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The Seneca Effect: Growth is slow but collapse is rapid (2017) [pdf]

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Re: The Seneca Effect: Growth is slow but collapse is rapid (2017) [pdf]

#31

Post by kylebenzle »

tehjoker wrote: post #29
jes5199 wrote: post #15

I am hoping that the modern world is not one single system that can crash all at once, but is rather many systems, such that a crash leaves room for new things to grow bigger

it didn't used to be, but now it is. the magic of growth and interconnection

Yes, the connecting thread is the USD hegemony. Hyperinflation and eventual collapse is not only possible but has been inevitable ever since QE started.

The stock market is now a farce and price is dictated by market makers, not "discovered". The housing market is nonsensical and has priced a generation out of home ownership. The US military is evil incarnate and our civil court system is based on whoever has the most money and is willing to lie wins. I'm doing everything I can to speed the collapse of a broken system and I'm sure there are many more like me.

The USD and therefore the world is on a count down timer to total collapse, problem is no one knows how long we have left.

Re: The Seneca Effect: Growth is slow but collapse is rapid (2017) [pdf]

#32

Post by kylebenzle »

roenxi wrote: post #24
patcon wrote: post #10

I thought this was talked about in high school biology... S-curves for populations that settle. Sometimes a population goes above the carrying capacity and it crashed and oscillates until it stabilizes. Humans are in an exponential J-curve that seems to keep going, but it's just because our culture and technology continually raise the carrying capacity on an S-curve. But if we "break" either culture or tech, then the…

An aside ... it is not safe to assume that the population stabilises. Chaotic results are possible if growth is fast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map

Populations never "stabilize" for any meaningful amount of time.

Re: The Seneca Effect: Growth is slow but collapse is rapid (2017) [pdf]

#33

Post by vlovich123 »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #26
chrisco255 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there's hundreds of years of known supply even at current consumption and we already have viable alternatives.

Really? Name one that is safe to handle, easy to convert, and has even 1/2 the energy density.

For grid power, nuclear and hydro beat oil by significant margins. For shipping we’d need to deploy nuclear reactors that could be safe to operate on the seas. For cars and trains, electrified tied to a fossil free grid is enough and is happening however slowly. For planes and land shipping trucks that’s trickier and not sure what the answer there would be. But if we cut shipping, grid and automotive fossil fuels we’d be reducing global emissions to almost 0. It’s not enough at this point due to unlocked runaway effects meaning the 1.5C warming is long in our rearview in terms of being an unavoidable result and it’ll take us a long time to transition based on the current political approaches which means I suspect 3C or even worse is highly likely within the next 50 years.

Beyond arresting the worsening conditions (which we’re failing at spectacularly) I’m not sure how to unwind the damage. Technology is unlikely to save us unless we get insanely lucky somehow (like fusion reactors that are trivial to scale and trivial to make cheaply and then shoving all that energy into carbon recapture at a scale we don’t know how to do because even at current levels it’s diffuse enough that it takes a long time to capture a small amount of carbon).

Re: The Seneca Effect: Growth is slow but collapse is rapid (2017) [pdf]

#34

Post by vlovich123 »

jes5199 wrote: post #28
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Name one that is safe to handle, easy to convert, and has even 1/2 the energy density.

I’m convinced that “density” is not a helpful metric here. There’s plenty of diffuse energy, and it’s advantageous to collect it near where it’s used, rather than make big pipes and ship it around

Disagree. Solar doesn’t work at night and it’s horribly inefficient to have a bunch of local batteries everywhere compared with centralized power generation with relatively cheap wiring distributing the centrally generated energy. Local generation is a greedy solution (I got mine) that has a shared cost (centrally generated power for those who can’t generate their own spikes massively in price). It’s basically a greedy “rich get richer” solution that also doesn’t actually solve the carbon problem because other people need electricity too.

