Chickens for Poor People

I'm working on a research-heavy post, but it's not quite ready. The information contained therein will be bad news to some folks (maybe quite a few folks), but then again, a lot of news about the world seems very bad nowadays. Anyway, I've been a bit busy – so here is a short (and hopefully somewhat lighter) post for this week.

An urban gardening education outfit called Growing Gardens hosts an annual “Tour de Coops” as part of their program of promoting urban chicken-keeping in Portland. The Tour de Coops originally started out as a bicycle tour of various local chicken-keeping homes, but has since grown geographically to the extent that many people drive from house to house to view chicken coops. Around a year and a half ago I started building a chicken coop in my back yard, thinking I could knock out the project in a few weeks. But my life got very busy and I quickly ran out of inspiration as I remembered the warnings I had heard in the chicken-keeping classes I had attended – warnings which distilled in my head into the message that “you must do everything just right or your birds will die!!!”

“How do you build a coop just right? What does just right look like?” I wondered. So I bought a book of chicken coop plans and I thought back to the chicken coops I had observed during the Tour de Coops which I had witnessed. As I sought to implement the things I had observed, I couldn't help but notice how much money I was dropping at Home Cheapo for what seemed to be the requisite building materials. The plan I chose from the book I bought seemed to me to be very basic, yet it was still more elaborate than I would have liked. At times I fumed about the potential cost per egg over the lifetime of my coop.

That got me thinking about the various coops I had seen during the Tour de Coops I had witnessed, as well as the general tone of the chicken-keeping classes I had attended. A large number of the coops I saw on tour and in class were, shall we say, palatial, with electric lighting, ventilation (and maybe even heating in one case), and all built by yuppie or post-yuppie types who viewed their birds as cute, affectionate members of their extended family. (How is a full-grown chicken “cute”?) “Where do you find the time or energy to build all that?” I wondered.

Immigrants and people outside American upper middle-class culture tend to view these things very differently. When I told some of my immigrant friends about my chicken coop project, almost all of them asked why I didn't just pick up a coop for free from Craigslist. Only one of them has built anything that is anywhere near as elaborate as coops, American-style seem to be becoming. But that's not the best part. After I started my coop, I noticed during my travels on bicycle that several back yards had birds who were housed in very simple boxes with chicken wire on their fronts. I kept thinking, “I could have done that!”

All of which brings up an uncomfortable observation. It seems that many who have been thoroughly marinated in American upper middle-class culture have a fundamental blind spot when it comes to trying to do anything simply and frugally. Some of us who look for strategies for sustainable living render those strategies unsustainable by turning those strategies into status symbols. So we have “fair trade” coffeehouses, sanctimonious hybrid vehicle owners, people who browse issues of Real Simple whenever they visit Whole Foods Market, people who try to balance stressed-out materialism with a few hours a week at a yoga studio, people who build chicken palaces with full utility hook-ups in order to make a statement about “sustainability,” people who take their cars to a Tour de Coops. And we have whole industries devoted to catering to the self-image of these people.

What's needed is chickens for poor people – along with a truckload of other survival strategies for people who have fallen (or have jumped) off the upper middle-class train. (There are more of us each day in this country.) We also need competent teachers of these strategies. Some of the coops featured in the Tour de Coops may lately have been sending the wrong message. Growing Gardens will probably never read this post of mine, but if they do, I hope they will bear with a bit of gentle constructive criticism from a friend.

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!

Good Water From Other Wells

I've been reading some great blog posts lately from some of my fellow writers, thinkers and doers. I thought I'd share them with you all.

First, Stormchild, author of the blog Gale Warnings, has written a good post titled, “Complexity vs. Complication.” It is a look at the dynamics of human systems, where complexity is the result of the connections between various parts of human systems and complication is the result of human “cussedness” or contrariness or indwelling sin. Complex systems can be fixed when they go wrong. Complicated systems can't, because there are people in those systems who don't want a fix. That insight can be applied to many of the large scale societal systems under which we suffer just now.

Jerry, author of SoapBoxTech, has a number of good posts. “SoapBox Thoughts on Arizona” presents intelligent commentary on the recent Arizona immigration law, while “Salvation, For Now” discusses the need for some locales to shift to dryland farming techniques as part of adapting to climate change. As to the viability of modern industrial agriculture, “How Technology Almost Killed Mixed Farming” is a good read. And “Transgenic GMO's Causing Bee Crisis?” discusses how genetically modified crops may be contributing to colony collapse disorder among honeybees.

Speaking of bees, Aimee of New To Farm Life has been writing about her experiences in learning to keep bees. Her latest bee post is “The Bee-Man Speaks”. Aimee and her husband are impressive in that while I might write about doing a thing, she and her husband both do it and find time to write about it. In addition to bees, they also keep goats and chickens (and who knows what else ;) ).

And for those trying out urban homesteading, I want to welcome a new follower of my blog, namely Heidi, author of The Itty Bitty Farm in the City. It's nice to meet another person who is learning to practice preparedness and sustainable living in an urban environment.

The Power Of Aspirational Propaganda

Every child had a pretty good shot

to get at least as far as their old man got;

Something happened on the way to that place;

They threw an American flag in our face

– Billy Joel, Allentown

I picked up a copy of the Portland Tribune today on the way home from work, as I walked to one of the MAX stations. It had a number of articles that interested me, but it also had a few letters that frankly brought me up short. Most of the writers were complaining against the city government's plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Some of their sharpest criticisms were leveled at proposals that seemed to be actually quite innocuous at worst, and frankly beneficial at best. Take things like adding sidewalks to streets that lack them, or making routes to schools safer (as in freer from motor vehicle hazards) for children who walk or ride their bikes to school, or making bicycle commuting safer for everyone. These didn't seem to be particularly evil proposals to me; yet some who wrote letters seemed to view these as part of a radical leftist plot to push government control onto every aspect of our lives.

