Very true , particularly regarding the visits by foreign dignitaries , to which might be added visits by pop stars and large ships . Apparently , State traffic laws are to be waived to allow Dolly Parton to bring a supersized motor vehicle when she comes .

Also add the solicitation of international sports events , at great expense to the taxpayers [ with the unsubstantiated claims that these will raise Australia 's image and bring a lot of tourists and investors ] and the never ending war commemorations and search for and reinterment of war skeletons .

I agree all the way, Geoff.

We really do seem to be utterly hooked into an acceleration towards the precipice.

I can see no way out of it. The touted solution to any woes that we might have is to increase growth even further.

We so desperately need to do just the opposite – wind population growth right back in Australia, and hence have some hope of slowing the rate of economic growth, especially the absolutely manic rate of primary resource exploitation.

But of course, this is just totally outside of any consideration within our political system, especially given that our government really is a puppet of big business.

The only hope we might have is to suffer a series of relatively minor upheavals, which are big enough to sting us into some substantial changes without destroying the lives of too many people. But what is the likelihood of this? Just about nil.

Geoff, mate, if you want to be taken seriously you cannot quote Diamond. His stuff on collapse has been comprehensively exploded by myself, Mark Lawson, and other writers. See the article..
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=12403
Note that there was no serious disagreement with the article.

This is not to say that the man's academic work is wrong, but his popular writing is too loose with the facts, if not nutty, to be taken seriously. For example, Diamond's stuff on Greenland sort-of accorded with the orthodoxy at one point, but the othodoxy had shifted even before he wrote that chapter in Collapse. Now scholars suspect that the Greenlanders did adapt to conditions but the black death opened up areas in the easy-living (by comparison) Iceland so they upped and went there. Diamond does not mention this, one suspects, because it does not fit with the message he wants to convey.

That is just one of the many, many problems with Collapse. The book cannot be cited by anoone who wants to be taken seriously

Curmudgeon -

I am aware of the rat story for Easter Island and do not have the simplistic view you parody in your article. I have not thought it likely the islanders would have actually cut down their last trees, rather that they triggered irreversible changes. Whether by directly degrading the ecosystem or via rats, the lesson is the same. Were they better off continuing to build huge stone effigies, or would it have been better to give up that obsession and try to save their home?

Are we better off trying to build an ever-greater GDP (that doesn't make us any more fulfilled), or might we be wise to try to save our home?

You raise questions about Diamond, and point out contemporaneous contrary work, but your commentary is far from "comprehensively exploding" his work. A bit of hyperbole there. And try writing a huge synthesis like that yourself, and see if you can get everything absolutely watertight and up-to-date. I think you're too ready to condemn. Most people, I think, read such syntheses as stimulating ideas, rather than received truth. You don't seem to have mentioned the Mayans, whose collapse apparently did follow closely the building of their grandest temples.

I would recommend Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" to anyone open to a stimulating take on the development of civilisation. Ditto "Collapse" for anyone open to a stimulating account of how and perhaps why some societies collapsed and others didn't.

Geoff

Look, pound this into your head. Diamond's work is full of howlers and cannot be taken seriously. If any of the major errors in the chapter on Australian been made in a book by someone defending the status quo, there would have been whole web site dedicated to attacking the man.

Instead of simply dropping him and quietly walking away - the obvious response - when teh vast problems noted for the Easter Island, Greenland and Australian chapters are pointed out, you come up with an extraordinarily feeble defence.

The point about the Easter Islanders is that, as far as anyone knows, they found an equilibrium with their environment such as it was. The bit about them building statues instead of saving their environment is little more than speculation by Diamond - speculation that hasn't quite been discarded by scholars. Its not as nutty as von Daniken, but its on the fringe, particularly considering his other errors.

Knowing the problems with his Collapse, to suggest that anyone should read Guns Germs and Steel is clearly absurd. There is some excellent material on the rise and fall of civilisations - Diamond is by no means the only one in the field - which I am happy to recommend. But to use Diamond is to chuck away your academic credentials.

