in our cultural narratives of an upward arrow of progress, and of technological and developmental progress being natural and universally desirable outcomes. In reality, argues Tainter, collapse is an economizing process. What he means is that by going through the process of collapse, the society is adapting to pursue increasing marginal returns again. It can only do this by breaking itself up socioeconomically; with smaller entities of the society untethering themselves from overextended empires, bloated bureaucracies, and the deleterious effects of overpopulation. This is not to say that the collapse is in any way peaceful or pleasant for those involved, but it is the economic solution of last resort that restore economic functionality to a population.

Battelle Softball - 9 Games into the season

2010-06-30T19:50:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a rough ride. We started out with three wins, then lost four, and have now won two again. Our team's offense disappeared for a while, and we let quite a few balls drop in the outfield. It seems all's on the mend now. Today's game was really back and forth. I made a couple good plays in the outfield, had three hits, three RBIs, and scored the game-winning run. For better or worse, Aisling has perfected the art of lining out to the third baseman.

Our Community Garden - Progress and Lessons Learned: Part 2 - Growth

2010-06-19T17:21:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been about a month and a half since the last post on the garden, and it should be clear from the headline picture that a lot has happened since then. Gone are the crazy days of mid-spring with the freezing temperatures and the high winds, and Richland is beginning to settle into a calmer, warmer, and sunnier summer pattern. That said, the weather remains unseasonably cool and wet. June has seen temperatures 5-10 degrees below average and 3 times the normal rainfall. The story was much the same for May. Normally we'd be dealing with temperatures in the 80's and 90s this time of year, but instead it is 70s and 80s, with some days still in the upper 60s.
I am generally up at the garden plot every 3 or 4 days, and it has been really stunning to observe substantial growth occurring in the short time since each previous visit. Work at the garden over the past month and a half has been mostly relegated to the task of weeding. Especially in May, I would leave for a few days and come back to see the garden almost overtaken with weeds. As I have continually kept weeding, the rate of new weed formation has dropped precipitously. All this weeding has been with the goal of minimizing competition for nutrients, water, and sunlight with the target crops.
Here is an update on the status of each crop type:
Corn: The big winner right now. Corn stalks are running 2-4 feet tall with leaves as wide as 5" They are forming tall, dense rows that have the side-effect of creating a shadow on some of the nearby rows of melons in the afternoon. No sign yet of any ears.
Cauliflower: A close second. Cauliflower plants range in diameter from 8" to 2 feet. They are all leafy right now. No sign of a central vegetable forming yet, but the leaves are prehistoric in size, so it should be only a matter of time.
Tomatoes: These warm weather lovers had a really tough time dealing with the cold earlier in the spring, and their growth seems to have been somewhat stunted. They seem to be getting their act together now, have shed their anemic pale green and brown leaves for bright green, healthy leaves, but remain a god bit smaller than some of the other tomato plants I see in other plots. It remains to be seen whether they will stage a full comeback, but there is plenty of growing season left!
Cantaloupe and Watermelons: The same comments for the tomatoes apply to the melons as well. They appear to be finally on the right path, but are very small. Some plants had a very hard time with the cold and may not make it. There is a nice open patch with no competition for sunlight, where the best melons are. These melons are still small though.

One of the better looking Watermelon Plants

Cauliflower

King Corn

Today's Oil Drum Essay

2010-06-17T11:38:00.000-07:00

'Gail The Actuary' over at TheOilDrum has a great essay posted today about energy decline and the manifestations of this decline in terms of oil prices, access to credit, and downstream effects on things like housing. The analysis is pretty consistent with my own thinking.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6574

The cementing of adaptations OR Why we can't live without Selenium

2010-06-13T17:15:00.000-07:00

This post is borne out of a conversation Aisling and I had last night.

There are a host of very minor trace metals that are actually necessary components of our diet. These include Selenium, Copper, Chromium, and Magnesium, just to name a few. What happens when we don't get an adequate supply of these metals? From various Wikipedia articles...

"Selenium deficiency can lead to Keshan disease, which is potentially fatal. Selenium deficiency also contributes (along with iodine deficiency) to Kashin-Beck disease.[4] The primary symptom of Keshan disease is myocardial necrosis, leading to weakening of the heart. Kashin-Beck disease results in atrophy, degeneration and necrosis of cartilage tissue.[5] Keshan disease also makes the body more susceptible to illness caused by other nutritional, biochemical, or infectious diseases..."
"Signs of zinc deficiency include hair loss, skin lesions, diarrhea, and wasting of body tissues. It is rarely recognised that lack of zinc can contribute to acne. Eyesight, taste,[9][10][11][12][13] smell and memory are also connected with zinc. A deficiency in zinc can cause malfunctions of these organs and functions. Congenital abnormalities causing zinc deficiency may lead to a disease called acrodermatitis enteropathica..."
"The symptoms of chromium deficiency caused by long-term total parenteral nutrition are severely impaired glucose tolerance, a loss of weight, and confusion.[10] Another patient also developed nerve damage (peripheral neuropathy)..."
"Copper deficiency can cause a syndrome of anemia or pancytopenia and a neurodegeneration in humans or other mammals. The neurodegenerative syndrome of copper deficiency has been recognized for some time in ruminant animals, in which it is commonly known as "swayback". Affected animals develop ataxia and spasticity...
Symptoms of magnesium deficiency include: hyperexcitability, muscle weakness and tiredness.[1] Severe magnesium deficiency can cause death from heart failure."

Fortunately, these deficiencies essentially don't occur because these metals are ubiquitously found in a broad spectrum of common foods, making it next to impossible to be deficient in them. They happen to occur in these foods in precisely the right ratios that serve our bodily needs without being so concentrated as to be toxic (and most of these are toxic in high concentrations). It's also worth noting that there is no such thing as Uranium deficiency or Ytterbium deficiency. It is only those metals which are present in the soil in somewhat predictable concentrations, are absorbed by the roots of plants, and thus ended up in the diet of our ancestors.

So the question is: If there never existed any Zinc or Selenium in our diets, would we be as healthy? The answer almost surely is yes. The fact that Zinc is involved in a number of chemical pathways that regulate healthy body tissues was borne of the fact that Zinc molecules were the most convenient and useful molecules for this function and were available in the necessary concentrations to pursue that solution to tissue development. If it had never been available, the body would have adopted a different, but probably nearly as successful solution set. Adaptations, whether biological/evolutionary or those that are part of the lifestyle of living things flow like rivers and electrons, through the path of least resistance. What I'm claiming here is nothing very new or insightful, but a key concept that flows from this understanding, is that once these adaptations are in place, they can become cemented in place, and thus are very hard to change, requiring substantial amounts of time and investment in developing new adaptations.
Think of cell phones. Twenty years ago, cell phones were a very fringe technology. No one but the rich or neuveuax chic businessy types had them. If they completely disappeared, not very much would have been disrupted. But cell phones found an adaptive niche because they allowed people to decouple distance communication with wall-mounted devices. This type of communication could reach places it never reached before, and investment in increasingly outdated methods like land lines dried up, both in physical existence, and in the habits of everyday people and business models of companies. Pay phones have also been disappearing at a rapid rate everywhere from airports to 7-11's. It's not hard to imagine a decade or two down the road, the traditional landline going the way of the telegraph.
To anyone alive today, and observing this shift, it must be obvious that the switch to cell phones engenders more convenience and efficiency in distance communication. It must also be obvious that the change does not occur overnight, but over the course of decades, as peoples' habits had to slowly adapt, and cell phone infrastructure had to be gradually built and refined to enable better service with fewer dropped calls, etc, and for learning curves and economies of scale to develop to such and extent that cell phones were affordable for a critical mass of the population.
What is not often considered in a world that views history through the lens of progress, is that adaptation in the reverse direction takes nearly as much time and investment. If Selenium mysteriously disappeared from our diets overnight, the change would cause a brutal shock to human populations, and it would take many many generations for a suitable replacement series of chemical pathways to be erected within our systems. Likewise, if cell phone towers suddenly stopped working tomorrow, communication and commerce would suffer a substantial blow, and economic systems that once never gave a thought to cell phones would find themselves crippled.
There are countless examples of this kind of situation in modern societies. Technologies that are vastly complex and require large investments in educational training, energy, and supply chain inputs from around the world are increasingly cemented into our functionality as a society.
While it is certainly hyberbole to suggest that these technologies might disappear tomorrow, one can certainly envision a host of scenarios where some of these technologies might be rapidly disrupted on a large scale - perhaps through targeted warfare, natural disasters, or economic depression. The extent to which this becomes a crippling problem for society depends largely on the pace of the change - whether it outpaces our abilities to adapt or not.
This is also the central problem underlying human-induced climate change. It is not that it's never been warmer than it is today or will be in 50 years. Indeed, it's been much warmer in millenia past. It's that the pace of predicted change in many places will likely exceed many species' (and by extension many ecosystems') ability to adapt. Periods of such rapid climate change are rare in the past, but are usually asscociated with mass extinction, or large die-offs in population of certain species.

