The Five Stages of Collapse

[NOBama]

Published Nov 11 2008 by Energy Bulletin
Archived Nov 11 2008
by Dmitry Orlov
1.
Hello, everyone! The talk you are about to hear is the result of a lengthy process on my part. My specialty is in thinking about and, unfortunately, predicting collapse. My method is based on comparison: I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and, since I am also familiar with the details of the situation in the United States, I can make comparisons between these two failed superpowers.

I was born and grew up in Russia, and I traveled back to Russia repeatedly between the late 80s and mid-90s. This allowed me to gain a solid understanding of the dynamics of the collapse process as it unfolded there. By the mid-90s it was quite clear to me that the US was headed in the same general direction. But I couldn't yet tell how long the process would take, so I sat back and watched.

I am an engineer, and so I naturally tended to look for physical explanations for this process, as opposed to economic, political, or cultural ones. It turns out that one could come up with a very good explanation for the Soviet collapse by following energy flows. What happened in the late 80s is that Russian oil production hit an all-time peak. This coincided with new oil provinces coming on stream in the West - the North Sea in the UK and Norway, and Prudhoe Bay in Alaska - and this suddenly made oil very cheap on the world markets. Soviet revenues plummeted, but their appetite for imported goods remained unchanged, and so they sank deeper and deeper into debt. What doomed them in the end was not even so much the level of debt, but their inability to take on further debt even faster. Once international lenders balked at making further loans, it was game over.

More

No comment. Yet.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Damn! There are a lot of 'Russian Scholars' predicting the demise of the American Union of States...

Comparisons to the old Soviet Union are a stretch in my opinion, but it is still weird.

-Joe

 

[NOBama]

I haven't had a chance to read the whole article yet, but the opening paragraphs were interesting. That's a long peice, man!

 

[DavidS]

Damn! There are a lot of 'Russian Scholars' predicting the demise of the American Union of States...

Comparisons to the old Soviet Union are a stretch in my opinion, but it is still weird.

-Joe

Russian scholars is an oxymoron.

 

[NOBama]

I just tried reading this whole article. I only got to item #4. The more of it I read the more it reminded me of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

Sorry people, I should have read the whole thing before posting it, because I wouldn't have.

 

[Zoomie1980]

More

No comment. Yet.

There are absolutely NO parallels between the Soviet Union of the 1980's and the United States, today. Not a single one.

 

[Toro]

There are absolutely NO parallels between the Soviet Union of the 1980's and the United States, today. Not a single one.

exactly

 

[NOBama]

Ya got me fella's, and on behalf of the board, I dealt with my error swiftly.

Have a nice day boys, and thank you for espousing your infinite wisdom with respect to your conformation of a previously admitted error on my part.

 

[editec]

Those of you who are dismissing this simple because the author is Russian, are being foolish, I think.

Speaking as somebody who has also spend an inordinate amount of time reading about the collapse of societies, I have to tell you the guy does make sense.

Societies organize around certain basic premises. Their economic systems (whatever system they develop) are chiefly based on those suppositions AND PHILOSOPHIES.

The economic system is, among other things, a diagnostic tool to tell you how healthy our society really is.

When the economics of that society go awry, either for some outside reason like an ecological disaster, or because the social cohesion has eroded over time because the elite have forgotten that they are merely part of the social contact, and not the point of that entire society, then the breakdown of that society is pretty much inevitable.

I believe I have described this event horizon as STUFF STOPS WORKING, many times on this board.

Now I want you all to think about this question for a while before you all kneejerk into optimist mode and tell me that I am a cynic.

How often have you encountered some aspect of our society which you simply KNOW no longer makes sense?

For example, your interactions with local state or federal government.

How often have you been interacting with those and thought to yourself:

What are they talking about? I sent them the paperwork. I did everything they asked of me and STILL I', facing roadblocks which this tool cannot stop because it's not their job?!

or

"Why does this law even exist? It isn't helping anyone, it is actually making it harder for us to get by"

or how many of us have come to the conclusion:

It's every man for himself. You can't trust people to do their jobs anymore. If somebody can cheat me, they will, I must be ever on guard against that.

