Total Recall

So, GM has been pulling cars back to fix at an amazing clip.

Again, people don't like hearing this, but it is our own damn fault.  Oh, GM and the other car makers still have to own the errors and make things right, but the base fault lies out here with the consumers.

For the last thirty years, the personal automobile has been one of the principle methods for us to establish our status.  The strutting of implied wealth in a luxurious vehicle increases chances of mating for young bucks and gives older folks the impression that they can look down their noses at the neighbors.

Oh, and lets talk safety.  They have larded so much safety junk onto the vehicles that the cost goes up and the efficiency goes down.  Then there is  the emission control systems needed to keep the individual vehicle's smog-contribution down so that middle class suburbanites can buy a car for each of their children to lord their status over their high-school and college peers.

So the cars have gotten bigger and fancier to be able to sell them to a more discerning and demanding crowd.  The gas mileage has gone down from the seventies because of safety and emission control concerns as well as the cupidity of folks demanding power to race between the stoplights and drive at unsafe speeds. There are also more cars out there because it seems now that everyone gets one.

But we blame this all on the car manufacturers.  Yep, never a thought that our tastes and fears and greed are the wellspring that all this nonsense grows out from.

If we are going to maintain the concept of motorized personal vehicles, you had better look at the desires and "needs" that you have for such a odd contraption. I figure that it will need to hold four people.  A simple and  as low-tech as can be made.  Also easy to fix, check.  Good gas mileage.  Easy and cheap to manufacture.

But this is going to be some years off.  Because the car manufacturers here still hear the echoes of our greed and arrogance in their market research.  So they will continue to make cars that cost to damn much and are too damn complicated for anyone to really understand and keep running.  The folks on the street will have to start seeing the automobile for what it is, a vanity.

Self-Inflicted

Yves over at Naked Capitalism is a great read.  You should really go out of your way to wander over there and avail yourself of the deep and coherent thought there.

Consider this article.

Post-constitutional America.  I kinda like the ring of that.

But, unlike Yves, I can't quite work up the sense of moral outrage.  Because you see, the way that I see it, this is all self inflicted.  Government can look into your facebook records?  Well dumbass, you stuck them on Facebook.  Did you think that it was private there.  Marky Zuckerberg can sell every scrap of information on you and that is OK, but the government looking at the same info is bad?  Wow.

For some reason, the whores running the big internet companies can fuck you until you bleed but the government can't look at the same 1's and 0's.  I don't get the logic.  Yelling stupid shit at the top of your lungs on the internet is as stupid as yelling stupid shit at the top of your lungs in a crowded street.  Both are a damn fine reason for the PTB to look closely at you.

So, I can imagine that all of you will point out that I say stupid shit on this blog all the time.  True that is.

But, I don't care if the government knows that I feel it would be best for the US to break up.  That is my opinion.  I am too old to get all involved with the idea that I have to make it happen.  I just point out the inevitable and wonder when things will start to fly apart.

Squawking that the guvmint spends to much time and money on stupid wars?  Yep, guilty.

Arguing that the guvmint and big business are colluding to screw the general population?  Who isn't doing that?

Look, if you want to get all hinky and try to speed up the entropy and pull down the current system, you go and have a blast.  But if you are stupid enough to use the internet and all of its known flaws and security faults to further your plans, pardon me if I think that you are nothing but a dumbass.

At the end of the day, the problem is the idea of the internet as a commons.  It isn't.  It is a consortium of big government and big business.  The idea came out of DARPA for christsakes.  It was executed by the telephone companies and the big chip/computer manufacturers.  It is no more a free commons than a nineteenth century company town in West Virginia.

Privilege

There have been quite a few paeans to the "American Farmer" lately.

Dodge truck commercials, YouTube videos, bloggers writing panegyrics, it gets kind of thick sometimes.

I grew up on a little truck farm in Northern Utah.  As a place to grow up and work through the summer, it just couldn't get any better.  Dirt poor though.  But it got the extended family through a lot of crap, depressions, world wars, etc., that would have been a damn site harder to get through without the 82 acres (35 acres of irrigated bottomland, 37 acres or alkali flats that were uncomfortably close to the Great Salt Lake).

But something started happening when I was a teenager.  I thought nothing it of the time, but the little farms all around started to get bought out and the families moved to the city.  Over time, two of the rich families had control of all the land once owned by 15-20 individual farms.  One of the families sold out to surburbia, one of them now controls nearly 2,000 acres.

