The Cheat Code for Preventing and/or Surviving The Coming Collapse (Part 2)

Last time, we looked at how bad things are from an ecological perspective, and how a universal cognitive dissonance has emerged, coming from the lack of congruity between the pending collapse we all sense and the various delusional stories we are being told about possible paths to the future. This creeping sense of disoriented dread is exacerbated by the lack of any workable points of application for tackling the dizzying array of problems we are confronting. People look around at existing institutions, and can’t see any way that these status quo structures could bend the curve on any of our macro-challenges. That judgment is correct.

Considering the laundry-list of ecological catastrophes that are on the near horizon, let’s consider the various things that we are going to have to do, sooner rather than later:

• We will need to eat much lower on the food chain, and somehow switch from an agriculture-heavy food system to a horticultural system, with people growing more of their own food and sourcing other foodstuffs from as local a level as possible.
• Tens or hundreds of millions of people will need to move away from coastal and desert areas, as the global warming already baked into the existing climate will render many areas of the planet uninhabitable. No matter what happens with future carbon emissions, feedback loops have already kicked in, and the heating will continue regardless.
• We need to flip the global trend from deforestation to reforestation.
• We will need to cease the production of plastics and forever chemicals, as they have now infiltrated every level of the food chain, with effects only beginning to be understood.
• We will need a massive reduction in consumption, especially of oil, which is a critical supply-chain component for 90% of all industrial production.
• We will need a broad effort to clean up and restore natural areas, perhaps with expanded use of eminent domain, to allow the land, water, flora, and fauna to repair themselves without human impact.
• In moving to a new, larger household format, we will need a revolution in infrastructure, moving to systems based on reclaimed, repurposed, and recycled materials. Anthropocentric mass now outweighs all biomass, and much of that human-made mass is toxic, from plastics to chemicals to electronic equipment waste.
• We will need a wholesale shift to passive heating and cooling, to reduce energy.

This is just a sampling of the kinds of things that will need to happen over the next decade or two, to get us on a sustainable trajectory for the future. There are certainly plenty of other initiatives and projects that could be mentioned, but you get the general idea. The overall theme of these changes is that we need to stop doing damage to the planet, repair the damage that has already been done, and do all of that in a way that allows people to thrive along with the natural world.

But how could we possibly do these things, when time is so very short? Let’s consider the current possible points of application for instituting the range of changes mentioned above:

• Green Energy Revolution-Green New Deal
• Global Agreements
• Techno-Salvation

I don’t really see any other alternative points of application that need to be discussed here. There are some other candidates out there, like the fantasies offered by the opposing sides of our two-party political duopoly. But these are not serious platforms for tackling our actual problems. They are just vehicles for preserving and extending the status quo, propaganda tropes that need to increase in partisan vitriol as conditions on the ground continue to deteriorate for regular people.

But more importantly, for our specific discussion here, is that all the alternative points of application are crippled by the refusal to look at the micro-household format itself, which is the demand-driver of our consumer-industrial system, and thus of our ecological catastrophes. Changing the composition of the household, by drastically increasing its size, is the only way to attack the base of the demand pyramid, which is the only way to attack the daunting list of necessary changes detailed above.

What will transitioning to Bigger Home Bases allow us to do? Why is this the best point of application for getting us to a place where we could potentially avoid collapse, while also preparing us for collapse if it does happen? Only BHBs, reinforced by Universal Basic Income, will allow us to do these things:

• Quickly reduce consumption, as people leverage the power of numbers to provision themselves more efficiently.
• Quickly reduce labor participation, which is crucial for the necessary economic contraction.
• Quickly create more economic stability for individuals, couples, and families. This stability is needed in order to move onto the broader goals below.
• Allow the creation of a new political party, to break the stranglehold of the ossified political duopoly in Washington, and to generate momentum for a UBI-BHB-MMT political platform.
• Export the new tactics and policies to other parts of the world.
• Begin construction of a new infrastructure, specifically designed to support more self-reliant BHBs and to start the repair of ecological damage.
• Slash personal debt, which diminishes the outsized influence of the financial industry on the political process.
• Bring more economic functions ‘in-house’, which can relieve pressure on the troubled childcare and eldercare sectors.
• Cultivate healthier lifestyles: reduced loneliness, reduced social media and other addictions, fresher food curbing obesity, reduced stress levels, etc.
• The UBI component would send the message that the federal government is working for regular people, and not just for business interests.
• Change in power dynamics, giving the upper hand to regular citizens, as they operate from a position of strength as workers and consumers.
• Gives the United States a unified national mission, moving us beyond poisonous polarization.
• Transforms what is needed for “infrastructure investment,” as the new BHB format has totally different structural needs, compared to the current micro-household setup.
• Sends a message to trading partners that we’re utilizing a new toolbox for bettering our own society, one not as dependent on foreign oil, cheap products, and international warfare.
• Leaders from the new political party could make it clear that the US supports any nation that works to put its people first, and pledge support for similar policies to the ones implemented here (not necessarily in the exact format, but support for the general approach).
• MMT principles applied at the federal level would allow the massive funding of all kinds of eco-healing policies at all levels: states, localities, and even other countries that utilize the USD or peg to the USD. The printing presses should be running.

I strayed a bit in this latest list, putting in features not just of Bigger Home Bases, but also of my overall 3-part approach: Universal Basic Income, Bigger Home Bases, and Modern Money Theory. It’s hard to keep them separated out when I get on a roll. The complete scheme really requires a very specific sequence of events, as I see it, each piece building on the previous step. And I know it seems utterly fantastical, and far afield from the realm of the possible. But to paraphrase Churchill, this plan might be the worst of all plans for creating a sustainable future… except for all the others.

Originally published at http://entropolitanblog.com on October 22, 2023.