Charles suggests you change your brand of cough syrup, but he’s a rough, hairy, very pragmatic and achieving sailor. I’m a Southern lady, so I don’t say things like that. There are different levels of “reality,” and the one we should be focusing on at present involves securing our individual supply lines. Logistics are a lovely thing; they win battles and ensure that the larder is not bare. “Armies fight only occasionally but they eat every day.” The same can be said of families. Philosophy of the brand you favor is a luxury. LBT

Very nice, sir. How about a future that is pre-Industrial Revolution?! Throughout history there have been slaves, free men, merchants, landed gentry, kings, and politicians. Today you can be a wage slave or live on the welfare plantation, establish a free hold, afford a big country place, be one of the hereditary wealthy (or lucky in sports or invent the home computer), or go into politics. Far too many fall in the first and last classes. The term “share croppers” evokes horror, but I think the time is coming when being allowed to keep half of what a man raises with someone else’s cattle, seed, chickens, and land will be thought very desirable. Sorry, but the capital outlay is too great now for a decent ROI on the land and machinery. Hmmm…let me play with that idea. There may yet be something in it. Oddly enough, many of the old ways work splendidly. Kunstler holds that in 15 years most younger people will have to work and live in the country. I hold that most of them won’t know enough to be worth what they eat, and a fine idea would be to plan ahead and acquire some skills and knowledge. Ideas? Linda Brady Traynham

I can never understand why Mr. Kunstler doesn’t play with his reader mail because he gets such good stuff. I AM a Philosopher (it says so on my University of Hawaii diploma, at least), as well as elitist scum (my detractors say), and I do not concern myself with society as a whole, how high is up, when the earth was created, and similar matters I have no power over or cannot document. I work at putting together small oases of love, laughter, and self-sufficiency and think others should be responsible similarly for their own security and happiness. No social conscience at all! Utopia on any sort of scale always fails because there are always those who will not work and those who want to order the behavior of others. There are far too many people and far too little cohesiveness of beliefs to have any serious hope of cleaning up the disastrous mess Statist policies and Balkanization have wrought. “Every family for itself” will not change that, but it does allow those so inclined to pull back into reasonable serenity. A fellow philosophy student once referred to mine scathingly as “the most brilliant mind of the Eighteenth century.” I still think that a lovely compliment. Life is about CHOICES and their consequences. The article I’m writing this afternoon (this is my version of a coffee break) demonstrates that an investment of under $5,000, very modest amounts of work, and a very few dollars a day can produce all the beef, poultry, milk, cream, eggs, and butter two families could use, and most of their vegetable needs, as well. The problem is city, county, and state regulations forbid keeping a dozen chickens, a goat, a pair of steers, and a milk cow in your back yard! Solution? Look at your lives and see if you can move outside their spheres of control. What America needs is the return of the yeoman farmer, a thesis which will give the Statists spasms. It is much harder to control a man who produces his own food. Your turn! Philosophize away. Cordially, Linda Brady Trayhnham

Delighted laughter. Thanks for the compliment–and y’all come on over to the Texas Ring and play. I’m a serious night owl and so is Gary. Linda

Second, I’ve been following Mr. K for a couple of years now. Read the books. Listened to the K-cast. I’ve come to understand that money, whether fiat, species, debt, what-have-you, is a claim on future labor or useful work. On the downside of Hubbert’s Curve you can issue all the money you want at any interest rate you want. What you have to look forward to are diminishing returns on that claim. And it’s not just the hydrocarbons. It’s also copper ores, uranium, fresh water, topsoil, you name it. Much of the entire resource base is in decline. Deal with it or deny it, contraction is inevitable. American exceptionalism has come to mean that we as a society are exceptionally naive.

Peak Oil?
Could be, I really don’t know, but from what I see, there is still a lot of carbon in the ground left to squander.
Maybe when we get through all the natural gas and coal I will begin to worry more.
Sure things will change, but I doubt the long term change will be anywhere near what Kunstler foresees (I don’t know exactly what this would be, but it seems to be some sort of a mid 1800′s Yankee farming village populated with educated atheists…does not sound bad, just seems unlikely)

Big stuff is here to stay, although it may be in a much slimmer form.
I doubt power and human greed will easily roll over and die.
On big thing leaves, another will take its place.

I don’t care for the idea, but increased global government seems a likely outcome to me.
Probably take a few more wars and a lot of human tears to get there.

Not to say that folks won’t have their spinach patches, and be able to elect people with the same accent to decide what to re-name the streets in the town…
I just think the actual power is consolidating, and has been for some time.

Glad I could give you a laugh! And even more glad to know that my rare late night keyboard e’opinion is appreciated. Consider me a moved reader. )

I must admit, the one thing that Mr. Kunstler does continue to demonstrate is how fortunate W&G readers are to have writers like you.

) All the best to you.