Bioregions not Bunkers
Guest article by Matthew Slater
Even if you are convinced that this civilisation is finished, it is very hard to know what to do about it. Events like a population crash, mass extinction, mass migration, etc are so complex we might be affected in many different ways — some effects could even be beneficial for some. We could at least anticipate more poverty, less energy consumption and less access to technology for most of us. There are ways to prepare, to extend the glide and soften the fall, but acting in a coordinated way at a meaningful scale usually requires money.
Any enterprise that yields more money than the amount required to finance it, can be financed, but any project that doesn’t yield a monetary return is classed as financially ‘unsustainable’. Oh the irony. It was the relentless and systematic extraction of money from every human activity that created this predicament, and the only solutions that can be financed must extract in the same way. So those who would restore ecosystems, protect species, explore new and old ways of living, simply do not get financed. Vanishingly small amounts of money are available for mitigating the present and future physical, social and ecological damages.
But we learned in 2018 that even the largest piles of gold and guns cannot make their owners feel safe. The billionaires know that the party is over, but they don’t know what kind of hangover to prepare for. A well equipped luxury bunker covers a wide range of scenarios, but if you have to ask question, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” that shows a fear that material wealth could be a liability in a post-capitalist dystopia. It seems to me that excess money inflates our sense of self, such that it becomes hard to separate one’s identity from one’s wealth. Perhaps that’s why the super-rich jump out of skyscrapers like lemmings when market bubbles burst.
I’ve been thinking about how these two problems, the collapse mitigation that can’t be funded, and the super-rich who are afraid of collapse, could add up to a solution.
Those of us who aren’t able to isolate ourselves in fortresses think about the future in a different way. Our hope for salvation in the people around us, in sharing, in mutuality, in cooperation. Groups of people, communities, should survive much better than individuals because of their diversity. They should also have a much better time, even in the most adverse of conditions. Building these resilient social structures though, is surprisingly difficult in the modern world. You need land and you need to be able, physically and legally, to live on that land, which requires investment and planning permission. Paying taxes from food production alone requires investment in equipment, licences, and competing against industrialised agriculture. Many kinds of energy resilience, like producing biodiesel, and sharing electricity between neighbours, are illegal.
Collective ownership of land and property is extremely difficult because the legal structures do not exist. Finally only the most dramatic of catastrophists soil their hands producing their own food when they can earn good money in a conventional job. All this is why the most sustainable ecovillage I visited on my tour wasn’t even self sufficient in vegetables. Even the intentional communities who focus on ‘resilience’ are mostly populated by middle class people doing middle class jobs. Meanwhile the lower classes, many of whom are predicting the worst, are not participating at all. They know what to do, but they have even less freedom, in terms of land, capital, education, access to credit etc, to pursue alternatives.
Meanwhile ranks of activists have dedicated themselves for decades to nurturing expertise in all areas related to communal living: energy security, food production, natural health, not to mention governance, conflict resolution and spirituality. Others have knowledge suited for larger communities such as intermediate technologies, software, construction, water management or money & finance. But all this knowledge for building physical and social infrastructure to diversify away from a collapsing civilisation, has little commercial value and few people demanding it.
In summary, many too-rich people believe that the current financial system is drawing to a close, and are nervous about an uncertain and probably dangerous future. They must feel that the game of wealth accumulation is increasingly vaccuous in that context. Their identities, as rich people, depend heavily on money and markets which seem set to crumble, so they fear the future, which offers them a choice of pitchforks or poverty.
Meanwhile many collapse-aware activists know exactly what to do, but there’s no finance for regeneration, retrofitting, relocalisation etc. because those activities will not yield acceptable financial returns while existing infrastructure remains intact, nor probably after!
It seems obvious that the too-rich should partner with the collapse-aware to build more-resilient enclaves of life to which they can retreat. These more-resilient enclaves are not comparable to sealed bunkers with preserved food. They would be living communities, committed to the land, experimenting in intermediate technologies; their wellbeing would be bound up in each other. We can’t predict how collapse will unfold, but those who are part of established systems of local food production, interdependence and practical knowledge will have a much better chance.
Avoiding the worst of the collapse requires the participation of policymakers who seem very much in the thrall of the global elites and their desire to leech money out of a dying ecosphere. Billionaires, however philanthropic cannot change the destructive incentives embedded in capitalism, and cannot change the course of civilisation. What they can do is overcome hubristic notions of saving all humanity and think about salvation in more practical terms.
Oscar Schindler was not able to stop the holocaust but directly saved hundreds of Jews. Preserving pockets of people and culture and technology, and joining them together where possible, might help reduce the chaos and harm of possible ‘Mad Max’ outcomes. More and larger enclaves would increase security and comfort for those living in them; it should be a very good use of money! But financing a community earns privileges but should not make someone the dictator! Financiers should decide the place, and leave the rest of the designing and building to experts. Then a place could be held open for them, so at any time they would receive a welcome, an amnesty even, a dwelling, and the protection of the community.
This kind of non-financial asset is exactly the diversification elites should be trying to put in their portfolios to hedge against financial collapse.
About the Author
Matthew Slater is an expert on community currencies and software. He designed the Credit Commons Protocol to help groups do moneyless exchange. He shares his outrage on twitter, and everything else on his web site.