They are preparing the hand-off to the fourth generation now.

Now here is the part that no one is going to like.  These guys are a corporation.  Most of the farmers in the US aren't "Rugged individuals" anymore, other than the back to the land folks with their 20 acres and their in-town jobs supporting the hobby farm.  No, farmers in America are lawyered-up Corporations with tax accountants, and computers laid into the same commodity futures indexes as Goldman-Sachs.

The youngers who are taking over the "farms" are different now too.  The ones that I know take business and management courses now.  I am not aware of an Ag degree among them.  They go to school free, hell they even get "dividend checks" from the family Corporation for spending money.  They are pretty damn hard to distinguish from the rich white kids from back east.

So, we talk about the rich white kids from rich families centralizing the wealth in America.  We talk about inequality, but when a person uses corporate tactics in an agricultural setting we give him a pass.

So, when I see these hymns of praise to farmers, I kinda laugh.  The world has changed from the hardworking farmer that is our mental ideal to the corporate puke.

If you have less than an quarter section and an open tractor, I might think of you as a farmer, praise you effusively and buy the beer. If you are just another factory owner masquerading as a farmer, go fuck yourself.

Initiations

There has been a bunch of hoohoorah concerning the lack of diversity in the high-tech sector.

Duh.

Look, whether you like it or not, the tech sector and the sciences are dying out now.  Oh yeah, I can just imagine the uproar that some will flame should they even consider this blog worthy of their efforts.

Look at the stock market values.  Look at the cool shit we make.  Look at the commercials on TV that show us as concerned about the world around us.  Look at how our cell phones and computers and new drugs and other such whatnot have made the life of the average man "better".

I am positing that this is a fever dream.  A self-referential fantasy for a culture which is trying desperately to find a way to morph into something else.  Everything that has been invented in the last fifty or so years isn't really all that new.  All have been variations on a theme, taking valuable functions and cheapening them to the point of worthlessness.

All the improvements have not filtered into the general society.  That is told by the diversity numbers.  Oh, there will be those who will tell you that the preponderance of men, whites, indians, and asians in the tech sector are proof of a "superiority" that confers upon these subcultures the right of priesthood.

But truth be told, these are just the last folks hanging onto a cult.  Gradually, the cult will die out as the resources, environment, and education gets degraded by their activities, but that is generation or three from now.

The womenfolk were the first to realize the sterility of the system.  That is why they don't go en masse into the sciences.  It is a sterile and hostile environment, unfriendly to anyone but true believers.  I spent twenty-five years in the cathedral, I watched a lot of women make the effort.  They had every bit of brains and skill that their male counterparts have, they just don't seem to have the true faith.  I think that women went into the temple, looked around, saw the moneychangers, then decided that they would be better off and happier somewhere else.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I will be recommending a technical education to my sons.  I will recommend that they go to the temple and skim the cream, but, while they are in there, have a care to keep an eye out for falling pieces of a broken sky.

Non-Irrational Prepping

Do you know the old story about sitting down at a Poker Game and looking around at all the other players and figuring out who the chump. If you can't figure out who the chump was - then it is you.

First things first, I am still a prepper.  But, in a sense, I am like my college buddies.  They identified themselves as Mormons, but they were "Jack Mormons".  Hell, I would suppose that, using the original intent of the word, you could even consider me a Jack Mormon.

So, here I am, a "Jack Prepper".

The reason that this screed is being written is because I began to watch a clip by Chris Martenson about how the next twenty years will be unlike the last twenty.  Well Duh.  But I watched only about five minutes before I decided that it was just a sales pitch.  Now, don't get me wrong, Chris says some damn fine things and he is by no means wrong.  It is just that I am not his target demographic.

Watch the video.  It probably has some excellent points about the world that will be replacing this one.  But I shut down at 4:04.  At this point these words were spoken:

The Economy, which is the lens that the crash course looks at everything.

Everything that we wish to see technologically, all of our jobs, and hopes, and dreams depend upon a functioning economy

The picture in the PowerPoint at this time showed an iPhone, a Tesla, a high-speed train, and a smiling, well dressed older blonde lady being pushed into an MRI by a smiling, beautiful tech.  In other words, the dream.
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He segued into what the problems with the economy and showed us horror pictures cherry picked from the worst of Detroit (Black People) and Greece(pesky low-rent, not Aryan).  It was at this point I turned off.

