wwswimming
Banned
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/48082
"In any case, about half a decade ago, I finally thought that the time was ripe, and, as it has turned out, I wasn?t too far off. In June of 2005 I published an article on the subject, titled "Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century," which was quite popular, even to the extent that I got paid for it. It is available at various places on the Internet. A little while later I formalized my thinking somewhat into the "Collapse Gap" concept, which I presented at a conference in Manhattan in April of 2006. The slide show from that presentation, titled "Closing the Collapse Gap," was posted on the Internet and has been downloaded a few million times since then. Then, in January of 2008, when it became apparent to me that financial collapse was well underway, and that other stages of collapse were to follow, I published a short article titled ?The Five Stages of Collapse,? which I later expanded into a talk I gave at a conference in Michigan in October of 2008. Finally, at the end of 2008, I announced on my blog that I am getting out of the prognosticating business. I have made enough predictions, they all seem very well on track (give or take half a decade, please remember that), collapse is well underway, and now I am just an observer.
But this talk is about something else, something other than making dire predictions and then acting all smug when they come true. You see, there is nothing more useless than predictions, once they have come true. It?s like looking at last year?s amazingly successful stock picks: what are you going to do about them this year? What we need are examples of things that have been shown to work in the strange, unfamiliar, post-collapse environment that we are all likely to have to confront. Stuart Brand proposed the title for the talk ? ?Social Collapse Best Practices? ? and I thought that it was an excellent idea. Although the term ?best practices? has been diluted over time to sometimes mean little more than ?good ideas,? initially it stood for the process of abstracting useful techniques from examples of what has worked in the past and applying them to new situations, in order to control risk and to increase the chances of securing a positive outcome. It?s a way of skipping a lot of trial and error and deliberation and experimentation, and to just go with what works."
kind of a mix of black humor and realistic suggestions for surviving in a severe economic contraction.
"In any case, about half a decade ago, I finally thought that the time was ripe, and, as it has turned out, I wasn?t too far off. In June of 2005 I published an article on the subject, titled "Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century," which was quite popular, even to the extent that I got paid for it. It is available at various places on the Internet. A little while later I formalized my thinking somewhat into the "Collapse Gap" concept, which I presented at a conference in Manhattan in April of 2006. The slide show from that presentation, titled "Closing the Collapse Gap," was posted on the Internet and has been downloaded a few million times since then. Then, in January of 2008, when it became apparent to me that financial collapse was well underway, and that other stages of collapse were to follow, I published a short article titled ?The Five Stages of Collapse,? which I later expanded into a talk I gave at a conference in Michigan in October of 2008. Finally, at the end of 2008, I announced on my blog that I am getting out of the prognosticating business. I have made enough predictions, they all seem very well on track (give or take half a decade, please remember that), collapse is well underway, and now I am just an observer.
But this talk is about something else, something other than making dire predictions and then acting all smug when they come true. You see, there is nothing more useless than predictions, once they have come true. It?s like looking at last year?s amazingly successful stock picks: what are you going to do about them this year? What we need are examples of things that have been shown to work in the strange, unfamiliar, post-collapse environment that we are all likely to have to confront. Stuart Brand proposed the title for the talk ? ?Social Collapse Best Practices? ? and I thought that it was an excellent idea. Although the term ?best practices? has been diluted over time to sometimes mean little more than ?good ideas,? initially it stood for the process of abstracting useful techniques from examples of what has worked in the past and applying them to new situations, in order to control risk and to increase the chances of securing a positive outcome. It?s a way of skipping a lot of trial and error and deliberation and experimentation, and to just go with what works."
kind of a mix of black humor and realistic suggestions for surviving in a severe economic contraction.
