Energy: Part II
Off the keyboard of Monsta666
Discuss this article at the Energy Table inside the Diner.
In the first part of this two part series we discussed how the sheer amount of energy coupled by its cheap cost enabled society to increase the amount of work that could be produced at a much reduced cost. It was this cheap energy subsidy that made the process of arbitrage between human labour and fossil powered capital very profitable as the price difference between hiring labour “energy” and capital “energy” was so vast.
This huge energy subsidy not only provided great wealth to the ruling classes who owned the factories and other capital infrastructure it also enabled the workers to become more materially wealthy as the cost of producing items was reduced drastically. This happened because all work requires energy to transform a basic resource into a commodity that is of economic value. If the energy cost is reduced and the supply of energy is greatly increased then the amount of work that can be achieved by a society will greatly expand and thus the items produced well sell at lower price due to the principles of supply of demand. What is important when discussing these matters of energy availability and will become increasingly important going forward is the concept of net energy. To understand this concept it would be wise to understand the laws of thermodynamics, more precisely the first law of thermodynamics. This law was originally described as:
“In all cases in which work is produced by the agency of heat, a quantity of heat is consumed which is proportional to the work done; and conversely, by the expenditure of an equal quantity of work an equal quantity of heat is produced.” – Rudolf Clausius, 1850[1]
|
For the mathematically inclined the following formula captures the law of conservation as any heat input will equal the work done.
dU = dQ – dW[2] where U =Internal energy of system, Q = Heat input, W = work done |
To many this statement may seem a little unwieldy and rather abstract but it basically describes the concept that energy cannot be created or destroyed and all energy transactions are merely conversions of one form of energy source to another. This idea is an important one to grasp since we can never actually generate energy; we merely extract it from existing sources.
This statement may seem rather obvious but since terms such as energy production and energy generation are so widespread it is easy to forget this fact. If we were to take such statements as energy production on a literal level they would be a clear violation of the first law of thermodynamics. Perhaps it can be argued this is just an argument over semantics and most people will know you cannot actually create energy but let us not underestimate the power of language and how it can shape conversations and narratives; over time people will believe such statements at face value as true even if they are patently false. This is especially relevant today when we hear so much talk about the US becoming not only energy independence but also becoming the top energy producer in the world.
But I digress, the main thing to take home is no form of energy extraction, be it from coal, nuclear fission (fusion for the optimists) and wind or solar actually generates energy. It just utilises existing energy sources. In the above examples energy is extracted either through nuclear fission/fusion reactions, potential chemical energy in coal/oil/gas or wind and solar energy. Another concept that will come from this basic idea and one that perhaps even more relevant is that it takes energy to get energy. This concept while important is something that rarely (if ever) gets discussed in the mainstream media. Much of the talk about oil, coal or gas “production” only refers to the amount of total energy that can be obtained from burning or utilising a given resource. This amount is merely the gross energy obtained from the ground. If we wish to determine the amount of useful energy available for greater society however we need to subtract the amount of energy used to obtain the resource in the first place. This is because it is only this energy that gets to be used by society for other economy activities. Thus for us to work out net energy we subtract the gross energy by the energy needed to extract the resource as described in the formula.
Gross energy = Total amount of energy obtained from energy source.*
Net energy = Gross energy – Energy required to obtain energy source.
* = Energy maybe expressed in other ways such as barrels of oil or million short tons of coal.
As a note net energy should not be confused with the similar but different term EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Invested) which describes the potential energy return from an energy source. The terms maybe used interchangeably by other commentators in the blogosphere but it would be a mistake to think they are the same thing. The way to calculate EROEI is quite different as demonstrated below:
EROEI =Gross energy / Energy required to obtain energy source.
or
EROEI = (Net energy/ Energy required to obtain energy source.) + 1
NOTE: Net energy is the energy available to society and thus something greater society would be interested in whereas EROEI is more of a potential concern for the person who wishes to see a return on their investment.
Since it is only net energy that gets used by the greater economy it is this value that we should be interested in knowing about rather than the gross amount. For example it is quite possible for our total gross energy to increase while our total net energy is actually in decline. If this were to happen we could easily see a scenario where we are getting materially poorer even though our total energy output is increasing. This process of increasing gross energy but declining net energy comes about due to the principle of low hanging fruit. That is the easiest and most favourable economic sources of energy – which yield the highest net energy – are extracted first and as those resources are depleted we move onto progressively worse and worse sources. It is this fact that the decline in net energy will be much steeper than gross energy decline.
This trend of declining net energy has likely already past as the newest sources of energy, a lot of which is touted as the energy source that will give the US energy independence actually yield poor amounts of new net energy. This is despite the fact this new energy sources (shale oil/gas) increase the amount of gross energy expended by the economy quite substantially. As a result from an economic standpoint these new sources of energy will deliver less economic benefit to society than would otherwise be believed as the extra net energy available will be more limited. It this reason why we should exercise caution when listening to claims that these sources of energy can offer a panacea to our economic troubles. In fact when hearing such claims it is useful to know the energy returns on energy for various sources as while this is not net energy which is ultimately the most important metric to gauge the EROEI can still provide an insight on how useful these sources will be:
As the graph clearly demonstrates; early sources of energy yielded a very high return of energy on energy invested. These high returns came about because early sources of energy such as shallow coal mines did not need much capital investment to extract the resource furthermore once these resources were obtained they would yield high quality energy such as light sweet oil or in the case of coal high quality anthracite. It is this reason in fact why net energy or EROEI has largely been ignored as historically gross energy for all intents and purposes equalled net energy.
In recent years however this has not been the case and the difference between gross and net energy is sufficiently large to warrant greater attention. Moreover another troubling fact to take note is that once EROEI reaches about 10:1 or lower the graph goes into steep decline. This steep decline means the available net energy that can be used by society will begin dropping at an alarming rate if current trends of extracting lower quality energy sources continue. If we take a recent major discovery of shale oil we discover the EROEI for this resource is 5.[3] In net energy terms this represents 20% of the total gross energy being used to extract the energy source. So from this information we can say that if all existing resources of energy were replaced by sources that were to yield returns equivalent to shale oil then our total net energy available to society would decline by 20%. This assumes there are no efficiency gains in how we utilised this energy and total gross energy remained constant. If that is the case then this would effectively mean we are 20% poorer as less energy would be available for economic transactions.
Off course what is more likely to happen is the EROEI and thus net energy will decline even faster than suggested in the previous paragraph as worse and worse sources of energy come online to replace existing high EROEI resources. As a result we are likely to see a steep decline in net energy available to society and we can say with some certainty that this decline in net energy will be faster than the rate of efficiency gains which has been around 1.7-3.0% per annum since the 1970s.[4] [5]
What is more due to the rebound effect (see this article for more info) it is likely that any efficiency gains made will need to exceed declines in available net energy by a few percentage points each year if we want sustain economic growth (which is a requirement for the financial system to remain stable). This all seems unlikely particularly if we consider that energy efficiency and conservation strategies will see diminishing rates of return as it becomes harder to increase energy efficiency after each progressing year. After all no economic activity can ever achieve 100% efficiency. Speaking of 100% efficiency this leads on nicely to the second law of thermodynamics which states:
“That the entropy of an isolated system never decreases, because isolated systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium — the state of maximum entropy.”
