General Motors seeks US$30b to avoid failure.
Have the Governments of the world forgotten how economics works?
If you can't sell enough product to survive then you have no right to be here. What the Governments of the world are doing is allowing business to believe they have rights outside of operating in a market. OK, there is an economic downturn. But ask yourself why? I'm not going to answer that but what I will say is this.
The post-war project of endless economic growth and the resultant suburban dream is over. We won't be resuming revolving credit anytime soon. The growth cycle is over. And I'm not talking about the supposed 7 year residential property cycle. I'm talking the industrial/information age in its current disguise, is over.
Ok, lets assume the US Govt prop up General Motors with a $30b bail out. Then what? Who's buying cars?
Remember how much oil was per barrel before this fiasco all started? I'll ask again, what do you think caused this "economic collapse" in the first place.
Showing posts with label Suburbia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Suburbia. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Life, love and in vino veritas
Every day is like sunday,
Every day is silent and grey.
Happiness part 1.
There is some chimerical line that is crossed, somewhere between 35 and 45. It's the point of no *romantic* return. Mortgages, kids and flat screen TVs take precedence over "well up for it" tottie. Maybe I should be saying "real love", or maybe what idealists might call "true happiness", takes over.
But hold on a minute, "happiness", jesus what the hell is that, happiness is truely dumb. Movies and weddings end in happiness. Happiness is an afternoon nap, on a blissfully languid sunday afternoon. Happiness is something, but it's not life, certainly not a life lived. When you look back, on your one and only life, what more a tragic thought could one ponder than, i never really lived.
I'm happy with not being happy, this fact confuses people. I'm often accused of being "a little bit of a lost soul", perhaps I'd be happier if I saw a spiritual advisor, or meditated or something. Please don't make the logical mistake (no apologies however for the 98% of you that do) I'm not saying I am unhappy (denying the antecedent for the geeks). What I am saying is that "happiness" is overated.
Personally I think excitement rates higher than happiness. Forget contentment, lifes too short for that, you can be content when you are dead. The problem with excitement is that it comes barbed, particularly in your suburban nuclear family setting. Excitement is as inherently risky as happiness precedes brain-dead mediocrity. Given the choice of excitement vs happiness, You can guess what I'd choose. It's a boy thing, no fuck it, it's a man thing - nothing wrong with that is there - we love adventure. Why do I skate, climb mountains on my own etc (at 45) because the alternative sucks - I see the 30-something risk-averse-daddys with 50-something guts supervising their scooter riding kids at Waitangi Park tragically dressed by their pursed-lipped wives - that's happiness!??
Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with "relationships", or kids, I have both, in fact I recommend them both - but you die one day, get that, one day you are going to die. In reality, love and death are the only things that really matter.
Every day is like sunday,
Every day is silent and grey.
Happiness part 1.
There is some chimerical line that is crossed, somewhere between 35 and 45. It's the point of no *romantic* return. Mortgages, kids and flat screen TVs take precedence over "well up for it" tottie. Maybe I should be saying "real love", or maybe what idealists might call "true happiness", takes over.
But hold on a minute, "happiness", jesus what the hell is that, happiness is truely dumb. Movies and weddings end in happiness. Happiness is an afternoon nap, on a blissfully languid sunday afternoon. Happiness is something, but it's not life, certainly not a life lived. When you look back, on your one and only life, what more a tragic thought could one ponder than, i never really lived.
I'm happy with not being happy, this fact confuses people. I'm often accused of being "a little bit of a lost soul", perhaps I'd be happier if I saw a spiritual advisor, or meditated or something. Please don't make the logical mistake (no apologies however for the 98% of you that do) I'm not saying I am unhappy (denying the antecedent for the geeks). What I am saying is that "happiness" is overated.
