Here's a couple interesting articles on the transformation to a Steady State Economy that seems to be an inevitable requirement of the oil peak (either that or a failed growth economy).

The first, from the Do The Math energy blog (yes, again, I like that blog heh) talks about what individuals may do to achieve a lower energy footprint:

http://physics.ucsd.edu/...reat-hope-for-the-future/

The second refers to more government policy and macroeconomics to achieve the desired solution:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3941

Its 10 Point Policy Summary are thus:

Ten Point Policy Summary

1. Cap-auction-trade systems for basic resources. Cap limits to biophysical scale according to source or sink constraint, whichever is more stringent. Auction captures scarcity rents for equitable redistribution. Trade allows efficient allocation to highest uses.

2. Ecological tax reform—shift tax base from value added (labor and capital) and on to “that to which value is added”, namely the entropic throughput of resources extracted from nature (depletion), through the economy, and back to nature (pollution). Internalizes external costs as well as raises revenue more equitably. Prices the scarce but previously unpriced contribution of nature.

3. Limit the range of inequality in income distribution—a minimum income and a maximum income. Without aggregate growth poverty reduction requires redistribution. Complete equality is unfair; unlimited inequality is unfair. Seek fair limits to inequality.

4. Free up the length of the working day, week, and year—allow greater option for leisure or personal work. Full-time external employment for all is hard to provide without growth.

5. Re-regulate international commerce—move away from free trade, free capital mobility and globalization, adopt compensating tariffs to protect efficient national policies of cost internalization from standards-lowering competition from other countries.

6. Downgrade the IMF-WB-WTO to something like Keynes’ plan for a multilateral payments clearing union, charging penalty rates on surplus as well as deficit balances—seek balance on current account, avoid large capital transfers and foreign debts.

7. Move to 100% reserve requirements instead of fractional reserve banking. Put control of money supply and seigniorage in hands of the government rather than private banks.

8. Enclose the remaining commons of rival natural capital in public trusts, and price it, while freeing from private enclosure and prices the non rival commonwealth of knowledge and information. Stop treating the scarce as if it were non scarce, and the non scarce as if it were scarce.

9. Stabilize population. Work toward a balance in which births plus immigrants equals deaths plus out-migrants.

10. Reform national accounts—separate GDP into a cost account and a benefits account. Compare them at the margin, stop growing when marginal costs equal marginal benefits. Never add the two accounts.

You are completely crazy if you believe in this garbage. Obviously, you can not make decisions for yourself and need others to decide for you. That is what a State Economy would do. Aside from having the government tell you how to live your life keep in mind how often gov officials are found to be corrupt. If you need examples i suggest you interview the last two Governors from the great state of ILL. If you need to know where to look for them its easy, they are both in prison. Yes, in prison cause they were corrupt. Your kind of government would turn people into rats and give all power to corrupt soulless bastards out to get all they can for themselves.

I didn't say a STATE economy... i said a STEADY-STATE economy; as in 0% GDP growth

As in the mathematical term "steady-state"

The term is used in macroeconomics as well. For example the Solow growth model theorizes that economies eventually reach a "steady state" of capital stock.

Also, another article that just appeared on Ars Technica about this:

http://arstechnica.com/...nd-of-growth-on-earth.ars

With an advocacy group to boot!

http://steadystate.org/

eh qzjul, a lot of the world still is in poverty to even think that steady-state is a good solution.

Further, it is all a matter of costs. As oil gets more expensive, we will shift more and more to other sources of fuel.

Qz is still selling his snakeoil? We'll all log in here soon and find it is a liberal propaganda machine.

well, obviously much of the world will have to be caught up; but it says so in all those articles!

Switch to other fuels: like what, precisely? nothing with the same energy density as gasoline; natural gas is good, but not AS good; electric is good for personal transport of light vehicles, but not truck transport. Things WILL get more expensive to move around. That may not immediately cause problems, but as demand goes up while supply cannot, problems will inevitably occur.


crest: how is it snake oil? is the earth infinite? is the growth potential for energy infinite?

ok.

Still, isn`t this just a technological problem rather than an energy problem?

We can make energy from other sources, we will just need a new fuel for transportation, be it batteries, hydrogen, bio-fuel or whatever.

And yeah, of course prices will go up short term :P

WTF ?

those 10 pts some are extremely laughable.

100% reserve requirements: a bank could not make a loan so they would not be a bank at all, we would just have places we would have to pay to keep our money locked upsafe, even though it would be depleting for the service charge I would have to pay to keep it there.

Stablized Pop? we would either kill someone when an extra baby gets born, or export one to a place that just had loss of life.

when marginal growth = Marginal benefits , because all have consistance in marginal benefit, we have to reavaluate the world on a daily/ hourly basis.

0% growth is death. No one can be better off unless they make others worse off. If i improve efficiency, I have to reduce the amount I produce?

so when is the sudan or most of Africa for that point, or a place like N.korea, concidered in the range that we can start this? do we just take away 3/4 of everything owned by those in the west to expedite the process. As the poorest in most western nations are actually living above the 50% percentile on a world state.

What qz says is true, http://www.youtube.com/...y_list?p=6A1FD147A45EF50D explains it all much better then I could. But in the end it will come to a steady-state economy, it is impossible to keep a steady grownth.

Note that this lecture is 10 years old, yet what he says rings even more true today.

think i was told that it's not possible to create a perpetual motion machine. how they figure that they'll be able to apply the principle to the economy without using solar power?

Pay this snakeoil seller no mind guys. Hey qz, spend more time improving the changes we suggest for this game or spend more time doing the work that feeds you instead of spending tons of hrs online reading this garbage. Matter of fact, read all the garbage you want, just don't post it here like. as Rick James would say, "it's something to do", it ain't!

