Fall of the Roman Empire: How Relocalization Worked

[Rival]

Excellent article. I would point out that there were many obvious drawbacks to the middle ages, however, that leads to the most important point of the article.

How many of the drawbacks of the middle ages (and the dark ages) could have been mitigated by intentionally planning for and implenting localization?

Issac Asimov considered this very concept in his "Foundation" series. Seldon recognized the impending collapse, and tried to manage it so that the dark ages lasted 'merely' 1000 years instead of the projected 10,000 years. Perhaps the most important question of our time might be:

What can we do today to reduce the negative effects of a collapse of our current system on the generations that will come after? Shall we give them 1000 years of darkeness, of just 100 years?  Shall 3 billion starve, or can we limit it to 1 billion? What technologies can we keep, and which will make things worse by continuing to support?

[Xenopus]

He gives very good points and makes my participation in a medieval studies society more relevant, but he does not mention that life expectancy rates were much lower during the Middle Ages and that infant mortality rates were much higher.

Finally, one can also argue that the medieval life may already be taking place in many rural villages in Third World countries, but the situation faced by inhabitants in such settings is not necessarily idyllic.

Life expectancy was low BECAUSE infant mortality was high. Infant mortality is the main determinant of life expectancy. We shan't forget to have midwives wash their hands, so I don't expect infant mortality to soar.

I don't think we can expect life to be idyllic, not matter where.

Yes, Rival, those really are the questions. The answer, I think, is we could do a fair bit of mitigation in advance and some countries (e.g. Denmark) have done so, but most of us won't because few political systems can plan for a future farther out than the next election.

[rbrgs]

What can we do today to reduce the negative effects of a collapse of our current system on the generations that will come after?

You really want to ask this question?  Kill off all the useless eaters.....

[PseudoPhil]

Yes, please do ask him, PseudoPhil, and report back here.

A snippet of my post in the comments:

How was relocalization accomplished? Can mechanisms for achieving this peacefully be created and introduced in the context of a society well past the point of diminishing returns? Or must a society facing such stresses necessarily come to chaos before new social and economic mechanisms are accepted?

His response :

PseudoPhil, relocalization at the end of the Roman Empire was accomplished by barbarian invasions, economic collapse, and the struggles of local communities to survive in a chaotic environment. It's likely to happen the same way this time, too.

[AreWeThereYet]

Transport will be our problem as well. Food will pile up and rot while people starve.

It's odd. I live in a county that has more beef cows than any county in Texas and Texas has more beef cattle than any state in the nation.

We are the beginning of the meat supply chain, and at the end of the distribution chain. There's no slaughter facility (USDA inspected) for miles. Most of the cattle we raise go to the panhandle of Texas or further north, into the central plains where they are fed and slaughtered.

The average piece of food on your plate has traveled 1,500 miles.

You'd have to be a fucking idiot to design such a stupid goddamned system. But that's what we have.

Ah, but don't sell short the custom butchers that abound.  But they couldn't handle the big herds..just the onesy-twosy drop offs from people.
From where my place is there are 3 ...one in Bryan, Brenham and Taylor.  Small and localized.

Yes, but it's illegal for them to sell the meat.

Yes you are correct.  For small holders this works..portions of the cow is sold live and each owner goes to pick up his meat.  Wouldn't work for a big producer like you though.

[Russ]

Yes, please do ask him, PseudoPhil, and report back here.

A snippet of my post in the comments:

How was relocalization accomplished? Can mechanisms for achieving this peacefully be created and introduced in the context of a society well past the point of diminishing returns? Or must a society facing such stresses necessarily come to chaos before new social and economic mechanisms are accepted?

His response :

PseudoPhil, relocalization at the end of the Roman Empire was accomplished by barbarian invasions, economic collapse, and the struggles of local communities to survive in a chaotic environment. It's likely to happen the same way this time, too.

LOL. It's funny how he's always slamming unnamed doomers for being too doomeristic, for believing in fast crashes and so on.

But whenever he lets himself be pinned down on a detail, his own scenarios are often pretty dire. For example, while the Roman Empire as a whole unwound over the span of centuries, various parts of it collapsed/were destroyed very quickly.

[RMG]

He gives very good points and makes my participation in a medieval studies society more relevant, but he does not mention that life expectancy rates were much lower during the Middle Ages and that infant mortality rates were much higher.

Finally, one can also argue that the medieval life may already be taking place in many rural villages in Third World countries, but the situation faced by inhabitants in such settings is not necessarily idyllic.

Life expectancy was low BECAUSE infant mortality was high. Infant mortality is the main determinant of life expectancy. We shan't forget to have midwives wash their hands, so I don't expect infant mortality to soar.

I don't think we can expect life to be idyllic, not matter where.

Yes, Rival, those really are the questions. The answer, I think, is we could do a fair bit of mitigation in advance and some countries (e.g. Denmark) have done so, but most of us won't because few political systems can plan for a future farther out than the next election.