Personally I think excitement rates higher than happiness. Forget contentment, lifes too short for that, you can be content when you are dead. The problem with excitement is that it comes barbed, particularly in your suburban nuclear family setting. Excitement is as inherently risky as happiness precedes brain-dead mediocrity. Given the choice of excitement vs happiness, You can guess what I'd choose. It's a boy thing, no fuck it, it's a man thing - nothing wrong with that is there - we love adventure. Why do I skate, climb mountains on my own etc (at 45) because the alternative sucks - I see the 30-something risk-averse-daddys with 50-something guts supervising their scooter riding kids at Waitangi Park tragically dressed by their pursed-lipped wives - that's happiness!??
Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with "relationships", or kids, I have both, in fact I recommend them both - but you die one day, get that, one day you are going to die. In reality, love and death are the only things that really matter.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Stuck at Home in Suburbia
I have a friend, currently living in a great house Central City, Wellington. You can walk anywhere in town and the Midnight Expresso is just a stones throw away. My friend is going through a combo-crisis. She is approaching 40. And she is about to move to suburbia.
This frightening tension says a lot about the mid-life mystery. When multiple bathrooms, double garages, lawns that need to be mowed and room to park the Stabicraft replaces the urban alco-club induced hedonism of our 30s. Symbolically she is faced with letting go of her youth in two short punches.
People don't choose suburbia, it chooses them.
Not only has the hyper-suburbanisation of the cattle-class over the last 20 years essentially propped up the New Zealand economy but you can accurately measure the suburban fiasco by the number of other happy motorists interfering with your commuting pleasure. Suburban life isn't much fun in Auckland if you work in the city.
Our entire fucking economy is based on continued creation and maintenance of suburban sprawl and all the insidious bullshit (recreational shopping at the local Warehouse) that it entails - we're at the end of the civilisation cul-de-sac. The far flung exburbian outreaches of society will be the first to implode in the severe vacuum that will accompany disruptions to the oil markets that they depend upon thereby seriously impeding the 80k a day commute. All the morbidly obese brain-dead infotainment zombies and desparate soccer mum housewives who live in their three bathroom "internal access" McHouses will find themselves cut off from work and midweek tennis dates.
The suburbs are the slums of the future. Some won't have to wait that long. The story goes something like this. Gross devaluation accompanied by wholesale denial - what Kunstler terms the pyschology of previous investment will be dictate behaviour. Default, foreclosure, repossession, bankruptcy. And for some, attempts to fly out of office block windows as the reality dawns.
Cheap oil subsidised our way into sprawl, but cheap oil is gone. My advice to those not currently comatose, make plans to get out now. By the time you're spending a third of your weekly wages filling the Ford Explorer it will be too late.
Postscript
For my friend worried about the suburban choice - the intuition is right. However, suburbia has a knack of quickly dulling the senses.
...but don't take my word for it
I have a friend, currently living in a great house Central City, Wellington. You can walk anywhere in town and the Midnight Expresso is just a stones throw away. My friend is going through a combo-crisis. She is approaching 40. And she is about to move to suburbia.
This frightening tension says a lot about the mid-life mystery. When multiple bathrooms, double garages, lawns that need to be mowed and room to park the Stabicraft replaces the urban alco-club induced hedonism of our 30s. Symbolically she is faced with letting go of her youth in two short punches.
People don't choose suburbia, it chooses them.
Not only has the hyper-suburbanisation of the cattle-class over the last 20 years essentially propped up the New Zealand economy but you can accurately measure the suburban fiasco by the number of other happy motorists interfering with your commuting pleasure. Suburban life isn't much fun in Auckland if you work in the city.
Our entire fucking economy is based on continued creation and maintenance of suburban sprawl and all the insidious bullshit (recreational shopping at the local Warehouse) that it entails - we're at the end of the civilisation cul-de-sac. The far flung exburbian outreaches of society will be the first to implode in the severe vacuum that will accompany disruptions to the oil markets that they depend upon thereby seriously impeding the 80k a day commute. All the morbidly obese brain-dead infotainment zombies and desparate soccer mum housewives who live in their three bathroom "internal access" McHouses will find themselves cut off from work and midweek tennis dates.