Back to the topic of technology - there are preemptive strategies for weathering possible shocks to our intensive technology systems. These involve finding ways to reduce dependence in one's own life on high technology - either by choosing not to adopt exceedingly intensive devices in one's lifestyle, or by building in redundancies - low tech means of doing the same thing that can be kept on hand and deployed easily if necessary. This might include having a bike (and investing in keeping your body in shape) or living close to public transportation in the event that a serious oil shock makes car transportation unavailbale for a time. Holding on to traditional ways of doing things as redundancies in our lives can often be very rewarding for their own sake. Whether or not I ever have to rely on my own backyard garden for sustenance, I can say emphatically that riding my bike out to our community garden plot and strolling trough our little rows of sprouting plants, as sparrows flit about, rabbits bound around, and white clouds drift overhead brings a renewed sense of connectedness and happiness to my life.

June Day Hike in the Blue Mountains

2010-06-09T20:06:00.000-07:00

The Blue Mountains are a mountain range that covers the far Southeastern corner of Washington State and the far Northeast corner of Oregon. They are volcanic in nature; underlying the soil is a vast network of volcanic basalt shaped over the eons by water. The mountains are essentially a maze of ridgelines, rising from the valley at around 1000 feet elevation, to gentle peaks at up to 6500 feet elevation. The closest ski resort to Richland is Bluewood, nestled right in the middle of the range, completely isolated from civilization. Bluewood recieves 300 inches of snow per year.

It has been a cool and rainy spring here. In May and June so far, Richland has had about 3 times its normal rainfall, and has been about 5-10 degrees cooler than average since early April. My primary apprehension about deciding to hike there was that there might still be too much snow on the ground. We were planning on hiking the Slick Ear and the Grizzly Bear trails, that make an 18-mile loop through the mountains. Unfortunately, we found out that our fears were justified. We had to take a dirt forest service road to get to the trailhead, and we ran into thick, slushy snow at around the 5200 foot level, still miles from the trailhead. So we simply pulled off the trail, and began hiking right there along forest service roads. After two miles of hiking, we reached a signpost pointing to the "Tabletop Mountain Lookout" in 5 miles. So we made that our destination. At least half of this road between there and Tabletop was covered in snow, and towards the end, we had to scramble over steep rocks, so it was a very challenging 5 miles. The view was spectacular though. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. From certain vantage points, we could see the valleys of Northeastern Oregon far below, and from others we could see across to the much more rugged Wallowa mountains, where we hope to hike later this month.

On the way back, I persuaded Aisling to take an adventurous detour down the spine of a snow-covered ridge. We had to cross a steep rushing creek to get back to the forest service road. Luckily, there was a snow-bridge across so we didn't have to wade in. The hike back up was a steep scramble over fallen logs and twisted brush. Aisling was not happy with me about that. The last few miles headed back to the car were quite challenging. We were doing the whole thing with around 30-40 pounds of gear on our backs to get used to the weight, and it really makes a difference. At the end of the day, my shoulders were really beat. My left knee also got tight, and I've vowed to stretch that out sufficiently so that it can handle some hardcore hiking at the end of the month.

Skunked by a Skunk!

2010-06-02T13:38:00.000-07:00

Life happens fast. All I had to do was bike eight tenths of a mile home from my friends' house after dinner and art class. Similar to Nick's deer incident, this animal came right at me! At my bike! As burnt and pungent as a skunk's defense chemicals are, I definitely prefer that it spray me to knocking me unconscious and resulting in a brain contusion!

It was too dark to see the skunk before it was just about to go under my front wheel. I felt wet drops all over my right exposed shin where the pants were rolled up, then BUMP I went right over the animal. "OMGosh!" I looped around but the little stinker had run off the road.

I walked into the house, and told Nick that I had just got sprayed by a skunk but he would have figured that out on his own! I had to shed my clothes, put everything in the garage- which we have since labeled the "Toxic Garage" and rubbed tomato sauce all over my shin, which apparently is an "Old Wives Tale." Nick got online and started finding web resources for cleaning up skunk odor. There is no information about cleaning up your wife from a skunk incident, just cleaning up your dog! I guess normally you don't get sprayed unless you go chasing and barking after a skunk- which I most certainly did not do! But I should have.

Next step was to try a concoction of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, dish soap and water all over my shin. My skin smelled fine after this, but as I was moving everything outside, walking back and forth, suddenly there was an invisible force field between my husband and me! And he had such distaste on his face! A few minutes of a life of being an Untouchable.

Nick stayed downstairs while I showered, brushed my teeth, and grabbed PJs, my book and a blanket to sleep on the couch. Somehow we switched floor levels and he told me from the top of the stairs that Wikipedia describes the skunk smell "as odors of rotten eggs, garlic and burnt rubber". At that point, I been up since 4:45AM, too sleepy for the odor to bother me, and was wondering why he had to Wiki the smell that he was experiencing first hand!

This morning was the fun activity of mixing a large volume of solution of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, soap and water in a big trash can and covering all of my affected possessions with it. So far, only the shoes still stink- even after bleach-water too.

Anyone who knows my luck with cell phones, will not be surprised that I removed everything from all the pockets of the bags but forgot to get the cell phone out of the pants pocket before dumping them into the cleaning bath! I soon noticed a solid, vibrating object at the bottom of the trash can. It keeps turning itself on and off. Poor phone! I am sorry for the ill-fate of all my cell phones.

"Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." -John Lennon

Photo from: http://www.gifmania.us/Looney-Tunes/Pepe-le-pew/_XXLmisc1.gif

Slouching Towards Despotism

2010-06-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

A very powerful article from Anecdotal Economics, reflected in May, 31st's post at The Automatic Earth.
http://anecdotaleconomics.blogspot.com/2010/05/slouching-toward-despotism.html

A heat pump water heater as an analogy for controlling economic systems

2010-05-26T21:25:00.000-07:00

In graduate school at the University of Maryland, I was responsible for designing and testing a prototype CO2 heat pump water heater. This is a device that pumps heat from the ambient air to a water tank, using CO2 as the heat transfer fluid. It is several times more efficient than a standard electric water heater. An electric water heater has an efficiency around 100%. Just about all of the electric energy that is input to the device is delivered to the water, using a resistive coil. It's very simple to control and to understand, and the output is very constant. On the other hand, the heat pump water heater requires electric energy only run a compressor. The heat transfer fluid (CO2) flows in a cycle through the compressor, then through a "gas cooler" where the high temperature, high pressure gas is cooled by the water from the tank (thereby heating the water. High pressure, medium temperature CO2 then passes through an expansion valve, where it drops to a lower pressure and temperature, and becomes a mixture of vapor and liquid at a cold temperature. It is then sent through an evaporator, where the ambient air is used to evaporate the liquid CO2, putting it back in a vapor form that can then re-enter the compressor. Many times more heat energy is released to the water than was required in the form of electrical energy to run the compressor. The energy efficiency of the system is defined as a Coefficient of Performance, or COP, that is the ratio of useful heat energy delivered to the water (the output) divided by the required electrical energy for the compressor (the input). An immediate thought that might come to mind is that this seems to violate conservation of energy. It doesn't though. The heat input to the CO2 in the evaporator plus the electrical input from the compressor balances the heat released from the CO2 in the gas cooler.
Unlike the electric resistance heater, the heat pump water heater is a rather complex system. The COP depends on a range of factors , principally the temperature of the ambient air, the temperature of the water entering the gas cooler, the CO2 charge (or the amount of CO2 in the system, and the speed of the compressor. These four variables are more or less out of the control of the researcher (me!) running the experiments. There were two "levers" that I could play with, however, to adjust the operation of the system, and thereby affect the COP. These were two valves - one controlling the expansion valve orifice opening, and one controlling the water flow rate. The expansion valve orifice opening controls two things simultaneously - the flow rate of CO2 and the difference between the high and low side temperatures and pressures. A tighter expansion valve opening means a slower flow, but higher temperatures and pressures on the gas cooler side of the system and lower temperatures and pressures on the evaporator side of the system. If the expansion valve is open too much, than the temperature of the CO2 can't get high enough to reliably heat the water, and the COP is very low. When the expansion valve is closed too much, the flow becomes too choked, and there is not a strong enough flow of fluid to maintain a high heat transfer rate, and the compressor requires more and more energy to function. Hence the COP is also low at this point. Somewhere in between there is an optimum point, where these countervailing influences are balanced and the COP is maximized. The graph below demonstrates this effect during steady state conditions (i.e. when the system has had a long enough time to settle to a constant rate of operation).

What this graph does not show, however, is the transient effect of changing the expansion valve opening. A transient effect occurs because the CO2 has significant thermal mass. Thus, the mass flow rate is changed almost instantly by adjusting the expansion valve, but the pressures and, especially the temperatures take time to react to the change. Closing the expansion valve causes the COP to drop for a while, before eventually rising again. Opening the expansion valve causes the COP to rise before dropping back to settle to a new equilibrium. At any time when you are controlling the system, you may not know if you are above or below the optimum point in the graph above, in terms of expansion valve opening, so you don’t know if you’re at point 1 or point 2. Note that both point 1 and point 2 have about the same COP. So you don’t know where you’re at exactly, but you’ve decided that your COP is too low and you’re going to do something about it, so you head for the expansion valve. The graph below shows the transient effects of either opening or closing the expansion valve, depending on whether you’re at point 1 or point 2.