Like the first law, this sentence describing the second law can seem a little unwieldy. In fact it is best to breakup this statement into two sentences as the quotation above addresses two very relevant points the first of which is displayed below:
“No process is possible in which the sole result is the absorption of heat from a reservoir and its complete conversion into work.” – William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, 1851[6]
In other words no energy transaction can ever be 100% efficient meaning some energy will always be lost when converting energy into some form of work. This point while blatantly obvious is often overlooked in the contexts of economics and broader society. It is this reason why there will always be a limit to amount of economic growth that can be realised as the planet has a finite number of resources and there are limits to the amount of efficiency that can be achieved. Another major consequence that does derive from the second law of thermodynamics comes from this statement:
“Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer body without some other change, connected therewith, occurring at the same time.” – Rudolf Clausius, 1850[7]
While at first glance, the concept of heat transfers may seem a little out there this statement does pertain to one important idea. That is over time all bodies and structures go from a process of order to disorder. For those that are really curious about this process and wish to learn more about the exact mechanics of this process please look up entropy. If this idea still seems a bit out there consider the fact that all structures, be it capital or labour, degrade over time and require maintenance to allow proper functioning. This maintenance always requires energy and thus some resources will always be needed to maintain current capital or labour.
|
The entropy of a system can be calculated by applying the following formula: dS = dQ / T[6] where S = entropy, Q = Heat input, T = Temperature of system. If we use the formula from the first law of thermodynamics and rearrange the formula shown above this statement can be derived: dU + dW = TdS *4 basic thermodynamic relationships develop out of this math
Internal Energy dU=TdS-PdV+ΣμdN Enthalpy (Heat) dH=TdS+Vdp+ΣμdN Hemholtz Free Energy dF=-TdS-pdV+ΣμdN Gibbs Free Energy dG=-TdS+Vdp+ΣμdN
If you do a little basic algebra, you get dG=dH-TdS This equation gives the Free Energy available in a system as a function of the Heat Content, the Temperature and the Entropy in the system. Only reactions with positive dG can go forward without Heat Input. *from RE |
In the case of labour humans need food to stay alive and remain functioning while capital requires some energy inputs to prevent it from degrading and evening breaking down over time. What is more the greater the complexity of a structure the more energy will be required for maintenance. This is because a more complex structure has a greater degree of order and since things naturally go from a state of order to disorder then more energy will be needed to prevent overcome this natural process.
This is another weakness with applying the logic that technology will save the day as increasing the complexity of technology not only increases the existing maintenance cost due to the second laws of thermodynamics; the cost of producing such items increases as more energy per unit weight are needed in the manufacture of the product. To demonstrate this example a car requires something in the region of 12-25 barrels of oil to build a car depending on the weight of the car but a computer – on a weight by weight basis – requires 10 times the amount of energy to manufacture.[9] A similar cost will be borne in maintaining these two pieces of capital. While in theory there can be energy savings on a production basis as less energy will be consumed despite the increased weight for weight costs (we do not need 1000kg+ worth of computers after all) what will increase significantly are maintenance costs of more complex infrastructure. To give a better idea of this concept at work consider healthcare. As the capital becomes increasingly complex capital then the maintenance costs will rise for the reasons described above.
To summarise this article and the one before it; when we wish to engage in a discussion on energy we need to be aware of range of things. First we need to understand the sheer amount of energy fossil fuels provide. It is truly immense and is a miracle resource and there needs to be a greater appreciation just how much energy they can deliver. From this we can truly grasp the scale of the task an energy transition (if it is even possible) will be. It is seems unlikely to me any combination of renewable or nuclear energy can fill the gap left by fossil fuels. That is not to say renewables cannot make life easier, they do have their uses but we would be setting our expectations too high if we expect them to maintain our current industrial lifestyles.
The other important points that need to be considered is the point we should be interested in not only the quantity of energy delivered but also the quality of energy. At the end of the day it is net energy or EROEI we are really interested in as it is this energy that gets used for greater society. Finally we need to be aware that due to the increasingly complexity of society our maintenance costs will rise due to the second law of thermodynamics so these costs need to be accounted for.
References:
[2] = 2.1 First Law of Thermodynamics (MIT)
[3] = EROI on the Web part 2 of 6, (Provisional Results Summary, Imported Oil, Natural Gas) (The Oil Drum)
[5] = Experts tangle over energy-efficiency ‘rebound’ effect (Nature)
[6] = 5.1 Concept and Statements of the Second Law (Why do we need a second law? (MIT)
[8] = Cash for Clunkers: The Environmental Cost of a New Car (The Truth About Cars)
[9] = The monster footprint of digital technology (Low-tech Magazine)
Fired
Off the keyboard of William Hunter Duncan
Originally published at Off The Grid In Minneapolis, Dec 21, 2012
Discuss this post in Epicurean Delights inside the Diner
I got fired from big bank Thursday, Dec 20, 2012.
Fired, for dancing, in my orange wig, on my break, an hour before the end of day at big bank, before a five-day holiday break.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It basically went down like this:
Sometime about Monday, an idea about dancing at my cramped cave-like work station, took hold in my imagination. Like all great ideas, it felt exactly right, until I had a day to think about it, flooded with all the reasons why not to, there being many. Wednesday night though, the vision took hold again, and I pulled out my dusty glitter dancing shoes, the wacky jacket and the wig, the Bose sound system, the iPod and the necessary cords. Thursday morning I packed them up, and off to the bus I went.
On the bus I wavered. Then, listening to my mp3s, I heard the two songs I would dance to and then I knew. Arriving at big bank per-usual twenty minutes early, I walked into the back break room and started preparing. I put on the shoes, the jacket and the wig; when I turned around, ready to dance to my station, there was Bob, the head manager in the department, looking at me, smiling. “Hi Bob!” I said, and he smiled again and walked out of the break room, uninterpretable, but not seeming to mind. I followed him down the aisle about six paces behind, between regular big bank employee cubicles, bouncing around like I do, to the very song that inspired the costume (which only I could hear), which had looped to that point serendipitously. Heads were turning, mouths agape or turned upward with a light in the eye, I sauntered to my station, danced awhile, while I punched in online, talking to a woman seated near me, people laughing and giggling. Then I took the gear off and went to work.
My original intention had been not to pull out the gear again, until the last five minutes of the day. But there was little work to do, people were clearing out early to go home, so I kicked up the timeline to the afternoon break.
In the meantime, I struggled against a cold sweat. Dancing in my chair to stay warm. Serendipitously too, I found this article on the website Zero Hedge, as to whether or not one can remain moral, and continue to work for a big bank. I don’t necessarily agree with the conclusion – I don’t know what a moral is, it sounds to me like a dead fish – but I do consider myself a man of integrity. Then, minutes before I started to prepare for dancing, a guy behind me was reading a loan and he said, “Look at this, this guy is a Pastor of an evangelical church and school, making $20,000 a month. His wife is a teacher at the school and makes $1000. Saving the poor and disfortunate, I guess.”
I put the jacket and the wig on (I wore the funky shoes all day), and at exactly two o’clock, I turned on the music.
The first song, Junek Bug Joe, only 2:18 long, djembe drum and mandolin based without vocals, by my friend Joe Credit, out of Missouri, or wherever he is now. (This link is to Joe’s song about coffee, the only one I could find. Blogspot doesn’t have an audio upload. You’ll get the idea.) LOL. Up tempo, up beat. Nearly every head I could see was facing me, perhaps 70 people, and most of them were smiling.
