Dmitry Orlav’s Visions of Collapse

Closing the Collapse Gap is a wry and wonderfully witty talk by Dmitry Orlav, an expatriate Russian living in America. Since it is a slide show/lecture from 2006, I am probably miles behind the curve. I just discovered him.

Orlav observes in 2006 that a collapse in the U.S. is inevitable, and will probably occur within the near future. He was prescient. But he’s not a pessimist by any means – just a sardonic observer with some useful experience for us as we stumble through it.

A few samples:

Many of the problems that sunk the Soviet Union are now endangering the United States as well. Such as a huge, well-equipped, very expensive military, with no clear mission, bogged down in fighting Muslim insurgents. Such as energy shortfalls linked to peaking oil production. Such as a persistently unfavorable trade balance, resulting in runaway foreign debt. Add to that a delusional self-image, an inflexible ideology, and an unresponsive political system.

Then there is our dependence on foreign oil – something that did not trouble the Soviets:

… [an] untenable arrangement rests on the notion that it is possible to perpetually borrow more and more money from abroad, to pay for more and more energy imports, while the price of these imports continues to double every few years. Free money with which to buy energy equals free energy, and free energy does not occur in nature. This must therefore be a transient condition. When the flow of energy snaps back toward equilibrium, much of the US economy will be forced to shut down.

Americans don’t like being compared to Russians, since we are exceptional people. But Orlav does the comparisons, and finds Americans coming up short in the survival of the fittest game. And then there is the American holiday season … We live miles apart for a reason. We don’t like each other.

When confronting hardship, people usually fall back on their families for support. The Soviet Union experienced chronic housing shortages, which often resulted in three generations living together under one roof. This didn’t make them happy, but at least they were used to each other. The usual expectation was that they would stick it out together, come what may.

In the United States, families tend to be atomized, spread out over several states. They sometimes have trouble tolerating each other when they come together for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, even during the best of times. They might find it difficult to get along, in bad times. There is already too much loneliness in this country, and I doubt that economic collapse will cure it.

Then there is our food system, with “organic” meat and vegetables shipped to various Whole Foods in refrigerated diesel trucks:

[Americans] don’t even bother to shop and just eat fast food. When people do cook, they rarely cook from scratch. This is all very unhealthy, and the effect on the nation’s girth, is visible, clear across the parking lot. A lot of the people, who just waddle to and from their cars, seem unprepared for what comes next. If they suddenly had to start living like the Russians, they would blow out their knees.

Perhaps the greatest efficiency of the Soviet Union was its incredible inefficiency. Things that benefit humans, like day care, paid vacations, pensions and health care, are not so conducive to “efficiency” as are fear of job loss, loss of home and savings.

A private sector solution is not impossible; just very, very unlikely. Certain Soviet state enterprises were basically states within states. They controlled what amounted to an entire economic system, and could go on even without the larger economy. They kept to this arrangement even after they were privatized. They drove Western management consultants mad, with their endless kindergartens, retirement homes, laundries, and free clinics. These weren’t part of their core competency, you see. They needed to divest and to streamline their operations. The Western management gurus overlooked the most important thing: the core competency of these enterprises lay in their ability to survive economic collapse. Maybe the young geniuses at Google can wrap their heads around this one, but I doubt that their stockholders will.

Then there is American “democracy” with our switches back and forth between two parties who are more alike than different. We can’t even get rid of the worst president in our short history for eight long years. That’s dysfunction junction.

Perestroika and Glasnost were all about democracy, and in my opinion it had the same chance of success as the hopelessly gerrymandered system that passes for democracy in the US, (although much less than any proper, modern democracy, in which the Bush regime would have been put out of power quite a while ago, after a simple parliamentary vote of no confidence and early elections). The problem is that, in a collapse scenario, democracy is the least effective system of government one can possibly think of (think Weimar, or the Russian Interim Government)…

Collapse is here, it seems. Are we prepared? My wife and I occupy a small patch of land, and use it to grow trees (currently being eaten by pine beetles) and flowers. Maybe we will convert it to a food coop. Maybe our neighbors will shoot us and steal it from us.

If you have a few minutes, read the whole talk. For me, it was rewarding and well-spent time.