Your article's a bit disappointing Geoff, indeed you seem to be asleep at the wheel yourself. I agree with everything you say to a point, but then you don't go the extra mile and condemn the juggernaut that is the real problem, that neither Julia nor anyone else can "adjust" to be more efficient.
May I ask for a follow-up article; in plain terms can you tell us what you would do if you were in Gillard's or, more to the point, Obama's position? What would you do? And why don't they do it, their intelligent people? The human race isn't completely degenerate, it still produces special people who can think critically across the spectrum, so why don't the political genius's act? It's simplistic to say they're in the pay or under the influence of the wealthy. This is a democracy for crying out loud!
There are two main reasons why our political messiahs don't stand up. One is hegemony; our vaunted democracies amount to bovine populism and the cattle are fed whatever keeps them producing milk. A politician can't do anything unless she's in power, and she can't win or stay in power unless she's brimming with carrots and turnips. Political messiahs are untenable and for the most part rejected in the filtering process.
The other reason is political realism. It is a peculiar delusion of the human being that s/he imagines solutions are unencumbered--ideal--that they may be introduced like a powerful new wonder-drug and lay waste to the worldly corruption that simply needs an antigen. When our messiahs come to office they do so under the provisor that they will find a way to maintain the status quo, more or less, and all their idealism is suddenly realised as juvenilia--they have to get with the program! the only game in town!
All our problems are systemic and there's no way to fix it--to sit on the carburettor and monitor emissions. It's the engine that's the problem! It's a bad engine! and we need politicians who will stand up and say so, not fixers!

I disagree with so much of this article I hardly know where to begin.

It is yet another restatement of the 'Limits to Growth', Malthusian, end of the world, business is bad, were running out of stuff theme repeated ad nauseum in many similar opinion pieces with few facts to support the idea. The 'we know better' Green lobby is at it again with their fear campaigns.

The world is way better than it was even 20 yrs ago for most of its inhabitants. Sure there are problems, but villifying big business and turning everyone into fearful environmental evangelists isn't the answer to anything.

In my opinion most of the "crises" predicted are generated by vested interest groups and bear little resemblance to actuality. We've been hearing that the world is on the edge for about 20 yrs now. Ho hum.

Whether Jared Diamond has exhibited serious flaws in Collapse and other books or whether he has made relatively small errors within the vast amount of material that he covered with his core messages intact, is really moot. It is a diversion to the article and discussion at hand.

The point is that governments are utterly beholden to the profit motive of big business and that we are consequently hooked in to continuous growth, gross antisustainability, and what would appear by all indications, a huge collapse in the near future.

Curmudgeon, after reading your posts above, I’m still not sure whether you agree or disagree with the main tenet of Geoff’s article.

Ludwig said

"The point is that governments are utterly beholden to the profit motive of big business and that we are consequently hooked in to continuous growth, gross antisustainability, and what would appear by all indications, a huge collapse in the near future."

Yes and it is completely and utterly incorrect.

1. Sustainability will increase probably growth.
2. Govts are not beholden to big business any more than they are to the Green movement.
3. There is no evidence for an imminent future 'collapse'. Particularly as no-one can say what it is that is supposed to 'collapse'.

Many people cannot get past their simplistic belief in the limits to growth model. Its appealing, easy and seductively catastophic but wrong.

Atman,

If you want to believe that there are no limits to growth then you need to explain how continuous growth is possible in a finite system (the planet Earth). Please enlighten us....

<< Sustainability will increase probably growth. >>

Not sure what you mean Atman. Could you please elaborate.

<< Govts are not beholden to big business any more than they are to the Green movement.>>

Since when have governments been beholden to the green movement?? The current government is beholden to the Greens more so than ever before, but this is a rare situation. And the silly Greens have got scant little interest in winding back population growth and achieving real sustainability in this country, so it seems! The Greens and the green movement are two quite different things!

But successive governments seem to be totally under the thumb of big business and have been for many years, and I can’t see how they can become independent of this enormous bias.

<< There is no evidence for an imminent future 'collapse' >>

Um……..no…… none at all! ( :>|

Refreshingly frank look at the 'warts and all' truth of our economic and financial situation.

The debt bubble was primed over 3 decades by a cocktail of potentially toxic legislation from negative gearing, deregulation of the banks to over-generous captital gains tax loopholes.