Now think about that, folks. We are SOCIAL CREATURES.

Sure we're ALSO individuals with some ability to control our own destinies, but we DEPEND on people making the right choices, the honest choices, the choices that we all depend on constantly.

I hear some of you doubting that.

Okay, let's make it simple.

Drive down the road. Are you depending on everyone making the right choices?

Damned straight you are.

You cannot possibly drive so defensively to be safe if NOBODY pays attention to the RULES of the road, can you?

When you drive down the road, or get onto a plane, or check into the hostpital or buy canned foods, or do any of the thousands of day to day task we all must do you are very nearly COMPLETELY DEPENDENT ON STRANGERS YOU WILL NEVER MEET TO DO THEIR JOBS WELL, AND TO NOT CHEAT YOU WHILE THEY DO IT, TOO.

So face it, you are dependent on most people making the right choices most of the time.

You are, a social creature, completely depnednet on society to do most of what you need done FOR YOU.

Every damned aspect of your life depends on THINGS WORKING.

It's not your guns, it's not your 401ks, it's not you jobs, its not your family, it's not you intelligence or your bravery, or your ability to program computers that keeps you safe and functional...

....it's the whole damned society keeping you afloat.

You are dependent on faceless clerks you never met to file the paperwork correctly.

You are dependent on air traffic controllers and pilots to get your plane down on the ground.

You are dependent every damned day on millions of individuals doing the RIGHT THING.

Well what happens when millions of individuals decide that doing the right thing is NOT IN THEIR INTERESTS?

In other words, what happens when EVERYBODY becomes aLIBERTARIAN?

I'll tell you what happens...Russian happens, Rwanda happens, Somalia happens.

Those millions of us who are in this coeity are the servants to EACH OTHER.

We are all highly dependent on our fellow servants following though on their jobs for us to be able to follow though on ours.

They do that, they do their jobs, because they think it in their best interests to do so as do we.

Well what happens when it is no longer really in their or our best interests to do those jobs?

What happens when they or we are not rewarded well enough to actually care if that job gets done?

THINGS STOP WORKING.

As as more and more aspects of our lives stop working correctly, or more and more of us, then guess what?

Sooner or later, not even the affluent can get things done.

GREED is NOT GOOD, and I do not give a rat's ass how many billionaires you all so admire tell you contrary.

Greed is not merely the desire to accumulate wealth, greed is ALSO the response to do the miniumum work for the maximum return.

Greed is ALSO the tendency to never give a sucker an even break, and GREED is thinking everybody else is that SUCKER.

Social greed is a sociopathologic mental DISEASE.

And when enough of us have are infected by that disease, then the society we are sharing is basically toast.

Now that's okay when only a very small percentage of the population are con men, crooks, and sociopaths. They can sap a system and the system can continue functioning because MOST people have not copped that sociopathologic disease.

But when a society's leaders are constantly sending our the message that those who stand by their posts and do the right thing are SUCKERS?!?

Then guess what? Everybody starts to get the GREED DISEASE.

That's when the social cohesion starts to unravel, folks.

This happens to societies, folks, and personally I see it happening to our right now.


And what is at the root source of that unraveling?

When the average guy absords the message that he is an individual who is making on his own, that he owes his fellow men nothing, and that only fools think otherwise....THEN that society is bound to fail EVERYBODY.

And that in my opinion is about where 25% of the AMERICAN population is at right now.

This board is rife with evidence of that conceit of the individual which breaks down societies over the long run.

What some of you have expressed on this board, and some of you rush in to agree with, is yourb contempt for you fellow men.

You think because you are doing okay, those who are not are simply losers. You believe in a lie called social darminism

As a consequence of this lie that far too many American now believe,
the American society and the way of life it created is now dying.


So Happy thanksgiving, folks.

Thanksgiving....a holiday developed by a COMMUNE of people who understood that they either had best hang together or they would hang separately.