The letter that really made my jaw drop was not about the proposed climate action plan. It was instead a letter asserting that the hardships endured by the early Pilgrim settlers in North America were due to socialism, because the pilgrims shared their resources. The writer states, “Lesson: Capitalism works, Socialism doesn't.” I had no idea that the early Pilgrims were so leftist. The writer's real aim, of course, was to justify selfishness. (The truth, at least as far as the pilgrims' first winter in North America, is that their hardship was due to cold weather, scurvy, lack of provisions caused by arrival late in the year, and the sickness that resulted from all of these. Later, they did in fact switch from collective farming to individual farms, and their harvests increased as a result. But that in itself is a commentary on fallen human nature.)

The justification of selfishness is not entirely surprising, yet there are aspects of it that mystify me to this day – even after all the “teaching moments” which have hit our country upside the head over the last two years. For the thing that puzzles me is the fact that so many Americans still embrace this justification, this ideology of selfishness, even though they are being burned by it.

I want to make it clear that I don't see anything wrong with private property (within limits!) or a person working to support himself and provide for his own needs. The Good Book commands honest labor so that we may meet our own needs and have something left over for charity. It also says, “If a man will not work, neither let him eat.” But the idea that all sharing of resources is a bad thing is unbalanced, as is the idea that the only way to build a prosperous society is by appealing to the selfishness of its members. Societies that live by such a philosophy are ruthless and have no safety nets; thus when any of their members fall honestly and unavoidably into trouble, their fellows tend to brush their hands, shrug their shoulders and say, “Oh, well!”

Our problem in the USA is that we don't share well. Many of us tend to look with suspicion even on voluntary sharing arrangements practiced by others, even when no one is forcing outsiders into these arrangements. One example: several months ago, a community group was trying to install a community garden in East Portland, on land that was vacant. This would have been a valuable asset for working-class people near the garden plot, who could have cut down on their food expenses and gained experience in growing healthy food for themselves. But the proposed garden aroused opposition from a group of neighbors who feared that the users of the garden plot would be dope-smoking hoodlums. The neighbors even said things like, “These people shouldn't be growing vegetables during the daytime. They should quit being lazy and get a job so they can buy their vegetables at the store!”

Why do we not share well? Why do we look with suspicion on those who do? And why are so many of us trying to take apart what safety nets we do have, especially those safety nets provided by the government? I think it has to do with the myth of the American dream – namely, that anyone can get rich if he just works hard enough or gets lucky – and the reinforcement of that myth by American mass culture. For instance, there's a billboard in downtown Portland – I don't remember exactly where just now – with an ad from a cell phone company containing the caption, “Teach Your Children Not To Share.”

But it goes deeper than that. Yesterday, we had a surprise snowstorm that kept most of us from getting home from work until quite late. I was on a bus next to a grocery store. We were waiting for TriMet to come out and put chains on the bus. While we waited, a young woman dashed in to the store (twice!) to buy some sort of scratcher Bingo lottery game. It cost her three dollars each time, and she won only three dollars each time, so I guess it was a wash. But who knows, she might have struck it rich if only she had bought the right tickets. Then there's the lottery pool in my office, and the people who each hope that the day the tickets are bought will turn out to be the last day they have to show up for work. And there are the TV game shows like “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”, which reinforce the idea that with the right luck, some of us might have a shot at getting rich overnight (without having to work for it).

Of course, since any of us might potentially become a millionaire overnight through a stroke of luck, we must jealously guard the prerogatives of the rich, lest our own enjoyment of wealth be spoiled by the limiting of those prerogatives. At least, that's the propaganda pushed on us by the rich, who use all the media tools at their disposal to tell us how evil corporate taxes are (witness the large, expensive signs saying “Vote NO on Job-Killing Taxes!” in Oregon), how any government programs to help the poor are nothing more than “socialism!!!”, and how any restrictions on the use or means of amassing private property are totalitarianism.

This propaganda is so effective that many ordinary Americans are willing to vote against their own interests and to believe things that are against their own interests in order to preserve a supposed “right” to have no limitation or obligation imposed on their wealth should they ever strike it rich. So we have a society in which 20 percent of the American population controls 85 percent of America's wealth, and 80 percent of the population controls only 15 percent of the wealth – yet many of those in the 80 percent listen to Rush Limbaugh, and watch Glenn Beck, and voted for McCain and Palin, and oppose "socialized" medicine, and disbelieve in anthropogenic climate change because protecting the environment is “socialist.” Many of these people are sure that they or one of their relatives will be the next “American Idol,” or that if they invest just right, they will strike it rich, or that the next Lotto ticket will be the winning one, and that once that happens, it will be a sweet ride. We wouldn't want any moral obligation to our fellow man to spoil the ride, would we?

Most of us have no more chance of becoming rich than gasoline has of surviving the Last Judgment unburnt. Yet by wanting to be rich, and by indulging our fantasies of being rich, we continue to enable the selfishness of the rich. That selfishness is killing the rest of us.

Note: the figure on 80 percent of the population owning only 15 percent of the wealth comes from The New Elite: Inside The Minds Of The Truly Wealthy, by Jim Taylor, Doug Harrison, Stephen Kraus, copyright 2009, Harrison Group.

Christmas 2009 - Notes From The Road

I just got back from visiting family in So. Cal. The trip was an interesting experience, but then again, it always is. It's amazing what a guy notices when he moves away from a place and only returns for occasional visits. This time, I dropped by a former neighbor who lives in a house almost directly across the street from where I used to live. We got to talking about people we both knew, while a couple of his grandchildren showed me their new puppies and their Christmas presents.