Economies will continue to grow scaling with science and continued exploration, not to mention wars which will continue to keep nations down providing cheap labor for the rest of us.

interesting

crest: you keep waving it off as snake oil but have yet to counter even a single point. The problem with a growth economy is that thermodynamics and physical limitations eventually get in the way.


Tbody: We can't even fully employ our own labour force, what makes you think we need additional labour; robots will eventually be cheaper than even 3rd world labour.

Science can only make the economy grow to a point; most of our economic gains are tied to the ever increasing amount of cheap energy. When that stops, there could be problems...

People have to work. The not as smart people have to work more to make the same amount of money.

I disagree. I deal with engineers from all over the world and they are usually the first to get there and the last to leave.

Not to mention there are some sales reps that make 6 figures and can't tell you how anything they sell actually works.

Or how about strippers? They are borderline retarded and pull in 70-80k a year to dance. Usually the cocaine habit bites into that money, but still.

All we need is to create the matrix, that way we can have 3/4 of mankind as batteries while the rest concentrates on advancing our technology, and when the inevitable happens and we get invaded by aliens, we just release everyone from the matrix as grunt soldiers.

I really don't see the fuel part of this, yes as fossil fuel becomes more scarce then other energy forms become cost effective ie. Solar, wind, nuke, Hydro, Geo and surely forms we aren't even thinking.

I'm sure as far as the population growth problem you can find articles written more then 200 yrs ago claiming we could never feed a billion people never mind 7 and growing, and with 7+ food supply is not remotely close to a problem, in fact the only food problems are effective transportation systems that are politically hindered.

Wow :X

I haven't read anything about steady state economy (zero growth) before, but a common objection must be that this is impossible in capitalist society, right? For the capitalist to make a profit, the surplus money must come from somewhere, and that somewhere is credit. That debt can then be repaid with new credit, which can then be repaid with new credit, and so on, and as long as the economy continues to grow, this is possible. But if the economy fails to grow, you have a crisis of capital...

http://davidharvey.org/...e-vote-to-end-capitalism/

true: currently money is created by a loan being made.

with 100% reserve requirements there is no credit.

qzjul is a totalitarian in the tradition of Mao, Stalin and Hitler.

This was a great read. Unfortunately when you think in terms of sustainability many people are there calling you an idiot because of their own shortsightedness. Lots of that here.

Also, the idea about 100% reserves is meant to restrict the flow of capital as debt from banks. That is the point. The government would then pick up the necessary capital shortfall and use the interest to finance infrastructure projects (ideally) and this would generate new revenue through taxes as well as disperse the interest earned as wages. As opposed to a hoarding system where banks amass massive amounts of capital in the form of profit from interest, the government would excrete 100% of the interest revenue back into circulation. Try to argue that banks do not hoard capital and I will point at their net worth increase over the past 50 years (it is insane).

"Switch to other fuels: like what, precisely?"

Thorium. Seriously. Read up on it. It's naturally occurring - and is a current waste product of coal-fired power plants. Oh, and it's 0% probability of the "negative outcomes" along the lines of Fukushima.. because the material can simply be removed from the reaction chamber.

Breeder reactors in France are much safer than the GE designs used in the US - and Japan.

If you'd like to believe peak oil doesn't exist: It's about EROEI, not amount of oil. If you don't know what that means, go read Sudden Debt.

Steve Keen, the Australian econ professor, has an excellent steady-state economic model.. discussed at debtdeflation.

there is no banking with out a spread.

so I borrow 100 dollars it creates a 100 dollar deposit instantly, and with 100% reserve requirement all of that money must be now put in reserve.

the switch would be about an instant 80% collapse of all wealth, and then the continuation of that depresion.

That is correct Oceana, and precisely why you would not make such a change over night. We went from talking conceptually to a rash enactment of said concepts.

isn`t it easier and smarter to just nationalize the banking system?

what difference does it make ,
you still have loans as the primary form of new money, regardless.

current system with say 6% reserve requirement 1 Trillion dollars make a 15T dollars economy. Go to 100% reserve requirement and you in a perfect world have a 1T dollar economy.

Not only would that mean everyone is Broke every countries currency is worthless so I hope your producing all your own personal goods cause no one is going to except your collapasing currency. That the countries policy is to make it worth 1/15th what is currently is worth.

Wrong! You know why people want to go to U.S.A.(in your part of the world ) or to Germany/U.K ( in my part of the world ) - because the work i do in my country and barelly gives me 10k / year could be done in U.S.A for 200k / year. ( yea i know i just had the bad luck of beeing born in a poor eastern european country - thank God i wasn`t born in Africa ).

Dose that make me less smarter than you ? Am i 7-8 times dumber than the above mentioned "stripper" that makes 70-80k / year ?

Now let`s get on the point - i have read the article and it`s a good one. But there is no optimism left in me ... i agree with most parts of the article, but i think there is no hope as long as 0,001 % decides for the rest of 99,999%.

Actually the first answer qjzul got was something like : " you must be crazy if you belive ... etc ". That`s the scream of the human kinds that could never manage to survive without a car, a supermarket and a T.V.

This thing will eventually end with another World War - and the winner takes it all. And i think some of us will be part of it too ...

Anybody that thinks that the developed world will ever accept any sort of 'equitable distribution of resources' with the undeveloped world without the input of an extraordinary amount of violence is in need of a history lesson.

We have worked damn hard for centuries exploiting the third world for our benefit. What makes you think we're just going to give it back and start working behind a team of oxen out of some sense of utopian altruism?

In the annals of human history one thing has been pretty consistent - there has never really been a middle, only a top and a bottom.