Except for the lip service that most of us are willing to give to that sentiment, (but not actually follow through on in most cases) fewer and fewer Americans really understand the above reality that their well being depends on most other people ALSO doing well enough.

I will remeind you of an editecian social axiom which I think describes society perfectly

IF YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE GETTING POORER? SO ARE YOU.​

 

[AVG-JOE]

Those of you who are dismissing this simple because the author is Russian, are being foolish, I think.

Speaking as somebody who has also spend an inordinate amount of time reading...>snip<...people ALSO doing well enough.

I will remeind you of an editecian social axiom which I think describes society perfectly

IF YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE GETTING POORER? SO ARE YOU.​

This is a bit of a ramblin' rant, there Editec, but your thesis is right on the money.

The best companies (which are microcosm examples of societies) that I have ever worked for are the ones in which management, administration and labor all knew the value of the people who comprised the other departments.

The worst companies to work for are the ones that are rife with politics, competition and interdepartmental back-stabbing... Especially if it is encouraged from the top as some sort of bizarre incentive.

-Joe

 

[jillian]

I just tried reading this whole article. I only got to item #4. The more of it I read the more it reminded me of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

Sorry people, I should have read the whole thing before posting it, because I wouldn't have.

Kudos for your honesty.

 

[NOBama]

Those of you who are dismissing this simple because the author is Russian, are being foolish, I think.

I don’t dismiss it (the article) because the author is Russian; I dismiss it because it is so wrought with his personal adventures which cloud the facts or similarities he's trying to convey.

As far as anybody espousing that the US has absolutely nothing in common with Russia regarding their collapse, I disagree wholeheartedly. All governments, including Russia and the US, have and always will have political corruption, IMO.

That said, if the US government were to collapse as Russia’s did, I believe political corruption would be the root cause.

Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have started this thread if I had bothered to read more of it. Lesson learned.

BTW, Happy Thanksgiving, Editec!

 

[Old Rocks]

There are many examples of collapse of cultures and societies in history. For a very good read on such cultures where the collapse came about from failure to deal with environmental effects of a societies activities, one should read Jared Diamonds "Collapse".

 

[Paulie]

There are similarities between our system and Russia's.

Most people are oblivious, because the media hasn't admitted to it yet.

 

[Toro]

There are similarities between our system and Russia's.

Such as?

 

[editec]

The similarities are fairly obvious, I think.

We are a large country, rich in resources, heavily industrialized and prone to adverterism in foreign lands.

We spend a huge amount of money on our military, we have very complex social systems in place, a huge bureacracy, and a very centralized government ruled by an elite group of insiders.


Also, our Empire is costing us a fucking fortune and our government is heavily in debt and the working class isn't making enough to support those goverments we have in place.

The bad news is that, as a people, Americans are even less prepared for economic collspse and breakdown in vivil authority than the Russsians were.

Seriously, if our nation goes the way of the Soviet the pain and suffering is goign to be worse than it was when that happened to the Soviet Union.

Why?

Lot of reasons...

1. We live in the suburbs and are dependent on our cars. The Soviets lived in clusters with lots of public translportation.

2. The Banks own our homes so when we can't pay the bills people are homeless. In Russia the government owned the homes so when the government went down, nobody had to move.

3. Russians still basically lived in the places they were born. Generations lived together. Their friends lived in the same towns. So when their society collapsed at least they had a netowrk of family and friends and associates.

Americans don't live like that as much. Many of us, if the net goes down are isolated in places where we really are not well connected. And we're possibly homeless (sinc eht bank takes our homes) we have cars we can't drive, and no social network to help us.

3. Russians had a long history of getting around the systme cuase their system did NOT work. Americans are used to things working and we are not prepared for when they do not.

4. The Soviets did not have a huge underclass, because they wer mostly ALL underclass. So there is no reason to break into the home down the street because they don't have shit to steal anyway.

Our society has huge differences in affluence which will tempt people to go after their neighbors things when time get hard.

Thorw into the mix the fact that so many of us (good and bad) are armed, and we could expect, I think, to see anarchy with a LOT of violence associated with it, that Russia did not see.

