I subscribe to a magazine called "The New Scientist" which has a cover article this week about the collapse of civilization.

It's dry, scientific and not at all the typical TEOTWAWKI stuff. It proposes a direct connection between "just in time" modern capitalism, the fundamental difference between a "network economy" and the older hierarchical, or vertical economy. Some of the ideas included the idea that the "obsolete" model of holding inventory and the inefficiencies therein are actually very important.

There was a simple statement in the article which got my undivided attention - "There are products in the world that are only made in a single factory".

In the end, it's described as a lack of energy (as in sources of) and an overwhelming level of complex interdependencies that leads to the collapse of civilizations. It's interesting to me that the locally autonomous economy simply doesn't exist at all, anywhere, except in the most desperately poor parts of the world where susinence farmers eke out a living off the land. If I were to look at even a small almost-city of, say 70,000 homes, there's no way that city could really function as an autonomous unit, feeding, housing and clothing itself, much less supplying the energy needed for that number of people, without global commerce.

Anyway, I have nothing really to say other than I hope that my kids are smart, resourceful and good with a gun, because the next 100 years look really nasty.