He told me about another neighbor who sold his house a few months ago, for a bit over $250K. The man was forced to sell his house because of the lifestyle he had lived during the good years of the Southern California real estate boom. He had added a couple of rooms on to what was originally a Korean War vintage, two bed, one bath house in a working-class neighborhood, and had decked out the interior with genuine tile floors, granite countertops and the works. He had also bought an RV, two all-terrain tricycles, an SUV, and a boat in addition to his work truck. He paid for it all by refinancing his home loan with an adjustable-rate mortgage. He ended up owing a few hundred thousand more than he paid for the house when he bought it. When the mortgage reset, he could no longer afford the monthly payment. Even though he was able to sell his house and relocate, he is still massively in debt.

Of course, I had known that our present economic collapse would be hard on many Americans who had made foolish choices because they were seduced by wanting to live rich. But my friend began to tell me about his own situation, a situation of unavoidable hardship caused by economic contraction. My friend is originally from Mexico, and does not have a college education. He does, however, have a great deal of common sense, and he has chosen to live within his means. He too has a two-bed, one-bath Korean War vintage house, and he is paying only the original mortgage he received when he first bought his house. But his employer is slowing down and may close the place where he works. If that happens, he too will be forced to move.

This was sad news to hear. But it did provoke a discussion of true wisdom in these times, and the art of living happily without a lot of money. It also showed how sharp my neighbor is. As I said, he is originally from Mexico, and did not go to college. His English is not that good. (My Spanish is much worse, believe me!) Yet when, over two years ago, I put my house up for sale, I remember him coming by and asking why I was moving, and I explained to him all that I was then finding out about Peak Oil and the fragile state of the American economy. He got it. Every word. This is much better than I can say of many college-educated Americans I have talked with over the last two years, men and women who refuse to examine the back story behind the illusion of wealth in which we all have lived for the last few decades, and who refuse to believe that it's all about to end. My friend, on the other hand, is a clear-eyed realist. He still gets it.

For this trip, I drove down and back, as usual. (I no longer entirely trust flying.) I noticed that a lot of rest stops in California are now closed. Also, there didn't seem to be as many Highway Patrol cars as usual. I am sure that this is due to California's budget “crisis.” But these things got me thinking on the return trip, as I was driving north past Bakersfield and before Sacramento. On that particular stretch, I was listening to a podcast I had downloaded of a presentation given by a man named James Howard Kunstler to the Commonwealth Club of California in March 2007. (For those who have heard that podcast, it's the one where at the end, Kunstler doesn't realize that he's still being recorded and he asks the chairman of the club, “Where's my mug?” Maybe they give commemorative mugs to their guest speakers.)

Mr. Kunstler had stated in his talk that social systems organized on a giant scale would get in trouble in an era of economic contraction. Those closed rest stops were just one sign of the trouble that California is in. But those closed rest stops made me ask what the citizens of California were actually getting in return for their tax dollars. For they had been asked to accept severe cutbacks in State government services in order to balance their budget, yet they were still required to pay taxes. I know that money is not going toward maintaining a safety net for Californians, because many of them have been trained to regard government safety nets as evil. And they surely are not building that high speed rail line that voters approved in 2008.

Anyway, it seems that we all, including those of us in government, will have to quickly learn the art of living happily without a lot of money. As the benefits provided by government at all levels continue to shrink, this will mean that we must do much more for ourselves.

The Timing Of The Next Oil Price Spike

The world and its official global economy have reached the end of a crucial phase. The beginning of that phase was in 2005, when the world's growth economy first began to encounter the reality of constrained global oil supplies. In May 2005, the world's oil producers produced slightly over 74 million barrels of crude per day (or 85 million, if one counts natural gas liquids, “oil” from tar sands, biofuels, and other non-conventional sources). This was an all-time production record which was not exceeded for at least 2 ½ years, if one believes the production numbers of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA). Some believe that the production numbers for 2008 were inflated, and that the May 2005 record is indeed an all-time record that has never been exceeded.

What is clear, however, is that global oil production stayed in a relatively flat band right around 85 million barrels per day from May 2005 until September 2008. Those who study Peak Oil have called this period the time of the “bumpy plateau,” where oil suppliers struggle to find enough new fields and start enough new projects to offset production declines in existing fields. We know we are past Peak and that the suppliers have lost the struggle when total daily world production begins to fall in spite of the best efforts of oil suppliers. At that point, the world has fallen off the bumpy plateau and is now on the downside of Hubbert's Peak. One of the signals that we are past Peak is an inexorable rise in the price of oil and petroleum products.

The 2007-2008 price spike may therefore have been such a signal. Oil climbed from around $65 per barrel to over $147 per barrel in a little over nine months. There were also spot shortages of petroleum products in various places, though this was not widely reported by the American media. Those who study Peak Oil devised a few theories to describe what they thought would happen as a result of the price spike due to Peak Oil. The consensus of many was that a sufficiently severe spike would derail the global economy, causing a recession and collapsing economic activity. This would also cause the price of oil to fluctuate wildly for a time before resuming its inexorable upward climb.

All these things have happened. The oil price spike of 2008 caused not just a global recession, but the beginnings of a depression potentially so severe that it may just end the official global economy. The price of oil has also crashed – from $147 per barrel to around $40 per barrel today. Of course, the fall in price is not due to finding new supplies (no one has found any large new, cheaply extracted supplies), but is due, rather, to falling economic activity. It now appears that the world has no more new supplies of cheap, easily-gotten oil.

So what happens next? Some analysts have stated that the price of oil will remain low until the world attempts an economic recovery. At that point, perhaps a few years into the future, global demand will run up against shrinking supply and there will be another price spike, followed by the return of a global recession or depression. But a report released in January of this year presents a different view – namely, that the coming price spike won't wait for an economic recovery, but that it will begin this year.

