a critique of reinventing collapse

by Charles Hugh Smith, oftwominds.com, critiquing Dmitri Orlov’s book, and discussing differences between USSR collapse and US collapse.

The cultural and structural differences between the USSR and the USA are significant, and if Orlov had been an anthropologist his book might have drawn somewhat less sensationalist distinctions. His primary thesis is that the Soviet Union was actually better prepared to weather collapse than the U.S., but I think he missed this critical difference: Russia and the other constituent states of the former USSR were resource-rich.

The delivery system for what I call the FEW Essentials (food, energy, water) was decrepit and inefficient, but there was plenty of oil, natural gas, wheat (Ukraine), water and know-how in a relatively well-educated citizenry. The problems were all basically political in nature: a failed Nanny State could no longer deliver the goods and services it had controlled.

The U.S. will be dealing with an entirely different set of problems: systemic financial crisis/collapse, and shortages in resources that were once abundant: food, energy and water (at least in the West). Those limitations in resources present problems beyond mere political corruption and incompetence, though we have still have an abundance of those. In other words, if the U.S. faces a bigger challenge, it’s because the problems are far deeper than just political structure.

Here in the U.S., the political problem is our system’s inability to tackle long-term problems with any sort of foresight and rationality, but that does not necessarily lead to political collapse. The USSR was a Nanny State par excellence–you needed political approval to go to college, to take a job, to buy food, to move to another city–your entire life was governed by the State, which “promised” to take care of you in a fashion captured perfectly by the wry Soviet-era joke, “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”

The U.S. has certainly evolved into a Nanny state in many ways, but we should be careful not to exaggerate this weakness. Many people in the U.S. are still quite capable of doing things for themselves, including organizing their community around goals the government is either botching or ignoring. As the economy tanks and tax revenues dry up, and government at every level spends more and more of its revenues paying interest on old and new debts, then the path of least resistance for government is not collapse but irrelevance.

Once people realize the Gravy Train has tumbled off the tracks and the government no longer has the money to throw tens of billions at every “problem,” then they’ll eventually stop trying to get blood from a turnip, i.e. demanding something from the gummit which the gummit no longer has–”free” money.

To some degree, that is what we are advocating here, but not just because governments are bankrupt. We argue that governments are the creation of bullies (for want of a better term) trying to legitamise their privilege and power, and minimise revolutionary social change. Civilisation is a culture of empire, sustained through slavery in various forms, where destructive behaviour is rewarded. For example, William the Conqueror gave large estates in England to his friends and those who helped him take England by force. The modern world was shaped by wars, colonialism and oppression, and it continues to this day, but oil has enabled governments to export many of the worst aspects of slavery and exploitation. As governments find they no longer have the energy to dominate our lives, and/or sort out ‘problems’ for their own citizens, it will be up to us to reshape our lives. For many people, living under more oppressive regimes (which are supported by the so-called democratic states), peak oil may well be a good thing in many ways – less interference, direct oppression, regulations etc. But at the same time, the nanny state will be less able to help us in hard times.

4. Wandering around as a homeless migrant is not a good survival strategy. Orlov suggests at the end of his book that wandering between two or three sources of resources would be a good strategy. My own view is that freeloading is frowned upon in the U.S. and your best bet to is either stay put (yes, even in ghettos and urban neighborhoods) or move to a place where you have some roots (where you grew up is always a good place to start) or where there is some commonality: a church you belong to, an ecosystem you love and will nurture, etc.

I also think the value of hard work and generosity is still valued here in the U.S. If you pitch in and start growing some food, and then share it, you will quickly become a valued member of the community, and people will start looking out for you, too.

Wandering around freeloading is a good way to be scorned and loathed. Even in the grittiest neighborhoods, food can be grown in amazing abundance once people put their minds and backs to it.

Good advice. Vagrancy is still a crime in the UK. How will your neighbourhood look post peak oil?

5. The U.S. is on par with Sadr City, Iraq in terms of firepower in the hands of citizens. As the most heavily armed society in the developed world, the U.S. can easily go the way of well-armed criminal gangs controlling urban zones or well-armed militia sprouting up to take out the criminals. There is historical precedents for either scenario. A third scenario (common in the 3rd World) is for wealthy enclaves to hire private forces to protect the enclave.

While I can’t predict which will play out in various circumstances, we should be aware that the U.S. has millions of military veterans and millions of weapons. The USSR had the vets but not the weapons in private hands. People will eventually choose to support an alternative to anarchy or criminal/mob rule, unless the criminal gang is the only alternative to something worse (i.e. the Sadr City scenario). Or people will pay extra to maintain a top-notch police force and let go of the other city services, performing them communally via volunteer labor.

My point is simply that a heavily armed culture with tens of millions of firearm-trained vets is not going to follow the route of a society without those two elements.

This could make the future very scary, but also could limit the government’s ability to oppress people. Of course, this doesnt apply in Europe, where only the government has guns.

6. Orlov underestimates the power of the Web/Internet. Orlov is extending his experience in a pre-Internet Russia, in which you had to stand outside in the cold in order to hitch a ride. Assuming the Internet backbone will be maintained–and why wouldn’t it be placed ahead of every other use except hospitals and the public safety centers?–then virtually everyone will be able to arrange barters of almost unimaginable range via the Web.

I need a ride to San Jose and have a bag of fresh lettuce and green beans to trade, etc. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how the Web will be leveraged to arrange trade, barter, etc

Possibly, although over time there probably wont be the energy to maintain electricity infrastructures, or to repair and replace computers. Again, this could be a good thing, as we learn to make do with what we have, focus more on low energy equipment, and stop expecting to upgrade computers every year or two. Perhaps many communities will learn to share computers (and much more).

7. Cable TV. Orlov does mention the mind-rot induced by the U.S. mass media, but he underestimates the perniciousness of cable TV. As long as Americans turn to the entertainment industry (CNBC et al.) for their “information,” then the U.S. is well and truly doomed. Our only hope is that most Americans will soon be too impoverished to pay their cable/Dish bill and be cut off, forcing them to the Web where some glimmers of reality do poke through the med-enhanced, propaganda-induced haze.