No Centennial Symmetry
When I contemplate the end of cheap oil, I do not ascribe to the view that we'll go back to the way things were in the last century.
No one is willing to keep oxen to plow the field - they'll just be willing to pay whatever it costs to get diesel to power their tractors. As poorly cost-effective as PV panels are, we'd rather build those than do without computers. With the built-out infrastructure in place for voice communications, I don't see that technology going away, either. Who is so poor that they can't afford to at least share a cellphone with their loved ones? But the big difference, the HUGE difference, is how much we love the advances in medicine since the last century. Oh, there isn't ANYTHING we aren't willing to [compel others to] pay on our behalf for health care.
I think the world will change, but it's not going to look like the past. It defies my guesses, but some of the cracks I see already can be widened to extrapolate:
We are not going to be able to meet the pension obligations we've currently made. Not at the town level and not at the state level and most certainly not at the Federal level without devaluing the Federal currency. That means that old people are not going to be able to continue a style of life they've become accustomed to when they were working. I think more old people will live with their families or possibly in group homes staffed by the modern equivalent of the servant class (meaning, poorly educated and unconcerned strangers.)
I think food in the United States will appear in sufficient calories, but of very poor quality. Already the poor are eating a diet nearly 100% made of corn or unhealthy fats. There is not only NOT an outcry against that, but in the food pantries and welfare agencies I've worked with, the poor DEMAND processed foods. They do NOT want to find rolled oats at the food pantry, they want Cheerios. I see this social trend continuing because the principle effect of the end of cheap oil is the rise in cost (and lack of availability) of nutritious foods.
Water is going to be a really huge issue. I live in a small town with excellent access to water - at the junction of three rivers - but our ability to raise money to run the water/sewer treatment plant is already endangered. The costs of running the town - particularly the pledged health care benefits for town workers - is already outstripping our ability to pay from our real estate tax base, at the same time as the real estate taxes are going unpaid in ever-increasing numbers. (Turns out that people who don't pay their mortgage also don't pay their real estate tax bill.)
It used to be that jobs were capital-based; we made widgets on machines bought with capital. We produced food on land bought with capital. We differentiated ourselves from our competitors with better capital investment in inventions or locations. But now jobs are service-based. I see more recycling opportunities, more installation opportunities. (Someone is going to make good money drilling wells on urban lots.) These jobs by their nature have to follow the untapped client-base, further breaking down the structure of communities as the hard workers leave.
So I think there will be more nomadism. In the last century people were tied to their location by fixed capital investment (ex. they'd built up their soil beds), by community ties (neighbors and people from church were helpful) and by family ties (chances are their aunts and uncles and cousins all lived nearby.) Now people live in houses they can't afford to maintain in communities they picked because of closeness to their jobs. Why stay if the job goes away?
Furthermore, why do the work of staffing a volunteer fire department if you're just passing through? Of sitting through endless meetings of a town zoning board? Of bringing a casserole to your elderly neighbor who has had hip surgery? Really, any activity that requires people band together to do an esoteric and expensive activity (installing a sewer line, for example) is going to go unfunded and undermanned. Keeping a community going requires a huge investment in terms of time and energy and money, and I don't think most people will be willing to do it.
That means crumbling infrastructure, particularly bridges. You're so used to sailing over ravines without ever noticing the steep banks or whether it's a good place to ford the river. It's no joke, though. (This is what REALLY killed the fool in "Into the Wild", by the way, not poisonous food.) A bridge over the creek abutting my Dad's property in Michigan was out for a dozen years until being rebuilt just before the Great Recession hit. It doesn't take a psychic to know that no town bridges are being rebuilt there this year. Living at the juncture of three rivers and getting around by bicycle has taught me just how dependent I am on bridges. I think the Appian Way of our interstate system will continue to be evident from space, but I do not think we will be able to maintain it for high speed travel in another 100 years.
I see civic structures crumbling. Here in Massachusetts we just reneged on the "Quinn bill" which promised better pay for police officers if they got more training. Oopsy, didn't mean it. Police and Fire are already set up to be the "bad guys" in the budget fights - how come they don't get cut like the schools and library and senior center, people moan? I think FerFAL in Argentina and drivers in Kenya know where that goes.
So I see a nomadic future where we are able to communicate instantly - nearly psychically - with distant friends and family. All of our old age money goes towards grasping for health care, made all the more necessary because of a lifetime of poor diet and increasing violence in society and the decreasing safety of transportation. Reliance on civic structures at any level will be problematic.