If you’re at point 2 and you close the expansion valve, the COP will drop sharply and rise to settle to an even lower COP. This is bad in the short and long term. If you open the expansion valve, your COP will rise quickly and later drop, settling to a higher level than before. This is better in both the short and the long term! But what if you’re at point 1. If you close the expansion valve, the COP will drop for a short while, before eventually climbing to a higher level, closer to the optimum point. This is the smart long term move, but comes at the cost of an even lower COP in the short term. However, if you open the expansion valve at point 1, you can temporarily raise your COP, but at the cost of sabotaging your long-term prospects by moving yourself even farther from the optimum point, and settling to an even lower COP than before.
This is the perfect analogy for what the major world governments are doing with economic policy. We are at point number 1, and we are opening the expansion valve. Only here, the COP is replaced with national and state budgets, and the expansion valve is replaced with the decision to take on more debt or to pay debt back. So if we’re at point 1, and taking on more debt is tantamount to opening the expansion valve further, why would governments do this? Three reasons:
1) It worked in the past! In the past, we were at point 2 (i.e. in an expansionary economy). More debt meant more federal income in the short and the long term. The short term reason why is obvious. More debt means more money now! The long term reason is that the debt was so valuable as an investment instrument that the increased tax revenues as a result of the debt could be expected to more than make up for the cost of repaying the debt in the future. Since we saw this effect happen repeatedly, we worked it into our economic theories and called it a law. The problem is, over time, the repeated application of that solution has moved us from point 2 back over to point 1. As we continue to apply the old remedy, we find that we’re moving to a lower and lower level of federal income. What worked before doesn’t work now because we’re in a new economic regime. We’re on the other side of the optimum point in the heat pump water heater graph.
2) Government officials are elected to relatively short terms and are more interested, generally, in highlighting economic gains on the timeframe of a few years. If the settling time for federal income is a decade, they have no incentive to apply the right corrective action, and instead continue to pull the lever in the wrong direction in order to maximize short term gain. This means more stimulus programs (read debt) to get the economy moving! Interestingly, publicly traded companies have the same sort of incentive system. Shareholders, who are increasingly in the game for the short term demand maximization of short term profits. From this analogy, it isn’t hard to imagine why short term profits can often be at the expense of long term profits. BP is a great example. To maximize profits, it cut a lot of corners with it well drilling, and will now be facing much lower long-term profits because of its cleanup obligations.
3) Here the analogy breaks down, but what if you knew the economy would enter a death spiral (by which I mean positive feedback loops set in that lead to rapid collapse of the financial system) if federal revenue dropped below $1 trillion. You are currently at 1.1 trillion and falling. Thus there is no way to effectively pay back the debt (since this might say, temporatily bring the revenue down to 900 billion, which is in death spiral territory). Thus the only way to survive is to “extend and pretend” by taking on even more debt, perhaps temporarily propping the federal revenue back to 1.2 or 1.3 trillion. The sad truth is that this might extend things a little bit, but it just means a higher degree of pain when the music stops.
If the real reason is truly reason #3, then we are truly screwed, because it is past a point of no return. There is no way out from reason #3 besides financial insolvency, debt default, massive deflation through a collapse in the money supply (or inflation through government printing of money on a massive scale).

Six Perspectives on Collapse - Part 1: Jared Diamond, 'Collapse'

2010-05-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

This post will be the first in a six part series exploring different writings on the topic of collapse. Collapse is a bit of a loaded word, and brings to mind images of a structures dramatically falling apart. My view at the time of this writing is that we are about 2 years into what will be seen down the road as a collapse of globalized industrial civilization. What this means exactly, what forms this collapse will ultimately take, and whether it will be a horrific, tragic, or uplifting experience for most of us is still uncertain. Whether it will be quick and catastrophic, or more akin to a gradual reversal of certain past trends also remains to be seen. This is a process that, in my view, has been more or less set in stone as of 10-15 years ago. The ultimate root causes, in my view, have been the unfettered exploitation of key natural resources (such as oil, wood, water and metals), degradation of key natural ecosystem services, and the population explosion that has been the most significant consequence of the exploitation of those resources.
By sharing different perspectives on what collapse means, I hope to have a better understanding of what might happen, in light of what has happened in similar circumstances in the past, to understand what might be different this time around, and to prepare, physically, economically, and spiritually for what the future holds.

This post is a book review of Jared Diamond's 2005 book 'Collapse - How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed'