Here is a little piece which addresses your point. No matter what though, average life span was short.

http://apps.business.ualberta.ca/rfield/LifeExpectancy.htm

Also, rough numbers indicate the infant mortality rate in ancient and middle age time periods was about 200 per thousand. What is interesting is the infant mortality rate in 1950-1955 was 152 per thousand. At present it is 47 per thousand.

[ralfy]

Thanks for mentioning that! I wonder if hygiene during the care of infants will alone lead to significant increases in lifespan. I looked at this collection of links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

and noted the possibility that "public health" measures led to a major 30-year increase in lifespans during the twentieth century (although it was a 15-year increase in other places because their life spans reached 40+). I wonder if those measures involved the use of vitamins, the prevalence of mass agriculture, vaccines, and other technologies that may be signficantly dependent on oil, and how the absence or lack of these will affect lifespans, if not the survival rates not only of infants but of children from the ages of 0 to 6.

Another point to consider is how longer lifespans and even lower infant mortality rates obviously lead to population increases, and how that should be considered, i.e., with a current population that probably six to nine the number during the Middle Ages. Also, we might factor in human migration to increasing population, present soil conditions, and the effects of pollution, and other factors that were probably not prevalent during the Middle Ages.

Given that, my scenario would be that of a rural village in a Third World country, and for a worst case situation, the setting described in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. In which case, lifespans listed here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

may change dramatically, probably at best following what took place during the early part of the twentieth century (i.e., 30 to 45 years), which is similar to that of the lowest-ranked countries in the list.

He gives very good points and makes my participation in a medieval studies society more relevant, but he does not mention that life expectancy rates were much lower during the Middle Ages and that infant mortality rates were much higher.

Finally, one can also argue that the medieval life may already be taking place in many rural villages in Third World countries, but the situation faced by inhabitants in such settings is not necessarily idyllic.

Life expectancy was low BECAUSE infant mortality was high. Infant mortality is the main determinant of life expectancy. We shan't forget to have midwives wash their hands, so I don't expect infant mortality to soar.

I don't think we can expect life to be idyllic, not matter where.

Yes, Rival, those really are the questions. The answer, I think, is we could do a fair bit of mitigation in advance and some countries (e.g. Denmark) have done so, but most of us won't because few political systems can plan for a future farther out than the next election.

[Xenopus]

Infant mortality may be 47 per 1000 worldwide, but it is 168 per 1000 in Afghanistan and 2.9 per 1000 in Iceland.

Someone did an experiment on an Indian reservation. One group got access to a hospital and clinic; the other had a midwife who rode around visiting all her people. She taught that babies needed to be breast fed, kept warm and clean and were very susceptible to diarrhea from dirty water. The infant mortality in her group dropped like a rock. In the group who were offered modern medical care, the fall, if any, was statistically insignificant. (Sorry; I have now lost the reference. It's quite an old study.)

[Diogenes]

Public Sanitation was the biggest additive to life expectancy bar none. Clean water, sewers, garbage collection and bylaws regard all of that is what made the biggest difference.

[Xenopus]

Public Sanitation was the biggest additive to life expectancy bar none. Clean water, sewers, garbage collection and bylaws regard all of that is what made the biggest difference.

Yup.

[ralfy]

I'm guessing that hygiene increases lifespan to around 45 years (from 30), and it's likely that part of it still involves oil. That means that might be the lifespan in a new middle ages. This does not include problems that might be caused by increasing population, soil condition, and others mentioned in my previous message.

[shaleoh2]

Transport will be our problem as well. Food will pile up and rot while people starve.

It's odd. I live in a county that has more beef cows than any county in Texas and Texas has more beef cattle than any state in the nation.

We are the beginning of the meat supply chain, and at the end of the distribution chain. There's no slaughter facility (USDA inspected) for miles. Most of the cattle we raise go to the panhandle of Texas or further north, into the central plains where they are fed and slaughtered.

The average piece of food on your plate has traveled 1,500 miles.

You'd have to be a fucking idiot to design such a stupid goddamned system. But that's what we have.

Ah, but don't sell short the custom butchers that abound.  But they couldn't handle the big herds..just the onesy-twosy drop offs from people.
From where my place is there are 3 ...one in Bryan, Brenham and Taylor.  Small and localized.

Yes, but it's illegal for them to sell the meat.

whoaa. can you barter.     

[shaleoh2]

Yes, but it's illegal for them to sell the meat.

wow, but yet its still legal to sell gold 

[Diogenes]

I'm guessing that hygiene increases lifespan to around 45 years (from 30), and it's likely that part of it still involves oil. That means that might be the lifespan in a new middle ages. This does not include problems that might be caused by increasing population, soil condition, and others mentioned in my previous message.

Hardly, people were still dying of water borne diseases in the 1850's in major cities such as London. It was studies by
John Snow, M.D. (1813-1858), who did the earliest examples of using epidemiological methods to identify risk for disease and recommend preventive action. In that case a local well pump near broad street in London was contaminated by sewage, when the pump handle was removed and people had to get their water elsewhere, the cholera epidemic stopped. the Sewers, water, sanitation food inspection systems we are familiar with generally date from the 1930's, at which point the average life expectancy for a male in the USA was almost 60.