Quote from: K-Dog on Apr 01, 2023, 02:59 PMYou will know collapse when you see it.QuoteSure...but how many years do you need to see it and claim it before everyone else figures out you pulled the trigger on claiming it WAY early?
I am not concerned about claiming collapse early because we live in a world which denies collapse altogether. About collapse I prefer being right or wrong, rather than be early or late.
The very existence of forums like this, going back to ROE and dieoff.org and Earth Day 1970 demonstrates that no, not everyone in this world denies collapse. And folks who see personal collapse around them, not collapse because the body count is high enough for it to be a REAL collapse, but still, maybe a plunge in living standards (Greece? Russia? parts of SE Asia and Africa? Tonga?)? These things involve the pain and suffering of societal and economic dislocation, even if it isn't a real collapse.Arguably, a definition of collapse not as stringent as the one I've proposed is reasonable, but collapse isn't the best word for it. What happened to Appalachia, as industry fled and left behind the culture that LBJ found so abhorrent he needed to create new programs to try and lift them up out of abject poverty? It wasn't a collapse, but it was certainly a poverty stricken, societal meltdown scarring lives and the psyche of an entire region. Those raised in that environment certainly haven't forgotten it. Economic collapse? Working up to a REAL collapse, or not working up to it even, can have other components utilizing the word collapse? Societal collapse? A degradation of the overall functioninf of society? Economic collapse? Cultural collapse? Each a degradation of critical parts of the systems we live within, but none of them being a REAL collapse? I don't know, but it would seem that the things we call collapse would fit into those lesser categories better than the real deal, the OMG we're all gonna die where are my buckets of beans and a gun type event.
Quote from: K-DogAs things are. Things are happening as rational doomers predict.
Define "rational doomer". The scientists that thought we would be dying off back in 1970 by the end of the 80's? Or only folks who agree with one particular doomer perspective? Which allows the broken clock routine in the door since at least the invention of the internet and the newsgroup format?
Quote from: K-DogThere is a shooting war.
American has been at war for for 222 out of 239 years. There is always a shooting war.
Quote from: K-DogProsperity America has no more.
America has lost it before during recessions and depressions, which arguably end, and then life continues to go on. And prosperity for whom? Appalachia didn't have it even as other parts of the US did post WWII. Economically depressed areas have always been around in America, even during the good times. Is it fair to proclaim "collapse" generally when it isn't all encompassing? Maybe collapse is a % of the population "not doing well", whatever that might mean. Mostly it probably means "I'm not doing so well", but that is pretty common in America in general, during good times and bad.
Quote from: K-DogI never was a 'Earth is going to turn into Venus guy'. I have not predicted things too early. Some years ago I came up with a musical chairs theory. A crisis comes and some people don't make it on through to the other side.
Soon as we can see the body count, we'll know its a real collapse or just a lightweight one then?
Quote from: K-DogHow many people with long term unemployment from frequent economic downturns in America ever get back to work? Not many. 2008 almost did me in. Musical chairs. Fewer resources find fewer people to distribute themselves amongst. As if resources were sentient.
I'll bet the same could be said of post Great Depression until WWII arrived, the recessions of the 70's as the rebalancing of American supremecy shifted, the end of the Cold War began to create the circumstances for the MAGA extreme as globalization sold out the American working people and now America has the demographics of immigration working against the happiness of old white folks, which just about every doomer on this forum is. Our perspective doesn't represent the global population, just a bunch of old farts who lived through that demographic shift. And are probably natural doomers to begin with. Which is why I find metrics so valuable when bandying about terrifying words...the metrics should match the word.
As far as resources being sentient, I would again bow to RE's knowledge of economics on how conservation and substitution work within the context of changes of resource mixes and costs. That would appear to cover the idea of how they could appear to be sentient.
Quote from: K-DogI have not claimed anything too early. Collapse is delayed because substitutions for resources are available. Easy oil became depleted and people into collapse in 2000 thought the end was nigh. Fracking extended the oil endowment but a Seneca cliff of oil production is on the horizon.
You can't say it ain't so.
Depends on the particular "it" you thinking of, but it appears to be oil? Easy oil was depleted about the time it took entirely new technologies to get the "harder" oil. That date is 1901 I believe. Fracking was this thing that came along in 1949 after I guess the next harder oil ran low?
On March 1949, Halliburton and Stanolind completed the first successful, commercial, hydraulically fractured wells in Oklahoma and Texas. During some tests in East Texas, they attempted to mix in river sand to keep fractures propped open. It worked, and the use of proppant became an established procedure. Source.
Quote from: K-Dog* Considering that it is too late to do anything to avert collapse. Nobody was too early!
Well, that I would argue. Because ultimately this isn't about a bunch of us modern, old white doomer men, but an idea, a philosophy, that dates back to the origins of major religions.