Seriously, if America goes down, hard, it will go down harder on Americans than it went down for the Russians, I suspect.

 

[Richard-H]

The differences between the U.S. and the Soviet Union far out weigh the similarities. I believe that though we have the beginnings of a collapse here, our ability to respond will be much faster and better than that of the Soviet Union.

Several things make a significant difference:

First, the U.S. has no culture, other than consumerism and greed, so there's no such thing really as a cultural collapse. We'll adopt a new culture very quickly. Even one of personal integrity if we really, really have to.

Second, we 'snap' just as stated in the article. In fact, we 'snap' so quickly that we can become an entirely different country almost instantaneously.

Thirdly, we've already had our 'Political' collapse. We call it an election.

Fourth, if you're as old as me, you know that we are a nation of ideological cameleons. This gives us and our government the ability to respond to changes rapidly.

Fifth, we are not a pain tolerant nation. We have no stoicism whatsoever. This means that we will react very early to any percieved problems. We're scaredy-cats.

Sixth, the ability of the government and people to analyze is far beyond the ability of any other culture.

Seventh, our women are a bunch of disloyal, sexual cameleons that in a single mass will abandon any fallen male stereotypes and idealize whatever they percieve as the new male ideal. Thus reinforcing and providing support for whatever the new idiom may be. (Hey, I know this one is weird...but it's true!)

Finally, there is one aspect of American culture that is uniquely American and has seen us through many a crisis and that is: INNOVATIVE THINKING.

 

[NOBama]

Damn man, #7 is gonna put you in a wrold of hurt if the females start reading this thread

 

[editec]

The differences between the U.S. and the Soviet Union far out weigh the similarities. I believe that though we have the beginnings of a collapse here, our ability to respond will be much faster and better than that of the Soviet Union.

Several things make a significant difference:

First, the U.S. has no culture, other than consumerism and greed, so there's no such thing really as a cultural collapse. We'll adopt a new culture very quickly. Even one of personal integrity if we really, really have to.

Second, we 'snap' just as stated in the article. In fact, we 'snap' so quickly that we can become an entirely different country almost instantaneously.

Thirdly, we've already had our 'Political' collapse. We call it an election.

Fourth, if you're as old as me, you know that we are a nation of ideological cameleons. This gives us and our government the ability to respond to changes rapidly.

Fifth, we are not a pain tolerant nation. We have no stoicism whatsoever. This means that we will react very early to any percieved problems. We're scaredy-cats.

Sixth, the ability of the government and people to analyze is far beyond the ability of any other culture.

Seventh, our women are a bunch of disloyal, sexual cameleons that in a single mass will abandon any fallen male stereotypes and idealize whatever they percieve as the new male ideal. Thus reinforcing and providing support for whatever the new idiom may be. (Hey, I know this one is weird...but it's true!)

Finally, there is one aspect of American culture that is uniquely American and has seen us through many a crisis and that is: INNOVATIVE THINKING.

I sincerely hope you are right.

I defintiely agree that our society is somewhat more nimble than the Soviet.

But sadly the nimbleness is mostly granted to the ruling class (few workers are very nimble because we don't hav ethe resources to radically change our long term debt structure).

When I went down economically, it took me and my family years to reinvent out lives to accomodate our economic circumstances.

When ten or twnety or fifty or two hundred million people go down it's going to be hard as hell for them to make the changes since they'll all be ALSO dealing with the fact that stuff stopped working.

I hope you're right, but I think you're wrong.

 

[Zoomie1980]

You people are great laughs. Can tell almost no one here has ever lived through really bad recession or years of "misery indexes"....

There is nothing going on today that isn't entirely NORMAL. You have extreme excesses and the correction is going to be extreme. Bills always come due, those are called recessions. We are having one. But it is NOT the collapse of American or Western civilization.

The primary difference between us and most societies in the world is the primacy of INDIVIDUAL and our high value (other than some of the kooks that populate this forum) on SELF RELIANCE. Soviet society never had any of that.