Comments on: Framing The Collapsonomics Practice

By: nick stewart

nick stewart — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 11:08:34 +0000

… the section on “Managing the causes of social unrest” seems spookily prescient given what happened last summer.

One of your most insightful posts Vinay

By: Chris Naden

Chris Naden — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:33:37 +0000

Smari: we are already seeing calls from non-US dollar-holders (notably BRIC) for a move towards a multiplex finance system, rather than the uniplex current one. This is arguably an international-scale return to the idea of flaxscript or the Greenback Plan from the 19th Century, which was killed off as a *national* policy because governments like monopolies they own.

Will it work? Maybe.

By: Antonio Dias

Antonio Dias — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:18:17 +0000

Just discovered this thread. I share the other respondents view that this discussion is desperately needed and vitally important. We do need to look for ways to avoid the common perception, that the status quo will go on forever – or return to some beloved stock market highpoint – or that we will fall into a survivalist nightmare. Both of these are projections of wish fulfillment, even though on opposite ends of a spectrum. These are both fantasies. The distopian fantasy in which gun-toting individualists will eke out survival as they fight of “Zombies’ is just as unrealistic as a faith in a continuation of the status quo.
We need to admit we do not know how things will play out at any of the scales and granularities that matter to us as individuals. Only then will we be able to develop an adaptability that may actually do us some good.
There may be moments of acute danger when some form of survivalist approach might get us through a tactical situation; but that does not make survivalism a viable strategy.

By: Lucas

Lucas — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 21:41:34 +0000

Smari, that decentralisation is already happening, but of course very very very timidly. How would it go faster? Right now, complementary currencies are “start small, keep small” experiments. Or maybe not?

By: Smári McCarthy

Smári McCarthy — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:12:02 +0000

Jerah, there’s one central and centralised aspect of the American system that is simply dangerous: the monetary system. If the US collapses, the monetary system goes with it. Decentralising the monetary system should be one of the top priorities of anybody thinking seriously along these lines.

By: Thomas Hiltner

Thomas Hiltner — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:37:44 +0000

Orlov makes a lot of sense. I speak generally along the same lines, although I have great faith in America’s (the people)”Don’t tread on me”, attitude, as applied to the robber barons of our time, and the souless corporate ownership that has deregulated itself into historic and dangerous ground.
Know your neighbor. Your life is in their hands.

By: Jan Steinman

Jan Steinman — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 07:18:55 +0000

I don’t think the FSU suffered an Orlov Level-5 collapse. I think Dmitry claims it went to Level-3 and subsequently partially recovered.

By: Jerah

Jerah — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:50:14 +0000

Nice. I’ve been looking for this kind of thinking for a while. I mean, there is doom and then there is doom. There should be MUCH more thinking on this level.

And with all due respect to Dmitry Orlov (and he does deserve a lot), there are things about the American system right now that are make it MORE resilient to collapse than the Soviet Union was. Our market system, as lopsided, unfair and blinded by its own ideology as it is, is simply more resilient when issues of supply and demand come up. It is NOT a centralized system subject to total collapse when the “center cannot hold”, so to speak…

Things do fall apart. But there’s still stuff to talk about.