Дмитрий
Орлов написал, что считает первый этап коллапса США пройденным.
Его сценарий крушения США имеет пять ступений, и, хотя никто не
знает когда и как точно USA грохнутся в реальности, его сценарий
кажется мне достойнымвнимания.
Переводить статью я не стал. Выкладываю
в оригинале. Дмитрию респект
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross defined the five stages
of coming to terms with grief and tragedy as denial, anger, bargaining,
depression, and acceptance, and applied it quite successfully to
various forms of catastrophic personal loss, such as death of a
loved one, sudden end to one's career, and so forth.
Several thinkers, notably James Howard Kunstler
and, more recently John Michael Greer, have pointed out that the
Kubler-Ross model is also quite terrifyingly accurate in reflecting
the process by which society as a whole (or at least the informed
and thinking parts of it) is reconciling itself to the inevitability
of a discontinuous future, with our institutions and life support
systems undermined by a combination of resource depletion, catastrophic
climate change, and political impotence.
But so far, little has been said specifically
about the finer structure of these discontinuities. Instead, there
is to be found a continuum of subjective judgments, ranging from
"a severe and prolonged recession" (the prediction we
most often read in the financial press), to Kunstler's "Long
Emergency," to the ever-popular "Collapse of Western Civilization,"
painted with an ever-wider brush-stroke.
For those of us who have already gone through
all of the emotional stages of reconciling ourselves to the prospect
of social and economic upheaval, it might be helpful to have a more
precise terminology that goes beyond such emotionally charged phrases.
Defining a taxonomy of collapses might prove to be more than just
an intellectual exercise: based on our abilities and circumstances,
some of us may be able to specifically plan for a certain stage
of collapse as a temporary, or even permanent, stopping point.
Even if society at the current stage of socioeconomic
complexity will no longer be possible, and even if, as Tainter points
in his "Collapse of Complex Societies," there are circumstances
in which collapse happens to be the correct adaptive response, it
need not automatically cause a population crash, with the survivors
disbanding into solitary, feral humans dispersed in the wilderness
and subsisting miserably. Collapse can be conceived of as an orderly,
organized retreat rather than a rout.
For instance, the collapse of the Soviet Union
- our most recent and my personal favorite example of an imperial
collapse - did not reach the point of political disintegration of
the republics that made it up, although some of them (Georgia, Moldova)
did lose some territory to separatist movements. And although most
of the economy shut down for a time, many institutions, including
the military, public utilities, and public transportation, continued
to function throughout.
And although there was much social dislocation
and suffering, society as a whole did not collapse, because most
of the population did not lose access to food, housing, medicine,
or any of the other survival necessities. The command-and-control
structure of the Soviet economy largely decoupled the necessities
of daily life from any element of market psychology, associating
them instead with physical flows of energy and physical access to
resources.
This situation, as I argue in my forthcoming
book, Reinventing Collapse, allowed the Soviet population to inadvertently
achieve a greater level of collapse-preparedness than is currently
possible in the United States.
Having given a lot of thought to both the
differences and the similarities between the two superpowers - the
one that has collapsed already, and one that is collapsing as I
write this - I feel ready to attempt a bold conjecture, and define
five stages of collapse, to serve as mental milestones as we gauge
our own collapse-preparedness and see what can be done to improve
it.
Rather than tying each phase to a particular
emotion, as in the Kubler-Ross model, the proposed taxonomy ties
each of the five collapse stages to the breaching of a specific
level of trust, or faith, in the status quo. Although each stage
causes physical, observable changes in the environment, these can
be gradual, while the mental flip is generally quite swift. It is
something of a cultural universal that nobody (but a real fool)
wants to be the last fool to believe in a lie.
Stages of Collapse
Stage 1: Financial collapse.
Faith in "business as usual" is lost. The future is
no longer assumed resemble the past in any way that allows risk
to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial
institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access
to capital is lost.
Stage 2: Commercial collapse.
Faith that "the market shall provide" is lost. Money
is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import
and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival
necessities become the norm.
Stage 3: Political collapse.
Faith that "the government will take care of you" is
lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access
to commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference,
the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.
Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith
that "your people will take care of you" is lost, as
local social institutions, be they charities or other groups that
rush in to fill the power vacuum run out of resources or fail
through internal conflict.
Stage 5: Cultural collapse.
Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity
for "kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty,
hospitality, compassion, charity" (Turnbull, The Mountain
People). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce
resources. The new motto becomes "May you die today so that
I die tomorrow" (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago). There
may even be some cannibalism.