The suburbs are the slums of the future. Some won't have to wait that long. The story goes something like this. Gross devaluation accompanied by wholesale denial - what Kunstler terms the pyschology of previous investment will be dictate behaviour. Default, foreclosure, repossession, bankruptcy. And for some, attempts to fly out of office block windows as the reality dawns.
Cheap oil subsidised our way into sprawl, but cheap oil is gone. My advice to those not currently comatose, make plans to get out now. By the time you're spending a third of your weekly wages filling the Ford Explorer it will be too late.
Postscript
For my friend worried about the suburban choice - the intuition is right. However, suburbia has a knack of quickly dulling the senses.
...but don't take my word for it
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Suburbia's looming fire-sale
On the forthcoming energy crunch Jim Kunstler argues,
These beliefs, that the society our children will inherit will somehow be richer, more open and peaceful and economically more prosperous. That technology and coming generations will solve the collective global problems we face. We truly believe in the fallacy of endless substitution. That we will discover and liberate energy sources cheaper and more productive as existing ones run out. In New Zealand many of us favour leaving such issue’s to the “market” to sort out. After all, the stone-age didn’t end because we ran out of stone.
An acute understanding of the fundamentals of energy and its intrinsic relationship with society instructs us differently however. The post-globalist, post-cheap-oil age will seriously challenge our deeply seated assumptions. We don’t have to run out of oil for life to be up-ended. We merely need to experience a supply squeeze and a reasonable price spike for all the mechanisms that support our modern life to be seriously destabilised. This situation is quickly approaching. The world is currently experiencing growth in oil use that is stretching available supply to the absolute limit. This is occurring when the global production of oil is about to move over it’s all time peak, after which it will be in permanent and increasing decline.
The public of New Zealand are about to get the shock of their lives. Currently there is no national leadership in regard to this issue. It is entirely likely that an aggrieved angry public will lash out as the instant erosion of lifestyle is paralleled by increasing fuel prices and shortages.
The resultant disorder will require an urgent downscaling of virtually all the activities in New Zealand. The suburban lifestyles many of us have invested our life’s earnings in, represent arguably the largest misallocation of resources since the Second World War. We will be forced to live closer to work, within walking or cycling distance.
As national and international supply chains are affected by disrupted oil markets the days of driving your 4WD to the Warehouse for some recreational shopping will quickly come to an end. The emergence of such massive discounters and franchisers was seen as a huge boon to mass consumerism however many of us failed to notice the losses incurred to society as the demise of localised retail systems followed. Such centralised national chains are ultimately dependant upon an infrastructure both local and international, that require heavily oil reliant distribution channels to be operationally seamless.
We will need to re-establish interdependent localised communities based on moving merchandise including food and produce shorter distances. Rail systems will have to be developed to replace defunct long-haul trucking systems.
Our agricultural systems face similar restructuring. Many of our food products are mass produced hundreds of kilometres away from cities and trucked to New World’s and Pack & Save stores country-wide. The re-emergence of market-gardens and localised agri-business will be necessary. Interdependent multi-mode distribution and transportation channels will have to be re-established if we are to feed ourselves. Farming will be performed on a much smaller scale. Access to fossil-fuel based fertilisers and pesticides will be tenuous and rather than a trendy luxury, small scale organic farming will become a necessity.
The changes we face, the end of globalisation bought about by the emerging dysfunction and peak in world oil production will not be pleasant. We will be forced to change our living arrangements in ways that we never envisioned in the golden years of the 1990s.
Suburban life has no future!
In fact many people will find that their lifelong financial investment in this car-dependent living arrangement becomes worthless almost overnight. Kunstler argues that we could well see a mad scramble to “get-out” (of suburbia). Unfortunately history reminds us that we are likely to cling to the tragic delusion that somehow “things will get back to normal”. The defence of the suburban way of life will become a bizarre yet futile exercise. It is very likely to precipitate appalling political situations. As it becomes increasingly evident that it is impossible to maintain our suburban utopia communities will likely turn to fanatical politicians preaching a “business as usual” message.
Whether we like it or not we are on the road to an extended harsh period of austerity and consequent re-adjustment. The sooner as a nation we face up to this dilemma the less the shock will be.
www.oilcrash.com
http://www.energybulletin.net/
Steve.