The real issue is how can governments be brought to see and act on warning signs of future catastrophe. There was a ten year period in the late 90's early 2000's when there were plenty of warning signs but no significant debate in parliament, university think tanks or press about the issues and how to tackle them. Ther was time to legislate to prevent the debt bubble

Now all we're getting is 'tut tut Europe and the US, we haven't made the same mistakes, we're all good and we won't fall into the same problems. Unfortunately, our mining boom and better (but not good) Govt debt situation won't make us immune. We still have huge private debt, more than 50% of it on over-valued properties.

Now the question is can this bomb be defused? Perhaps it's too late; the timer has already been set ticking, we now have the bubble and it's too late now to stop the consequences.

Ludwig

its fair enough that the stuff on Diamond is just a distraction from the main thrust of the article. I was astonished by the fact that anyone could defend him. For the record Daiamond's mistakes are not minor, they are howlers.

The article itself indicates that Geoff should keep his day job. For example, he talks of unsustainable household debt levels and a house price bubble. Say, what? House prices have been largely depressed in Australia for years, although there have been exceptions. In Perth they shot up a couple of years back and may still be rising, but in Melbourne and Sydney they've done nothing for years.

In fact, one of the reasons Australia escaped the worst of the GFC is because our property market was not booming in the lead up to it. For that and other reasons, with a fewe exceptions, the bad loan write-offs remained relatively small. So much for a major part of his thesis.

Squeers -

You are right in that we need a better system - political, economic and in our values. I have written a fair bit on this. You'll find a few indicators on my website, for example
http://betternature.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/cut-emissions-and-boost-economy/
http://betternature.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/gdp-shrinks-hooray/

Or you can download my 2004 book Economia, which has a long section on how to reform the economy and reduce our destructive footprint on Earth.
http://betternature.wordpress.com/booksanddownloads/economia/

Well I don't know what universe Curmudgeon inhabits, if he thinks house prices have been depressed. They have only doubled, or close to tripled, over the past decade or two, way beyond inflation (which excludes housing costs, by the way - another trick of mainstream economics).

But beyond anecdotes, Steve Keen has been documenting Australia's private debt level (160% of GDP), mostly mortgage debt, and the risks to our supposedly brilliant economy.
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/

Note: U.S. debt to GDP ration has again attained over 100 percent - at over 15 trillion.
Combined private and public debt in the U.S. is over 54 trillion.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Thanks for links Geoff, I'll have a look asap.

I believe in the fundamental proposition (I only wish I had time to research it) that it is impossible (at least at this, or any foreseeable, stage in our technological development) to sustain economic growth in tandem with cuts in Co2 emissions; the latter are the inevitable by-product of the former. Economic growth is not abstract, it's "material" growth and costly in terms of fuel in and emissions out (there's also the considerable question of entropy. I've posted this link elsewhere but perhaps you've missed it: http://tinyurl.com/7uv25c9)
IMO, the only way we can cut emissions is by cutting economic growth, i.e. material growth. This is non sequitur, however, in a capitalist system; profits collapse and societies degenerate without economic growth. It's not simply that the big end of town won't permit it or that governments are enthral to their corporate masters, the whole shebang is in denial, or wilfully misleading the electorate, of the fact that economy and the human presence must grow or collapse. The fact that it must collapse if it continues to grow seems to be the preferred option.
What I was getting at above is that well-intentioned as we may be with our ideological solutions, they're hatched in the equanimity of our studies, and not in the real world where our leaders are obliged to operate rather than pontificate.

Interesting thoughts Squeers, but I think there's a way through.

Living systems have long since solved this problem. They grow, they stabilise and they continue. Unlimited growth is pathological - a plague or a cancer.

Humans are part of the living network of the planet, and for a long time we followed this pattern.

There are many ways already known for us to dramatically reduce our material throughputs, so we have a much lighter footprint.

We are not limited to past kinds of "capitalism". If we make quality of life the objective of our economies, instead of GDP, and increasing GDP, then we can reduce material throughput and improve our quality of life - simultaneously.

We have to overcome the inertia of the presently powerful, who don't want anything to change of course. That is likely to happen, as the present system can't even maintain itself, let alone us and the planet. The present system results from an unholy alliance of the self-interested rich and the deluded economics mainstream, whose core theory is pseudoscience.