Before minute one passed, Jeffery, one of the work directors, who has a very genuine heart, leaned over the cubicle wall, and told me I needed to turn it off and take it to the break room. I asked him if I was going to get fired, and he said he didn’t know, and I told him I was going to take that chance. He tried to convince me otherwise, but there seemed in his surprise, a hint of admiration. Work Director Mark, told me to turn it down, which I did, but then I turned it up again, and then Manager Jim told me to turn it down, and I told him I couldn’t, lamely that it was my “dream” – trying to dance all this time. I turned it down, and then back up, and he stomped away angrily, “You’re not going to turn it down then, that’s just great!”
Mind you, it was never anything like so loud, that we couldn’t speak easily to each other from a distance. Some time last week, when I was sitting at a computer out in the middle of the department for a day, all three of these guys had stood around me in my chair, while we discussed, puzzled over and tried to solve a mystery about a loan I was working on. Four adult men putting their heads together to solve a problem – it was quite enjoyable actually, and the first time I felt like I connected with these guys in a very real way. Now, it was all command and control. I heard Jim saying to someone piercingly, “You aren’t taking pictures, are you?”
The first song ended, and there was a spontaneous uproar of cheering, clapping and laughter, MUCH louder than the Bose had ever been. I leaned back, cupped my hands around my mouth and projected out, smiling, “if the apocalypse is indeed upon us…I recommend…Dancing!” and there was another round of laughter.
The second song, G.B.A, by Xavier Rudd, out of Australia, began more ominously, though it basically being about making the world a better place for kids. He cusses twice, but we’re all adults here, yes? Manager Jim had fire just about blasting out from his ears, and work director Mark stalked around giving me a look, ready to pounce. As I danced, periodically berated to turn it down, turning it down, turning it back up, I could feel the vibe darkening, and watched as people disappeared back into their atomized space, fewer and fewer looking at me. Jim finally gave up and stomped back to his desk. I continued to dance, trying to maintain my own joyous vibe, letting go as I could (I could see at least one wild haired woman intent on what I was doing, the very same “true princess“) and when the song ended, there was a depressing, cold silence.
I sat down, took off the wig, jacket and shoes, packed up the gear, and punched out for the day. I saw both Jeffery and Mark standing around Jim’s desk, so I walked there to talk to them.
“What do you need?” said Mark, hostile, ready for a fight.
“I just wanted to let you guys know, It wasn’t my intention to try to show you guys up, at all. I didn’t mean any disrespect. I realize this could get me fired, but even then, no hard feelings. I punched out for the day.”
“You’re leaving for the day?” said Mark, his hostility quite suddenly vanished.
“I think that’s best. And if I don’t hear anything tonight or tomorrow, I’ll just show up next week.” Jeffrey seemed to think that was reasonable. Meanwhile, Jim was seated at his desk on the phone, scowling at me. He got off the phone, I reiterated what I had said, for his benefit, but he scowled some more and got back on the phone without saying a word.
I walked back to the break room, sat down somewhat stunned, and then prepared as if I might have to walk home, as the bus would not arrive for another 90 minutes. Mostly packed, I picked up my long underwear pants, and began walking to the bathroom.
As soon as I walked out of the break room, I saw both work directors walking down the main aisle toward me. Mark said, “hold on right there,” and I stopped, standing there with my long underwear in my hand. They rounded the corner, a woman with them, who I immediately saw by her badge, was none other than the vaunted Sheila, head dept-manager Bob’s boss, the same dragon lady who I have criticized in this blog, who I never have met, who I have been told, “never look her in the eye.”
Looking her in the eye, smiling, all three people before me prepared for a fight, she says to me, quite calmly but with the slightest edge, “Ok, what you did, you disturbed the other staff. Are you waiting for the bus?”
“I was; thinking about walking home maybe too.”
“Well we can escort you out, or I can call security.”
I laughed softly and shook my head and smiled. “That won’t be necessary; but, um, would it be ok if I slip into the bathroom for a second, and put on my long underwear?” which I was holding out in front of me in my hand, and I’m pretty sure all three of them, even dragon lady, giggled.
When I came back, dragon lady was gone, replaced by Lanni, my contact at the temp agency. She got there quick. “Hi Lanni!” I said. “So this is it, my last day at big bank?” Mark pointed at my badge, and I said, “I still need to be able to get out of the building,” and made a gesture smiling, as if to keep it, and it got awkward for a second, though not in any harsh way, Mark almost apologizing at that point. “I tried to do a good job while I was here,” I said, and Jeffery and Lanni esp. seemed to agree that I had. “I just have a very real antipathy toward big bank,” and then I wished them a happy holidays and Dec 21, Solstice, and they walked me to the door. On the way out through the revolving gate, Mark’s goodbye was loudest, out of all proportion.
Outside the gate in the stairwell, Lanni told me she had received a phone call and raced from downtown to protect her employee.
I hypothesized out loud, laughing, faux serious, “There is a lunatic dancing in an orange wig, and he’s yours. Come retrieve him.” She hadn’t heard the actual story, so I explained, briefly.
“Well that’s relieving,” she said. “Usually when people leave like this there is a lot of acrimony, shouting. You just made me laugh. After a pause, “Are you Ok?” She seemed genuinely concerned.
“I’m doing great,” and then I lied a little bit, saying that this work is “not what I am here to do.”
“When you think about it, all I was doing was dancing.” I explained the costume and how I danced outside the Halloween stores I managed. She asked about the songs. She said some people here at big bank are on edge, in lock-down mode, understandably, that she’s noticed that, everywhere she manages temp employees. She said if she hadn’t been able to come down to get me, they were going to call the police. I said thanks for showin up (though that would have been interesting. Hi Guys!), and then we said goodbye.
“Hey, it’s almost the Apocalypse, right?” I said, by way of alluding to the weirdness of it all.
She had a faraway look then, “Oh right, when is that?”
“Tomorrow.” As I started toward the door.
She turned away, but turned back. “You don’t really think the world is going to end, do you.”
“Nope,” I said, smiling, and walked out the door, seven miles home, on the heels of a Midwestern snow storm.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Looking back, my only regret is that I wasn’t singing softly on my way out of the department, the first verse from the Blind Melon song “No Rain”:
All I can say is that my life is pretty plain,
I like watchin’ the puddles gather rain.
And all I can do, is just pour some tea for two
And speak my point of view, cause it’s not sa-aane
It’s not sa-aa-aaa-aane…
That, and I guess, when Sheila walked up, I didn’t say, “Hi Sheila! We finally meet!”
There was video. My sweet friend Shelly, who I have also defended in this blog, like a true champ, pulled up a chair, right up front and got comfortable, with her phone. They chased her back to her seat, by the end of the first song, and I’m not really sure, but she may have been the one Jim interrogated about taking pictures. I called twice and she checked in by email, I asked if it would be ok with her if I posted the video here. She didn’t reply until 3:42 this morning, saying that she learned it was security policy at big bank, no pictures or video, so she deleted it. I’m kind of crushed about that. But it’s ok I guess, and there were a lot of smart phones in that space so perhaps there is a video floating around the internet somewhere. Perhaps I could petition the NSA for a copy. LOL.
Which is funny too, when I first conceived of this idea, about an announcement, it certainly wasn’t then about getting “term’d” by big bank. It was more personal, about how all I really want to do is dance around the world in an orange afro. There’s a lot more to it than that, but no room now to go into it, in this post. I will say, it feels confirmed for me now; not least as I sit here in the sun, drinking coffee, listening to the great advocate of Liberty, Wayne Lapierre of the NRA, like a a true capitalist/militant/fascist gun lobbyist, advocating for moral lock-down, a government database for the “mentally Ill,” and a full frontal, visibly military State even in the schools.