Here is why I can never be a true prepper.  Because a true prepper like Dr. Martenson (I just noticed that he is appending Ph.D. to his name, I assume that just haven't noticed this before) views the world through a different lens.  Dr. Martenson is selling a program that allows people to think that they will retain the goodness of the current setup when the walls come tumbling down.

My view is different than this.  The sanitary white folks will have a lot farther to fall than everyone else.  The hopes and dreams and whiz-bang will become the fever dreams of the past.  A set of fables and myths that will wilt and change over time.  Mr. Martenson is selling the pure smack of prepping.  The idea that if you plan things right, you can keep all that you have and be in a position to sneer at the unwashed.  The Ant and the Grasshopper.

Perhaps.

But the best way to view this kind of things is in the rear mirror.

 "Those who have not known the Ancien Régime will never be able to know what the sweetness of living is" ("ceux qui n'ont pas connu l'Ancien Régime ne pourront jamais savoir ce qu'était la douceur de vivre"). 

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, prince de Bénévent 

The Great Game

The game is afoot.

The US, for around twenty years seemed to own the ball, the bat, and the rules.

That appears to be changing.  What I think is happening is that a lot of folks have started to push back.  We have a tendency of seeing the other players as "regional powers", not capable or willing to challenge us.

But, the game is being played in their regions.

I hope the PTB know what they are doing.  The way that I look at it, beating a bigger opponent in the vulgar world of geopolitics is the same as the simple world of the playground.  You simply band together.

I Tried

I spent nearly two hours trying to think of something.  Three starts, three aborts on pieces for your reading pleasure.  All failures.

I got nothin'.

Sorry

Could it be true?

Now, we all know that Hillary has been down on her knees at fundraisers for 2016.

Now, it looks like Mitt the Shit is doing the same.

Now, at the risk of sounding like a sick bastard, If this comes true, I couldn't be happier.

I get to view the single sorriest set of choices ever presented tot the American Electorate by the tired-ass two-party system.  Now, when I was younger, I would have been filled with righteous indignation and tried to go out there and "Do" something about it.  In my dotage, I have learned the truth.

The system is there for itself, not for us.  It is an inbred and incestuous set of ex-Student Body Presidents trying to climb to the perceived peak of power by any means available.  Their visions for America are solipsistic and shallow, I would doubt if either of them has a moral compass other than the desire to command others.

For a while there I had resigned myself to Hilly and Billy back in the White House.  It didn't really sadden me.  She would be assiduously incompetent and out of touch.  After the sad slide that the Obama Administration gave us, her combination of blind lust for power and sad incompetence would allow the remainder of the country to come to grips with the fact that the limousine liberal wing of the Democratic Party is the only political faction rivaling than the NeoCons for the title of "Worlds Biggest Shitheads".  At that point, maybe the country would get off its duff and do the necessary fundamental changes in structure required.

Now Mitt is looking fondly at the thought of his sad ass sitting in the Oval Office after beating Hillary.  Man, if there is a person that could give Hillary a run for the Worst-Person-Ever it wold be the Mittster.  Where Hillary would screw everyone to build a Potemkin Village for the welfare state, Mitt would make sure there is nothing between his plutocrat friends and the wallets of the country and the populace.  Mittster's administration would so thoroughly arrange for the fall of the Republican/Neocon war party that the country would get off its duff and do the necessary fundamental changes in structure required.

I really cannot decide which would be worse.  But if it is a run between these two sociopaths, we will be looking forward to decade or so of civil unrest.

Yay...I am not fat, I am disabled

Look, I know I am fat.

I just can't say that I care to damn much.

But this one made me giggle.  Now the the lack of desire to push yourself away from the table may become a "disability".

Denmark has asked the European Court of Justice to rule on the case of a male childminder who says he was sacked for being too fat.

Two thing here backaroos.  One, the idea of a 350 pound male childminder kinda creeps me out.  Yes, I know, I know, but still in all.  I am 6-8 and push 400 after a snack.  I am fat and I know it.

But I don't think that I would be exactly appropriate as a childminder.  I scare the shit out of most kids.

The second is more subtle.  The physical requirements to hold most jobs don't require a BMI of 20.  Hell sitting at a desk like most jobs or watching a bunch of rug-rats doesn't require the body I had when I was playing football or playing skip-to-my-Lou in the jungle.

These folks hired the guy, firing him because he was fat was a shitty deal.

But a disability.

Really?

Shades of Manzikert

So, the ISIS has taken control of Mosul, 400,000,000,000 dollars, and a whole potload of shiny new American military equipment.  Bummer.