Geoff Davies

Again, clearly you need to take a closer look at the marekts. Sure house prices in Australia are high compared to, say, the US. There are geographical reasons for that. House prices may have doubled in perhaps 20 years in NOMINAL terms, but not in real terms (houses then are also different to houses now, in general, but that's a long story).

But you talk of a house price bubble. Pound this into your head - there is no such bubble at the moment in Australia. There was certainly a surge in prices, again for good reasons, but it petered out some years back with the market playing catch up. There is no evidence that house prices are out of wack with the underlying demand.

You cited Steve Keen's stuff. I had already read it and, out of curiosity, looked at the UN stuff he cited. How did they get such a high figure for Aus private debt, and what did it actually mean? the answer is not a lot. Its not unusual say, for a householder to have a debt of three time his or her annual salary on a house. I'm not about to explain it all here but the key point is the servicing of the debt. Instead of looking at debt levles you want to look at indexes for defaults..bankruptcy stats for example (higher at the moment due to economic conditions, but not seriously so) or debt write offs by banks (low).

In all, Geoff, I'm not about to bother with your book. You'd have to do a lot better than any of this before I pay attention.

For some historical background of what Steve Keen is saying about debt you only have to look at one of OLOs finest articles:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6528&page=1

Note the date this was written. We all know what happened in 2008. He has updated much of his data since then.

His ideas aren't generally accepted, but this guy is a forecaster with a successful track record. You may ignore or dismiss him of course, but do so at your own risk.

Bugsy

Sigh! go back and look the article you linked. All it really does is illustate the problems with that sort of forecasting. Despite Dr Doom's prognostication (Keen's nick name is Dr Doom), the GFC only affected Australia because it affected most other countries. There was no system melt down like there was in the depression and 1890s, despite the graph. What it does show is that debt tolerance has changed.

See what happened in 1990 with the graph? That was a time of vast change in the Aus system. There was a property boom and a lot of bad lending by major banks. When it collapsed all the old state banks had to be amalgamated with other banks. that was a bad time and went on for years. You'll see its a bump on that graph.

So all the graph is doing is showing us what happened. It doesn't say anything useful about when we may expect a correction (actually we're already having it - but its a mild one forced on us by others). If a doomster like Keen keeps on saying the same thing he's bound to say it before a downswing..

A lot of people warned about American lending practices (the cause of the crisis), but no one realised that the American bust would cause problems everywhere, straight away. Keen never forecast that.

Ok his forecasting is not totally on the money, that's true.

But given this graph does not predict the future, you can infer one or two things from it.

Given the data as it stands, would you expect the ratio to continue increasing over time or not?

If not, why not?

It does show with a pretty good temporal correlation that downturns after the peaks in that graph are associated with major deleveraging events. What it does not predict is when that is likely to occur, but occur it will because there is an actual limit to how much debt you can actually afford to pay relative to your income, regardless of ones 'tolerance' to it. Where that limit is on a population scale is a matter for debate of course. Unless you think that there isn't one...

Bugsy - dunno about debt limits .. the actual peaks are just what you'd expect if there's been a major collapse. GDP has stopped growing and no one can pay their bills.. The peaks occur after the downturns. Property prices are a much better leading indicator, but the actual level does not help.. there has to be a build up and speculation..

As for debt limits, I'd have to take a closer look at the figures which Keen cites - part of it is certainly corporate debt which is a different animal altogether and may well be partially equity of foreign companies operating here (long story to do with tax).. Another part of the reason is that Aus house prices are higher than most other places for geographical reasons (we crowd into just a few cities).. beyond that I'm not sure, although I doubt that there is any real cause for worry..

Curmudgeon -

You are not alone in believing everything about Australian debt and economy is fine, it's true. You have most of the Oz establishment on your side. However I'm persuaded by Keen's arguments and data. Simple enough idea (net new debt increases aggregate demand) and data to show the effect.

Btw, referring to your discussion with Bugsy, Mortgage debt accounts for around 100 of the 160% of GDP that is private debt in Oz, as I recall. It is major.

