Friday, April 22, 2011

Closed The Shop, Sold The House...

It must be tempting sometimes for the most popular collapse-watchers and writers to wonder how others take their words – especially their advice. In this post I'll talk a bit about the effect a few collapse-watchers have had on some recent decisions of mine.

I remember several months ago how I started to become very interested in The Automatic Earth, a blog which mainly focuses on the financial aspect of the decline and contraction of our present industrial society. I learned a great deal about finance from the site (although I must admit that I can still be confused by some of the more abstruse aspects of the world of modern finance). If I had to summarize the main points of The Automatic Earth, I would state them as follows:

  • The global industrial economy dominated by the First World, particularly the United States, is in the throes of a deflationary contraction.

  • This deflationary contraction consists of the extinguishing of multiple, mutually exclusive claims on wealth and the contraction of available credit.

  • The fact that credit and multiple mutually exclusive claims on wealth are being extinguished defines this present time as a deflationary time, even though the prices of energy and many commodities are now rising.

  • The best short-term strategy for weathering the present deflationary contraction consists, among other things, of holding as much cash as possible while becoming debt free and securing the means to maintain your own existence.

There's a fair bit of wisdom in these things, as well as other strategies not mentioned here which are listed at the Automatic Earth. But whenever there is advice from a particular source, one is also likely to find somewhat contrarian advice from others.

Anyway, I found myself following the advice listed above, as well as other maxims, such as “Take care of your health,” and “Be worth more to your employer than he is paying you.” I've been working two jobs, one as a practicing engineer and one as an engineering adjunct instructor. Engineering is not the most poetic profession on earth, but then, as Chico Escuela used to say on Saturday Night Live, it's been “bery, bery good to me.” However, I've been working like a dog for nearly a year now. The cash flow has been good – if one's goal is to “preserve liquidity” in the face of a deflationary depression. And I deliberately negotiated a salary with my boss that was lower than the going rate for someone with my experience, so I believe I have been worth more to him than he's paying me.

But he's wanting more and more of me, and over the last several months, it seems that a great many aspects of my life have been put on hold while I devote myself to work and to teaching. This is not a very resilient arrangement, for if the economy suffers the sort of shocks that it experienced in 2008, my firm could lose a number of key clients. There are things I should be doing toward building a resilient neighborhood where I live, toward writing and chronicling the unfolding story of life on the downside of Hubbert's Peak, toward doing good and trying with my neighbors and friends to preserve those things that are of greatest value. The demands of my work have gotten in the way of such things. Most of my co-workers regularly put in workweeks that average between 50 and 60 hours. The only skills we seem to have are cubicle skills. And what good is the money if you die of a heart attack or stroke trying to earn more of it? Or, as the Good Book says, “For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Thus, over the last few months I have come to certain conclusions. A few weeks ago, I gave my boss notice that I am quitting Although I am willing to stay on long enough to finish a couple of projects, I intend to be finished before the beginning of summer. For the next several months, I will be relying solely on my income as an adjunct professor. (This is my version of voluntary “radical cashectomy”.) I will be reducing my monthly expenses as well. Fortunately my house is paid for and I have no other debts, so debt is not an issue.

I have written out a mission statement of sorts for the next couple of years. It could be summed up in one phrase: “transforming myself (along with the people I care about) into someone who might stand a chance, given the world's assumed trajectory.” (Hat tip to Dmitry Orlov for that one.) The savings I have accumulated will provide me with a bit of “learning curve” time to accomplish this. One of my main goals is to develop a suite of post-Peak skills, with an emphasis on understanding general science and engineering and their application to a post-Peak world. Another goal is to become a competent teacher of these skills, as well as a builder of resilient enclaves and a repairer of culture.

I will also continue to write pertinent posts for this blog. Stay tuned!

6 comments:

ha1ku said...

I applaud your courage and your commitment. Please continue to write!

In my own way, I am trying to adjust my lifestyle downward and have been planning a exit strategy out of an increasingly more stressful work environment. I find your writings most inspiring.

TH in SoC said...

Ha1ku, thanks for your comment and your continued readership. May you also have success in escaping the rat race. I will indeed continue to write, God willing.

Sudeep B said...

Best of luck mate.

Aimee said...

I do t know much about your personal life, but if you aren't partnered, I highly recommend finding a person to live with who has complementary skills. This usEd to be called "getting married." unless a person is rely by nature a lone wolf type - and some of us are - then I think the best survival strategy out there is to be part of a skilled partnership. No one person can realistically expect to acquire all the skills of a self sustaining life in all of it's complexity - from growing and preserving and cooking food to making or mending clothes, to all the carpentry and mechanical skills needed for general upkeep to making money to buy the stuff we cant yet make. ModErn life is a very complicated affair and as grim as the situation is and as inevitable as collapse is, it is only going to get more complicated for some time. A man alone - or a woman - will have a harder and harder time Of it in the coming decades.
Plus, of course, it's nice to have Someone to huddle with around the campfire.

TH in SoC said...

Thanks, Aimee, for your comment and your continued readership. I am not necessarily the lone wolf type. I do believe in traditional marriage (though I have no interest in a certain overhyped marriage happening in a certain island country this week ;)).

How to find someone - that's the catch. I'd be happy to meet a woman who was a theologically and morally conservative Christian while at the same time being strongly leftist socially and economically. It would be okay if she was born in the USA, but it might be even nicer if she had been born elsewhere. And hopefully, she'd think thast I was what she'd been looking for....

Jerry said...

TH, in so many ways we sound like kindred spirits. Just the type with whom I would gladly community build.

I have a great deal of respect for what you are trying to do, for your active consciousness AND conscientiousness.