I didn’t anticipate the command and control response I got, in the specifics. I figured there was a strong chance they would fire me. I thought though, they’d just let me do my thing and then fire me. Oh well, I disarmed them, at every turn, except Jim, who is new to the job, neither of his superiors were there, and he’s got two kids, a house and a wife. The “other staff” who were the ones “disturbed,” were the regular big bank employees who could not have seen me dancing unless they came to investigate. That a djembe beat from a pot-loving starry eyed mandolin genius, a digerridoo based song about making the world a better place for kids, and a guy dancing in an orange afro wig, on a day when there had not been any work for most of us to do for several hours, would be mistaken for any of the various horsepersons of the apocalypse, shows IMHO how far gone these folks are. Though I’m sure any of them might see the error in their ways, if they would just lighten up.
To my knowledge, though, big bank has not in firing me, forgiven the mortgage payments I owe it.
So anyway, that’s what I did, at the end of the Mayan Long Count.
Conspiracy, Peak Oil and Fukitol
Off the keyboard of Lucid Dreams
Published on Epihany Now on December 20, 2012
Discuss this article at the Epicurean Delights Smorgasbord inside the Diner
Before the 9/11 truth movement existed I knew what we were being told was bull shit. I knew that because I was on the vessel that dropped the first bombs on Afghanistan as a result of 9/11. I knew in my bones that the American population, and the world, was being lied to, but I didn’t know the specifics. I wanted out of the navy before 9/11 happened. I had realized that enlisting in the military was a grave mistake for me because I valued self exploration, autonomy, and intellect; none of which the navy provided, gave a shit about, or allowed to occur. I choked down the contracts I had signed until 9/11happened. It was one thing to be slaving away as a nuclear automaton relatively benignly as far as the world was concerned, but it was quite another to be assisting in the killing of invisible innocents. I wanted to know the truth badly.
Energy: Part I
Off the keyboard of Monsta666
Discuss this article at the Energy Table inside the Diner
Energy despite its utmost importance is a topic that doesn’t receive much attention and is a subject that is poorly understood particularly in the mainstream media or even economics. It is curious to think that this is the case especially if we consider that without energy nothing would literally happen. Taken in this context it is easy to see why energy could be regarded as the most critical resource for without it there would be no life on planet Earth.
It seems that one of the major reasons we forget about the importance of energy and take it for granted is the fact energy is ubiquitous in modern day society. If one cares to look outside their window it is likely they will see numerous cars whizzing around at high speeds (they are high if we compared their speeds to humans and animals which was the historic norm before the industrial age). If one thinks about this last point it can be quite an enlightening process; how much energy does it take to cart an object that weighs in excess of 1000kg at around 30MPH? Then think all this energy can be found in a single gallon of gasoline/diesel. And as startling as this thought maybe we can say we consume even more energy in total in our homes and workplaces and that is despite the fact there are over one billion cars – which nearly all run on oil – running across our planet. Quite a thought isn’t it? [1]
So in short we can say we are addicted to using energy. However this should not come as any surprise because man has always needed SOME energy to ensure his survival. The amount needed for basic survival is relatively modest however since the only real energy source man needed at first was direct consumption through food to stay alive. However through time man found other external inputs of energy that made life easier for him. The heat from fire allowed man to keep warm not to mention allowed him to cook and provide a source of light in the dark. Domesticated animals also reduced the burden of labour in the fields and allowed great productivity not just in hunting but also in managing the fields when man shifted to agriculture.
These external inputs of energy not only allowed man to extend his natural range of environments he could live on but it also spurred growth in population and prosperity as external energy meant more of the burden of labour could be shifted away from man. As time went on the number the external sources of energy increased and so did the amount of energy used by man. It was not until man began harnessing fossil fuels in earnest however that his energy use suddenly exploded. The graph below can clearly attest to this fact.
While this final fact is widely known it is still quite difficult to fully grasp and appreciate how much of a boon these fossil fuels were to mankind. To illustrate just how much energy we can obtain from these fossil fuels I feel it is best to apply a little maths. To make comparisons between different energy sources it is necessary to know what a BTU is. For people unfamiliar with the term a BTU stands for British Thermal Unit and one BTU represents the energy required to heat one pound (454g) of water by one degree Fahrenheit which comes to approximately 1055 joules. [2] Now if we consider the most expensive fossil fuel, which is oil, then we will find that burning one barrel of oil (42 US gallons or 159 litres) releases 5.8 million BTUs or 6.1 gigajoules of energy. [3] These large numbers may seem rather abstract and arcane but if we covert this total energy content into man hours then the facts can be more easily absorbed. The energy delivered from 6.1 gigajoules would equate to a man spending 1.45 million kilocalories. If we assume a man consumes somewhere between 100-200 kilocalories an hour then that would mean a barrel of oil produces the equivalent amount of energy as 7,290-14,597 hours of labour depending on how hard the man works. Assuming there are 48 forty hour weeks a year that equates to 3.8-7.6 years of human labour. Armed with this information it makes you wonder how we can ever consider a barrel of oil is overpriced at $90 dollars a barrel when one barrel delivers the equivalent of 3.8-7.6 years labour!
To put this into an even greater context if we decided to pay the man a decent wage of $10 an hour then we would need to pay him anywhere between $73,000-$146,000 to deliver the same amount of work as a barrel of oil. With this perspective it becomes clear what a boon fossil fuels have been proven to be as effectively we have been using these fuels as “energy slaves” due to the fact they produce so much energy at such a low cost. With energy being so cheap it becomes obvious just how profitable the exercise of replacing man and animal labour with capital powered by cheap fossil fuels has been as the price differential between the two markets is simply enormous. And let us not forget in all this that oil is the most expensive fossil fuel in today’s market and its price is abnormally high when compared to historical prices so it was even more economical in the past than it is today.
Saying all that we do need to recognise the flaws in making such comparisons or more generally, using BTUs in general. That is not all work achieved with a certain resource can be easily substituted with another resource for example no amount of men dragging a car would make it travel at 30MPH as could be achieved if the car was powered by oil. Therefore the figures above can only deal with the total energy expenditure and allow comparisons on that end but they say nothing about the quality of the work achieved nor can they describe how easily the work can be substituted with another resource. This is an important concept to grasp as quite often it is stated that we can substitute oil consumption with renewable, nuclear or even coal and gas energy which while such statements are true to a certain extent, not all uses can be substituted for. Coal, renewables and nuclear energy cannot be easily made into a liquid fuel as these energy inputs are primarily used for electrical generation or home heating. It is this lack of fungiblity which results in people often making the distinction between a liquid fuel crisis and an energy crisis as these are two distinct phenomenon as each crisis poses a different set of problems and will therefore require a different set of solutions (assuming solutions even exist) to solve or manage if there are no viable solutions.
Despite these limitations or perhaps because of them we can reach certain conclusions. The increase in the availability and affordability of energy has done more than reduce the cost and amount of work that can be achieved. It has also played a big part in increasing productivity. This increase in productivity comes because, as described in the previous paragraph, there are certain forms of work that can only be utilised with fossil fuels and these activities cannot be done regardless of the amount of men employed in particular tasks. Jobs that are energy intensive such mining, steel production or heavy vehicle transport all require intense and constant inputs of energy. Since they require intense AND constant energy inputs these tasks cannot easily be substituted into labour nor is renewable energy a suitable candidate for substitution due to its intermittent nature. However it cannot be denied all these economic activities contribute to increased productivity as less labour will be needed to be deployed to accomplish these tasks (assuming these tasks could be completed at all without fossil fuels).