These fine folks also hold sway over a sizable chunk of property in the area.  The are well armed, well-led, and, to the horror of all, notoriously brutal.  So what goes now.

I am certain that there are generals in Washington, worried about their careers, who want to send in the 82nd.  Bad Idea.

Lets go to the folks who know how to run that area.  The Turks.  The descendants of the House of Seljuq might be the medicine that the Middle East needs.

Granted, they have mellowed as a race in the past millennium, but these are still the folks that ruled the roost for a while.  I still think their armed forces would love a chance to go ripping through Syria and Western Iraq and clean up the mess.  The guys wrote the book on how to put down rebellions and conquer territory.

Let them have it.  They have to clean it up afterward, but let them have it.

It would be refreshing to watch an operation like this run properly.

My second choice would be a descendant of Timur, but they are kinda scarce on the ground.

Strangeness at the VAspa

So, it would appear that all are shitting their collective breeches here at the VAspa.

The Muckety-Mucks are sending out frequent e-mails making sure we know we are loved and we that we aren't of the "bad people" crowd that causes all the ruckus.

The new acting director wants to hustle getting vets into the warm embrace of the public health system because, as all know, the "market" cures all ills.

But what are we going to pay for the services?  My guess that it will be a compensation roughly equivalent to Medicare.  Sure isn't going to be the asking rate.  So the welcoming arms of these private practices sure as hell won't be beckoning the broke-down old war-horses that are our stock in trade.

I really don't think that the guys will like it either.  Right now they are treated with a lot of respect and, for the most part, treated pretty damn well.  The guys sure ain't going to want to opt for some doc-in-box somewhere.

Move along here.

Nothing to see but politics.

Shuttlecock

Welcome Home Bowe:

Sorry about the inconvenience.

Now, I know that your family and your friends will be overjoyed to have you back.  I am quite happy as well.  I hope that it won't take to long to heal and that you can come all the way back soon. 

But be aware that coming back the way that you did will be hard on you.  It won't be nearly as hard as what you have been going through for the past couple of years, but it will become irritating in the extreme.

You see, when you started to figure out that you weren't in Afghanistan to "protect freedom and the American Way of Life", you started down the path to apostate.  So you are, to lot of the couch-dwelling foreign policy hardasses, an inconvenient heretic.  Because in the mind of the couch dwelling, an American serviceman who questions the mission is anathema.

When Obama traded you for five Taliban commanders, it was a great deal.  We got you back and we got rid of five huge embarrassments.  But the war-crazies will defile your name and reputation to make it known that (a) you should be questioning their wisdom and (b) that "Top Taliban Commanders" have been let go to strike again at the good old USA.

Let's examine these premises severally.  Ask any Vietnam vet what he thought about the idea of a "domino-theory" and stopping the rise of Communism and you will probably get a snort of derision.  Because anyone who has been in the furball realizes that it is only the folks around you that matter.  The mission itself is nearly always stupid.  The morals involved are questionable.  The whole thing is just plain stupid.

This is when most folks who come the epiphany that war is a huge waste just start counting down the days and get the hell out of the military. 

But you are probably a sincere young man, and you probably spoke the truth to those around you.  That, while a correct and honorable thing to do, just made you a target.  I don't know what was going on in your mind when you wandered off the laager, but any fault of action and any guilt from thought crimes has been erased by your extended stay with the Taliban.

As for the five "commanders" well, getting rid of them this way got rid of a fraction of the ongoing problem of the injustice of Guantanamo Bay.  Big win there.  As for the febrile concerns that they will "strike at the USA", well....

These guys have been at our tender mercies for 13 years.  They have been out of the mix for that time and the Taliban has moved past them.  The idea that they will return to take over their command from folks who have been commanding a very successful insurgency during their confinement is an odd one indeed.  The current commanders will use them as propaganda tools, but after thirteen years in our clutches, I would question the idea that they will be given their old roles back.

Bowe:  your release was a good thing, and I approve of it 100%.  It is a good compromise where we win a lot more than we lose.  But make sure that you don't spend too much time listening to the shit that talking heads say as they serve their political masters.  

Comrades: a repost

This is a repost:  It originally went back in 2012, but, now that I am reading Professor Pitteky, I thought that I would re-post it.

The problems here in the US aren't the ones described by the mainstream media.  They have gone over to being propaganda outlets for their corporate masters.   

We have to start digging to figure out the problem's root cause.  I think that if folks spent some time with this difficult process, there may be a lot of correlation between what happened during the last "Gilded Era" and this one.

