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Musings Report 2021-34 8-21-21 Far From the Source
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Far From the Source
This is so obvious that it seems banal, but after writing about social capital last week it struck me just how far the vast majority of us are from the sources of our daily essentials: food, fresh water and energy.
This vast distance between the sources of essentials and the consumers of those essentials is an artifact of the current era of abundance and the decay of local sources in favor of global supply chains.
Consider food as an example. In the late 19th century, roughly half of many metropolitan regions' food was grown or raised within the city limits. Residents had gardens, a few fruit trees, raised ducks, chickens and geese, and so on.
You may recall the late 19th century Sherlock Holmes story in which a jewel thief force-feeds a stolen jewel to a goose, and then must track down and buy every goose the owner had since sold. It did not take hours of travel to reach the home where the geese were raised; it was in the city.
Now there are numerous constraints on raising food in cities and suburbs. Some locales ban front yard gardens; many ban raising chickens, etc. Others require complex compliance with food-safety regulations designed for major enterprises to sell household-raised produce in farmers markets.
If you ask the produce manager of your local market why so little produce is locally supplied, the answer you'll likely get is that the store (or chain) only buys from a major distributor; if the distributor doesn't stock locally grown produce, the store won't stock any, either.
And so rather than locally grown garlic, ginger, etc., you find garlic, ginger, etc. from China, Brazil, Ecuador and so on.
That it makes financial sense to everyone involved to fly/ship produce thousands of miles, burning millions of gallons of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel in the process, rather than make it sensible and easy to obtain locally grown produce, tells us how far the system has strayed from the principle of keeping production close to consumers.
As for energy: while few families had natural gas wells (for example) in their back yard, access to wood for cooking was once a matter of walking out to collect fallen branches, etc.
The advent of coal and petroleum (and before that, whale oil for lighting) created a great distance between the few sources of energy and the widely distributed consumers.
But the reliance on ever-greater amounts of energy have increased our dependence on these long supply chains. It's one thing to supply far-flung consumers with a few liters of kerosene, it's quite another to keep the vast electrical grid fully charged and provide millions of gallons of diesel daily to keep the trucks rolling, jet fuel to keep the aircraft flying and 150 million cars, SUVs and pickup trucks fueled.
Any break in the energy supply chain will cripple "modern life" in a matter of days. Those in the petrol delivery network have told me the delivery system is so finely tuned that gas stations will run out in 48 hours if deliveries are disrupted.
Cities require energy to operate, and this is efficient since millions of people use the centralized systems for delivering fresh water, food, transport (public transportation) and energy. But our reliance on private vehicles has left shared transport (trains, subways, etc.) woefully inadequate to the task of bringing in supplies or moving people out of cities crippled by scarcities / disruptions in global supply chains.
In other words, cities are inherently vulnerable to supply chain disruptions due to their distance from sources of essentials and the concentration of millions of consumers. But we've greatly amplified this vulnerability by becoming dependent on long, inherently fragile global supply chains and private transport.
We've all seen what happens to highways when an emergency is declared: every way out of the urban core is soon in gridlock, jammed with private vehicles going nowhere as everyone jumps in their car expecting to navigate "normal congestion."
Human nature is wired to hoard anything that's becoming scarce as a survival strategy, and this directive to hoard quickly strips stores of whatever is perceived as potentially becoming scarce.
Any disruption in supply chains will quickly empty supermarkets, etc. of food and household supplies. I am old enough to recall the 1973 Gas Crisis that sparked the spontaneous emergence of enormous lines of cars snaking around any gas station that still had gas as drivers decided to "top off my tank" regardless of any other conditions.
Needless to say, this inner directive to "top off my tank" immediately threw the entire fuel distribution system into chaos.
Scarcities become self-fulfilling feedback loops as potential scarcities quickly become real scarcities.
The global supply chains have become remarkably efficient in the past 50 years, and this success has lulled the populace into a complacent faith that the supply chains are durable and resilient, when the reality is they have become longer and stripped of redundancies, rendering then more fragile than ever.
This complacent faith in the permanence of global supply chains has prompted few households to set aside a buffer of food, fresh water or energy in their cupboards. Those who do are derided as "doom and gloom preppers," crazed adherents of doomsday cults, etc.
Discrediting a practical, rational response to our economy's extreme dependence on fragile global supply chains is part and parcel of the status quo ideology that 1) everything is under control, we have experts on the job, there's nothing to fret about and 2) we are so rich and powerful nothing can disrupt our way of life.
If people understood the extreme vulnerability of their way of life resulting from the immense distances between the sources of essentials and their convenient comforts and long supply chains all converging in chokepoints, their confidence in the "just borrow and spend freely, there's nothing to worry about" orthodoxy might waver, and consumer borrowing and spending might falter.