PowerLess NZ
On the forthcoming energy crunch Jim Kunstler argues,
”Many of the beliefs and accepted dogmas of the late 20th century will fallOne of the reasons a great many people, policy makers and leaders find it impossible to face the issue of peak oil is because it challenges the very beliefs that we argue are a priori truths about industrialised western societies, without requirement for justification, our fundamental birth-rights.
away as a new and very different reality asserts itself.”
These beliefs, that the society our children will inherit will somehow be richer, more open and peaceful and economically more prosperous. That technology and coming generations will solve the collective global problems we face. We truly believe in the fallacy of endless substitution. That we will discover and liberate energy sources cheaper and more productive as existing ones run out. In New Zealand many of us favour leaving such issue’s to the “market” to sort out. After all, the stone-age didn’t end because we ran out of stone.
An acute understanding of the fundamentals of energy and its intrinsic relationship with society instructs us differently however. The post-globalist, post-cheap-oil age will seriously challenge our deeply seated assumptions. We don’t have to run out of oil for life to be up-ended. We merely need to experience a supply squeeze and a reasonable price spike for all the mechanisms that support our modern life to be seriously destabilised. This situation is quickly approaching. The world is currently experiencing growth in oil use that is stretching available supply to the absolute limit. This is occurring when the global production of oil is about to move over it’s all time peak, after which it will be in permanent and increasing decline.
The public of New Zealand are about to get the shock of their lives. Currently there is no national leadership in regard to this issue. It is entirely likely that an aggrieved angry public will lash out as the instant erosion of lifestyle is paralleled by increasing fuel prices and shortages.
The resultant disorder will require an urgent downscaling of virtually all the activities in New Zealand. The suburban lifestyles many of us have invested our life’s earnings in, represent arguably the largest misallocation of resources since the Second World War. We will be forced to live closer to work, within walking or cycling distance.
As national and international supply chains are affected by disrupted oil markets the days of driving your 4WD to the Warehouse for some recreational shopping will quickly come to an end. The emergence of such massive discounters and franchisers was seen as a huge boon to mass consumerism however many of us failed to notice the losses incurred to society as the demise of localised retail systems followed. Such centralised national chains are ultimately dependant upon an infrastructure both local and international, that require heavily oil reliant distribution channels to be operationally seamless.
We will need to re-establish interdependent localised communities based on moving merchandise including food and produce shorter distances. Rail systems will have to be developed to replace defunct long-haul trucking systems.
Our agricultural systems face similar restructuring. Many of our food products are mass produced hundreds of kilometres away from cities and trucked to New World’s and Pack & Save stores country-wide. The re-emergence of market-gardens and localised agri-business will be necessary. Interdependent multi-mode distribution and transportation channels will have to be re-established if we are to feed ourselves. Farming will be performed on a much smaller scale. Access to fossil-fuel based fertilisers and pesticides will be tenuous and rather than a trendy luxury, small scale organic farming will become a necessity.
The changes we face, the end of globalisation bought about by the emerging dysfunction and peak in world oil production will not be pleasant. We will be forced to change our living arrangements in ways that we never envisioned in the golden years of the 1990s.
Suburban life has no future!
In fact many people will find that their lifelong financial investment in this car-dependent living arrangement becomes worthless almost overnight. Kunstler argues that we could well see a mad scramble to “get-out” (of suburbia). Unfortunately history reminds us that we are likely to cling to the tragic delusion that somehow “things will get back to normal”. The defence of the suburban way of life will become a bizarre yet futile exercise. It is very likely to precipitate appalling political situations. As it becomes increasingly evident that it is impossible to maintain our suburban utopia communities will likely turn to fanatical politicians preaching a “business as usual” message.
Whether we like it or not we are on the road to an extended harsh period of austerity and consequent re-adjustment. The sooner as a nation we face up to this dilemma the less the shock will be.
www.oilcrash.com
http://www.energybulletin.net/
Steve.
PowerLess NZ
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