Jared Diamond is part archaeologist, part anthropologist. In 'Collapse', Diamond takes a scientific approach to examining how past societies either failed to meet the challenges they faced, or succeeded in overcoming these challenges. A scientific comparison between complex societies is indeed a very difficult proposition. The approach that Diamond has taken is to make comparisons between very ecologically similar societies, and describe the causal influences that have led to different results among them. For example, Diamond compares failure or success among the dozens of Polynesian islands dotting the central Pacific, the contrast between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, sharing the island of Hispaniola, and the contrast between Indonesian and Papua New Guinea, again, both sharing the same island. Diamond also devotes a lot of space in the book to societies with no scientifically contemporary neighbors, like the Maya, Norse Greenland, the Anasazi of the American Southwest, and ancient Tokugawa Japan. There are many past societies to choose from - both those that have been successful, and those that have collapsed, but Diamond seemingly chooses the societies he analyzes according to two criteria. All of the societies he analyzed faced climatic and/or natural resource challenges, and all of them had archaeological records that allowed for reasonable precision in making factual claims about the state of the society through time. Jared Diamond adds a very refreshing human perspective to the societies he analyzes. He tends to present conflict in society as generally occurring between two sets of rational people with valid needs and viewpoints. As a starting point, Diamond presents a contemporary conflict between traditional Montana residents trying to make a living off of the land conflicting with land developers trying to grow Montana's economy through tourism. The heart of the conflict is that the rising land values that the tourism brings make the traditional farming uneconomical and have been killing long-rooted local businesses and farms. Diamond presents the arguments of real people on both sides, and suggests that the societies he presents in the book are not abstractions, but dynamic states full of the same sort of people acting in their own rational (if, perhaps narrow-minded) ways.
The heart of the thesis that Diamond presents in this book is that things like climate change, resource depletion, and trade conflicts can essentially be proximal causes of collapse. By this, he means that they are the causal factors that are immediately responsible for the decline of the civilization in question. The case that he makes though, is that these factors have to be taken within the context of the civiliation in question. These proximal causes are forcings that are either withstood by a strong society or cause the collapse of a weakened society. There are often other ultimate (or underlying) causes, stemming from factors that led the society to be either inherently resiliant or fragile. I think a classic example of this distinction is this year's Haitian Earthquake. The proiximal cause of the devastation in Haiti was the 7-Magnitude earthquake. Underlying that devastion was building construction. If the buildings had been constructed to reasonable standards, they would have held up fine (as those buildings in Port-Au-Prince built to better standards did). Underlying this cause is the fact that rampant poverty prevented investment in earthquake-resistant structures. Underlying this poverty were corrupt government and perverse incentives and prices leveled on Haiti through globalization.
A common thread in the book is societies that initially established roots in a region during times of favorable climatic times, developed infrastructure utterly dependent on that favorable climate, and then were unable to cope with a harsher climate or a decline in the resources that supported the region. Thus changing ecological conditions acted as proximal causes to collapses that were undergirded by overambitious development and poor planning for the future. Two examples given in this book are the Maya, whose civilization collapsed flourishe under times of abundant rain and then collapsed during periods of relative drought, and the Greenland Norse, who were able to develop civilization in Greenland in times of relative warmth, but collapsed into war and cannibalism due to the onset of the little ice age around 1000 AD. As a point of direct comparison, the Greenland Inuit, who lived in Greenland at the same time did not experience collapse due to a more resilient and better-adapted form of subsistence.
This comparison is part of the basis for another parallel, and fascinating thesis that Diamond makes: Successful societies are often those that are able to abandon certain core values. These are values that led to success in certain circumstances, but were toxic to their success in other circumstances. This is an interesting perspective, because we often think in America, that our success as a society will depend on holding on to our core values. The true test of a society is the ability to recognize when these core values have become maladaptive and whether the society ultimately has the courage to abandon them. In the case of the Greenland Norse, it was ultimately their decision to hold on to the cultivation of livestock (a holdover from European tradition) on marginal land, and a refusal to adopt inuit techniques of whale and seal hunting that led to a collapse of food production as the climate turned south. Conversely, iceland's abandonment of certain forms of livestock were instrumental to its survival of the same kinds of conditions.
Of course, the cultivation of livestock in mainland Europe was a cornerstone of earlier civiliational success. It is easy for societies to fall into the trap of viewing such cultural values as fundamental, and not recognizing when those values become cumbersome and counterproductive under other circumstances.
(My own note...) Viewed through this lens, America's survival may depend on its abondonment of individualism as a curtural ideal and automobiles as a symbol of freedom. These two things were instrumental in the development of American mobility and innovation/competition in the 20th century. Innovation and competition are highly desirable in an expansionary economy with symbiotic dynamics. However, in an ecologically constrained economy, such dynamics become highly zero-sum and largely become forces for the transfer of wealth from the lower classes to the priveleged classes of society. This is exactly the dynamic underpinning the financial crisis of 2008-present. Financial 'innovation' (credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, derivatives) in the last decade has been defended by their creators as driving the expansion of the economy, but since real physical output has been stagnant, this growth has occurred entirely within the realm of the money economy, and has greatly increased levels of wealth stratification, with the poor becoming poorer and the rich becoming richer (with taxpayer funded bailouts being a ransom that the public has paid in order to not lose all that they had).
Okay, back to the book...Another interesting perspective that Diamond brings to the table is to explore how collapse may manifest itself in environmentally troubled societies. Diamond imagines that in the Greenland Norse society, the well-off farms in the more productive areas of the Greenland settlement likely tried to insulate themselves from the problems elsewhere, but eventually became targets of local anger and violence when everyone else was starving (he backs this up with archaeological evidence). Later in the book, he brings up a comparison to gated communities in modern America. The point is that the society will only validate the rich's right to a comfortable life when there are sufficient resources to go around, and people are not destitute.
An interesting modern day examination that Diamond makes regarding the social manifestation of modern day troubles is Rwanda. The background to the 1994 Rwanda genocide, as portrayed in the media is mostly correct - and goes something like this: Rwanda is a country that over time became populated by two ethnic groups; the Hutu of West African descent, who were principally farmers, and the Tutsi, from East African descent, who were principally pastoralists. The Tutsi early on established themselves as overlords of the Hutu. Diamond writes: "When German and Belgian colonial governments took over, they found it expedient to govern through Tutsi intermediaries whom they considerd racially superior to Hutu because of Tutsi's paler skins and supposedly more European appearance." Independence came to Rwanda in 1962, and in the power vacuum left by the departing Europeans, the Hutu took the oppurtunity to overthrow Tutsi domination and replace it with Hutu domination. Over the next decade, a million Tutsi Rwandans fled to neighboring countries. For years, they would periodically invade in attempts to restore their power. In 1973, General Habyarimana (Hutu) staged a coup against the existing Hutu government and decided to leave the Tutsi in peace. For 15 years, Rwanda prospered under these peaceful conditions. Diamond writes, "Unfortunately, Rwanda's economic improvement became halted by drought and accumulating environmental problems (especially deforestation, soil erosion, and soil fertility losses), capped in 1989 by a steep decline in world prices for Rwanda's principal exports of coffee and tea, austerity measures imposed by the World Bank, and a drought in the south." These pressures came to a head in 1990 when another Tutsi invasion was used as a pretext for Hutu-led civil war. Habyarimana's government was brutal enough in its attack on Tutsi, but not enough for Hutu extremists, who murdered Habyarimana, and rounded up the nation's Hutu in a campaign of mass Tutsi genocide. By the end of the campaign, an estimated 800,000 Tutsi, representing 75% of the remaining Tutsi population had been exterminated.
While ethnic tensions were the spark that lit the fire, Diamond makes a strong case for environmental and population pressures underlying factors in the genocide - the fuel for the fire. Diamond notes that the genocide is not as black and white as is portrayed. For example, Diamond writes "Rwanda contained a thied ethnic group, known as the Twa, who numbered only 1% of the population, were at the bottom of the social scale and power structure, and did not constitute a threat to anybody - yet most of them, too were massacred in the 1994 killings." and "The distinctions between Hutu and Tutsi is not nearly as sharp as often portrayed. The two groups speak the same language, attended the same churches and schools and bars, lived together in the same village under the same chiefs, and worked together in the same offices. Hutu and Tutsi intermarried and sometimes switched their ethnic identities...the groups were so intertwined in Rwandan society that in 1994, doctors ended up killing their patients and vice versa, teachers killed their students and vice versa, and office colleagues killed each other" and "Especially puzzling...are events in Northwest Rwanda. There, in a community where virtually everyone was Hutu and there was only a single Tutsi, mass killings still took place, of Hutu by Hutu." Clearly there was something else going on here. Writes Diamond, "How, under those circumstances, were so many Rwandans so readily manipulated by etremist leaders into killing each other with the utmost savagery?"
A complete explanation, according to Diamond lies in the population and environmental pressures in Rwanda. Rwanda and neighboring Burundi are the two most densely populated countries in Africa, and among the most densely populated in the world. Exploring the case of the Northwestern Hutu region (Kamana) that also participated in the massacre amongst its own, Diamond writes, "Kamana's population density is high even by the standards of the densely populated Rwanda: 1740 people per square mile in 1988, rising to 2040 in 1993...Those high population densities translated into very small farms: a median farm size of only 0.89 acre in 1988, declining to 0.72 acre in 1993. Each farm was divided into (on average) 10 parcels, so that farmers were tilling absurdly small parcels averageing only 0.09 acre in 1988 and 0.07 acre in 1993. "As both population and agricultural production increased, per-capita food production rose from 1966 to 1981, but then ddropped back to the level where it had stood in the early 1960s...Steep hills were being farmed right up to their crests. even the most elementary measures that could have minimized soil erosion, such as terracing, plowing along contours rather than straight upa nd down hils, and providing some fallow cover of vegetation rather than leaving fields bare between crops, were never practiced. As a result, there was much soil erosiion, and the rivers carried heavy loads of mud... Because all of the land was already occupied, young people found it difficult to marry, leave home, aquire a farm, and set up their own household. Increasingly young people postponed marriage and continued to live at home with their parents." By 1993, all males age 20-24 were living at home. Thus, family size was increasing, such that each family was living off of only 1/5 of an acre in 1988 and 1/7 of an acre in 1993. Again, Diamond writes "Even when measured agains the low calorie intake considered adequate in Rwanda, the average houshold got only 77% of its calorie needs from its farm. The rest of its food had to be bought with income earnd off the farm, at jobs such as carpentry, brick-making, sawing wood, and trade. Two-thirds of households held such jobs, while one-third didn't. The percentage of the population consuming less than 1600 calories per day (i.e. what is considered below the famine level) was 9% in 1982, rising to 40% in 1990 and some unknown higher percentage thereafter." There was also a fundamental redistribution of land going on, with the relatively wealthy, larger farms buying farmland from the increasingly desperate smaller farms, who needed emergency income from their farm sales to stay alive. "Those land disputes undermined the cohesion of Rwandan society's traditional fabric. Traditionally, richer landowners were expected to help their poorer relatives. This system was breaking down, because even the landowners who were richer than other landowners were still too poor to be able to spare anything for poorer relatives."
So to sum it up, writes, Diamond, "Escalating conflict forms the background against which the killings of 1994 took place. Even before 1994, Rwanda was experiencing rising levels of violence and theft, perpetrated especially by hungry landless young people without off-farm income...The 1994 events provided a unique opportunity to settle scores, or to reshuffle land properties, even among Hutu villagers...It is nor rare even today, to hear Rwandans argue that a war is necessary to wipe out an excess population and to bring numbers in line with available land resources.
This is one example of how collapse dynamics can play out in a society that has outgrown its available resources (in this case, arable land). If a society is unwilling or unable to sufficiently plan for the future and faces starvation as a result, these kinds of pressures will be solved in one way or another. If not through family planning and resource management, then through war, genocide, starvation, etc. Again, this is just one contemporary example, but such scenarios can be envisaged for many of the ancient societies that experienced collapse.
In our modern world, we have essentially managed resource and environmental problems in the past century or two by outsourcing our needs to an increasinly globalized marketplace. When we have faced environmental pressures at home, we have sought additional resources abroad, or have outsourced our production, in effect moving the dangerous effects of the pollution and land degradation elsewhere. This has been a very successful strategy because a more diverse set of countries and regional entities trading in a global marketplace has been more effective at redistributing surplusses, and mitigating problems in individual regions. The crisis we face in the 21st century, however, is one where global capacity for resource extraction and sinks for pollution become limited. Rather than the isolated Easter Island described in the book, where islanders cut down all of their trees to make canoes and build monumental stone heads, we risk globally using up all of our readily available oil on the erection and sustainment of cities that are utterly dependent on that cheap oil (and bumping up against a host of other limits as well).
One of my favorite chapters in the book is a concluding chapter called 'One-Liner Objections', where Diamond lists 12 commonly espoused objections that people blithely make, largely as articles of faith, against the warnings presented in this book, and then presents a rebuttal against those objections. I'll wrap up this post by listing those objections below (in bold), and then including parts of Diamond's rebuttal to each.
The environment has to be balanced against the economy
"This quote portrays environmental concerns as a luxury, views measures to solve environmental problems as incurring a net cost, and considers leaving environmental problems unsolved to be a money-saving device. This one-liner puts the truth exactly backwards. Environmental messes cost us huge sums of money both in the short run and in the long run. In caring for the health of our surroundings, just as of our bodies, it is cheaper and preferable to avoid getting sick than to try to cure illnesses after they have developed..."
Technology will solve our problems
"This is an expression of faith about the future, and therefore based on a supposed track record of technology having solved more problems than it created in the recent past. Underlying this expression of faith is the implicit assumption that, from tomorrow onwards, technology will function primarily to solve existing problems and will cease to create new problems. Those with such faith also assume that the new technologies now under discussion will succeed and that they will do so quickly enough to make a big difference soon..."
If we exhaust one resource, we can always switch to some other resource meeting the same need
The major arguments that Diamond makes here are that unforseen problems often derail promising new solutions, and that those that do have promise, often require several decades to transition due to the requirements to change secondary technologies, infrastructure, and institutions associated with the former resource or technology. The point is that such switches are enormously costly and inherently uncertain. In the case of switching from fossil fuels to wind/solar, there is an additional issue related to switching from a high-energy density, easily transportable and dispatchable fuel, to one that is only available at certain times and in smaller quantities.
Just look around you: the grass is still green, there is plenty of food in the supermarkets, clean water still flows from the taps, and there is absolutely no sign of imminent collapse.
"One of the main lessons to be learned from the collase of the Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders, and other past societies(as well as from the recent collapse of the Soviet Union) is that a society's steep decline may begin only a decade or two after the society reaches its peak numbers, wealth, and power"
Look at how many times in the past the doom-and-gloom predictions of fearmongering environmentalists have proved wrong. Why should we believe them this time?
"...it is misleading to look selectively for environmental problems that have proved wrong and not also to look for environmentalist predictions that have proved right, or anti-environmentalist predictions that have proved wrong. There is an abundance of errors of the latter sort...we must expect some environmentalist warnings to turn out to be false alarms, otherwise we would know that our environmental warning systems were much too conservative. The multibillion dollar costs of many environmental problems justify a moderate frequency of false alarms. In addition, the reason that alarms proved false is often that they convinced us to adopt successful countermeasures."
The world can accommodate human population growth indefinitely. The more people the better, because more people means more inventions and ultimately more wealth.
"Data on national wealth demonstrate that the claim that more people mean more wealth is the opposite of correct." (paraphrasing...The only country on the top 10 list of countries for both population and affluence is the U.S.) "Actually the countries with large populations are disproportionately poor. Eight of the ten have per-capita GDP under $8000 and 5 under $3000...Instead, what does distinguish the two lists is population growth rates: all 10 of the affluent countries have very low relative population growth rates (1% per year or less), while eight of the 10 most populous countries have higher relative population growth rates than any of the most affluent countries, except for two large countries that achieved low population growth in unpleasant ways:China, by government order and enforced abortion, and Russia, whose population is actually decreasing because of catastrophic health problems."
If those environmental problems become desperate, it will be at some time far off in the future, after I die, and I can't take them seriously
"In fact, at current rates, most or all of the dozen major sets of environmental problems will become acute within the lifetime of young adults now alive. Most of us who have children consider the securing of our children's future as the highest priority to which we deote our time and money. We pay fro their education and food and clothes, amke wills for them, and buy life insurance for them, all with the goal of helping them to enjoy good lives 50 years from now. It makes no sense for us to do those things for our individual children, while simultaneously doing things undermining the world in which our children will be living 50 years from now."