That cannot be allowed to happen, and so a false confidence is promoted.
Where can residents of the developed world cities go if cities run out of food, fresh water and energy for all the private vehicles everyone depends on?
In recently urbanized nations such as China and India, many urban dwellers faced with chaotic shortages can make their way back to family villages where residents still raise their own food and the consumption of energy is very modest.
Few urban dwellers in developed nations have such a resilient bug-out option. As I've long noted, preppers who establish hoards in distant cabins haven't really solved the core problem, which is to relocate to places near the sources of essentials. The only real solution is a property set up to raise food with a potable-water well or catchment system/tank and an energy source (solar panels, etc.)
But even this solution is only partial, as it lacks the core assets of rural villages: low-tech, sustainable sources of essentials and the social capital of long-established, durable family and community ties.
Villages are famously riven by petty jealousies and squabbles, poisoned by gossip, and so on--they are, after all, communities of human beings. But they are also reservoirs of social capital: sharing, obligations, duties, reciprocities and what Eric Fromm called "rootedness," one of the most important psychological foundations of human security and happiness.
After long decades of experience, I can report that raising food is not easy, especially if attempted by rank beginners or an isolated individual. Moving into (or back to) a functioning community is much, much easier than attempting to single-handedly create a private island that generates its own essentials.
It's also not easy to master the maintenance and repair of water pumps, solar arrays, batteries, dwellings, equipment, etc.--something overlooked in our "more technology is always the answer" orthodoxy. Reducing dependence on technology is generally a more sustainable strategy than increasing one's dependence on the same long, fragile supply chains for parts and replacements.
There is one other asset in largely self-sustaining communities close to sources of food: getting by on less, much less.
The stupendous hidden costs in energy required to sustain the convenient comforts of our always-on-tap-luxuries lifestyle is hidden from everyone but supply-chain insiders. What insiders know but keep to themselves is the difficulty in re-establishing immensely complex supply chains once they break.
We assume the gas station and supermarket will be quickly restocked after any spot of bother, and the lights will come on in an hour or two. But in a system with only two days of buffer, is this faith in a rapid, seamless refill of every essential realistic and wise, or is it just a form of comforting magical thinking?
My observation is there's a see-saw: those with the lowest level of knowledge of supply chains have the highest confidence in the permanence and durability of rapid, seamless refill, and those who know the most have the least confidence that the supply chain is unbreakable.
To tie this into last week's exploration of social capital: in thinking about fragility, vulnerability and essentials, the orthodoxy of permanent abundance focuses on material goods and is blind to the intangible wealth of social capital, just as it is blind to the intrinsic risks of becoming totally dependent on supply chains stretching for thousands of fuel-hungry miles, chains that are entirely dependent on a handful of chokepoints. This is the perfection of a network prone to disruption and collapse.
One final thought: what sources of essentials are within walking distance of your home? What's within 5 miles / 8 km? How about 10 miles / 16 km? More city, suburb, pavement?
Central Paris--the old city boundaries--is about 6 miles or 9.5 km across. I've walked between the city's two forests (from bois to bois) in a leisurely day.
In pre-hydrocarbon eras, one could reach food-rich communities on foot from central Paris, Florence or Hangzhou, or virtually any other city. (Leonardo Da Vinci's property in Florence was mostly vineyard.)
If we can't walk to sources of essentials, that's a measure of our vulnerability to supply chain disruptions.
Highlights of the Blog
Posts:
Why the Wheels Are Coming Off 8/20/21
The Smart Money Has Already Sold 8/18/21
Why the Global Economy Is Unraveling 8/16/21
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
I asked the 27-year old daughter of a close friend for a multi-step favor involving mailing me a book, and she got it done the next morning. We'd picked her and her sister up after school for many years, as her parents both worked, taking the girls on bicycle rides, baking cookies, drawing, even doing a bit of HTML coding, and it's heart-warming to see what a fine adult she has become.
From Left Field
You Really Need to Quit Twitter (theatlantic.com)
How opium led to ‘the banality of evil, the birth of megacorporations, the foundation of empires’ -- succinct description of narco-states...
Farewell to Bourgeois Kings
Remembering the Saur Revolution (in Afghanistan)
Zbigniew Brzezinski & the lies about Afghanistan
Millions of electric car batteries will retire in the next decade. What happens to them? (theguardian.com)
US History Shows Spending on Infrastructure Doesn’t Always End Well
Inside America’s Covid-reporting breakdown -- we only manage what we measure...
Human Stupidity Explained: A Study Published on "Systems"
A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta (sciencemag.org)
The Atlantic: The driving force behind ocean circulation and our taste for cod
America is full of ‘democracy deserts’. Wisconsin rivals Congo on some metrics (theguardian.com)
"Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike." Oscar Wilde
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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