I started to read the article with the thought that Peter was being
realistic. However in the second half it became obvious that he is
a "Business as Usual" advocate.

It will not be BAS. We might well have difficulty in keeping local
telephone systems operational.
The internet and its undersea cables and all the cost and resources
needed to maintain them are almost certainly doomed.
The high intensity industry to maintain such systems will probably
not be attainable.
We are going into a more local industry as international freight will
become impossible at the intensity we now have with thousands of
container ships.
We may well be back to either nuclear powered ships or sailing ships.

Expect a slowdown in industrial activity and more industrial make do.
Higher energy costs and the shortage of liquid fuels will prompt a
diversion of resources into alternative systems which use less energy
and less other resources.

The days of the 2000km salad are also ending unless we build while we
can a country wide electrified railway.
Industry and business will have to be more sustainable in a time of
zero growth.

Indeed we are facing the steady state economy and the "End of Growth".

Peter is another hold out in this idea of "peaks" in resources. the idea of "peak oil" has now officially collapsed, thanks to the energy revolution and its difficult to know what other peaks he may be referring to.

A lot more could be said but Peter's view of economic history is unusual to say the least. This statement:

"Huge industrial corporations are in reality dinosaurs left over from the mass-industrial age and there are plenty of commercial arguments for their demise. Big firms arose in the main to avoid open trading through control over information flows, but given we now have a much greater information capacity, they should logically be broken up into smaller parts to improve efficiencies."

So Microsoft and Apple shouldn't really exist? They control information on what, exactly? What information does BHP Billiton control that its component divisions would not?? and so on, and on. In the author's polemic he misses an interesting point.. multinationals are becoming a problem not for the reasons he alleges but because they can find ways to evade taxes. Microsoft, for example, is able to book much of its revenue through Ireland which has an advantageous tax tructure (BHP Billiton cannot do this, incidently, as it deals in physical products).

That is just the start of problems with this article.. best to move on.

Doubtless well intentioned, Peter McMahon’s article is nevertheless seriously flawed by his employment of high-level abstractions and lack of critical analysis of the politico-economic relations underpinning the series of crises besetting ‘global civilisation’.

Pointing out that the nation-state has “in large part been undermined over the past few decades by the rise of the transnational corporation and global financial market”, he concludes that “The result is governments increasingly prone to capture by vested interests ruling over increasingly disengaged and apathetic populations”.

For Peter, huge industrial corporations are dinosaurs left over from the mass-industrial age and should logically be broken into smaller parts to improve efficiencies… including banks. However long-distance trade remains essential to connect various regions with specific resource strengths, such as food growing capacity and mineral deposits.

One big idea, he suggests, is that “we can replace the existing hierarchies of power, wealth and information with a plethora of networks that use digital technologies”.

"It may be that what we are seeing is the rise of a social-capitalist system built on huge amounts of micro-trading carried out by everyone utilising digital networks with a focus on generating reasonable profits along with maintaining social cohesion."

Arguing that we know a lot more about how modern civilisation works than we did, he naively concludes that “more and more people and organisations are moving on the need to achieve basic structural change”, and that “this orientation is breaking into the mainstream.”

The idea of a ‘social-capitalist system’ is an oxymoron. The ‘ethic’ of Capitalism is anti-social, anti-democratic exploitation, alienation and oppression of any and all competitors and those whose only input to this pernicious mode of Production, Distribution and Exchange is their labour. It is about ‘beggar thy neighbour’. For the Capitalist Class, ‘reasonable profits’ is anathema, and another oxymoron!

Yes, bring out the usual suspects, give them a good thumping! No mention of the fact that our satanic capitalist global economy, fuelled by our wicked use of evil fossil fuels, has led to longer lives, lower infant mortality, and better-fed, happier, healthier, better-educated populations the world over. No mention of the innumerable prognostications of doom and disaster, dating back almost to the industrial revolution itself, which have all turned out to be misguided, misinformed and ultimately laughably wrong. No mention of the remarkable and inspiring capacity for human beings to solve problems for themselves and others, when they actually have reason to think that the problems are genuine, and not imaginary bugbears manufactured by mean-spirited and jealous individuals anxious to drag everyone else down to their own level of resentment and gloom. Why are so many of you people so desperate to believe that you're living in the End Times? Is being happy, healthy and prosperous too boring for you?

Keep the article handy, Peter, and post it every three months or so. It will save anyone else having to cobble together the same old dreary nonsense over and over again. Carefully husbanded, it may last as long as human civilisation does, which will be a good many centuries yet.

the idea of "peak oil" has now officially collapsed

Now there is an interesting statement. Which official official ?
The International Energy Authority ?
The IEA says 2006 !

The only one to even suggest that latterly has been someone at a US Uni.
Forgotten his name, but his maths were torn to pieces by several others.
Curmudgeon is probably referring to shale oil in the US where some
are even predicting that the US will become an oil exporter of the
scale of Saudi Arabia.
Either that or he is referring to cold fusion.
Well cold fusion probably has a better chance than the US being an exporter.

Nothing much has changed since 2005, crude oil production has been
about the same and some are predicting the decline will start about
2015.
The increase in all liquids is mainly ethanol production and that is
now putting pressure on food supplies. Hence the Euro is now being
asked to remove their mandated ethanol in petrol.
The same subject has arisen in the US because of their drought.

Do you want to drive or eat your daily bread ?

Great well researched, thoughtful,extremely cogent article.
Yes there are some multinationals, with larger budgets and more real power, than many sovereign nations! Many of who have so mismanaged their economies, with tax breaks for those who least deserved or needed them, or the employment of three times more lay-about bureaucrats, than was needed to supply every possible public service!
Why, the Greeks employed more workers to maintain a national railway than he total of passengers it actually carried.
It would have been vastly less expensive to actually rip up the rail, sack the staff and put all of its intending passengers into govt paid taxis!
A Tobin tax, or rather an entirely unavoidable expenditure tax, is a great Idea, that ought to end avoidance.
Excluding capital and energy business models from the private market and its endless machinations/speculation; via mandating legislation, is also a must, as is taxing myriad small to modest co-ops and family business models, at a lower rate?
[Creating competing for market share public enterprise, would remove the tendency for these things to morph into union controlled monopolies?]
Which would then allow them to not only compete, but bring the too big to fail enterprises, to their knees? Making anything else than a carve up and sell off completely and financially non-viable.
Shifting the focus onto poverty and acting to end it, in all its forms and guises; with say micro finance and or exclusively targeted direct aid, will create many millions of interactive business growth models, no longer reliant on endless and entirely unsustainable growth.
Many small rural and regional co-ops could be successfully assisted, with govt guaranteed start up money and managerial mentoring/advice/assistance.
There would be many places where say a small to modest multi purpose recycling plant, could be set up to reclaim and recycle regional waste, or distil endlessly sustainable, low cost alternative fuel.
We need to remain cognisant of the fact, that almost all of our worthwhile progress, as truly liberated humans, was accompanied or created by the advent of endlessly reliable ultra-cheap energy, and progressive thinkers!
Rhrosty.