The report, titled, “Oil Prices: Another Spike Ahead,” was written by Jeff Rubin and Peter Buchanan, and is in the 23 January edition of StrategEcon, a publication of CIBC World Markets. (You can find it here: http://research.cibcwm.com/res/Eco/ArEcoMI.html. Click on the report titled, “Reflation.”) The report analyzes the effect of collapsed oil prices on new oil production projects, most of which require prices of well over $60 per barrel to be economical. Because the actual price of oil is so much lower than what is needed for oil producers to make money, many planned oil projects have been cancelled. The result is the removal of well over a million barrels per day of new production, and a decline in total world production from 85.8 million barrels per day in 2008 to 84.8 million barrels per day in 2010. The IEA has also stated that due to depletion of existing oilfields, the petroleum industry will have to spend well over half a trillion dollars each year just to meet future demand. This money is not likely to be spent in our present economic climate.

The CIBC report therefore predicts a supply shortfall of at least two million barrels per day by 2010, and a price spike that will begin in 2009 – indeed, within the next several months. By the end of 2010, the global price of oil will likely be back over $100 per barrel again. This will hinder, and may possibly derail, any attempt at a global economic recovery.

It appears, then, that we have fallen off the bumpy plateau. Or at least we don't have much longer to wait before we know for sure. All the words written on this blog and others concerning alternative systems and living lightly on the earth were not in vain. If anyone hasn't yet taken those words to heart, hopefully it's not too late.

The War On Frugality

The present energy and economic crises in the world have caused the return of a long-forgotten culture of frugality in the United States and other First World nations. The return of this culture is due to a grassroots movement among ordinary, everyday citizens who don't have many resources and who are tired of being taken for everything they've got by large corporate masters. This culture of frugality is gaining such strength and spreading so rapidly that voices in the mainstream media are now starting to comment on it, as seen in the following articles:

• “In Recession, Frugality Makes A Comeback,” Los Angeles Times, 13 January 2009, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/valley/la-fi-pennywise13-2009jan13,0,4887711.story

• “Making Frugality A Habit,” New York Times, 9 January 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/10/your-money/household-budgeting/10cost.html

• “Ladera Couple Prospers By Living Below Means,” Orange County Register, 16 January 2009, http://economy.freedomblogging.com/2009/01/16/ladera-couple-prospers-by-living-below-means/

• “Frugal Is Cool In Cash-Strapped US,” The Guardian, 4 January 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/04/us-economy-thrift-barack-obama

It might seem to be a good sign that a movement toward sensibility and living within one's means is getting the attention of national media. Yet we must remember that the national media are owned, by and large, by powerful, rich corporatist masters with a vested interest in reviving and growing the “official” economy, which is first and foremost a consumer economy run by big business. Living within one's means, getting out of debt and turning one's back on consumerism is not good for business or for the official economy.

It is therefore no surprise that the masters of our economy have begun to attack this movement toward frugality and simple living. The attack has come in various forms, including media articles which talk about the damage done to the economy by people who refuse to rush out and buy things. Here are some samples:

• “Return to D.I.Y Ethic Erodes Service Businesses,” New York Times, 16 January 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/business/17services.html?ref=business. The Times article contains this amazing quote: “All of these consumers could praise themselves for their newfound frugality in the midst of an economic downturn. But ever step they take toward self-reliance – each shrub they prune themselves, each cupcake they bake from scratch – hurts the people and small businesses that have long provided these services professionally.”

• “Hard-Hit Families Finally Start Saving, Aggravating Nation's Economic Woes,” Wall Street Journal, 6 January 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123120525879656021.html. Again, here's an amazing quote: “Americans, fresh off a decadeslong (sic) buying spree, are finally saving more and spending less – just as the economy needs their dollars the most.”

• For those who live in the United Kingdom, there's this: “This Recession Demands That We Employ Logic And Spend Our Way Out Of It,” UK Telegraph, 13 January 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/rogerbootle/4218744/This-recession-demands-that-we-employ-logic-and-spend-our-way-out-of-it.html

• “Don't Be Frugal To Follow Recession Chic,” Marketplace, 17 December 2008, http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/12/17/wilkinson/. This is an archived radio show featuring Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank. One more amazing quote, from the show's introduction: “It's natural to want to penny-pinch when in a recession, but if you're not at risk of financial struggle, you may not need to cut back. Commentator Will Wilkinson says if you can, you should keep on spending.”

Here is rich irony! We are suffering an ecological and economic disaster caused by the decision by the masters of the global economy to hoodwink ordinary citizens and their governments to live beyond their means for as long as possible. These masters created an economy that is built on debt and that runs on credit and that devours anyone who can't make his payments on time. That economy has begun to crash, leaving millions of bloodied victims in the aftermath of its fall. These victims have been turned into the prey of the rich masters of this economy. Now that we ordinary people are seeing all of these things come to pass, we are trying to protect ourselves from being jacked any further by getting out of debt, living within our means and learning to be self-reliant. And you mean to tell me that the spokesmen for the rich are trying to make us feel guilty for this?!

But it gets even better. Not only are the masters of our official economy trying to talk us common people out of frugality, but they are even enlisting the help of the government to punish and frustrate frugal living. Cases in point:

• The Times of England recently published an editorial titled, “Punish Savers And Make Them Spend Money (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article5469589.ece),” full of policy recommendations for the governments of the United States and Great Britain. One such suggestion is as follows: “Instead of reducing taxes on interest payments, the Government could tax all bank deposits and other risk-free savings. This would create a negative risk-free interest rate, encouraging savers either to invest in property, shares and other productive assets – or simply to save less and consume more.”