Many mining operations such as the tar sands mining operation in Canada would be much harder if not outright impossible without cheap
abundant energy inputs provided by fossil fuels.
A more troubling fact does emerge from this however and that is it becomes apparent that our modern industrial society is heavily dependent on not just abundant energy but cheap energy to remain viable. Even today with oil priced at $90 a barrel which is still an excellent deal when taken in the context described above this price is sufficiently high that many developed economies struggle to grow quickly due to the “high” energy costs as we are repeatedly reminded by the media. In fact these high energy costs have resulted in much demand destruction in the major OECD countries for oil that are most sensitive to price changes as demonstrated in graph below.
This demand destruction primarily manifests itself through higher unemployment and reduced oil consumption from remaining employed workers due to a decline in real wages. This high price of oil has not curbed demand in all countries as the developing economies, which are less sensitive to price increases, continue to demand more of the product. This demand increase of the non-OECD countries is roughly equal to the decreased demand in the OCED countries so overall global oil demand has remained constant at around 30 billion barrels per annum.
The more significant trend has not been with changing patterns in oil consumption but with the changing energy mix in which the global economy utilises. Since oil is priced at $90 it is the most expensive fossil fuel in the market. In the US the next most expensive fossil fuel is coal which is priced at $68.15 per short ton.[4] Seeing as one short ton on average releases 19.6 million BTUs[5] of energy which is roughly three times that of a barrel of oil we see that coal is just over 4 times cheaper than oil on BTU basis. In light of this fact it would be natural to think and expect coal consumption to rise rapidly during this period however coal consumption has actually declined in recent years (for the US at least) because the cheapest fuel in recent years has been natural gas which reached levels as low as $1.90 per million BTUs earlier this year. Seeing as coal has been priced generally been priced at around $3 per million BTUs for the last three years[6] it is easy to see how natural gas consumption has surged.
It should be noted however that at this present moment natural gas is currently priced at $3.48 per million BTUs (accurate at time of writing)[7] and seems to be rising in the past few months. If natural gas price rise much further then coal will become the cheapest fossil fuel in the US and demand for this fuel should increase provided the trend of rising natural gas prices continues. If we talk about fuels on a global basis the story is quite different as globally coal is by far the cheapest commodity and it is these cheap prices that have caused global coal demand to surge in recent years. The high price of oil and the fact that main users of coal (Eastern Asia) have seen rapid economic growth in recent years have been other contributing factors in the increase in the amount of coal demanded.
If this trend of growing coal consumption continues it will not be long before coal becomes the top source of energy in the world and this is a fact that is likely to catch many people by surprise. Saying that, one should throw some caution to this current trend of surging coal demand as it is quite likely that growth in the global economy will slow down and may even decline. If that is the case then the rate of increase in demand will decline or demand may even decline entirely should the world enter a global recession.
Another important consideration and one that is almost universally overlooked in the mainstream is the concept of Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI). In the second part of this topic I will discuss this concept in more detail and also explore the laws of thermodynamics that is largely neglected in the media and economics in general. Do not worry; it will not be a boring physics session with lots of large scary numbers. In any case I wish all diners a merry Christmas and a happy new year.
References:
[1] = World Vehicle Population Tops 1 Billion Units (WARDSAUTO)
[2] = British thermal unit (Btu) (Business Dictionary)
[3] = Barrel of oil equivalent (Wikipedia)
[4] = Coal News and Markets (EIA)
[5] = What is the average heat (Btu) content of U.S. coal? (EIA)
[6] = Coal News and Markets Archive (EIA)
[7] = Commodity Prices (CNN Money)
Black Friday
Off the keyboard of William Hunter Duncan
Published on Off the Grid in Minneapolis on Novemebr 23.. 21012
Discuss this article at the Epicurean Delights Smorgasboard inside the Diner
I biked the mile to the bus stop this morning, twenty degrees outside and a thirty mile-an-hour headwind, blowing snow, at six am, to discover that this post-Thanksgiving Day Friday, Black Friday, is considered a Metro Transit holiday. No bus waiting. Hmm. At first I imagined, I would bike the five miles to big bank, which I can do, even under the conditions, comfortably enough. I imagined sitting down at my computer station, firing off an email to my immediate management and the temp people, informing them precisely what I had done and what I think about that. Except for much of the journey would be on the shoulder of a four lane 55mph speed limit everybody driving 60, it snowed and rained last night, the roads are slippery, and a bike helmet, which I couldn’t find this morning anyway in a very symbolic Hmmmm, isn’t going to protect me from a 2000+ lbs projectile moving at six or eight times the speed I am, bearing down on me from behind. By the time I got half way home, which is on the way to big bank from the bus station, I was like, that’s fucking crazy. No WAY am I biking that, and no way am I putting someone else out, on a day that just about everybody thinks is a holiday (judging by the lack of automobile traffic as I write this), so I can go and FORECLOSE ON HOUSES FOR UBER_BANK_LEVIATHAN-KRAKEN. LOL.
So I got home, and called the automated overseer computer lady at big bank, and spoke the words, “William Duncan, Kodi {manager}, 7am MONDAY,” in reference to the time I would be returning to work. I left a voicemail with my contact at the temp agency, and sent an email to the top two managers in my department. It’s a liberty, what I’ve done, relative to my station. Still, I don’t expect any push back. If I even hear about it, I’ll be surprised, though it is strictly speaking, grounds for me to be dis-invited, to work for big bank.
It’s not like I’m going shopping. Nor am I going to sit around smoke pot get drunk chow left-over Thanksgiving dinner watch Tee-Vee. It’s not even very comfortable in my house, when it’s this cold, with the wind blowing hard. Mostly, aside from drinking coffee writing blog posts researching, I will be working, insulating the house, which is a drafty sieve. Lots of work to do, here. Might get a buzz on too, eventually. 
If I lose the job, which is a possibility, I’ll just tell the temp agency, listen, if big bank doesn’t take me back, I’ll write an op-ed in the straightest, most conventional clear easy to understand language I can muster, for one of the local MSM newsprint outlets, about the arrangement as it stands, in its full absurdity. I mean really, there are people expected to work the second shift starting at 3:30 pm, Monday, Christmas Eve Day, FORECLOSING ON HOUSES! Maybe they want to, but it’s also like a threat of economic dissolution otherwise, and really when you are a “butt’s in seats in the morgue, or the meat-house,” a day off is also one less day of pay, when we are making about $7 LESS than the average American wage. Which is kind a of low grade terror, this sort of economic hegemony exercised with such ruthless, numerical logic. Which then calls into question the whole War on Terror, when, if you dare not participate in the making of dollars in the imperial way prescribed, you are fucked. Get with the fucking program?
It’s not like I’m a weak performer, either. My numbers are solid, in their metric. 100% accuracy, in my last review. There is a threshold one must reach, in sheer numbers, before one is eligible for overtime, which I crossed some time ago, though I have not partaken of the so-called fruit (nor have I striven to do more, necessarily.) They can fire me, but if they do, I’m going to do what I can to return the favor.
