Tools vs. Machines

I'd like to expand one idea I alluded to in the Death of Tyranny, that the Industrial Age was brought about by making mechanical slaves.  In my language of patterns, the difference between a tool and a machine is that a tool helps you do something while a machine does it for you.  The distinction isn't always clear cut; in between scythes and lawn-mowing robots, you have the options of reel mowers, push mowers, self-propelled mowers, riding lawn mowers, and lawn tractors (not to mention cows, sheep, rabbits, ducks, etc.) for getting your grass trimmed.  While there are important philosophical reasons not to even have machines as slaves (especially Cylons), today I am more concerned with the practical side.

One rumor I have heard from the very early days of industrial automation (circa the 1950s), they had to make a choice between analog and digital robots.  Analog robots were cheaper to produce, easier to maintain, worked faster, required less power, were far easier to modify, and did much more precise work.  Digital robots only had a single advantage: they didn't require an full-time operator.  In other words, analog robots were tools, digital robots were machines.  I think we all know which choice they made.

Nor is this question just a matter of history.  I love what Marcin Jakubowski is trying to do over at Factor-E Farm.  I truly wish him the best of luck in completing his Global Village Construction Set.  Honestly I think what he is doing there is the best chance of maintaining a high level of technology as we move off Hubbert's Mesa.  I just hope he has the time to complete it.  If you look at his Compressed Earth Block Press, you will clearly see it is a machine.  Just give it power and dirt and it will spit out blocks for you.  Contrast that with the Auram CSEB Press.  It is completely human powered.  There are no fancy hydraulics or gears or belts to break down.  It is basically just a box with a giant lever.  The GVCS Press will clearly win on a per person or per machine basis over the Auram one.  But there is much less that can go wrong with the Auram.

On the Long Ascent, machines can be useful, but good tools are essential.

Human Potential

As I've said before, investing in yourself is one of the ultimate forms of savings.  There is quite a large body of literature about self-improvement, of which I have read quite a bit.  I'm going to share with you some of my favorites.  Before I do that, however, I would like to turn it on its head.  Improving yourself certainly is in your own self-interest.  As we come off Hubbert's Mesa, we will not be able to rely on machines as much as we have.  Necessarily we will have to rely on ourselves more.  Making sure that everyone is living up to their full potential is the best way to resist collapse.

Now for my short list of the books I've found most helpful in improving myself:

• Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz

This is the second self-help book I ever read, and the first I ever read deliberately. When my family went on a six-week long car trip the summer after sixth grade, I didn't think to bring anything to read. All I could find in our travel trailer was "Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About Energy but Were Too Weak to Ask" by Naura Hayden. This book was at the top of her list.

Back then cybernetics was still a relatively unknown word, and even to this day I'm not sure how many people understand that it is the science of goal-seeking. The basic point of this book is that we all have goal-seeking mechanisms in our psyches, but they are below our conscious awareness and beyond our direct conscious control. This book is about reprogramming ourselves by changing our self-image.


• Getting Things Done / Making It All Work by David Allen

There are a multitude of "time management" books out there. In my opinion these are simply the best. What he describes is not a single system but rather the characteristics of successful systems. Getting Things Done is the simple how-to guide and is more appropriate for people looking for steps to follow. Making It All Work is the follow up that provides a more conceptual framework for people looking to design or tweak their own system.


• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

This is the fundamental guide for creating value. Once you get the central theme, it can get a little repetitive, but that's to make sure that you do get the central theme. One of the important things that distinguishes this book from other books on getting rich is that it is completely independent of monetary and political systems. Even if you are just living with one other person on a deserted island, the concepts in this book will serve you well.


• The NIV Student Bible [Zondervan]

I think this is the latest version of the Bible we used when I took a two-year Bible study through CCO. I've looked at a lot of different editions of the Bible. The NIV translation is the one I've found easiest to read. In addition, I found the commentaries in the Student Bible were the most accessible to me when I was just starting out.

I've found these to be the most useful books on developing human potential, and I hope you find them useful as well on the Long Ascent.