• The United States Government has passed a law, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, that will require all thrift stores to test all toys and clothes sold for children for contamination by lead or lead-based paint, starting in February 2009. (Source: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-thrift2-2009jan02,0,2083247.story) The testing is designed to be so expensive that thrift stores – thrift stores! – will be forced to stop selling secondhand children's clothes and toys because they will not be able to afford the tests. This law will also drive the makers of handcrafted toys and handmade clothes out of business, as well as shutting down other cottage industries. You'll just have to go to Mervyn's or Wal-Mart or Toys 'R' Us instead. After many people protested, the Consumer Product Safety Commission modified its proposed enforcement of the law to grant thrift stores a temporary reprieve, but the law is still on the books.

Note: This law is typical of recent legislation and executive orders passed or enacted by the Federal Government. Other examples include the National Animal Identification System, proposed ostensibly to “keep the nation's food supply safe from terrorists,” whose real effect is to drive small livestock farmers out of business. There are also the cumbersome FDA regulations recently enacted for small slaughterhouses, regulations that are so expensive to obey that only big agribusinesses can comply. The funny thing about these laws is that they don't protect us from contamination via products sold by big businesses with lots of money.

Make no mistake. Frugality is one tool by which ordinary, rank-and-file people can become self-reliant and can free themselves from exploitation by a corporatist system controlled by the rich. The rich masters of our present system understand this, and will do everything they can to wage war against the frugal and the self-reliant. But we're on to them. Do these things make you mad? Then let your congressman know that you've got his number.

I leave you with the following quote from the novel The Likeness, by Tana French. I read the quote for the first time on the Schneier on Security website. Here it is:

“Part of the debtor mentality is a constant, frantically suppressed undercurrent of terror. We have one of the highest debt-to-income ratios in the world, and apparently most of us are two paychecks from the street. Those in power -- governments, employers -- exploit this, to great effect. Frightened people are obedient -- not just physically, but intellectually and emotionally. If your employer tells you to work overtime, and you know that refusing could jeopardize everything you have, then not only do you work the overtime, but you convince yourself that you're doing it voluntarily, out of loyalty to the company; because the alternative is to acknowledge that you are living in terror. Before you know it, you've persuaded yourself that you have a profound emotional attachment to some vast multinational corporation: you've indentured not just your working hours, but your entire thought process. The only people who are capable of either unfettered action or unfettered thought are those who -- either because they're heroically brave, or because they're insane, or because they know themselves to be safe -- are free from fear.”

Digital Television and Frugal Entertainment

Those who watch television regularly probably know that the United States recently passed a law requiring all television broadcast networks to stop broadcasting analog television signals as of 17 February 2009, and to broadcast only digital television (DTV) signals. The U.S. has also mandated that as of 1 March 2009, manufacturers of television sets can only manufacture sets containing DTV tuners. Older analog TV sets will not be able to receive or display shows broadcast by DTV networks, meaning that those who own analog sets and refuse to buy newer DTV's will no longer be able to watch television.

According to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, the switch to DTV is a good thing, because it will give us all an enhanced viewing experience, as stated on their DTV website:

"Digital Television (DTV) is an advanced broadcasting technology that will transform your television viewing experience. DTV enables broadcasters to offer television with better picture and sound quality. It can also offer multiple programming choices, called multicasting, and interactive capabilities.

Converting to DTV also will free up parts of the scarce and valuable broadcast spectrum. Those portions of the spectrum can then be used for other important services, such as public and safety services (police and fire departments, emergency rescue), and advanced wireless services."

Manufacturers of consumer electronics have devised digital-to-analog converter boxes that owners of analog TV sets can purchase in order to continue watching shows without buying a new DTV. However, these boxes cost between $45 and $70. The Federal government had been issuing $40 coupons to offset the cost of these converter boxes, but the Feds seem to have run out of coupons (imagine that!), so that those without coupons must pay the full price. Also, there is at least one report that these converters don't work so well (See “Technology – Not Picture-Perfect, Houston Chronicle, 5 January 2009, http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tech/news/6195818.html).

On the other hand, if you want to just buy a new DTV (also known as HDTV), you will have to spend between $999 and $3597 at Paul's TV (He's the king of big screen) in Orange County, California. Or if you go with Best Buy, you can get a TV for anywhere between $109 and $3999. But I have a better idea.

It should be obvious by now that the sole purpose of American television is to hoodwink and hypnotize people into buying worthless, unnecessary things at grossly inflated prices. Not only are we being sold a bill of consumer “goods,” but we are being sold a point of view and a mindset that renders us incapable of critical thinking, that turns us into prey and that makes us into easy targets for the large, rich powerful predators who feed on us. Since this is the case, losing the ability to watch television isn't a bad thing.

It should also be obvious that the sole purpose of the recently passed DTV law was to force working-class Americans to spend money they don't have.

So here's my frugal tip for the week: don't buy a DTV converter box. And don't buy a new DTV or HDTV set. When the 17^th of February rolls around, just take your analog set out to the dumpster. Get a hobby instead. Or learn a new skill. Or read books that force you to think. Or get some friends and do something meaningful and constructive. Or if you're a kid, go outside and play. Learn to play a musical instrument, to write, or to draw pictures - and make your own culture. After a few months of real life, you'll hardly miss television.

Festival of Frugality #158

It is my honor to host this week's Festival of Frugality. As I stated in my last post, the “Festival of Frugality” is a “blog carnival” in which various Internet authors volunteer to host a page consisting of blog posts and articles addressing a particular topic related to frugal living. (Their link is also on my sidebar, under the title “Other Wells.”) Many bloggers submitted articles for this week's Festival, and I have selected a few of these to be showcased on this week's installment of The Well Run Dry.