Meanwhile, the bulk of America shops. I was at my sister’s yesterday, consuming tee-vee programming. Whether it was that or the industrial food she fed me, I can’t say was the cause of my ill stomach. It was more like soul sadness, in the presence of such grotesqurie’, as was splashed across my cerebral cortex, with such cynical abandon. In my last post, I said I am not a “moral” man. Do not mistake that for moral relativity, which Americans display with monstrous pride. On one Newz program, a woman was interviewed about her attack plan, shopping today. She advocated teamwork, with everyone with a plan of operation, “otherwise you won’t get everything you need.” She bought seven flat-screen tv’s Black Friday 2011, most of which remain in the boxes. She was presented as an ideal of normality by the network, which she is, in America. We scoff at the savages, those responsible in the past for human sacrifice to placate the gods. By how many orders of magnitude worse, all those who have died that we might be free to shop – what is being done to the earth, to fulfill our “needs”?
My sister said she had been made to feel guilty for doing damage to the “environment”, because she had ordered some product on-line, instead of in a store. The rationale, that those things ordered online travel more miles, than they would if they were housed in a centralized retail box. I laughed and asked her how long she thought 7 billion people could continue buying the resources of the earth transformed into consumer product to be thrown away as garbage, esp. when we are adding 200,000 people a day, globally? I didn’t ask, but I’m guessing, she bought the turkey at Sam’s Club, and most everything else for dinner besides. She gets it, the madness of it, she just can’t imagine any other way, or won’t.
I recognize too, the slippery slope I am on, justifying my work at big bank at all, in any way. Perhaps after Black Friday 2012, I will no longer have to.
This is what my lightning bug niece and I did Thanksgiving. It’s hard to see her wings, but they are there. The bike, a gift from RE, head Admin at the Doomstead Diner
Work, Life, Contemplation and Change
Off the keyboard of William Hunter Duncan
Published on Off the Grid in Minneapolis on November 11, 2012
Discuss this article at the Epicurean Delights Smorgasbord inside the Diner
Winter arrives tonight here in Minnesota, in a hard way. Temperatures are expected to fall throughout the day, below freezing, with temperatures remaining below freezing through tomorrow, as low as 18 degrees. That will be a test of how well my oil filled electric radiators heat the house. I have two, one in the kitchen and another in the bathroom, heating the bedroom also, which is less than half the house. My furnace is broken and I have neither the money nor the inclination to fix it. I would certainly like to rip out all those forced-air steel vents in the basement, I’ve hit my head on a hundred times. I could buy a nice woodstove from a friend for $200, and install it myself for about $250-300, but the stove is not catalytic, which means it isn’t designed to burn off most of the particulate, which is not a solution in the city; also as I do not have access to a wood lot. Though I could arrange with a tree trimming crew, to have more than enough wood dropped in my driveway, for free. A catalytic wood heater connected to a radiant water system which I would rarely use because the house itself would be solar radiant, would be ideal.
Back into the 40′s and 50′s next week, so no worries. Heating half the house with two oil heaters, cost about $40 last month. If I tried to heat the whole house, which is in mid-repair and a heat sieve, it would cost me $200+. Assuming winter comes, even the climate being uncertain. My neighbor across the alley, a good Christian who I have never known to question authority in any meaningful way, remarked to me about it yesterday, unprovoked, in evident concern, while I was working on my new driveway. Much of the aggressiveness I have endured from the city, the last several years, about my garden, I suspect has arisen from complaints from him. The lack of attention I have received from the city in the last year, has coincided with his evolution in thinking about my garden, in part as a direct result of his awareness of radical changes in weather patterns. He is a hunter, fisherman and gardener.
My new driveway is made of antique Purrington pavers, 9 lbs each, originally, likely, paving stones for a road, here in Minneapolis, which were removed at some point to my sisters driveway, before it was hers. She has never parked on the driveway, which she has only ever used to grow soil on, by neglect. You couldn’t see them; there was an inch of soil and weeds covering them. I asked her if I could buy them; she gave them to me. I stacked them up, rented a truck and paid my friend Jamie, a musician who lives in a rundown trailer you couldn’t move if you wanted to, $80, to help me transport the 5 tons. He only wanted $40. I bought him a snack and dinner too. I’ll have six cubic yards of class five crushed limestone dropped on my sisters driveway this week. She can grow weeds on that just as well. My father is furious, but he hasn’t been proud of anything I’ve done, since I was MVP of my high school baseball team. Except that time I shot that eight point buck. He doesn’t know either that I’ve painted my upper body green, put on faux animal pants, and danced with those horns publicly. Perhaps he will reconsider about the pavers, when he sees the driveway, the patio, and the front sidewalk to the street.
The white pine table for the patio, three feet across.
Otherwise, since I started the work on the hoop house, greenhouse, with the white pine dropped in my driveway and the work on the driveway and patio, more of my neighbors have stopped by and spoken with me in a friendly way than ever before. 
My father is happy to have me working at big bank. I am happy too, insofar as the work I’ve been doing here at the house would not have happened, if not for that job. I am also astounded, at how many people in the department I work in, are eager for overtime. It is the debt they hold, I suppose. I value my time more than money. The department head, in advocating for people to work overtime so that it would not have to be imposed, said approximately, “What are you going to do otherwise? I’m just going to go home and sit in front of the television,” and many and maybe most nodded in agreement. No one seems much perturbed that we are foreclosing on houses.
I sit in my awkward corner at big bank, dancing sometimes to the global sounds on my iPod, wanting to sing, most days listening to Terence Mckenna on youtube, contemplating TEOTWAWKI. The election was encouraging to me, insofar as I was anticipating a potential hard Right turn. When you write things like the Benghazi incident is likely related to covert CIA operations having to do with Syria and al Qaida, and that Broadwell is CIA if I ever saw one, and not a bad way at all to excuse yourself from the drug money gorged, para-military, al Qaida affiliated cesspool the CIA has become, General; well, I have the sense that the GOP LOVES government when it comes to cracking down on alternative media, mindful as I am that the Obama administration has been ruthless in regard to whisleblowers, among many other things. I hadn’t anticipated a repudiation of the Republican message, with the election, such as that message has become. (The reader might be advised to not take my prognostications TOO seriously.)
Thinking such things about the world as I do, I tend to keep to myself at big bank. The work encourages it. Besides, I’m a minority white guy, and bald besides. And I’m shy. People don’t engage me much either. I’d much prefer to wear a hat and bandana, but that is against the rules. It get’s cold where I sit, and it would soften the bald nearing middle-age white guy thing. I intended to wear the orange afro and the wacky jacket, Halloween, but when I woke that day it barely occurred to me, and I couldn’t have cared less at the time, really. Though I did puff before I left the house, and closed my eyes and let go into the music on the bus. Peace pirate, Sir Vis, yet.
TEOTWAWKI. Terence Mckenna was much responsible for the mythology around Dec 21, 2012, having come to the conclusion through work with the Chinese I Ching, and a mathematical computer program he devised, that the end of time would occur that day, coming to this conclusion separate from any knowledge of the Mayan prediction. He wavered on his prediction, suggesting it could mean anything, from the destruction of the entire planet; the transformation of the entire universe; transforming ourselves somehow technologically, such that we would expand into hyperspace; to the invention of time travel; to his death merely, and we could all laugh that we believed him. Like Moses he would not see the promised land, as he died in 2000, from a deadly tumor in his brain, in the frontal cortex associated with the “third” eye. A curious end, for a mystic, particularly one so loved. In a cruel irony, his entire collection of rare books and manuscripts, and personal notes, were lost in a fire. The organization entrusted with them, Esalen, had seen fit to store them in an otherwise unoccupied office, off-site, next to a Quiznos, where the fire started – seven years after his death.