A Multitude of Rs

Back in a simpler age, education was concerned with the three Rs: reading, 'riting, and 'rithmatic.  (Obviously, they weren't so concerned with spelling back then.)  The environmental movement came up with its own version of the 3 Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle.  It is a catchy phrase, but it has become trite.  People rarely think about what it actually means.  We need to carefully reconsider those 3, but in addition, I think several more are worth adding to that list.

• Refuse

If someone tries to give you something you don't want, refuse it. Even something as simple as refusing a glass of water saves the several glasses worth of water and a little soap required to wash it.


• Rethink

Before you consume something new, ask yourself if you really need it or if something else would work as well. A hyper-mileage car may be a good thing, but if you can do without any car, that is far better.


• Reduce

If you do need to use something, see if you can use less of it.


• Rent

If you are only going to use something occasionally, consider renting it. If you only have one week of vacation a year, why own a vacation home or even an RV when you can rent one instead?


• Refill

Not so long ago, when drinks came in glass bottles, it was possible to get them refilled. You still do have the option to fill your own cup with coffee and fountain drinks at many coffee houses and convenience stores.


• Reuse

Refilling bottles is an obvious way to reuse things, but other things can be used over and over even if they are normally thrown away after one use.


• Repair

Usually things don't wear out all at once. As stuff becomes more costly to produce, if something is mostly working, fixing a small broken piece becomes more worthwhile.


• Renew / Restore

Eventually things will wear down or age. When it is something that represents a major investment of materials and energy, like a house, it can be worthwhile to make it like new again.


• Return

One of the problems with being a conservationist in a consumer society is that for many of these options, there are no economies of scale for the end user.  If we were to start returning stuff we have used up to where we bought it, they would have more incentive to deal with it properly.


• Repurpose

This is basically reusing stuff, except it is for a different purpose than the original -- for example, using chopsticks for plant stakes.


• Redesign

Once consumers start returning things they have used, companies will want to rethink how they make things.  Some examples are making things that are easy to disassemble or using standard parts that can be reused if they are still good.


• Recycle

Breaking things down into their constituent materials and reusing them is not a bad option, but it is usually the last that should be considered.  Considerable time and energy has to be expended doing this -- granted, it still usually takes less than starting with virgin materials, but other options are better.


• Regenerate

This is the ultimate goal.  Sustainability sounds like a good idea, but it is not enough.  All the other Rs help minimize the damage we do and keep things going as long as we can, but there is a limit to how much of that we can do.  Focusing on regenerating our resources and world we have degraded is what will propel us upward on the Long Ascent.

Time Order of Needs

Many financial planners say you must distinguish between "needs" and "wants" when deciding what expenses are most important.

Survivalists have a "Rule of 3" for setting priorities:

• You can survive about 3 minutes without oxygen.
• You can survive about 3 hours in extreme temperatures.
• You can survive about 3 days without water.
• You can survive about 3 weeks without food.

These correspond roughly to the physiological level of Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs".  Sleep is another physiological need, but it doesn't fit nicely in to the above, in part because those are external.  As some point your body will likely force you to sleep; you just better not be operating heavy machinery at that time.  Some people list clothing, but that is tied in with extreme temperatures.  Sex is another physiological need, not so much for the individual as for the species.  3 decades without sex would be disastrous for the human race.

I left out the last rule of 3:

• You can survive about 3 months without companionship.  

This is a psychological need.  It is a need nonetheless, but despite the rule people can vary greatly in how long they can go without it.  Maslow categorizes psychological needs into four levels, in order: safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.  His theory is that you need to fulfill one level before you start to satisfy the next, starting with the physiological.  One problem is this theory does not explain such conditions as anorexia nervosa, where a physical need is denied to fulfill a psychological need.  Another important criticism is that Maslow's hierarchy is culturally biased.

This brings me to where I disagree with financial planners and why this entry is not titled "Needs vs. Wants".  Except for the physiological/psychological distinction, these really are the same kinds of things. "Need vs. want" is just a matter of degree.  In the long run, any system which does not fulfill all of these is incomplete.

While a strict hierarchy does not explain things well, putting our psychological needs in some kind of order does make sense.  I think it a worthy exercise to extend the analysis that is simple with physical needs, namely how long can people survive with those needs unmet?  Quite frankly, I don't have these answers.