But I thought I'd begin first with a general discussion of frugality, which is defined in Merriam-Webster's Tenth Collegiate Dictionary as “economy in the use of resources.” In other words, being frugal is using resources wisely, without waste. Frugality is especially relevant to people living in an environment in which resources are scarce or becoming scarce, in an economy in which average people have less and less access to those resources.

I suppose there are two views of frugality. One view sees frugality as part of a strategy of building earthly wealth so that those who are frugal now may one day no longer need frugality, because they have become rich. Those who follow this way save their money so that they can “invest” it in strategies which promise riches later. But those who have the other view see the problems now being faced by our present world – declining availability of resources and resource wars, climate change, environmental degradation, and enslavement and exploitation of poor people in order to support economic growth. Those who see these things also see how greed and consumerism are at the root of these problems, and this is what moves them to a frugal lifestyle. For them, frugality consists of a readjustment to a righteous and proper view of the world, a reality-based view, a determination to live lightly on the earth while building a meaningful existence on a foundation other than constantly getting “stuff.”

I hold the second view of frugality. To me, consumerism is evil and enslaving – and a dead end. The well's run dry and it's time for thirsty plants to learn to thrive on much less water. The best and most truthful voices in the blogosphere are saying the same thing, and are speaking with great clarity of the breakdown of our present consumerist system. Below I have highlighted some posts from a few of these bloggers:

• Polly Poorhouse presents Economic
  Crunch: Wrapping for Less posted at Economic Crunch, dedicated to wrapping gifts inexpensively and ecologically. (Also, while you're at it, please read the post titled, “Clergy and Town Officials Help Homeowners At Risk” from the same blog. Although Polly did not submit this article for the present Festival of Frugality, it is a good example of community and neighborhood responses to hard times. Way to go, Polly! )

• Miss M presents K.I.S.S. – Keep it Simple, Small posted at M is for Money. (Miss M's submission is especially interesting to me because her house is about the same size as mine. People don't need McMansions to be happy. As an example, in the book “Education of a Wandering Man” by Louis L'Amour, there is a picture of the house in which he grew up – along with six siblings!)

• Lisa Spinelli presents Eating Healthy Without Being Wealthy: Sweet Potatoes and Yams posted at Greener Pastures. (Lisa is another blogger who seems to really “get” the brokenness of our present system. Her post on healthy eating on a budget is timely.)

• Jim presents Please Don’t Give High Upkeep Gifts posted at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. (Jim takes a well-deserved poke at the high maintenance “gifts” marketed so often nowadays – gifts which frequently require expensive periodic upgrades.)

• Super Saver presents Pre-Paid Phones Save Money posted at My Wealth Builder. (Super Saver brings up an important point. We have been conditioned to think that we “need” cell phones. Cellular providers use this “need” to keep us on a treadmill of constant and ever-more-expensive upgrades. But there are cheaper ways to stay connected for those who actually need a cell phone.)

• mbhunter presents Tips for the coming decade of frugality posted at Mighty Bargain Hunter. (Mighty Bargain Hunter is another person who “gets” the difficulty of the times we are now facing. Check out his “tips” and feel free to come up with some of your own also!)

Again, I want to praise these bloggers and the offerings they have posted this week. They are a welcome slice of reality.

Other blogs deserve honorable mention, among which are these:

• Jeff Rose presents 3 Ways To Become Recession Proof posted at Good Financial Cents. (Disclosure: Jeff is a certified financial planner and writes his blog as a means of generating income, yet this post is a bit of good free advice – especially the part about developing a diverse skill set.)

• Curt presents 6 Things To Consider Before Refinancing posted at PennyJobs.com. (The Federal Reserve is trying to “stimulate” the American economy by attempting to get people to start taking on debt again. One strategy used by the Fed is lowering interest rates on borrowing. For those thinking of refinancing their mortgages, Curt's article lists some potential pitfalls of refinancing.)

• Tristan presents Christmas Consumerism posted at Find Financial Freedom. (Tristan rightfully questions the sanity or wisdom of indulging in a holiday spending binge at this shaky time in our economy.)

• vh presents Real Wealth II posted at Funny about Money. (An interesting commentary about what is actually of value.)

• Dana J. presents "What Can You Downsize to Save Money? posted at The Family Wallet. (Dana is on the right track.)

• Credit Card Assist presents How to Tell Your Credit Card Company You Can't Pay posted at Credit Cards Blog. (Here's some advice for those who are finding that their own personal wells have run dry.)

• David presents The cost of carelessness - it’s the little things that kill posted at Pimp Your Finances. (Be careful in your financial dealings with large, powerful creditors. They are carefully trying to get every last penny from you.)

• Carson Brackney presents Shhhh...It's Really a Bankruptcy; Misleading Sales Pitches Gain Traction in a Weak Economy posted at Personal Finance Analyst. (A timely warning against falling for scams during our present economic difficulty.)

Lastly, here's a post that contains general insights on the people who caused our present economic mess:

• Single Guy Money presents Huge Bonuses For Struggling Company Execs posted at Single Guy Money.

A Festival Of Neighborhood Frugality

Few people are rich enough or powerful enough nowadays to avoid facing the worrisome future that looms over us, a future brought on us by overconsumption and the end of abundant natural resources. Yet there are strategies for dealing with that future which can enable a person to live without worry to a great extent, even if such a person does not have a great deal of money or political power. The root causes of our present societal problems boil down to greed, overconsumption and the massive concentration of wealth into the hands of a few. One key remedy for these and for the many symptoms generated by these root causes consists of learning to live more simply, learning to live well on less.

That's why I am pleased to announce that I've been given a chance to host an upcoming Festival of Frugality at this blog, The Well Run Dry. The Festival of Frugality is a “blog carnival” in which various Internet authors volunteer to host a page consisting of blog posts and articles addressing a particular topic related to frugal living. (Their link is on my sidebar, under the title “Other Wells.”)