First Anniversary!!

2010-05-22T22:43:00.001-07:00

Aisling and I celebrated our first anniversary this past weekend with a mini bike tour through the Palouse region of Eastern Washington and the panhandle of Idaho. We left from Pullman, camped overnight in Hell's Gate state park in Lewiston, and then biked back to Pullman the following day. We had our anniversary dinner back in Richland at Anthony's seafood restaurant. Here are some pictures below:

Dinner at Anthony's

Looking down towards Clarkston, ID, during our climb up the Old Sprial Highway

Clearwater River Canyon, near Juliaetta, ID

Aisling Riding back towards Pullman, WA

Aisling on the edge at Steptoe Butte

Farming on the Palouse hills, from Steptoe Butte

News Quote of the Day

2010-05-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

"NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks slumped Friday on worries that Europe's economic woes could spread to the United States, pushing investors into safe-haven areas such as government debt."

So let me get this straight, government debt has been the proximal cause of Europe's economic crisis, more debt has been offered as the solution by the EU and IMF, and investors are seeking US government debt as a "safe haven"....???...WTF!
When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

The cruel joke of it all, is that the preponderance of views like the quote you see above from CNNmoney, as vapid as they are, is the only thing that is keeping the US afloat. In a world where the tertiary economy (money and investment) becomes ever more abstracted and untethered from the primary (natural resources and services) and the secondary(human labor)economiies, its continuity is incresaingly determined by faith in promises.

Battelle Softball League!

2010-05-12T20:24:00.000-07:00

Weekly Highlights:
Week 1: Strong headwinds blowing in from center field, kicking up crazy dust. It was hard to hit the ball very far. Singles were the rule of the day. Aisling and I had a great time. Aisling legged out a single, and I hit a double, but was thrown out trying to leg it into a triple
Week 2: Aisling made a great catch in right field and got on base 3 times, including 1 hit, a run, and an RBI. I hit a long double over the center fielder's head, and an inside-the-park home run deep to right. We both made some good plays in the field, but I got my shin smashed by a really hard line drive while playing shortstop. Icing it right now. Aisling and I ran to and from the field (2.4 miles each way)
Week 3: Beautiful weather. Not too much action from either of us at the plate or on the field. I had a hard single to center, two fielder's choices with an RBI each, and lined out hard to center field. Aisilng singled up the middle in her first at-bat, but lined out twice to third base.

The Power of the Community: Part 1: Economies of Scale

2010-05-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

This will be part of a series of posts investigating why the community may be the ideal scale for tackling many of the worlds problems.
This first post will deal with economies (and diseconomies) of scale. Specifically, I will seek to underline why solutions on the scale of the individual, building, business, etc are economically inefficient and why solutions on the scale of federal governments or the world governing agencies are equally inefficient and ineffective. I'll start with economies of scale (factors that reduce unit costs by virtue of an increase in size).
It seems to me that the biggest drivers of economies of scale are the ability to use a smaller set of tools and infrastructure relative to the number of goods you produce or services you provide. Let's say everyone in a certain population wants flour, and has relatively cheap access to wheat. One solution would be for everyone to buy a small tabletop mill and produce their own for their own consumption. Each person wants a pound of flour per week and each person will spend one hour per week griding their own stock of wheat for flour in their own table top mill. It turns out that this is a rather expensive proposition because that mill will be going unused for the remaining 83 hours of the week. If, instead, 40 people banded together to buy a single tabletop mill, and took turns using it at a central location, they will each be able to mill their own flour for 1/40th the cost. This is more economically efficient, but those 40 people have to also invest time going back and forth to that communal location, there may be some wait time, and some of the people may not be as quick as others at operating the machine. These factors allow factories or manufacturing centers to take advantage of the next level of economies of scale by putting the means of production into the hands of fewer people who can schedule their operation of the tools, and free up extra time and resources for the rest of the people who want flour.
Economies of scale also pertain to making things phyically bigger. Let's say you want to make gadget X, that requires the acuisition and assembly of 10 discrete parts. Let's say the assembly time is independent of size. It takes a worker 10 minutes to assemble gadget X regardless of the size. While the costs of those 10 constituent parts may be linearly related to thier physical size, the labor cost of their assembly is fixed. So if at size A, gadget X costs $2 of parts and $2 of labor = $4, at size 2A, gadget X will cost $4 of parts and $2 of labor or $6. The cost per unit size has thus dropped from $4 to $3 as the size is increased from A to 2A. This is why it makes economic sense for the people involved in making flour to be working in a larger facility with bigger equipment, and is the driving force behind any bulk discounts you see at the grocery store.
Economies of scale deal mostly with material and labor efficiency of production (although in energy, there is also a better thermodynamic efficiency of production at larger scales. Larger devices and plants are able to operate with fewer heat losses for the same reason that a bucket of boiling water will take longer to cool than a thimble full of boiling water. With fewer heat losses, more heat energy can be converted to useful forms.) On the other hand, diseconomies of scale are forces that tend to make larger operations less efficient than smaller ones. These forces are mostly beureaucratic in nature. Wikipedia has a great article on diseconomies of scale. In bullet form, paraphrased from Wikipedia are the countervailing forces of diseconomies of scale:
- Duplication of Effort: "... General Motors, for example, developed two in-house CAD/CAM systems: CADANCE was designed by the GM Design Staff, while Fisher Graphics was created by the former Fisher Body division. These similar systems later needed to be combined into a single Corporate Graphics System, CGS, at great expense. A smaller firm would neither have had the money to allow such expensive parallel developments, or the lack of communication and cooperation which precipitated this event."
- Top-Heavy Companies: "The more employees a firm has, the larger percentage of the workforce will be "management". A company with a single worker doesn't need any managers...Managers are necessary to manage a large, complex company, but should be considered a "necessary evil" as they also reduce overall productivity. Also note that higher level managers get higher level pay, and thus cost the company more than their numbers would indicate."
- Office Politics: "For example, a manager might intentionally promote an incompetent worker knowing that that worker will never be able to compete for the manager's job. This type of behavior only makes sense in a company with multiple levels of management."
-Isolation of Decision Makers from the Results of their Decisions: "...If a single person makes and sells donuts and decides to try jalapeño flavoring, they would likely know that day whether their decision was good or not, based on the reaction of customers. A decision maker at a huge company that makes donuts may not know for many months if such a decision worked out or not. By that time they may very well have moved on to another division or company and thus see no consequences from their decision."
-Slow Response: "In a reverse example, the single worker donut firm will know immediately if people begin to request healthier offerings, like whole grain bagels, and be able to respond the next day. A large company would need to do research, create an assembly line, determine which distribution chains to use, plan an advertising campaign, etc., before any change could be made. By this time smaller competitors may well have grabbed that market niche."
-Inertia: "This will be defined as the "we've always done it that way, so there's no need to ever change" attitude...refusal to consider change, even when indicated, is toxic to any company, as changes in the industry and market conditions will inevitably demand changes in the firm"
-Public and Government Opposition: "Such opposition is largely a function of the size of the firm. Behavior from Microsoft, which would have been ignored from a smaller firm, was seen as an anti-competitive and monopolistic threat, due to Microsoft's size, thus bringing about public opposition and government lawsuits."

