Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

[Thailandnotes]

http://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstler.../#more-6201%27

50 minutes, very interesting.

[Woodsman]

Re: Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

http://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstler.../#more-6201%27

50 minutes, very interesting.

Have your ever read any of is "World Made by Hand" novels? I think they're quite good.

[Ellen Z]

Re: Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

Have your ever read any of is "World Made by Hand" novels? I think they're quite good.

I’ve read them all.

As novels – let’s just say creating complex human characters or believable plots is not quite Kunstler’s strong point.

But as experiments in thinking about possible futures, they’re quite interesting. In one sequence that caught my attention, someone performs an emergency appendectomy without a modern operating room – using liquor to swab the patient’s abdomen, using herbal medications to tranquilize the patient. I didn’t double check all the details, but it was an eye-opener to realize that some operations probably could still be performed even if you didn’t have electricity and all the modern supplies we take for granted. (It led me to reconsider what medicinal herbs I’d like growing in my backyard, just in case they might ever come in handy.)

These novels picture a world that slides from our current state into an economy without fossil fuels and electricity, within a couple of decades. That combines with an epidemic (many houses are standing empty) and plant diseases so that wheat bread becomes a rarity. Starting from those assumptions, he describes a world in which people remember cars and rock ‘n roll, while making their own music and walking, or riding a horse or mule, wherever they need to go.

Because the change happens so quickly, his people know and remember modern methods, and can figure out how to apply them in changed circumstances. His village includes a trained physician and (I think) a trained dentist. It includes someone who can rig up electricity based on a flowing river, enough for an electrified band and lights at a special party.

These assumptions make for interesting novels, but personally I think those assumptions are unlikely. I can picture that 200 years from now the United States might be split into four or five separate countries, goods might travel by the Erie Canal, and human/animal muscles might be used to replace work now done by oil and electricity... I hope that isn't the future in front of us, but it could be. I don’t expect to see that degree of change within my lifetime.

PS – I didn’t go back to the books to double check my impressions, so I may have messed up a detail or two.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

Have your ever read any of is "World Made by Hand" novels? I think they're quite good.

Isn't Kuntsler's fiction simply kinder, gentler pseudo-apocalypse porn?

I remember when Kuntsler's first rose to his 15 minutes of Peak Oil fame.

He seemed to write with such fatalistic and gleeful disdain.

I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall EJ not having much love lost for Kuntsler during Kuntsler's faded 15 minutes of fame. But that's going back close to a decade now.

Assuming my memory is accurate, I suspect it may involve Kuntsler's seemingly total lack of confidence in entrepreneurial solutions to bring light to the darkening and rocky road.

I'm still waiting for a Tom Clancy-esque techno thriller with a long time horizon covering the same issues but with a happy ending for a smaller population base that doesn't involve zombies.

I'm pretty dark on some things with an ultimately optimistic light at the end of the tunnel, but even I wouldn't invite Kuntsler to a dinner party or as a wingman to chat up the ladies.

Reading Kuntsler should include a warning label compelling one to watch some puppy and kitten YouTube videos to bring light to the darkness.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

Doesn’t sound like you listened to it which is fine. I hadn’t checked in with Kunstler in a long time and found it surprising on several fronts. Most of it is a discussion on how the drop in oil prices is effecting economies and politics of various countries.

Had some friends here from Malaysia last week. The woman teaches at a large international school in KL. Enrollment for next year is down 200 students. 24 teachers are leaving and they are only replacing 4 of them. Why? “Oil.”

Everyone seemed to be betting the Najib scandal would go away, but the price of oil and the decline of the ringgit and the budget crisis those create may change everything.

[shiny!]

Re: Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

http://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstler.../#more-6201%27

50 minutes, very interesting.

When I click the link it goes to a page that says "Account Suspended."

[Woodsman]

Re: Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

When I click the link it goes to a page that says "Account Suspended."

Just tried it; works as expected.

[shiny!]

Re: Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

Just tried it; works as expected.

Well now it works. Thanks for fixing it, Woody!

[santafe2]

Re: Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

OK, I tried to listen to this interview and got 7 minutes in before the BS got piled so high and deep, (that's a PhD in BS), I had to stop listening.

Berman says half of all US oil is “expensive” oil. He doesn’t quantify “expensive” but goes on to say,

“The oil we’re using is increasingly expensive and that is an irrefutable observation and fact.”

“We have tons of oil. We just don’t have very much left that’s affordable.”

Then Kunstler adds: “Oil over $75 a barrel crushes economies and oil under $75 a barrel crushes oil companies”.