Re: The Seneca Effect: Growth is slow but collapse is rapid (2017) [pdf]

#35

Post by sifar »

jamesakirk wrote: post #14

Emily Dickinson would tend to disagree: ؜ Crumbling is not an instant's Act A fundamental pause Dilapidation's processes Are organized Decays — ؜ 'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul A Cuticle of Dust A Borer in the Axis An Elemental Rust — ؜؜؜ Ruin is formal — Devil's work Consecutive and slow — Fail in an instant, no man did Slipping — is Crashe's law —

Thanks, hadn't come across this one before, and I feel there is some truth to this - that when the inner processes slow down or atrophy, collapse begins.

However, I think the rapid collapse probably refers to what is observable on the outside

Re: The Seneca Effect: Growth is slow but collapse is rapid (2017) [pdf]

#36

Post by nnx »

kylebenzle wrote: post #31
tehjoker wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it didn't used to be, but now it is. the magic of growth and interconnection

Yes, the connecting thread is the USD hegemony. Hyperinflation and eventual collapse is not only possible but has been inevitable ever since QE started. The stock market is now a farce and price is dictated by market makers, not "discovered". The housing market is nonsensical and has priced a generation out of home ownership. The US military is evil incarnate and our civil court system is based on whoever has the mos…

> I'm doing everything I can to speed the collapse of a broken system

How?

Re: The Seneca Effect: Growth is slow but collapse is rapid (2017) [pdf]

#37

Post by oblio »

nnx wrote: post #36
kylebenzle wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the connecting thread is the USD hegemony. Hyperinflation and eventual collapse is not only possible but has been inevitable ever since QE started. The stock market is now a farce and price is dictated by market makers, not "discovered". The housing market is nonsensical and has priced a generation out of home ownership. The US military is evil incarnate and our civil court system is based on whoever has the mos…

> I'm doing everything I can to speed the collapse of a broken system How?

By posting that comment.

Re: The Seneca Effect: Growth is slow but collapse is rapid (2017) [pdf]

#38

Post by a_t48 »

kylebenzle wrote: post #32
roenxi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An aside ... it is not safe to assume that the population stabilises. Chaotic results are possible if growth is fast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map

Populations never "stabilize" for any meaningful amount of time.

Nit: eventually, they will.

Re: The Seneca Effect: Growth is slow but collapse is rapid (2017) [pdf]

#39

Post by ianbicking »

kylebenzle wrote: post #31
tehjoker wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it didn't used to be, but now it is. the magic of growth and interconnection

Yes, the connecting thread is the USD hegemony. Hyperinflation and eventual collapse is not only possible but has been inevitable ever since QE started. The stock market is now a farce and price is dictated by market makers, not "discovered". The housing market is nonsensical and has priced a generation out of home ownership. The US military is evil incarnate and our civil court system is based on whoever has the mos…

There are so many more systems than the USD. There's many more systems than money itself! There are industrial systems, food systems, logistical systems, educational systems, ethical systems, religious systems, political systems.

It's naive to think all those systems are subservient to some other "master" system, or that the fragility of those systems is multiplicative instead of offering complementary strengths. It's naive because none of those systems developed dependent on the other systems, nor were they independent; they've all been developing together for thousands of years. It's like an ecosystem of systems; if one fails (such as currency) then there's a dozen or more others that are ready to pick up the pieces. And it's myopic to think currency is even one of the more important systems, as though it's somehow more important than the other foundations of human experience that led us here.

Re: The Seneca Effect: Growth is slow but collapse is rapid (2017) [pdf]

#40

Post by GolfPopper »

patcon wrote: post #10

I thought this was talked about in high school biology... S-curves for populations that settle. Sometimes a population goes above the carrying capacity and it crashed and oscillates until it stabilizes. Humans are in an exponential J-curve that seems to keep going, but it's just because our culture and technology continually raise the carrying capacity on an S-curve. But if we "break" either culture or tech, then the…

This sounds a lot like something I read not that long ago (it was on acoup, of course[1]) about post-Roman population density, how the carrying capacity of the Roman Empire was high because of the increased efficiency allowed by having a good transportation - classic economic specialization. But once the Empire collapsed, the specializations it enabled couldn't come back, and it took a thousand years or more for former Roman provinces to return to their Imperial population levels.

1.https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-f...

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