The lesson to be learned from these two countervailing forces is that there is often an optimal size to businesses (or to organizations like government). To the extent that businesses exist to solve problems pertinent to the public good (which is increasingly not the case as a business gets bigger and bigger!), it could be reasoned that there is an optimal size to all businesses and operations that falls somewhere between the individual and the mega-corporation/federal government. Federal beuracracies are one of the most oft-cited reasons for republicans demanding a smaller federal government, and at least for this reason, they are justified. This does not prove that the community is the right scale for such organizations, but it at least provides the conceptual framework for the argument that I intend to make that optimal problem solving requires a balance of scale.

Our Letter to Dick Bengen at Ruby Ridge Farm

2010-05-10T21:34:00.000-07:00

As a follow-up to the discussion with former Ruby Ridge Dairy workers that Aisling and I attended at Shalom United Church of Christ (our post about it here), I drafted the following letter to Dick Bengen:

Dear Mr. Bengen,
Hello. My name is Nick Fernandez. I live in Richland and work as an energy analyst at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Let me start by thanking you for your years of hard work managing Ruby Ridge Dairy and providing milk and dairy products to the Northwest.
The reason I am writing is that my wife Aisling and I attended a church event several days ago at Shalom United Church of Christ that featured former workers from your farm who spoke about their experience working on your farm and being fired and blacklisted for attempting to form a union. Our account of their experiences was necessarily one-sided, because of course, it was only the workers expressing the story from their perspective. Their story however, struck quite a harsh note. We community members at the church were very troubled to learn that the people working hard to provide us with quality dairy products were being treated to conditions that (may) include being underpaid for their hours, being chronically treated with disrespect, being forced to operate faulty and unsafe farm equipment, being required to work without breaks, and being fired and blacklisted for trying to stand up for themselves. I think the heart of their indignation is that they are people with families and social needs, and feel like they have been treated without worth – as less than human.
I understand these are very difficult economic times. I suspect you are subject to pressures like low profit margins and outstanding debts as are most independent farmers. My wife and I can sympathize with the forces that likely weight upon you, and can understand that there are two sides to every story. We would however like to see a solution to the current problem that makes everyone happy. I know that the workers aren’t any more happy about having to pursue a lawsuit than you are to have to defend yourself. So I would like to reach out to you and your family and ask what we as a community can do here in the tri-cities to support you so that you may in turn support those who have worked so hard for you. We in the Tri-Cities would like to feel light conscience again buying and consuming products from Darigold, which we understand is your primary buyer.
We’re welcome to any creative solution that you may have, and are lending our support to the resolution of this matter. Please write me at 2348 Hood Ave #5, Richland, WA 99354 or e-mail me at nick.fernandez@pnl.gov at your convenience.
Thank you.

Nicholas Edward Fernandez

Aisling Gardner Fernandez

Our Community Garden- Progress and lessons learned: Part 1 Germination, Planting, and Early Season

2010-05-08T11:42:00.001-07:00

Our 15x15 garden plot at the Battelle Community Gardens. Picture taken late April, 2010

This year, Aisling and I are renting a 15ft x 15ft plot of community gardening area from the Battelle Staff Association. The community garden is maintained by two women who work for PNNL. It is installed with a series of vertical pipes with sprinkler-heads at a height of about 8 ft that water the gardens each day. There are communal tools in a tool shed that everyone can use,as well as vine wire-frames, stakes, and netting (to use as primitive fence) so that there is really no upfront cost to the aspiring community gardner other than the $10/plot and the cost of seeds, and any other lawn & garden 'helpers' that the grower may decide to employ (we bought some mulch and potting mix for example).

This has mostly been my project - because I want to get into local food growing, and because Aisling largely gets her fill of food growing while working at the farm. The project started in February when we bought a tomato growing kit from our local grocery store. The kit comes with these little soil pods that expand in water and serve as a substrate for starting tomato plants in this plastic greenhouse that the kit turns into. It took a solid 2 weeks to see anything come out of the seeds, and within a month, we had healthy green saplings lapping up the light coming in from our downstairs windowsill. Meanwhile, we bought a number of seed packets - 3 other types of tomatoes, cauliflower, cantaloupe, watermelon, and corn. This makes up the bulk of what we are currently growing or trying to grow in our garden.
For these other seeds, the first attempt at germinating them was to get a large ceramic dish, fill it with soil from the back of the townhouse, sprinkle seeds on top, and keep it continuously watered on the windowsill. This was marginally successful, but slow. About half of the corn seeds germinated, while the others rotted. Cauliflower came up quickly, and with more widespread success. Cantaloupe and watermelon did not budge from their seed form. Once the seeds got going, I transplanted them individually from the ceramic dish to small peat pots, and filled them with potting mix. I made a two tiered window sill holder for the peat pots out of scrap wood, that you can see below:

This was all going on in late March. Meanwhile, I needed a solution to get the melon seeds germinating. We were keeping our house at about 63 degrees, and I suspected the cold temperatures (especially right near the windowsill, and with water constantly evaporating from the potter) were preventing germination for warm-weather loving plants. To test this hypothesis, I built a makeshift seed germination chamber, out of a shoebox, a drop-light cord, and a 14W CFL lightbulb. I cut out a hole in the side of the shoebox big enough to screw in the lightbulb, and plugged the box into the wall. Temperatures in the box stay pretty constant in the 80s or 90s while sitting on a desk indoors. Inside the box, I put a wet dish towel, folded up, on top of a small plate. Within the folds of the dish towel, I placed the seeds. Voila! Within 36 short hours, the corn seeds were germinating. Ditto the cantaloupe and watermelon seeds within 48 hours. Within 4 days, there were 4" roots and a 1/2" stem sprouting from the corn seeds, and 3" branching roots coming from the cantaloupe seeds. This setup (shown below) became the new default seed germinator.

In the early weeks of April, there was a constant assembly line of plants coming from the ceramic dish and the seed geminator into peat pots held in two separate windowsill holders. By mid-april, there were 100 plants growing in our apartment.
The typical last frost/freeze of the season is April 27. By early April, I could tell this was going to be problematic, because the February tomatoes were rapidly outdrowing their peat pots. By mid-April, I had no choice but to transplant them (and some other quick growers, like some of the rapidly growing corn stalks)into the community garden. It appeared as though a warm period was settling in, and I hoped it would last into May and that the last frost was behind us. I had heard anecdotally that the cold is especially anathema to tomato plants.
We planted on a Thursday, and came back on a Monday to find that our plants looked much more haggard and dried out. Many looked suspiciously clipped, as though they had been eaten. Indeed, rabbits roam freely around the garden. I chased a rather plump rabbit out through the fence gate at one point, and then watched as he quickly darted back into the garden through a 1.5"!!! gap in two metal fenceposts. So the rabbits were going to get into the garden, period. We decided that a plot-level defense was our best strategy, and made use of the netting, and some stakes to render a makeshift fence. That protects from the rabbits, but there are also quails and other birds that can make their way in - and we have seen them in there. The leaves of some of our fledgling plants continue to look clipped. I also decided that relying on the default watering schedule alone was not going to work for these plants. I bought some fine mulch and laid out 1 ft. diameter rings around the base of each plant to prevent evaporation from the soil, and have been going back to the plot at least once every three days to water.
In late April, the winds came. For plants coddled indoors for over a month, this was disastrous. Day after day, winds would be sustained at 20-30 mph. The climax was a day in early May with sustained winds at 40 mph and gusts to 65 mph. The winds ravaged a lot of the plants. Some of the larger tomato plants made out quite well, as they had the time and the stem strength to weather themselves. These tomato plants especially went through a rapid change in appearance when exposed to the wind and the cold. The leaves and stems went from light green, translucent and broad to dark green, thicker, consolidated leaves, and a hard, brown stem. Watermelon plants and young cauliflower were decimated by the wind, but the cantaloupe, which was sitting right at ground level was largely unaffected. Right after the really windy day came very cold early may temperatures, including a freeze warning that yielded overnight temperatures down to 30 one night then 31 the next. I went back to the plot to find all of our melons and tomato plants completely dead. Astonishingly, though, the cauliflower had found new life, and had grown large, dark green leaves. I had planted two new rows of corn straight from the germinating box, and both of these were yielding the new beginnings of stalks. Older corn plants had some outer leaves that turned brown.

Paper cup wind shield for sensitive plants

Example of a tomato plant in late April with more weathered leaves. You can see one branch still maintained its maladaptive broad leaves, which became sickly and brown on the edges.

Be Very Worried about Greece!