I'd like to dedicate my upcoming Festival to “Neighborhood Frugality.” That is, what are people doing as neighbors to save money together, to cut down on costs, to alleviate the financial impact of our present economic troubles? What ideas are people coming up with? There are many things that neighbors can do together. For instance,

• Has anyone started a barter network?

• Has anyone started a “lending library” of commonly used tools or machinery? Not every guy needs his own table saw every day; a group of neighbors might get together to buy such an item for the entire group and work out a scheme for sharing it.

• Are there any homeowners who have rented out space in their homes for storage? Are there any homeowners who have rented rooms to boarders? How is it working? Do you have any suggestions or tips?

• Have any neighborhoods gotten together to buy needed items in bulk, like food? What arrangements did you make? How is it working?

• What neighborhood ideas do you have that I haven't listed here?

If you read The Well Run Dry and you have a blog of your own, feel free to submit a blog article on this subject. Share your tips and practical wisdom. I will be hosting Festival #158, which will be published on 30 December, so you will have until the 29^th to get your blog entries in. To submit your entries, go to this page: http://www.festivaloffrugality.com/submission-guidelines. And feel free to check out this week's current Festival at the Naturally Frugal blog.

As for The Well Run Dry, my posting will be a bit light this next week. I am traveling to visit relatives over Christmas. I'll be driving, so three days of my time will be tied up. I may be able to get out another post by next Saturday, if time permits.

Depression Bicycling, Or How To Find Two Cheap Wheels

In my last post I described how I became a bicycle commuter, and the cost of the learning curve I experienced as I searched for what I consider to be the best and most reliable bicycle for a durable ride. My learning experience was pleasant and quite interesting for the most part, and I can remember the many hours I spent searching the Internet and doing research on the best type of bike for utilitarian transportation.

Such research and experimentation is almost always pleasant for those who have the time and money to engage in such activities. It is said that women enjoy shopping and men don't; however, I think that this statement is inaccurate. I believe that everyone enjoys shopping for things that are of personal interest. Thus one can find people who collect nice clothes and shoes, but one can also find people who collect hand tools, guns, books, guitars – and bicycles. (I never quite became a bicycle collector; I have bought only three bicycles since 2005, and have since sold one of them.)

I repeat: if one has the time, money and interest, researching and experimentation with various bicycles can be quite fun, and one can build up an impressive collection of complete bikes and spare components in the process of searching for the “dream” bike. But there is now a large and growing number of people for whom such a pursuit is entirely out of the question. These are the victims of the present slow-motion collapse of the American economy, people such as the employees of Circuit City, which recently filed for bankruptcy, or the employees of General Motors, which is on the deathwatch list right now, or employees of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut, which are cutting jobs. Such people are now awaking or have been awaking over the last several months to find that a new and unexpected day has dawned on them, and that they have to make rapid readjustments. Bike commuting can help such people save money, but they need reliable, cheap and readily available bikes if bicycle commuting is to be a help in readjusting to a frugal lifestyle.

There are resources to help people who want or need to get quickly into bicycling on the cheap. One resource near where I live is the Citybikes Workers' Cooperative, located very near the downtown area of Portland, Oregon. I had the opportunity to interview a couple of their staff today, and I asked the following question:

Let's assume that there has been a sudden reduction in the amount of oil imported by the United States, a sudden spike in the price of oil and of petroleum products such as gasoline, a sudden worsening of the economy (perhaps a full-on crash), and a sudden lack of availability of foreign-made metal and rubber parts. Assume that all of these events happen at the same time. Let's also say that you live ten or fifteen miles away from where you work, and you wake up one morning to find that all these things have happened, and you have over $10,000 in credit card debt, a mortgage, and a gas-guzzling SUV, and your boss calls you in to his office and tells you that your company needs to cut your hours in half. Assuming that one of your first ideas for coping is to commute by bicycle in order to save money, what could you do to get on two wheels cheaply?

Tim Calvert of Citybikes had many things to say in response to my question. He began by pointing out the central role played by the bicycle in everyday life in Cuba shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba was deprived of inexpensive imported oil. He also mentioned Vietnam and its bicycle industry – an industry which builds incredibly simple, yet hard-wearing utilitarian steel-framed bikes which are used by the majority of the population. He suggested that the bicycle “culture” of Cuba and Vietnam might become widespread in the United States in the event of an extended and severe economic downturn.

He had the following suggestions for people who suddenly found themselves in the situation I outlined in my original question:

First, there are two ways to go when buying a bike. One can buy a cheap new bike from Wal-Mart, Target, Fred Meyer or Sports Authority for as little as $150.00. Or, one can search for a good cheap used bike. There are many sources for used bikes, such as classified ads, garage sales, Goodwill, the Salvation Army and Craigslist. A desirable bike will have a simple frame and be capable of carrying heavy loads. In Tim's opinion, it doesn't matter much whether the frame is made of aluminum or steel, as long as a person in economic difficulty can get his or her hands on a functional bike.

However, there are bikes to avoid. Tim warned against getting a bike with a suspension fork or any suspension components, since on an inexpensive bike, such components tend to break easily. Moreover, the suspension components make it hard to mount racks or baskets to the bike. Also, lightweight racers are a no-no (especially the carbon-fiber kind), since the act of riding such bikes day-in and day-out while carrying loads will quickly tear them up. The basic strategy, no matter what bike a person gets, is to get whatever you can with the limited amount of time and money you have, then simplify it.