I don't think we're going back to a preindustrial-revolution society. But I understand why people might long to.
No one is willing to keep oxen to plow the field - they'll just be willing to pay whatever it costs to get diesel to power their tractors. As poorly cost-effective as PV panels are, we'd rather build those than do without computers. With the built-out infrastructure in place for voice communications, I don't see that technology going away, either. Who is so poor that they can't afford to at least share a cellphone with their loved ones? But the big difference, the HUGE difference, is how much we love the advances in medicine since the last century. Oh, there isn't ANYTHING we aren't willing to [compel others to] pay on our behalf for health care.
I think the world will change, but it's not going to look like the past. It defies my guesses, but some of the cracks I see already can be widened to extrapolate:
We are not going to be able to meet the pension obligations we've currently made. Not at the town level and not at the state level and most certainly not at the Federal level without devaluing the Federal currency. That means that old people are not going to be able to continue a style of life they've become accustomed to when they were working. I think more old people will live with their families or possibly in group homes staffed by the modern equivalent of the servant class (meaning, poorly educated and unconcerned strangers.)
I think food in the United States will appear in sufficient calories, but of very poor quality. Already the poor are eating a diet nearly 100% made of corn or unhealthy fats. There is not only NOT an outcry against that, but in the food pantries and welfare agencies I've worked with, the poor DEMAND processed foods. They do NOT want to find rolled oats at the food pantry, they want Cheerios. I see this social trend continuing because the principle effect of the end of cheap oil is the rise in cost (and lack of availability) of nutritious foods.
Water is going to be a really huge issue. I live in a small town with excellent access to water - at the junction of three rivers - but our ability to raise money to run the water/sewer treatment plant is already endangered. The costs of running the town - particularly the pledged health care benefits for town workers - is already outstripping our ability to pay from our real estate tax base, at the same time as the real estate taxes are going unpaid in ever-increasing numbers. (Turns out that people who don't pay their mortgage also don't pay their real estate tax bill.)
It used to be that jobs were capital-based; we made widgets on machines bought with capital. We produced food on land bought with capital. We differentiated ourselves from our competitors with better capital investment in inventions or locations. But now jobs are service-based. I see more recycling opportunities, more installation opportunities. (Someone is going to make good money drilling wells on urban lots.) These jobs by their nature have to follow the untapped client-base, further breaking down the structure of communities as the hard workers leave.
So I think there will be more nomadism. In the last century people were tied to their location by fixed capital investment (ex. they'd built up their soil beds), by community ties (neighbors and people from church were helpful) and by family ties (chances are their aunts and uncles and cousins all lived nearby.) Now people live in houses they can't afford to maintain in communities they picked because of closeness to their jobs. Why stay if the job goes away?
Furthermore, why do the work of staffing a volunteer fire department if you're just passing through? Of sitting through endless meetings of a town zoning board? Of bringing a casserole to your elderly neighbor who has had hip surgery? Really, any activity that requires people band together to do an esoteric and expensive activity (installing a sewer line, for example) is going to go unfunded and undermanned. Keeping a community going requires a huge investment in terms of time and energy and money, and I don't think most people will be willing to do it.
That means crumbling infrastructure, particularly bridges. You're so used to sailing over ravines without ever noticing the steep banks or whether it's a good place to ford the river. It's no joke, though. (This is what REALLY killed the fool in "Into the Wild", by the way, not poisonous food.) A bridge over the creek abutting my Dad's property in Michigan was out for a dozen years until being rebuilt just before the Great Recession hit. It doesn't take a psychic to know that no town bridges are being rebuilt there this year. Living at the juncture of three rivers and getting around by bicycle has taught me just how dependent I am on bridges. I think the Appian Way of our interstate system will continue to be evident from space, but I do not think we will be able to maintain it for high speed travel in another 100 years.
I see civic structures crumbling. Here in Massachusetts we just reneged on the "Quinn bill" which promised better pay for police officers if they got more training. Oopsy, didn't mean it. Police and Fire are already set up to be the "bad guys" in the budget fights - how come they don't get cut like the schools and library and senior center, people moan? I think FerFAL in Argentina and drivers in Kenya know where that goes.
So I see a nomadic future where we are able to communicate instantly - nearly psychically - with distant friends and family. All of our old age money goes towards grasping for health care, made all the more necessary because of a lifetime of poor diet and increasing violence in society and the decreasing safety of transportation. Reliance on civic structures at any level will be problematic.
I don't think we're going back to a preindustrial-revolution society. But I understand why people might long to.