2010-05-05T21:01:00.000-07:00

Riots in Greece this week ...Abondoned house in the Palouse Hills, Eastern Washington

Protesters filled the streets of Athens today, setting fires to banks, attacking policemen, and otherwise venting anger at the "austerity measures" being forced upon them. I'm not realy sure who they are protesting against. Their government is in between a rock in a hard place. It's broke! The result of decades of borrowing from the future (AKA rampant debt). Well guess what...it's the future, and the young folks of Athens aren't too happy with their worthless I.O.U.'s from the past.
In comes the E.U. to the rescue. Germany, among other EU countries, plus the IMF have generously prepared a $165 billion bailout package for our feta friends. How generous. Hold on though, this isn't a Christmas present. It's just more debt!! What better way to solve your massive debt problem than refinancing it with brand new debt, only this debt doesn't come cheap at all. Greek 10-year bonds, being sold to the EU and the IMF in the guise of a "bailout" are running at 9.51% interest right now. If my math is correct, that means that somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 billion would then be coming due in the 2020 timeframe to pay off that generous gift. Where is that all supposed to come from? It's not going to come from anywhere, because it's a ludicrous proposition. The rotting corpse of debt is simply being swept under the rug. This bailout will seal Greece's fate.
Why should we be worried here in America? Well, Greece's 2010 national debt is expected to be 120% of its GDP. Where do we stand in America? According to the National Debt Clock : http://www.usdebtclock.org/index.html , our debt currently stands at 90.1% of GDP. The UK is close to 100%. The only thing that keeps America from becoming the next Greece is faith that the U.S. can stand behind its debt. How does the U.S. maintain this faith? Quite simply, it's a pyramid scheme. Much like the Greek bailout, our current debt obligations are being paid off with new debt. It gives the illusion that the U.S. is 'good for it.' But at some point, it must become apparent to a critical mass of potential buyers of U.S. treasury bonds that the promise of future repayment is an empty one. In order to cajole the U.S. economy into breakneck action (because the bright lights in charge see massive economic growth as the only way out of this trap), the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates on borrowers super-low (0.2-0.75% depending on the instrument...http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/update/ ) to encourage people to take on new debt obligations, while funding its own operation through much higher interest rate debt that it takes out on Treasury Bonds (3.6,4.6 percent for 10,30 year bonds, respectively...http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates/index.html). As Ilargi puts it over at theautomaticearth,
"Wall Street banks can borrow from the Fed at 0.25%-0.5% right now, then walk a few -virtual- blocks down the street to the Treasury Department, buy Treasuries that yield 4% today and likely much more in the months and years to come, and basically sit on their hands while the money flows in."

So the U.S. is already rapidly selling out its future, while crossing its fingers for a ninth-inning rally of ginormous economic growth, within our energy and materially constrained economy.

High Winds and Dust Storms this week!

2010-05-05T19:48:00.000-07:00

Back East, it's not unusual to have high winds during strong thunderstorms, but here, on Monday, we had an entire day of tropical storm force winds under clear skies. It was all thanks to a strong cold front coming out of the North Pacific. In the Cascade passes, over a foot of wind driven snow piled up on the slopes and on the road. Down on the east side of the Cascades, we had a full day of 40 mph winds, with gusts to 65 mph. In the back of our townhouse complex, a massive evergreen (not native to the desert here!) was uprooted and smashed into a fenceline guarding the houses behind the complex.
When the wind gets strong enough here, it means dust storms. We have very light, dry soil over here that has a high content of volcanic ash. The wind whips the dust from the fields and from open exposed desert, and turns the sky a hazy brown. It's mostly a spring thing, as it's associated with the strong storms that come in off the Pacific, which die down in May and June.
Aisling was working on the farm...well really she was stuck inside tending to half of her job, which is to handle the stream of e-mails from CSA subscribers. All of the farm laborers went home to avoid getting dust in their eyes and lungs. Aisling stayed until mid-afternoon, but had to rush back to town because she found out that the road to the farm was going to be closing soon.

Deepwater Oil - A Symbol of our Times

2010-05-03T21:23:00.000-07:00

The disaster currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico is raising some very good questions about the lengths that we go for oil and I've been pleased at the coverage of it in the media. But the disaster is about more than just the intersection between oil/energy and the environment. It is a central symbol of our times, and I want to share some thoughts that I have about the spill and what it means.
Mike Tidwell, author, journalist, and president of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network was on NPR today, trying to put the spill in perspective. Tidwell stated that the well that erupted and led to the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig was one of 35,000 wells in the Gulf of Mexico. His point was that with this many wells, it was simply a matter of time before the odds caught up - that some human error or foible of nature caused the law of averages to rear its ugly head. There is probably some truth to this, but what is neglected is the nature of the well that was being drilled by the deepwater horizon. It was the deepest well that had ever been drilled. Ever. The reservoir rock containing the oil that the well eventually bore into was under 6 vertical miles of the Earth's crust, which was itself below 6,000 feet of ocean water, and hundreds of miles from the nearest shore. Think about it...if you had to come up with a plan of how to extract oil out of porous rock lying that far under those conditions, how would YOU go about getting it out? How would you even set up the equipment to start drilling above a mile of turbulent ocean water? If you're scratching your head, believe me, you're not that daft. It pushes the limits of what's technically feasible. There's a reason petroleum engineers are the highest paid profession coming out of college. Just look at the piece of equipment it takes to drill this hole:

It reminds me a little bit of one of those shots from Star Wars, where an enormously complicated spaceship slowly drifts by a stationary camera, and you are thinking, "Where is the end of this thing, it just keeps going!" As you can imagine, such a colossal hunk of steel, and engineering costs a LOT of money! The suggestion that somehow BP was recklessly digging a hole out there is a bit disingenuous. There were four separate valves built in to ensure that the well did not rupture and incur damage to this rig (The rig itself is mobile, by the way, it is responsible for drilling many many wells, which are subsequently linked to pipelines that bring the oil to shore.) BP most certainly did not want to lose this piece of capital investment. What they did not do was install a fifth layer of redundancy - another half-million dollar piece of equipment - to protect against a blowout, which admittedly is more common in e.g. North Sea oil production.
So back to the significance of this particular well. I already mentioned it was the deepest well in history, and that the Deepwater Horizon was pushing the limits...in uncharted waters, if you will. Why not stick to the playbook, you might ask - with such obvious risks involved? Well, the answer is, because this was the next economic place to drill for oil. You can't simply drill a surface hole on dry land in the middle of Texas and have oil gush out of the ground, like you could in the good old days. No. That was the low-hanging fruit. Why go after oil 7 miles below shifting seas when you can spend a few bucks and get a gusher right next to your house, right. Well this is where we are at. Yes, there is plenty of oil left under the ground, but it's increasingly in smaller and smaller pockets in harder and harder to reach places. And the oil that's found so far under the seas is packed into rock at enormous temperatures and pressures. It requires tremendous costs to extract it. There is still some cheap and easy oil left, but it's in the hands of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other direct or indirect supporters of Islamic fundamentalism, and nationilized, so that it is off-limits to Western oil companies. But even, that, too will be history in the not-so-distant future. The point, however, is that the marginal barrel of oil - the source of the next economic barrel of oil in the world is in places like the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. And the cost of this marginal barrel is rapidly increasing. A mere 7 years ago, the marginal cost of a barrel of oil was $15. Now, to bring online the next new barrel of oil, the cost is $70. This is almost a 5-fold increase! Since there are 42 gallons in a barrel, this means that the bare costs of getting the marginal barrel of oil out of the ground are $1.67 per gallon. Once the oil is processed into gasoline, profits are extracted by the sellers of the gasoline (and the oil-companies themselves), and the government taxes it to fund roads, bridges, and other car-related infrastructure and safety measures, you're looking at a bare-minimum cost of $2.50 per gallon (I use 80 cents as a rule of thumb for the spread between crude oil and gasoline at the pump. It's higher here in Washington and other states that tax higher). Anything less than that means that the marginal producers are losing money and will go out of business. Trust me, this will only happen during a strong economic downturn or worse (as was the case, when oil prices dropped to $30 a barrel, briefly during the past recession). But now the economy at least thinks it has new legs, so prices have surged to at least above the marginal cost of production (currently crude oil is selling at $86/barrel), as they should in a healthy market.
Scene V: Enter stage right the explosion aboard Deepwater Horizon. BP has generously offered to cover all costs associated with the oil spill (because it's the law.) In reality, they're only going to have to cover those costs which are directly economically quantifyable in the near future. They're not going to have to pay for a host of externalities that will be too peripheral to link directly to this disaster, or to pay for things that many people value, like the cleanliness of the gulf, the lost beauty of the beaches, or the death of fish, birds, and other creatures that are not exploited in commercial fisheries. Even still, they will pay a pretty penny and the U.S. is going to reconsider what it allows oil companies to do, and require very draconian and even more expensive measures to be able to make the case to the public that this isn't going to happen again. All of this will be passed on to the consumer because it will mean that the marginal cost of production is going way higher in the near future. Oil companies are only going to play this wild gamble if they can make sufficient profit to buffer themselves against these kinds of risks.
So why is this a symbol of our times? It is a classic case of diminishing returns - or to put it as Jospeh Tainter would, 'declining marginal returns on investments in complexity.' This is the thesis of his 1990 watershed book 'The Collapse of Complex Societies', where he offers this simple economic truth as the driving force behind the collapse of previously dominant empires. I will get to writing a review of this book at some point in this blog, but you can get a bit of a better backgound in John Michael Greer's April 28 blog post at http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/. We can see this theme around us everywhere in our society. It's embodied here in spending more and more money chasing smaller pockets of harder to reach oil in harder and harder to reach places. It's embodied in us spending outrageous amounts of money on expensive high-tech medical equipment across the board that might save a few more lives, but is not, as a science, making any more leaps in improving health outcomes for the developed world or extending life expectancy. It's embodied in techno fixes, like the proposed development of 'clean coal' through carbon sequestration and storage. It's embodied in all of the myriad of techno fixes that we apply as a society to fix the problems we've created as the result of other technologies that were designed to fix other problems. As David Korowicz puts it in his report 'Tipping Point',
"In 1897 J.J. Thompson discovered the electron, then the cutting edge of physics, all on a laboratory bench. The understanding of this particle laid the foundation for the digital infrastructure upon which much of the world relies. Today it requires a 27km underground tunnel, 1,600 27 ton superconducting magnets cooled to less than 2 degrees above absolute zero, and the direct involvement of over 10,000 scientists and engineers to find (possibly) today's cutting-edge particle, the Higgs boson. In the 1920‟s Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, with a huge benefit to human welfare, for a cost of about €20,000. Today it costs hundreds of millions to develop minor variations on existing drugs that do little for human welfare.
25
Science and technology are an exercise in problem solving. As generalised knowledge is established early on in the history of a discipline, the work that remains to be done becomes increasingly specialised. The problems become more difficult to solve, are more costly, and progress in smaller increments. Increasing investments in research yield declining marginal return45. We see this in the growing size of research groups, levels of specialisation, and the knowledge burden"

