Two Thirds Done

Thoughts and experiences of an eighty one year old Wild Duck.

Avram Miller by the sea
EN | IT

587 posts since 2006

Tag: Post Carbon

  • These are the good old days

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    Lately, I have been feeling very pessimistic about the future of humanity because we have so many daunting challenges ahead of us. But, generally, the leaders of most countries are only interested in their own power and do not want to take the required actions. 

    I suggest you read this thoughtful article by Richard Heinberg, a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, where my son, Asher, is the Executive Director.

    While it is right and needed to focus on Climate Change driven by fossil fuels, we also have to understand that we will run out of these fuels way before we have substitutions. This could lead to the total collapse of the world order, and I am not kidding.  

    We are wasting fossil fuels and have no way to regenerate them. Alternative energy will not be able to ramp up fast enough with the investments now being made and the weak and selfishness of our leaders.  

    The world is like a 20-year old who inherited a lot of money and is now spending it on drugs. We can only speculate if the drugs will kill him before he runs out of money.  

    While I doubt that we can take the needed actions to change the inevitable decline in civilization, perhaps we can take some action personally to deal with the effects. Those actions might not be very desirable in the short term but could be life-saving eventually.  

  • Introducing the Four Day Work Week

    As some of you know, I plan to run for President via Americans Elect if nominated.  I will be posting some of the planks of my campaign platform
    Here is one:  Introducing the Four Day Work Week
    As some of you know, I plan to run for President via Americans Elect if nominated.  I will be posting some of the planks of my campaign platform from time to time.  Here is one – Introduce the Four Day Work Week.
    I hate to be the one to tell you, but the jobs that were lost in the debacle that  resulted in part from  the real estate bubble,  are not coming back.  The combination of globalization, increased productivity resulting from technological advances and  resource depletion  are  permanent.  Rather than dealing with that reality, we masked it by the using of easy credit.  So rather than having growth we simulated growth.  That allowed Americans to buy homes they could not afford with debt that they could not pay back. Building these homes created many jobs but those jobs could not be sustained.  In the mean time, increasing real estate values allowed the rest of us to feel more wealthy  and more comfortable spending our savings or, even worse, borrowing from the equity of our homes.  I think you probably already know all this.  But our government leaders are telling us (both parties) that we just have to return to growth and everything thing will be ok.  The two parties do not disagree with the end objective – growth.  They just disagree on how to get there. And they are both wrong.
    So if we are going to have 10%  unemployment (it’s really more like 20% but we don’t count the people that had given up looking for work), more or less permanently (although will likely get worse), then what does this mean for our country?  If so many people are unemployed permanently, things are going to get ugly. Unemployment insurance can not maintain standards of living.  And unemployment insurance will not be extended for ever.  So many families will find themselves with greatly reduced incomes or even no income.  Family not directly effected will fear that they will be next to lose their jobs.  This means that in addition to living with great anxiety, they will also be willing to work longer hours for less pay and less benefits which, while increasing profitability for their employers, will have the effect of actually reducing job growth.  Not all parts of society will be effected in the same way.  For instance young people and in particular young people of  minorities will be even more effected.  You only have to look to the recent riots in the UK to see how well this works out.
    So is there an alternative?  Yes, we can go back to the promise of a four day work week, something I was told to expect when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s.   If we reduced the work week to 32 hours,  after a period of adjustment, everyone  could be employed.  Yes, we would all be earning 20% less but we would have a full extra day in our lives.  This in effect would add increase our days off by 50%.  We would stop having to worry about losing our jobs.  We would once again have some bargaining power with employers.  We would have not to be fearful of gangs of young men who have never found work.

    So rather than think about a reduction of your salary by 20%, think about all the great things you will be able to do with the extra day.

    Here is a pretty good video talking about this concept.

    New Dream Mini-Views: Visualizing a Plenitude Economy from Center for a New American Dream on Vimeo.

     

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