It’s interesting to me, how little I hear anymore about the Dec 21, 2012 Apocalypse meme. I had expected it to be more prominent a part of the dialogue, but it is not much at all, after all the hubub years ago. This, even as uncertainty has ramped up exponentially, with the economy, the fiscal cliff, Sandy, Benghazi, Syria, Iran, $100 barrels of oil, Fukushima, drought in the crop lands, and clear evidence for anyone who is conscious of the weather that a cycle has been broken. Even the most sanguine supporter of all things AMERICA, believes CHANGE is upon us, though notions of the how and the why are as diverse as there are people.
Terence imagined much more of a spiralling effect than we have seen. He imagined a kind of exponential condensing of Time, at which end-point we would emerge into a kind of psychedelic hyper-dimensional awareness. The kind of technological progress he imagined though doesn’t seem to have come to pass; more it seems to me, we are seeing the global industrial machine grinding to a halt, and many of our techno-dreams with it, because of oil constraints, weather, population growth and too much debt. I don’t think Terence was wrong, necessarily, and his psychedelic research and reporting on it has been invaluable to me, to sort things out; I just think maybe his psychedelic dimensional travels caused him to underestimate the staying power of the material universe, maybe.
I do however believe the Mayans were about dead on with their long count calender, which 5,126 year cycle happens to coincide with the rise of the written Word, the Logos transcribed; and the rise of agriculture about 5,126 year before that. Those two, ag and the written word, are without peer in their effect on Homo sapien. The Logos written, the Word, leading to a paradigm of control, which now seems to be both aggravated in it’s desire, and slipping out of possible.
Notice that the definition of apocalypse is a lifting of the veil. What veil? The veil of authority. Consider the Catholic Church, or the Boy Scouts, or Lance Armstrong, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street and the Federal Government. The stories these entities and institutions, and everything relating to them, have rested upon, are everywhere revealed to be a fraud. A fraud for what purpose? A fraud to control resources, to control nature, to maintain power and influence, to maintain BAU. A fraud feeding at the foundation of everything life depends on.
I intuit we are closing in on some kind of bifurcation point, after which normal will be turned upside down, metaphorically. What that is going to look like, I have all kinds of ideas. Anything from a comet strike, to a solar wiping-out of the global electrical grid, to a collapse of the global financial markets, to a series of nuclear strikes, to an organic or inorganic destruction of a series of off-shore oil wells, to the collapse of the Saudi royal family, to mass starvation, and on and on and on, unto a widespread collapse in belief in the current paradigm.
The Mayans don’t have the corner on cycles though. There is also the 26,000 year cycle of the rotation of the axis, the cycle of precession of the equinox. We are now in the Aeon of the zodiacal house of Pisces, the fish, associated by some with Christos. It will be another 200 years before the cycle of Aquarius, the water bearer, begins. Which I take to mean it will be another 200 years before a true healing of the waters will begin. With all the nuclear and poisons and off-shore oil wells around, how polluted we allow the waters to become remains to be seen. Perhaps enough, that there will be no human to witness the healing of the waters.
My hope is, though, the thing ultimately revealed, is that Homo sapien is a vastly more profound being than any control freak has ever lead us to believe. And the Sun and Gaia would not have spent billions of years bringing us into being in order to let us perish of our control issues.
Cycles upon cycles upon cycles of time. Change eternal. To illutrate, my black-cap raspberry vines, sans leaves:
Pauperization Meat Grinder…
Off the keyboard of Steve from Virginia
Published on Economic Undertow on October 1st 2012
Discuss this article at the Epicurean Delights Smorgasbord inside the Diner
Mish posted an interesting video the other day, another TED-talk by Andrew McAfee. it is an example of how far down the technology rabbit hole we’ve traveled. McAfee’s idea is that robots are going to take everyone’s jobs … but this will be alright! We’ll be ‘free’ (from hated jobs, money, etc.) Insert buzzword here:
McAfee is a shill for the computer/telephone industry. He has cleverly put the wind to his back and proselytizes for the job-eradication industry. It’s actually a safe job! In the process he promises all sorts of abstract benefits that are certain to arrive ‘tomorrow’ …
Humans are suckers, we always wind up believing the promises. We really have no choice, we’ve become desensitized and can no longer imagine alternatives to mechanized mass-marketed ‘prosperity’ other than ‘Third Reich’, ‘Mad Max’ or ’40 acres and a mule’.
Technologists: it’s always tomorrow with these people. Tomorrow’s benefits are essential to overcome the baleful consequences of yesterday’s benefits. Tech is the ultimate tail-chasing exercise, nobody gets anywhere except unemployed. The outcome is a deeper and deeper capital hole that can never be dug out of. Here is McAfee in his own words:
About Andrew McAfee
Andrew McAfee studies the ways that information technology (IT) affects businesses and business as a whole. His research investigates how IT changes the way companies perform, organize themselves, and compete. At a higher level, his work also investigates how computerization affects competition, society, the economy, and the workforce.
He and Erik Brynjolfsson are co-authors of the ebook “Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy”. The book brings together a range of data, examples, and research to show that the average US worker is being left behind by advances in technology.
He coined the phrase “Enterprise 2.0” in a spring 2006 Sloan Management Review article to describe the use of Web 2.0 tools and approaches by businesses. He also began blogging at that time, both about Enterprise 2.0 and about his other research. McAfee’s blog is widely read, becoming at times one of the 10,000 most popular in the world (according to Technorati).
Industrialization concentrates employment within manufacturing centers and has done so since the Industrial Revolution: in this sense nothing has changed for hundreds of years. Machines are the instruments of the pillage economy: as long as there are fossil fuels to power machines there will be machines stealing human jobs. Machines cost less to operate, they never go on strike, never complain or fail to perform. If a particular machine is balky it is repaired or thrown away and replaced without concern. Machines are collateral, they can be debt-subsidized, humans workers cannot. The machine-dynamic is self-amplifying, reflecting the desires (greed) of machines’ owners. If one owner doesn’t have job-pillaging machines, his competitors obtain them and destroy his business. Technological advancement is the essence of ‘ruinous competition’.
According to McAfee, machines will labor so we won’t have to. Nothing is said about how the great bulk of the world’s citizens will entertain themselves absent jobs. Undertow has mentioned this before: the greatest shortage in the world right now is not one of resources or water or fossil fuels, rather it is a shortage of interesting, useful things for people to do! As the late, great Charles Bukowski said, you can only fuck once a day, what do you do the rest of the time? A: drink. Who makes the beverages? A: robots.
McAfee:
I am personally still a huge digital optimist, I am supremely confident that the digital technologies that we’re developing now are going to take us into a utopian future … not a dystopian future … and to explain why I want to pose kind of a ridiculously broad question. I want to ask what had been the most important developments in human history? No single answer to it … what does the data say? The Industrial Revolution …
The bottom of the pyramid is benefitting hugely from technology … the economist Robert Jenson did this wonderful study a while back, where he watched in great detail what happened to the fishing villages of Kerala, India, when they (?) got mobile phones for the very first time. And when you write for the Quarterly Journal of Economics, you have to use very dry and very circumspect language … but when I read his paper I kind of feel Jensen is trying to scream at us and say … ‘Look, this was a big deal, prices stabilized’ … so people could plan their economic lives (!). Waste was not reduced … it was eliminated! And the lives of both the buyers and the sellers in these villages … measurably improved.
The ‘droids are taking our jobs … but, focusing on that fact misses the point entirely. The point is that then we are freed up to do other things. And what we are going to do, I am very confident, what we are going to do is reduce poverty and drudgery and misery around the world …
What is there not to like about cute little ‘droids?