When buying a used bike, invest in yourself as well. Specifically, learn basic maintenance up to and including the fixing of broken wheel spokes. The more a rider knows how to do for himself and the more he knows how to improvise, the less he will have to spend paying someone to fix his ride. Riders who learn maintenance should also invest in a handy set of tools. And speaking of wheels, one should get the strongest wheel and hub he or she can find, and the thickest tires. Thick tires may not be the favorites of the wanna-be racers, but in the event of severe economic troubles, rubber products may be quite scarce and thick tires will last a long time. (I remember a recent ride I undertook with a few people who had racing bikes and thin tires. They were easily able to go quite a bit faster than I could on my Surly LHT. But two of them got pinch flats during that ride, whereas I haven't had a flat in a few months (may the Lord continue to have mercy on me).) There are other tricks that can extend tire life, such as cutting the treaded middle from a tire that's worn out and using it as a liner inside a new tire. This increases the life of the new tire and reduces the likelihood of flats.

Baskets are good and handy, and can carry more cargo than most pannier bags. (I personally have seen many bikes equipped with plastic milk crates used as baskets and secured to bike racks with bungee cords or zip ties.) In a severe pinch, improvised racks can be made from a variety of materials, including wood and rope, if the need arises. Improvised bike trailers can also be easily fabricated.

But let's say that a person still has a job, yet has suddenly become aware of the precarious state of the economy and wants to prepare for hard times. Let's say also that bicycle commuting is a big part of that person's preparations, and that the person is willing to spend up to $500 toward getting a good set of wheels. Tim also had suggestions for persons in this category: first, get a bike that's comfortable and as strong as possible. A used steel non-suspension mountain bike is a good choice. Then equip it with fenders, racks and baskets. Next, buy tools and a good floor pump.

The last thing that Tim mentioned is that the homeless population in Portland (a significant portion of the total city population) is on the cutting edge when it comes to using bicycles as basic utilitarian transportation. They are the ones who display great inventiveness in building their own trailers, outfitting their bikes for comfortable long-distance journeys and hauling heavy cargoes by bike. One thing they don't do is to carry the small “portable” lightweight bike pumps sold in many shops, preferring to carry full floor pumps instead.

I talked next with John, another Citybikes co-op worker. His answers to my original question closely paralleled Tim's answers. He agreed that a person in sudden economic distress would do best by buying a used bike, especially if such a person did his own maintenance. He believed that in a sudden economic downturn, there would be shortages of tires and tubes, scrounging of used parts to make up for the unavailability of foreign-made new parts, the increased use of patched tubes and tires rather than throwing punctured tubes and tires away as is the case now, and an increase in the number of people who were interested in learning basic bike maintenance. A big part of bike maintenance of course is keeping one's bike out of the weather when it is not being ridden, and keeping its parts clean and well-oiled.

He also believed that a major economic downturn would hurt big manufacturers such as Giant and Trek, due to the fact that so many of their bikes are made overseas and shipped to the U.S. The failure of their business model would lead to the rise of more small-scale local American manufacturers. There are already some American manufacturers of components, whose products, while expensive, are very durable.

When it comes to frame materials, John believed firmly in steel, since it is much simpler to build a frame from steel tubing than from aluminum or carbon fiber. John had a very negative view of carbon-fiber components and carbon-fiber bikes, believing that such bikes cannot stand up to the rigors of daily use as utilitarian bicycles – especially if they must regularly carry large loads. (After my experience with a carbon-fiber seatpost, I must say that I agree with him.)

John agreed with Tim that a bike for hard times should be as simple as possible. This rules out disc brakes in his opinion, since they are expensive to fix and the brake rotors can be easily damaged. A good cantilever or linear pull brake is much simpler and more reliable. Also, friction shifters are simple, easy to fix and very long-lasting, as opposed to the expensive clicking “index” shifters popular nowadays. For night riding, a generator-powered set of lights would be ideal, as there would not be a need to purchase batteries. The generator for such a lighting system could be an inexpensive, tire-driven “bottle” type, such as the Busch & Muller Dymotec or something similar.

Like Tim, John also mentioned various inventive ways of setting up a bike to carry things, and he mentioned racks and homemade bike trailers. Citybikes also sells a product they call the “Bike Bucket,” a pannier container made out of a recycled detergent bucket. One can buy a Bike Bucket for $25 from them, as opposed to spending $75 to $100 for an Ortlieb pannier bag. Or, one can buy a used 5-gallon bucket and some hardware and make a “Bike Bucket” oneself.

John also had ideas for those who saw an economic collapse coming before it actually happened and who wanted to buy a bicycle as part of their preparations. He suggested that such people buy a steel-framed bike with cantilever brakes, double-walled heavy-duty aluminum rims, rear rack, and a seven or eight-speed rear cassette for those wanting a multi-speed bike. He did not recommend more than eight speeds for the rear cassette, since too many gears would make the drive train more fragile. He also suggested that such a bike be fitted with basic Shimano components, since if something broke, it would be easier to scrounge for a replacement. One bike that we both discussed is the KHS Urban-X, a steel-framed bike with many touring-specific features that is also quite inexpensive.

Both Tim and John provided very good advice for people who suddenly find themselves facing hard economic times and who choose bicycle commuting as part of their strategy for adaptation. One key that was common to the advice of both men is to get a simple, durable bike, and to stay away from lightweight, complicated racing machines. Unfortunately, the light/fast/racing culture is prevalent among many sellers of bicycles in the United States. I shall have more to say about this in my next post, where I discuss hindrances to bicycle commuting.

Hopefully my question and the answers that were given will be helpful to many people who are being forced to consider adaptive strategies for their own personal hard times. Below are some pictures from the interview. Enjoy!

Rear view of a "Bike Bucket"

A stack of "Bike Buckets" for sale

Here, John is refurbishing a used 1980's vintage Specialized steel mountain bike.

This is a picture of Tim next to his bicycle. He bought it used and customized it to fit his style of commuting. Note the "Bike Bucket" attached to the rear rack on the right side of the bike.