Although many people imagine collapse to be
a sort of elevator that goes to the sub-basement (our Stage 5) no
matter which button you push, no such automatic mechanism can be
discerned. Rather, driving us all to Stage 5 will require that a
concerted effort be made at each of the intervening stages.
That all the players seem poised to make just
such an effort may give this collapse the form a classical tragedy
- a conscious but inexorable march to perdition - rather than a
farce ("Oops! Ah, here we are, Stage 5." - "So, whom
do we eat first?" - "Me! I am delicious!") Let us
sketch out this process.
Financial collapse, as we are are currently
observing it, consists of two parts. One is that a part of the general
population is forced to move, no longer able to afford the house
they bought based on inflated assessments, forged income numbers,
and foolish expectations of endless asset inflation.
Since, technically, they should never have
been allowed to buy these houses, and were only able to do so because
of financial and political malfeasance, this is actually a healthy
development. The second part consists of men in expensive suits
tossing bundles of suddenly worthless paper up in the air, ripping
out their remaining hair, and (some of us might uncharitably hope)
setting themselves on fire on the steps of the Federal Reserve.
They, to express it in their own vernacular, "fucked up,"
and so this is also just as it should be.
The government response to this could be to
offer some helpful homilies about "the wages of sin" and
to open a few soup kitchens and flop houses in a variety of locations
including Wall Street. The message would be: "You former debt
addicts and gamblers, as you say, 'fucked up,' and so this will
really hurt for a long time. We will never let you anywhere near
big money again. Get yourselves over to the soup kitchen, and bring
your own bowl, because we don't do dishes." This would result
in a stable Stage 1 collapse - the Second Great Depression.
However, this is unlikely, because in the
US the government happens to be debt addict and gambler number one.
As individuals, we may have been as virtuous as we wished, but the
government will have still run up exorbitant debts on our behalf.
Every level of government, from local municipalities
and authorities, which need the financial markets to finance their
public works and public services, to the federal government, which
relies on foreign investment to finance its endless wars, is addicted
to public debt. They know they cannot stop borrowing, and so they
will do anything they can to keep the game going for as long as
possible.
About the only thing the government currently
seems it fit to do is extend further credit to those in trouble,
by setting interest rates at far below inflation, by accepting worthless
bits of paper as collateral and by pumping money into insolvent
financial institutions.
This has the effect of diluting the dollar,
further undermining its value, and will, in due course, lead to
hyperinflation, which is bad enough in any economy, but is especially
serious for one dominated by imports. As imports dry up and the
associated parts of the economy shut down, we pass Stage 2: Commercial
Collapse.
As businesses shut down, storefronts are boarded
up and the population is left largely penniless and dependent on
FEMA and charity for survival, the government may consider what
to do next. It could, for example, repatriate all foreign troops
and set them to work on public works projects designed to directly
help the population. It could promote local economic self-sufficiency,
by establishing community-supported agriculture programs, erecting
renewable energy systems, and organizing and training local self-defence
forces to maintain law and order.
The Army Corps of Engineers could be ordered
to bulldoze buildings erected on former farmland around city centers,
return the land to cultivation, and to construct high-density solar-heated
housing in urban centers to resettle those who are displaced. In
the interim, it could reduce homelessness by imposing a steep tax
on vacant residential properties and funneling the proceeds into
rent subsidies for the indigent. With plenty of luck, such measures
may be able to reverse the trend, eventually providing for a restoration
of pre-Stage 2 conditions.
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This may or may not be a good plan, but
in any case it is rather unrealistic, because the United States,
being so deeply in debt, will be forced to accede to the wishes
of its foreign creditors, who own a lot of national assets (land,
buildings, and businesses) and who would rather see a dependent
American population slaving away working off their debt than a self-sufficient
one, conveniently forgetting that they have mortgaged their children's
futures to pay for military fiascos, big houses, big cars, and flat-screen
television sets.
Thus, a much more likely scenario is that the federal
government (knowing who butters their bread) will remain subservient
to foreign financial interests. It will impose austerity conditions,
maintain law and order through draconian means, and aide in the
construction of foreign-owned factory towns and plantations. As
people start to think that having a government may not be such a
good idea, conditions become ripe for Stage 3.
If Stage 1 collapse can be observed by watching
television, observing Stage 2 might require a hike or a bicycle
ride to the nearest population center, while Stage 3 collapse is
more than likely to be visible directly through one's own living-room
window, which may or may not still have glass in it.