Readers can come to their own conclusions about Jensen’s paper which measures the impact of cell phones on independent fishermen and their customers on the Arabian seacoast of southern India. The fishermen and customers use the phones to discover where the best price might be had for fish as well as who has fish available for sale. What Jensen does not examine in parallel is the efficiencies of other, simpler technology such as VHF- or citizens’ band radios which do not need the massive network infrastructure of the cell phones. Jensen is a rationalizer for the expanding ‘growth’ status quo, the paper is filled with the usual econometric gibberish. What matters most is excluded from it by design: the cost of the network technology in its entirety against the best possible returns of the users.
Cell phones are a billion-dollar solution to a thousand dollar problem. The only way the phones can exist in the first place is when the entire country takes on the debts needed to construct the platform and keep it running. Fishermen are subsidized by everyone else: costs are smeared across the network, the fishermen by themselves cannot hope to pay for anything other than their own handsets and (limited) access. Creditors provide the funds and put future generations on the hook for repayment. Whether the enterprise supports itself is irrelevant because the (expanding) infrastructure — not the customer base — is collateral for (expanding) loans. Once constructed the infrastructure is self-supporting in that it is ‘too big to fail’: it will be bailed out as needed by the government in the form of central bank credit or government guarantees for private sector loans.
McAfee argues the medium matters more than the content itself. This is nothing new, television has been around for decades. The result is smart (chic) transmission means with users having little or nothing to say: smarter machines and dumber operators. The medium marginalizes any content that does not acknowledge the supremacy of the medium in a self-amplifying cycle. Even as ‘progress’ is busy cannibalizing itself, content which might break the cycle is shunted to the margins. Technology is a form of information rationing: fashionable content which supports the fashionable medium is transmitted. Anything else is deemed hopelessly old fashioned and is safely ignored.
The robots steal peoples’ jobs until the cheap energy that drives them becomes too costly. Robots become stranded capital, then recyclable junk. Ironically, the cheap energy is disappearing because there are too many robots! Technology requires a large supply of refined, concentrated energy along with a hyper-complex infrastructure of interrelated robots, to provide the desired services and to keep itself operating. Links in the system don’t have to break, they only to become unaffordable which strands the other links. Once gasoline becomes too costly, the marginal driver vanishes. Once he’s gone so goes the new car industry: without cheap fuel there are too-few gasoline users to support the massive enterprise.
Consider the fishermen in Kerala: efficient fish-pillagers become more successful than others over the short term. They gain subsidies to purchase high-performance fishing boats that allow them to exploit the fishery more completely than their competitors. There are diminishing marginal returns on technology: increasing the efficiency of the fishermen does not increase the fishery but diminishes it. At some point the fishery collapses from over-exploitation, leaving the fishermen turning to the government for a bailout. At the end of the day there is no fishery, little- or no fishing at all … the boats sit idle and corrode. Fishermen are out of work and cannot afford their cell phones without turning the girls in their families out into the street as whores. Gone forever is a thousand-year enterprise of fishing from small boats along with the communities that the unfashionably inefficient fishing once supported. The villages become concrete-block ‘resorts’: the fisherman, undone by their own technology, are hustled off to slums within sprawling mega-cities. The apologists for modernity rationalize for these things too.
The ‘cost error’ is fatal. Because machines cannot pay for themselves by way of the their use, they must be paid for with borrowed ‘money’ which itself is the ‘Mother Of All Innovations’. Most of the gadget-finagling of the past thirty or so years has nothing to do with actual improvements to machines but are restatements/reconfigurations of pre-existing versions. Innovation has taken the form of ‘money tricks’ that conjure more credit against non-existent collateral and discursive processes that make it easier for asset managers to steal from their customers. Because of the success of previous innovations and diminishing returns, the thefts are naked, the thieves desperate. They have pillaged too well for too long: there is only so much remaining … that isn’t bolted down.
Nobody asks the question, where do the thieves go with the loot? Lifeboats from the Titanic are picked up by other Titanics careering into icebergs. The passage of time and repetition of the lifeboat/sinking process also has diminished returns. The amount of work to be done conforms to available resources: at some point there is one lifeboat and a relative handful of passengers, this is what the resources will support over an extended period.
The basic idea is our mechanized economy isn’t productive enough to support all the demands made against it.
To the technologist, the obvious solution to our crisis is to deploy more machines so as to eliminate the productivity shortfall. Besides the techies, this is the argument of the so-called ‘free market’ types keep making over and over. Give us more productivity (machines), ‘innovation’ (machines), ‘entrepreneurs’ (machines) and old time religion (hard currency) and there will be paradise tomorrow!
The flip side of the argument is that everything but the machines must be sacrificed or tomorrow will be a disaster! To satisfy technology, our parents are tossed into the furnace their pensions are stolen. Payments to the seniors must be suspended or nothing will remain for machines (with real numbers to prove it). Of course the children and the grand-children were consumed a long time ago. There is nothing left, the machines have burned it all, what remains is to take what little capital remains, feed that into the fire then jump in after it!
Analysts wail because the US Social Security Trust fund is underwater with not a word is said about every other aspect of modernity that has drowned first. Real money/capital has been shoveled down the rathole for decades. It was given over for fuel put into our precious toys that never earned a dollar!
The country (countries) have been ruined while a handful of well-positioned criminals have enriched themselves. What else is there to show for the trillion$ simply extinguished? Those who want waste need only look to the ends of their driveways! Look to the insides of houses! Look at any automobile slum, any monstercity with hulking tombstone concrete towers that must be fed with rivers of petroleum every single day or else.
The way to solve the problems in the USA right now … along with those of China, Europe, Japan and the rest of the world is to shed the autos and leave the seniors and the kids alone. Instead, everything in sight — pensions, education, health care, privacy and civil liberties — are thrown into the fire in order to keep driving. This is madness!
Pauperization is a world-wide phenomenon: too many humans, too many machines, no return on the use of the machines. We love our machines, we will never let them go …
Phantom returns (from the machines) are actual claims levied against humans (and the rest of nature). Machines ‘prosper’ because humans starve (and capital is wiped out). The bosses say, “No problem! There are increasing numbers of humans, we can afford to sacrifice some of them (as the payment for my getting rich).”
When the machine-feeding system breaks down the outcome is Greece … then Yemen. Coming up is Spain then China and others … into the pauperization meat grinder. Higher input costs multiply exponentially through the system … whatever kind of system you have. In the end, nobody can afford what the system needs to function. The next step is shortages … which are permanent.
As fuel becomes more expensive, machines are fired and humans replace them: ruinous competition doesn’t follow any rules but its own! The entire machine-paradigm of expanding work, expanding machines, of expanding labor productivity and expanding marketplaces requires expanding capital to consume or it shifts into reverse. The amount of work to be done conforms to available resources. McAfee says nothing about ‘hyper-ruinous competition’ where tech competes with itself for diminished inputs.
The largest industrial input is petroleum. Regardless of production or reserves, Peak Oil occurred in 1998, when a barrel of Saudi crude cost less than $10. Price matters, nothing else. More costly crude strands all of world’s fuel wasting infrastructure. Even massive extensions of credit, public and private, cannot bring the cost of petroleum within reach even as credit has its own unbearable costs.
Pauperization is taking place right now in real time right under everyone’s noses. For this the technologists have no answer because there is none … What is needed is a complete change of thinking and attitude, a look beyond the mass technology magic mirror and toward functioning ways of living that demand more of the citizens than to be fashion slaves.