LQD: Capitalism is Not Worth Saving | 98 comments (98 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (none / 1)

I wasn't implying that you could make one with wooden tools in a blacksmiths shop.

But it seems that there's a huge difference in the plant and energy necessary to run an assembly line of whatevers with production runs in the hundreds of thousands, and the plant necessary to make them one or two at a time. The latter may well be unsustainable, but would the former be as well?

Technical issues aside, I mainly want to challenge the idea that any collapse will follow the popular image of collapse following Rome - that the end of the capitalist world system would result in a "dark ages" of ignorance and superstition from which recovery would be impossible. For a whole variety of reasons, I just don't think things would run the same way. Really, though, this is a topic for another time in another diary.

by Zwackus on Fri May 15th, 2009 at 11:02:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (none / 0)

There's a huge difference in the resources required to run it... but in the case of microprocessors in particular, I'm not certain that the resources to run it are more important than the resources to build it in the first place.

Industrial society is both highly resilient and highly vulnerable. If you take out a sufficiently small part of the system, it will be able to repair or replace it with relative ease. But if you take out too large a part of the system, the rest will collapse catastrophically. It is hard to see any viable path from here to a "half-industrial" society. And it is even harder to see why such a society would be desirable.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 01:12:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 2)

I can't argue on the technical feasibility of such a system, so I won't. It is an interesting question to think of absolute minimum-possible plant requirements to make certain things, but not one that I can engage in on anything more than a purely speculative nature.

However, as for the desirability of such a thing, well, that seems a bit easier to answer. The possibility of a "half-industrial" society provides an alternative to the either/or dichotomy we seem faced with - mass industrialism or life in 1700. There are things that are good and useful and valuable in our modern technological repertoire, but our current means of producing them is horribly wasteful and environmentally damaging. As most of our technology has been developed in the age of mass-production, our ways of thinking about these things has been similarly linked to the idea of mass-production. However, is this a necessary link? I don't think the technological means or possibilities of small-scale production have really been explored, because in our current system, they don't make sense. However, that does not mean that they are impossible.

This is turning into a diary. Maybe I'll write one.

by Zwackus on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 02:14:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 4)

Depends on your definition of "mass production." If you mean mass production in the sense of assembly-line production of more or less uniform copies of a single blueprint, there is nothing that prevents mass production from being compatible with sustainable consumption patterns. Very few things are produced in only a handful of factories - meaning that we could scale back production of most goods by a factor of at least ten, and still not hit the physical limits where this definition of industrial mass production becomes non-viable. This would still be a fully industrial society, but it would have a much smaller ecological footprint.

OTOH, if you mean "mass production" in the sense of "producing a lot of cheap stuff that breaks fast and cannot be repaired," rather than - say - making stuff that's a little more expensive up-front but doesn't break if you give it a nasty look, and which can be repaired when it does break. Then yes, I agree that that kind of "mass production" has to go away.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 03:03:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (none / 1)

"I mainly want to challenge the idea that the end of the capitalist world system would result in a "dark ages" of ignorance and superstition from which recovery would be impossible."

Seems to me that the point is not whether it is POSSIBLE to "recover" from such a collapse, but whether there is a large chunk of humanity to which it doesn't really matter. Most people, the huge majority, are interested primarily in football and beer and conversation. Add in a nice ritualistic religion that provides rote answers to all existential questions, and most people are happy.

Suffering? Hello, everybody experiences dukkha. Modern medicine? People still die. War? Sure. Thanks to us not being in the Dark Ages, now we have supercomputers. Big deal!

In what way has the Enlightenment actually made things better for most people? The most secure and self-satisfied people I know are hard line Catholics and Presbyterians and Evangelicals who know all the answers and watch TV all weekend.

by asdf on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 03:37:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 3)

In what way has the Enlightenment actually made things better for most people?

We have hot showers, running water, electricity and usually don't die from lung infections. Does that count?

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 06:04:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (none / 1)

Yeah, but excepting hot showers, running water, electricity and modern medicine, what did the Romans ever do for us?

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Sat May 16th, 2009 at 06:43:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (none / 1)

Personally, I can totally relate to the "they don't die from XXX" argument, because in the absence of modern medicine, I would have checked out a long time ago.

HOWEVER, everybody still dies. Instead of dying at 35 from a lung infection, we die at 95 after 10 years of "living" in vegetable mode in a nursing home. Which is somehow better, I suppose...

by asdf on Sun May 17th, 2009 at 12:35:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Could a biotistic society . . . (4.00 / 2)

You can always shoot yourself in the head at 85 if you prefer that. Still much better than dying at 35 in the body of a 60 year old.

My grandmother became 93 and lived at home all the time until her death, with complete mental clarity all the time.

Still, my fathers grandmother became 99(!) and that was without much modern medicine as she was born sometime in the mid 19th century.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Sun May 17th, 2009 at 05:20:56 AM EST
[ Parent ]

LQD: Capitalism is Not Worth Saving | 98 comments (98 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Top Diaries

Of Childless Cat Ladies and other matters...

Lest we forget: How extreme violence and division have been...

A blog policeman's lot is not a happy one

The Amazing thing that's happening in the US Presidential...

Hoover's FBI: Patriotism, Nationalism, MAGA, Fascism

Net Zero Energy - August 24, 2024

Recent Diaries

Post WWII: Building a Terror State Inside Europe

Tampered AP-900 Pagers Explode Across Lebanon

Of Childless Cat Ladies and other matters...

Hasbara Content U.S. State Dep't Briefing

Trump's Loomer Agent Provocateur

Dominique De Villepin Se Rend Immortel

Al Jazeera Documentary Egyptian Icon Inji

Jewish Terror and Genocide - Israel Firster

Impunity the New Judeo-Evangelical Coalition

Lest we forget: How extreme violence and division have been...

The EU In Inevitable Economic Backslide

Incoherent On Morals and Law & Order

Dutch Cabinet and Israeli Threats to ICC Prosecutors

Alan Dershowitz the Closet Republican

Israel Murders Peace Activists

GS: MAGA Policy Hits EU Economy Hard

Hoover's FBI: Patriotism, Nationalism, MAGA, Fascism

Trump Victory, Communism, Divine Intervention

City Agriculture - September 4, 2024

President Sees US NATO Policy Succeed in UA

Occasional Series