The point is that we as a society only know how to solve problems with more complex and challenging solutions, and at a smaller and smaller benefit. We apply high-tech solutions left and right and hail technology as our savior. This is really a remnant from the recent past, when technology really did allow us to make huge leaps, and thus to increase our societal wealth by leaps and bounds. We don't understand that this is no longer true. We blame governments and corporations (and to be sure, this is a complex world, and a great deal of social and economic inefficiency and injustice is doled out by both of these institutions), without grasping that the principle driver behind the fact that we are collectively getting poorer is that we are spending more and more for less and less in order to try to solve our growing slate of problems. This leaves less and less of the societal surplus - the pie if you will, to split up amongst ourselves as the spoils of our labor and our genius and creativity. We live in a constrained world, and this fundamental driver will only get worse. The ONLY solution set we have that can truly make us richer again is to sacrifice the sacred gains of industrialization, and return to our simpler roots. Only now with so many more people on the planet, we will have to do so in a way that is extraordinarily sensitive to the environment that we all share. I'll try to flesh out some of those solutions in some later post.

Nickster

Interesterified Oil and Hydrogenated Oil

2010-05-02T23:38:00.000-07:00

Don't eat interesterified oils or hydrogenated oils- they are equally unhealthy replacements to the outlawed transfats. Just eat what Mother Nature made- por favor.

http://growingbolder.com/blogs/health/the-skinny-on-interesterified-oil-211630.html

Ash

Immigration Rights- Tonight's Meeting and Potluck

2010-05-02T22:53:00.000-07:00

This evening Nick and I went to the screening of the film "Viva la Causa" ("Long Live the Cause"), a movie in English about Latin American grape pickers in Sacramento, CA who created a union 40 years ago-- and then we talked with Mexican immigrant dairy workers who were fired within the last year for trying to start a union here in Eastern WA.

The movie is very interesting. It talks about the minimally educated and soft-spoken Cezar Chavez, who started the United Farm Workers union as a response to the deplorable and inhumane working conditions in the Delano Valley of California. It also describes the very influencial but less famous Dolores Huerta, who worked with Chavez the whole time (how common that the woman doesn't get the credit). It talks about the concurrent Civil Rights Movement in the South being led my MLK. Chavez was influenced greatly by the nonviolent methods of Gandi and MLK.

Chavez led the farm workers to unite to strike on the grape farms, yet there was a constant stream of the other migrant workers coming in to take their place to pick grapes-- the "strike breakers" because they were desperate too. The strikes weren't that efficient, so they started going to towns to encourage everyone to boycott the table grapes from the farm they worked for. In an act of resistance to the boycott, the vineyard started paying to use the brand name of other grape growers. The picketers then escalated the boycott to all CA grapes, and to the stores that sold them. They were aided by a nationwide grassroots movement led by community organizers, who passed the word along in their own towns. Parallel to Ghandi's journey to the sea for salt, Chavez and Huelga led the strikers on a 25 day walk to San Francisco to gather support from workers at farms along the way. Amazingly, all of this went on for over two years and many frustrated strikers wanted to use violence against the threatening police and farm owners. Again, in parallel to Ghandi's strength and determination to rebel passively, Chavez fasted for 25 days until the violence ended.

OK, enough about the movie, which I really recommend. After the movie, four former workers of the Ridge Dairy in Pasco, WA (10 mi from here) joined the group and told us about the working conditions on the farm, how they were fired last year for trying to start a union, how the farm owner, Dick Bengen, and the farm manager (who is an illegal immigrant, but is paid better and treated better than the rest of the workers) ignore the worker's rights and push them to work in conditions resembling slavery. I'm writing this blog, not Nick because I was the only one there who knew enough Spanish to have a conversation with los campesinos.

I need to do a lot more research to understand the situation- for example the union is currently suing Dick Bengen- http://www.kndo.com/Global/story.asp?S=10928395

THE INDIGNITIES:
1. work 9-10 hours/day but are only paid for 8-9. workers report hours on papers given to the manager (an illegal immigrant himself with more benefits than the others), but the manager underpays them and says "the wage calculating machine is broken."
2. no rest or meal breaks.
from the WA State Dep of Labor and Industries:
http://www.lni.wa.gov/WorkplaceRights/Agriculture/Breaks/default.asp

What are the rest break and meal period requirements for agricultural workers?

One 10-minute paid rest break for each 4 hours worked.
A meal period of at least 30 minutes if working more than 5 hours in a day.
One additional 30-minute meal period If working 11 or more hours in a dayhttp://www.lni.wa.gov/WorkplaceRights/Agriculture/Breaks/default.asp

3. no health insurance
4. wages are $10-$11.50
5. fired for joining a union to stand up for their rights
6. once fired, put on a "black list" so that other farmers won't hire them.
7. the farm owner, Dick Bengen, keeps a gun in his truck, and has on one occasion threatened the workers with the gun.
8. Bengen uses foul language with the workers, and generally treats them demeaningly.

There will be two more meetings this month where the local attorney Tom Roach will talk about the status of immigration reform around the country. http://www.roachlaw.com/. I made sure that the four farm workers: Magarito, Rafael (and I have to get the names of the other two) know about these events and can come to be the faces of immigrant injustices.

This is a complicated matter and I don't want to support uncontrolled illegal immigration, however those workers who are here should be treated with respect and given some time to drink water and have lunch if a farmer has hired them.

Ash's First Blog- ¡Bienvenidos!

2010-05-02T22:28:00.000-07:00

First of all, I second Nick's welcome post because I am pretty sure that I understand the description of what we both understand about our world. =)

I want to add that "My New Mind's Eye" has another meaning (to me, not to Nick) beyond the ones that Nick mentioned. In Africa, I heard a Christian song with the lyrics "Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. Open the eyes of my heart. I want to see you. I want to see you" and since then I have started using that first line in my prayer (and since that trip I have started to pray too). To me "My new mind's eye" and "the eyes of my heart" are very similar phrases that mean to learn about something not just intellectually but really internalize it and live it out.

And just now, I read that the line "in my mind's eye" is said by Shakespeare's Hamlet; he vividly recalls the image of his father as if he were there in person. So I think that what you believe deep in your heart or your mind is what you see as reality.

The best thing that Nick and I have been doing as a couple is sharing our intellectual explorations. With the feedback of anyone else reading this blog, we hope to delve more into the great sea of information and to see the world through "my new mind's eye" or through my developed heart instead of through my impulsive and shallow mind.

Ash

My New Mind's Eye - Indroduction and Intent

2010-05-02T21:17:00.000-07:00

Welcome to 'My New Mind's Eye' - a joint collaborative blog between Nick and Aisling Fernandez. We are a married couple in our mid-20's, living in South Central Washington State. I am an Energy Analyst at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, and Aisling works on an organic/conventional produce farm in Eltopia that provides a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program to the Tri-Cities area (Richland/Kennewick/Pasco, WA). She will be starting graduate school at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, OR in the fall in a Masters in Public Health program with a focus in Epidemiology and Biostatistics.
The name for the blog comes from a Nick Drake song called Northern Sky. It has special meaning for us because it was the last dance song at our wedding. The name also describes well the theme of our blog, which is essentially a process of awakening to the true state of our very complex and interconnected world, how we fit into it, and what are responsibilities are to ourselves and to other members of our global community for whom our shared fate is intertwined. What we have come to believe so far is that in an increasingly constrained world, the optimization of the economic, the environmental and the social realms of our society are thoroughly linked, and that this systemic optimization is very much driven by the practice of traditional codes of morals and ethics.
In addition to these considerations, the blog may also feature other tangential aspects of our lives and things we wish to share with each other or with the rest of the online community. We hope to share this blog with our friends and family, but are also leaving this completely public and open, with the anticipation that perhaps other people may have some interest or input to the discussions we are having. We welcome anyone to comment on our blog, even if you disagree with what we have to say. We always like to hear the other side, if we are missing it. We do ask, however, that all comments be kept civil and constructive.

Cheers,

Nick