Things are changing.  The main body of the population is awaking.  The process will be slow, I thought once that the change would start accellerating in my lifetime, now I am not so sure.

But the change is coming.  Stay awake.

I have been pondering the nature of preppers and their habitual political leanings. To be blunt, there appears to be no apparent thought to the process, merely a knee-jerk "anti-Communist" "pro-freedom" set of leaning that really doesn't make sense in the current modern political climate.

We have entered the final stages of capitalism as envisioned by Marx and Engels. The capitalists (owners of production) are doing their level best to make sure that the workers are in thrall and kept there. I cannot think of a better way of describing the process that is occurring. Yet the preppers see everything as a commie plot to take their freedoms. Shit. The communists here in the US are so damn lame that they couldn't take their own temperature, let alone your freedoms.

Yet whenever someone stands up and say that capitalism is fucking us over, they are labelled as a godless commie and the dumb-fucks on the lunatic fringe of the prep movement go all John Birch. They would rather kill a commie who has an excellent handle on the nature of the problem than listen to him. Sure, Marx and Engels had some less than stellar ideas about how to solve the inherent contradictions of capitalism, but you sure can't begrudge them their absolutely right-on and prescient description of the depredations of capitalism.

So, I would highly recommend that y'all back off of the comrades. Hell, I think that if you listen to them without mindlessly bouncing dated and invalid screeching out of your yap, you might find that they are on the same side you are.

Again, this does not mean that I agree with communist theory at all levels. Hell, I think that even the Commies are embarrassed by how badly the term was misused in the twentieth century.

What is the Nature

Was doing my reading over at “The Automatic Earth” and I ran across this little gem.  

“If we can agree that QE has distorted prices of all assets [...]”

I have been amazed that the Federal Reserve Bank has kept the mass of duct tape, baling wire, and bubble gum together for as long as they have.  I cannot remember ever really leaving the recession that began back in ’06.  It seems to me and. I would posit, most “non-rich” folk that the recession is still with us. 

Now, I have always been interested in the nature of money.  I really don’t care about it except for two very important reasons:

•  as an abstract idea which makes people do the craziest things and;
•  as a set of 0’s and 1’s in my bank which I can transfer to other folks who will then give me what I need and/or want.

QE made things appear to tick along when you look at things the way bankers look at things.  Which is by no means the way that the great majority of folks look at things.

  

QE does seem to allow the current system to limp along.  The government can spend more than it takes in in taxes.  The banks can pay themselves big bonuses.  Rich folks can buy spiffy new homes. 

But the actual idea of QE is appears to me to be nothing more than running a printing press for a small swath of the society and hoping that some of it gets down far enough to make some difference in the general population’s life.   You could make an argument that this effect has occurred, but the argument would be tenuous at best.

Back to the quote that started the whole train of thought.

“If we can agree that QE has distorted prices of all assets [...]”

Governments running printing presses most often have a pronounced effect on the price of precious metals.  In the past, in nearly every case, a government running printing presses makes the price of precious metals go up.   But that hasn’t happened here. 

My point here is simple.  The price of gold and silver are out of whack when compared to the money that is stealth printed by the Fed. 

From the Fed

The price of gold in mid-2011 was around $1,800.  The price of silver in mid-2011 was around $45.  In Mid-2011 the Fed’s books held around 2.5 Trillion.

 

From Kitco

The price of gold in now is around $1,250.  The price of silver now is around $19.  The Fed’s books seem to be pushing 4 Trillion pretty darn hard. 

So, if everything made sense, and if there were a dependency between federal debt (printing) and the price of precious metals, the price of gold and silver should be about 30-60% above their values in mid-2011 (gold in the $2,300 to $2,900 range: silver in the $60 to $72 range). 

Now, in the words of the weasels “past performance is not an indicator of future performance”.  But when long term historical trends don’t seem to hold true anymore, one has to look around for exceptional events.  

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

So, following all the hubbub over Piketty's book, I thought that I would spend the time to read it instead of listening to people who haven't read it argue about it.

Well, I am not through yet, but it appears pretty certain that this work will piss of the Randities, NeoCons, the efficient market economists and other such priestly types.  It would appear that (Gasp...Heresy) Professor Piketty has the odd notion that the "economy" should serve the whole of the human populace, instead of the other way around.

Now, I may be wrong in this little dab of defamation, maybe later in the book,  Professor Piketty will raise the beam from my eye and show the proper worship for the economy.