What I do know is that making sure all our needs are met, starting with the most urgent, is critical to not losing our way or falling down on the Long Ascent.

Expense vs. Expenditure

In common everyday usage, expense and expenditure are used synonymously.  Even some accountants use them interchangeably.  In the United States tax code, there is a subtle but important difference.  No, even though one of my careers is a professional tax preparer, I am not turning this blog into a detailed discussion of taxes.  However, the distinction between expense and expenditure is a critical one for any discussion of sustainable economics, especially from the top of Hubbert's Mesa.

To put it simply, an expense is spending money for something which you completely benefit from in the current year; an expenditure is spending money for something which you benefit from for multiple years.  For example, your car is an expenditure (or at least I hope if you're reading this blog, you're not buying a new car every year!), the gasoline to fill it is an expense.

Where this distinction relates to sustainability and Peak Oil is that it doesn't just apply to money.  For those purposes, though, one year is very arbitrary; it probably should be expanded.   For example, making concrete takes a tremendous amount of energy, invariably from fossil fuels these days.  If you make concrete objects so that they are only put to one use and then discarded, that represents a substantial energy expense.  On the other hand, concrete objects that are designed to be reused over and over are an expenditure that can pay dividends for centuries.

We need to carefully analyze whether the resources we use are expenses or expenditures, because on the Long Ascent, expenses weigh us down, but expenditures are what allow us to go higher.

No More Problems

One thing you will find over the coming weeks, if you haven't seen it already, is that I am a very much in favor of making careful distinctions.  One distinction John Michael Greer emphasizes is between problems and predicaments: problems have a solution; predicaments do not.  That distinction I am not so happy with.

Don't get me wrong, I think it is very useful to distinguish between things that can be solved and things that cannot.  My issue is with the connotations of the words he uses.  If you have math homework and you say you have 5 problems to solve, I have no problem with that.  Most of the time, though, both the words problem and predicament are very negative.  After reading Napoleon Hill, I came to the conclusion:


THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS, only opportunities.


Or to put it more humorously,


Opportunity knocks often.  Most people don't answer because it comes disguised as a problem.


Now, I have come to realize this isn't entirely true.  There are problems that are not opportunities, but they only happen when people are oblivious to them.  As soon as you recognize something is a problem, it becomes an opportunity to make a change and make things better.

Similarly, things we cannot change I prefer to call parameters, rather than predicaments.  We need to plan for things like mortality.  Fighting them makes no sense.

The language of opportunities and parameters will serve us well as we make the Long Ascent.

Class vs. Income

Recently in the United States there has been much talk about class warfare.  As disturbing as the concept is, I am more concerned about a fundamental distinction that has been lost in modern America: the difference between class and income.

This is due in large part to the success of the US in allowing people to change their circumstances.  Class used to have a far different meaning.  When you were born into the slave class in nineteenth century America, not only did you remain a slave for the rest of your life, but your children were similarly condemned.  If you were born into the aristocracy in sixteenth century England, you remained an aristocrat, no matter how much a fool or scoundrel you were.

These class distinctions were maintained by law, and thanks to the struggles of those who came before us, they are largely gone.  The term "middle class" still exists, but the way it is used now, people only mean "middle income", between "rich" and "poor".  The distinction between them is rather arbitrary; for example, "the poor" are those who earn less than the "poverty level".  This arbitrariness makes it easy to go from rich to poor and possible to go from poor to rich.

Even though we don't have the same kind of legally enforced class system as in the past, I think it is still a useful concept.  We still have mental and cultural barriers that keep people in their same circumstances.  I define the middle class as those who work for a living; the lower class does not work, and the upper class has others work for them.  As a further gradation, the upper middle class work for themselves, and the lower middle class work for someone else.  This is a completely separate dimension from wealth and poverty; each class has rich and poor members.  The importance is that members within each class have more interests in common than they do with people of equal income in other classes.  For example, the lower middle class still has to show up for work every day, whether they are flipping burgers or starring in movies.

It is important to understand that no class is better than the other.  All are necessary, or at least unavoidable.  (Even if we work until the day we die, no one works from the day they are born.)  Each class requires different strengths.  We just need to think clearly about our circumstances.

If you are confused about which class you fit in, you can easily get lost on the Long Ascent.