After a significant amount of bloodletting, much
of the country becomes a no-go zone for the remaining authorities.
Foreign creditors decide that their debts might not be repaid after
all, cut their losses and depart in haste. The rest of the world
decides to act as if there is no such place as The United States
- because "nobody goes there any more." So as not to lose
out on the entertainment value, the foreign press still prints sporadic
fables about Americans who eat their young, much as they did about
Russia following the Soviet collapse. A few brave American expatriates
who still come back to visit bring back amazing stories of a different
kind, but everyone considers them eccentric and perhaps a little
bit crazy.
Stage 3 collapse can sometimes be avoided by the
timely introduction of international peacekeepers and through the
efforts of international humanitarian NGOs. In the aftermath of
a Stage 2 collapse, domestic authorities are highly unlikely to
have either the resources or the legitimacy, or even the will, to
arrest the collapse dynamic and reconstitute themselves in a way
that the population would accept.
As stage 3 collapse runs its course, the power
vacuum left by the now defunct fedral, state and local government
is filled by a variety of new power structures. Remnants of former
law enforcement and military, urban gangs, ethnic mafias, religious
cults and wealthy property owners all attempt to build their little
empires on the ruins of the big one, fighting each other over territory
and access to resources.
This is the age of Big Men: charismatic leaders,
rabble-rousers, ruthless Macchiavelian princes and war lords. In
the luckier places, they find it to their common advantage to pool
their resources and amalgamate into some sort of legitimate local
government, while in the rest their jostling for power leads to
a spiral of conflict and open war.
Stage 4 collapse occurs when society becomes so
disordered and impoverished that it can no longer support the Big
Men, who become smaller and smaller, and eventually fade from view.
Society fragments into extended families and small tribes of a dozen
or so families, who find it advantageous to band together for mutual
support and defense. This is the form of society that has existed
over some 98.5% of humanity's existence as a biological species,
and can be said to be the bedrock of human existence.
Humans can exist at this level of organization
for thousands, perhaps millions of years. Most mammalian species
go extinct after just a few million years, but, for all we know,
Homo Sapiens still have a million or two left.
If pre-collapse society is too atomized, alienated
and individualistic to form cohesive extended families and tribes,
or if its physical environment becomes so disordered and impoverished
that hunger and starvation become widespread, then Stage 5 collapse
becomes likely. At this stage, a simpler biological imperative takes
over, to preserve the life of the breeding couples. Families disband,
the old are abandoned to their own devices, and children are only
cared for up to age 3.
All social unity is destroyed, and even the couples
may disband for a time, preferring to forage on their own and refusing
to share food. This is the state of society described by the anthropologist
Colin Turnbull in his book The Mountain People. If society prior
to Stage 5 collapse can be said to be the historical norm for humans,
Stage 5 collapse brings humanity to the verge of physical extinction.
As we can easily imagine, the default is cascaded
failure: each stage of collapse can easily lead to the next, perhaps
even overlapping it. In Russia, the process was arrested just past
Stage 3: there was considerable trouble with ethnic mafias and even
some warlordism, but government authority won out in the end. In
my other writings, I go into a lot of detail in describing the exact
conditions that inadvertently made Russian society relatively collapse-proof.
Here, I will simply say that these ingredients are not currently
present in the United States.
While attempting to arrest collapse at Stage 1
and Stage 2 would probably be a dangerous waste of energy, it is
probably worth everyone's while to dig in their heels at Stage 3,
definitely at Stage 4, and it is quite simply a matter of physical
survival to avoid Stage 5.
In certain localities - those with high population
densities, as well as those that contain dangerous nuclear and industrial
installations - avoiding Stage 3 collapse is rather important, to
the point of inviting foreign troops and governments in to maintain
order and avoid disasters. Other localities may be able to prosper
indefinitely at Stage 3, and even the most impoverished environments
may be able to support a sparse population subsisting indefinitely
at Stage 4.
Although it is possible to prepare directly for
surviving Stage 5, this seems like an altogether demoralizing thing
to attempt. Preparing to survive Stages 3 and 4 may seem somewhat
more reasonable, while explicitly aiming for Stage 3 may be reasonable
if you plan to become one of the Big Men.
Be that as it may, I must leave such preparations
as an exercise for the reader. My hope is that these definitions
of specific stages of collapse will enable a more specific and fruitful
discussion than the one currently dominated by such vague and ultimately
nonsensical terms as "the collapse of Western civilization."
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(Пять стадий коллапса - сценарий крушения США )