Mr Piketty seems to have forgotten that the economy is our true God here in the USA.  The being that spoke with Abraham and Moses is a convenient cover story for the rubes, but the real God here in the USA is the Economy.

I will continue reading.  I hope that Professor Piketty will realize, in the course of this work, what is important in this Country

Caught between Fables

Consider the time of my youth.  We had just kicked the Jerries butts and had Ivan by the throat and we slowly and surely throttling him.  Science was kicking ass, penicillin and nuclear power, computers and television.  Janitors at the elementary school raised families with the wife staying at home to take care of the kids.  Life was grand.

But slowly, over the past fifty years, the bloom has been coming off the rose.  Truth be told, the damn thing is looking just a bit scraggly. 

I grew up in a world that is quite different than the one that is available today.  Some folks will try to tell you that we can go back to that old world of wealth and largess, but I really think that they are selling false dreams.  It has been my opinion for thirty or so years that we are living in the days of decline.  But I have always been confident that we will find a way through the puzzle.  The world will not be the same as it is today, or was in the past, it will be a different world.  I just can't make out the details.

But out there in the good ol' USA, there is a conflict between two sadly obsolescent world-views.  Both claim to be the wave of the future.  Both are rooted in a different phony past.  Both are following nothing I could name.

The first is the "Fuck it, human extinction is here!"

The second is "Screw it, the singularity is here!"

Has no one heard of a middle ground?

You Know....

The Archdruid had this in one of his posts a while back.

The 28th Amendment:

Article I:  The Union of the States is hereby dissolved, and the several States shall be free to make other arrangements for their welfare.

Article II: All property of the former federal government in each State, at the time this amendment is ratified, shall become the property of that State.

Article III:  All property of the former federal government outside the territory of the States shall be divided by agreement among the several States.

Acta Eruditorum

The Archdruid was apparently very surprised when he discovered that he had quite a following of scientists and engineers.   He confessed to the usual ritual of dithering that all of us perform when we are surprised by events.  But he did come up with a bit of a challenge for those out there.

Here’s what I’m proposing. I’d like to ask this blog’s readers to break out their word processing programs again, but this time I’m looking for nonfiction papers with a scientific or technical slant, written for an intelligent nonprofessional audience.  Each paper should either describe a  problem that will confront the deindustrializing world in the course of the Long Descent, or propose a practical solution to some problem of this kind, or both. Successful entries will start from the assumption that the unraveling of industrial society sketched out in this blog and my books The Long Descent and The Ecotechnic Future is a reality that has to be accepted, and go from there to deal with specific challenges that will follow from the shape of that future.

So I am proposing a pursuit of an appropriate solution to the problem of transmission of ideas in a resource constrained world.

In the past, access to ideas and work done outside of one's hometown was limited.  The journals that stood at the forefront of the scientific and technical revolution that has shaped the last two hundred years has served us well.  At first, these journals were quite limited in size and scope.  The Proceedings of the Royal Academy began with a humble press run of approximately 1250 (1) and has now blossomed into an industry of thousands of journals with almost unfathomable penetration of the populace.  The best numbers that I can come up with yields a total of 23,750 journals publishing 945,900 papers.

Now, I realize that there is quite a bit of fluff in those numbers.  Different judges would rate importance of the articles and/or journals as earth-changing to astonishingly trivial, with a very heavy weighting to the latter.

The long descent will see the none-too-gradual withering away of the hundred flowers that is the current state of the journals industry.  They are as much a artifact of a energy-prolific world as the largest, most fin encrusted Cadillac monster manufactured in the 1960's.  But, in a sense, that withering will provide an essential brake to material progress, allowing us to better husband the non-renewable resources remaining.

But there will always be a need for transmission of scientific thought.  Newton developed the calculus first, but the work languished for so long that an equivalent genius named Liebnitz was able to work out the ideas independently and publish them.  The transmission of thought is as important as the thought itself.

But in a resource constrained future, what will be the nature of the transmission of scientific ideas?

__________________
Footnotes
1.)  Last week, I was brash enough to pose a question to the Royal Society concerning the size of the printing run of the earliest issues of the Philosophical Transactions.   I was expecting to be ignored, but with a courteous note that pleased me to no end I was given a response along with an excellent reference.

Johns, Adrian
Miscellaneous methods: authors, societies and journals in early modern England
British Journal for the History of Science; 33(2), no.116, June 2000, pp.159-186
(abstract here: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=52533)