Beyond those things, I will not "pound this into my head". Nor respond to the sarcastic "Mate". If you were interested in a reasonable debate, rather than forcing your view down others' throats, then I might be more inclined to continue a discussion. You're playing to win, not to learn. Your style is unpleasant. Not the worst on this site, but that's not saying much.

".. the actual peaks are just what you'd expect if there's been a major collapse. GDP has stopped growing and no one can pay their bills."

Yees, keep going... What it also shows us is that it doesn't tend to plateau. It's either going up or down. The downside of the peaks are associated with paying down debt (deleveraging) and are certainly a different economic climate than the upside. Of course, when you are paying down debt, 'growth' is difficult and has other social consequences.

Of course the timing of the peak is difficult to predict. Lucky for us, Keen has updated his figures in the intervening years and shown us that the US has already peaked, and we likely have as well (although how big the downside will be is difficult to say isn't it?).

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2010/06/13/empirical-and-theoretical-reasons-why-the-gfc-is-not-behind-us/

There may be no cause to worry, but while the actual house prices haven't fallen a massive amount (although they have fallen), the average amount of time it takes to sell a house has risen significantly, and there are other indicators indicating that house price increases may stagnate.

One of Keen's ideas is that fast rising house prices attract investors, and so is a sort of feedback, but there can be a negative feedback as well, that is if property investors are worried that their highly leveraged property is dropping in value, then they may start to try and offload them before the prices drop further. Some are arguing that this may already be happening. I dunno about that either, economics has a terrible predictive record, but if the growth in house prices starts to slow (if not decrease), what would make them an attractive proposition for new buyers?

Geoff,
you bear me out more eloquently than I possibly could myself.

This is very touching: <Living systems have long since solved this problem. They grow, they stabilise and they continue. Unlimited growth is pathological - a plague or a cancer> Agreed.

<Humans are part of the living network of the planet, and for a long time we followed this pattern>
Yes, but what does that have to do with the present state of affairs?

<There are many ways already known for us to dramatically reduce our material throughputs, so we have a much lighter footprint>
I have no idea what you mean by "throughputs", but what about the sheer logistics of 7 billion and counting?

<We are not limited to past kinds of "capitalism". If we make quality of life the objective of our economies, instead of GDP, and increasing GDP, then we can reduce material throughput and improve our quality of life - simultaneously>
This is precisely the kind of idealism I'm talking about!
There's only one kind of capitalism. The other kinds are just variations on a theme. Quality of life is not, will never be, the objective. To imagine it might be so is breathtakingly naive!
But for arguments sake, how do you propose we pull that off--make quality of life the objective, rather than profit (and what is quality of life btw?)?
<We have to overcome the inertia of the presently powerful, who don't want anything to change of course>
Yes!
I prefer that "presently" should mean "soon", But never mind; how do we overcome the presently powerful, bolstered as they are by hegemony?

<The present system results from an unholy alliance of the self-interested rich and the deluded economics mainstream, whose core theory is pseudoscience>
What is your holy solution?
Geoff, this really does look vacuous and you're not doing radical thought any favours.

Squeers,

What I wrote was the briefest indication of conclusions of my thinking and writing. There are not only articles but books you can read, to fill in background, if you follow the links I gave before. So I think your criticism is a bit hasty.

Regarding your comments:

Human economies could be brought into compatibility with the biosphere.

Throughput refers to the amounts of resources we harvest/dig, use once and dump. We could use them more frugally with existing designs, and we could seriously recycle almost everything if we set about it.

I we limit ourselves to what has already existed, we are condemned to repeat the past. I argue for a market economy that is managed for quality of life, and that does not produce such unequal concentrations of ownership and wealth. To do this we have to reform some of the mechanisms at work in our economies and societies. This is neither old capitalism nor socialism.

Quality of life is what we decide it is, I don't want to be prescriptive. Except that we must become compatible with the biosphere, or our system won't survive.

To overcome the presently powerful, we work out how we want the world to work and persuade others to join us. That can lead to a political tipping point.

If you want to determine whether housing is expensive in Australia, you might consider a "Big Mac" comparison or median income to house price ratio. By both these measures Australian housing is expensive. By what comparative measure does Curmudgeon determine otherwise?