Really? Were either of you awake over the last 5 years or so? Oil averaged $100 a barrel in 2011, 2012, 2013 and half of 2014. I don't remember economies being crushed. And if Mr. Berman or Kunstler would like to guarantee $60-70 a barrel for an extended period to the US shale industry, I'm fairly sure we'd have another shale oil boom.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

OK, I tried to listen to this interview and got 7 minutes in before the BS got piled so high and deep, (that's a PhD in BS), I had to stop listening.

Berman says half of all US oil is “expensive” oil. He doesn’t quantify “expensive” but goes on to say,

“The oil we’re using is increasingly expensive and that is an irrefutable observation and fact.”

“We have tons of oil. We just don’t have very much left that’s affordable.”

Then Kunstler adds: “Oil over $75 a barrel crushes economies and oil under $75 a barrel crushes oil companies”.

Really? Were either of you awake over the last 5 years or so? Oil averaged $100 a barrel in 2011, 2012, 2013 and half of 2014. I don't remember economies being crushed. And if Mr. Berman or Kunstler would like to guarantee $60-70 a barrel for an extended period to the US shale industry, I'm fairly sure we'd have another shale oil boom.

1 X GRG55 > 1000 X Kuntslers(on a happy, less always apocalyptic day)

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

Berman says half of all US oil is “expensive” oil. He doesn’t quantify “expensive” but goes on to say, “Oil over $75 a barrel crushes economies and oil under $75 a barrel crushes oil companies”.

Really? Were either of you awake over the last 5 years or so? Oil averaged $100 a barrel in 2011, 2012, 2013 and half of 2014. I don't remember economies being crushed.

Depends on which economies you are talking about. 100$ oil does and did damage emerging economies without a lot of oil. Thailand took a huge hit in terms of unemployment, food prices, etc. It was mitigated by LPG transportation and subsidized petrol prices.


“Berman says half of all US oil is “expensive” oil. He doesn’t quantify “expensive.”

Sure he does, just as many here have - when the price of getting oil out of the ground and refining it closes in on the price you can sell it for.

[Woodsman]

Re: Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

Depends on which economies you are talking about. 100$ oil does and did damage emerging economies without a lot of oil. Thailand took a huge hit in terms of unemployment, food prices, etc. It was mitigated by LPG transportation and subsidized petrol prices.


“Berman says half of all US oil is “expensive” oil. He doesn’t quantify “expensive.”

Sure he does, just as many here have - when the price of getting oil out of the ground and refining it closes in on the price you can sell it for.

I didn't listen to the podcast because the blurb and figures quoted are pretty shopworn to me by now and my initial impression was a big BTDT. As for his fiction, Ellenz made a great review of his work and while we have a different opinion of JHK's characters, I think she made a fair representation.

I have a particular affinity for Jim's cantankerousness and misanthropy. The world was once awash with cranky lefty intellectual Jews with a bit of fight in them. Nowadays Kunstler seems just one of a handful. And if World Made by Hand and The Long Emergency were his best shot, that's good enough for me.

We'll get to peak oil, peak dollar and peak empire at some point; maybe tomorrow but probably not. I think the doomer mindset is a projection onto the political economy of one's personal fear of death and loss of potency. I like JHK, but I see that in him too.

[santafe2]

Re: Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

Depends on which economies you are talking about. 100$ oil does and did damage emerging economies without a lot of oil. Thailand took a huge hit in terms of unemployment, food prices, etc. It was mitigated by LPG transportation and subsidized petrol prices.

OK, I get that your selling your book here since you posted this link but now you're just making it worse. The SET moved up 400% during 2009-2014, (nice problem to have) and unemployment in Thailand is non existent. It's been under 1% since 2010. And even if none of this was true the interview would still be chock full of nonsense.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

It's been under 1% since 2010.

Bloomberg, The Economist, and other publications estimate that the percentage of Thais earning a regular income/paycheck is around 35 percent. The guy selling corn under the bridge and the woman making lanterns for Songkran are counted as fully employed. 65% are part of the “informal economy.” Thai wages are severely depressed by foreign workers working for 2 to 4 dollars a day.

[santafe2]

Re: Kunstler Interviews Art Berman

Bloomberg, The Economist, and other publications estimate that the percentage of Thais earning a regular income/paycheck is around 35 percent. The guy selling corn under the bridge and the woman making lanterns for Songkran are counted as fully employed. 65% are part of the “informal economy.” Thai wages are severely depressed by foreign workers working for 2 to 4 dollars a day.

Thanks Tn. If the average Thai worker's income is $400-$500 a month and the majority of workers are making under $100 a month, some group must be doing very well. I reviewed incomes by quintile on the World Bank site and the lowest quintile in Thailand earns 6.7% of average income, which is about double your 'on the ground' estimate for 65% of all workers. Where's the disconnect?