November 16, 2004

• I've heard good things about this.
• It would rather depend on what form the economic collapse took. It seems unlikely that a catastrophic collapse would occur without some major event which significantly damaged infrastructure. At this point, population loss would have to be factored into any model, as would previous mass-migrations caused by war. Also, dispertion of population would not simply follow liniar distance. Natural barriers as well as transportation routes and the availibility of resources would all have to be taken into account. Probably, the topic is much too complicated to be predicted accurately. For example, when Argentina had a recent economic crisis, they found that there was a lot of migration into households headed by pensioners. Why? Lots of people were loosing their jobs, but a state pension was stable income. I don't know how many people would have predicted something like that in advance. If you really want to get a good idea of the kind of thing that would happen in a catastrophic economic collapse, try reading up on places like Somalia, Afghanestan and the parts of the former Yougoslavia. These were all relatively technologically advanced societies which suffered rapid social breakdown into almost complete lawlessness. There are lots of other examples if you want to look for them.
• Oh, and in terms of software... looks like a job for GIS!
• One interesting, if fictional scenario.
• It's unlikely that populations would go rural rapidly- cities are still the seats of governments, and with a crisis being able to mobilize a large number of people quickly would be advantageous. More likely, city folk would arm themselves and carry out raids on the rural folks in order to secure their foodstores, eventually subjegating the country folk to serfdom in exchange for protection from roving bands of unaligned hordes. Neo-fuedalism, no matter how the survivalists plan.
• All that's needed to destroy a civilization and bring it to a bronze age, bartering level is to take away its light switch. Cities can't run without facilities.
• Alex: I don't think so. We'd go back to the industrial age pretty quick. AFAIK there's still plenty of coal on the East Coast. Combine with scrap metal everywhere and knowledge, you get an instant industrial revolution.
• If the US economy collapsed, I think it'd be something between 1930s US mixed with current Russia with 1910s China trown in.
• Interesting topic. I'm reading a bio of Frank Lloyd Wright the architect and he had some interesting ideas on this, developed from Silvio Gesell. This was back in the 1930's during the Great Depression. Gesell wrote that a new system of finance was needed if society were to avoid the pitfalls of monopoly capitalism and the credit system that had brought about economic collapse. Gesell's concept of a new system of 'free-land' and 'free-money', a currency that would lose it's value over time, encouraging it's use as quickly as possible, was more than a utopian idea. During the early 1930's the free money concept, one that Wright espoused for Broadacre City, was actually in use in many parts of the United States, and in 1933 a bill was presented in Congress "directing the Federal Treasury to issue a billion dollars worth of free money" March wrote. "So this idea was in it's time and place a practical political economic proposition." In Wisconsin, a new political party, called the Progressives, which believed in the right of men and women to own their own homes, farms and places of employment, opposing corporate and absentee ownership. They lobbied for the public ownership of utilities and banking, for social security, cooperative movements of all kinds, in short for a broad-based democracy. page 447-448 from 'Frank Lloyd Wright' by Meryle Secrest
• More likely, city folk would arm themselves and carry out raids on the rural folks in order to secure their foodstores, eventually subjegating the country folk to serfdom in exchange for protection from roving bands of unaligned hordes. Heh. You urbanites might get a raid or two, and then the country folk will begin eating the city folk. Think about it: per capita guns (advantage: country); outdoor woodland gunfire experience (advantage: country); food production (advantage: country); pissed-offyness (advantage: country); terrain familiarity (advantage: country); military experience (advantage: country); experience using the nuclear family as the basic unit of society (advantage: country); camo (advantage: country)... On the other hand? graphic design (advantage: city); investment counseling (advantage: city); taxicabs (advantage: city); mafia guys (advantage:city)...
• But, frankly, how the hell is economic collapse supposed to get rid of the US Army? Or the rest of the World? Other international powers would never let the US fall into lawlessness and chaos, at least not in our lifetime -- it would have to become irrelevent to China, India and Europe.. that's a long way from happening. I can see some warlordism (isolated), and trouble with agriculture if oil and fertilizer were hard to find, but then everybody else wants the US to continue supplying food. So chaos in the US means chaos the World over. Maybe we'd see China exploding, India and Pakistan getting teh nucular on, Russia in a bad place (not news), Africa raped (like it's not that way already).. but Europe & the Middle East? Total bloodbath in ME, muslim wars in Europe, like some right-wingers seem to predict? Or would Europe remain a bastion of calm? One of the scarier things (from an Eurocentric perspective) of this scenario is that World economic crisis & chaos would probably help get Fascist governments to European powers.
• I've got my plan, but I ain't sharin...now back off before I shoot!
• kitfisto: well, I'll come back with my 1.2 million buddies from the US military.
• Too late. I've walled off Brighton nad am setting up work parties...oh, wait, that's Day of the Triffids...
• Fes: Especially in the sprawl of Southeastern Michigan, the advantage goes to the city folk. The country folk have the militias, but city folk have gangs. And we have plenty of gun stores too (in fact, just outside of Detroit, there's a liquor, guns and "magazines" shop. Talk about one-stop). And after seeing how quickly people were mobilized into neighborhood phalanxes during the blackout, survivalists would become a larder, not an opposing force. Maybe out in West Michigan, the country would be able to hold out better, longer, but around here I'm throwing my lot in with the infrastructure.