Jason Hartman plays a Flash Back Friday Episode, where he interviews James Howard Kuntsler, author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. He discusses this book along with his most famous book, The Geography of Nowhere. He explains the decline of oil production as a result of the industrialized society ending. Further, he looks at the shift into smaller-scale, more localized, agrarian communities.
Announcer 0:00
Welcome to this week’s edition of flashback Friday, your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason has hand picked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy.
Announcer 0:14
Welcome to the holistic survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The holistic survival show is your family’s insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. sudden change or worst case scenario. You’ll be ready. Welcome to ballistic survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host Jason Hartman.
Jason Hartman 1:03
Welcome to the holistic survival show. This is your host, Jason Hartman, where we talk about protecting the people, places and profits you care about in these uncertain times. We have a great interview for you today. And we will be back with that in less than 60 seconds on the holistic survival show. And by the way, be sure to visit our website at holistic survival calm, you can subscribe to our blog, which is totally free, has loads of great information. And there’s just a lot of good content for you on the site. So make sure you take advantage of that at holistic survival calm We’ll be right back. It’s my pleasure to welcome James Howard Kunstler to the show. I have been a fan of his work for several years now. And he publishes a lot of interesting stuff. He has a weekly blog podcast, many books, and I originally found him when he had his book out entitled The long emergencies surviving the end of oil climate change, and other converging catastrophes of the 21st century. It’s a pleasure to have him with us on the show today. James, welcome. How are you? I’m fine. It’s a beautiful day in upstate New York. Well, fantastic. Give us a little bit of your background, you are making some, some pretty big van dire predictions, if I may say and just wanted to kind of dive into your work and, and what your latest thoughts are,
James Howard Kunstler 2:19
oh, gee, I didn’t you know, it’s funny because I don’t consider them dire. I’m really I’m a journalist. I’m an author. I you know, I don’t pretend to be an academic. I published a number of books on the fiasco of suburbia. Back in, you know, 20 years ago, I started that series and about urban design because I was interested in you know, why the human habitat in America was just so unrewarding and so, so lacking in in grace and, and amenity and so I wrote the geography of nowhere and then I published home from nowhere a sequel, which was kind of about the new urbanist movement and some of the remedies For Bad, bad Town Planning and bad architecture, and then I wrote a book about this about called the city in mind about cities. And then in 2005, I published a lung emergency. And that was about this, you know, what was developing to be a set of predicaments that the human race faced, and America in particular, because of our lifestyle and the way we do things, and so, you know, what I predicted was, we were going to get into trouble with oil. And we were going to get into trouble with finance. And indeed, we’ve gotten into trouble with both of them, and also that we would get into trouble with something else that that has now become an especial problem in America, which is delusional thinking. And I think the reason for that is that as a society becomes distressed, the wishful thinking and belief in magic and and, and the supernatural kind of increases added fact I wrote another book published in 2012 called too much magic, wish, technology, wishful thinking and the fate of the nation. And it was largely about how we were trying to tell ourselves that shale oil and shale gas would allow us to keep driving to Walmart forever. And I just don’t think it’s going to work out that way. So I hope that’s not too much information.
Jason Hartman 4:23
Yeah. What No, that’s that’s great. Because one of the areas where I was going to pick a debate with you, if you will, is on shale oil and how the US seemingly to me correct me if I’m wrong, but is slated to be the next big energy exporter if our government will let it happen.
James Howard Kunstler 4:40
It’s complete nonsense. Okay, don’t tell me more. Yeah, well, when we’re not gonna, that’s not gonna happen. The shale oil enterprise is going to be proved to be very ephemeral. And the way I would encourage your listeners to think about it is in the following way. We had many, many decades. cheap oil. And that’s pretty much what made the the current version of the American economy or at least the most recent version of the American economy, what it was. Absolutely.
Jason Hartman 5:09
Now before you go on, I just want you to maybe define cheap oil a little bit. I mean, how much per barrel in and you can cite real or nominal dollars, but just tell us which one we’re talking about. You know, does that mean
James Howard Kunstler 5:23
to me that that in today’s dollars, it probably means oil under $35 a barrel? And and we stopped seeing that in really, the early 2000s ease? we’re nowhere near that. Yeah. I mean, we we briefly touched it, you know, during the crash of 2008 when the price of commodities crashed, but that was only a very brief thing. And you know, oil has basically been in the 75 to $110 range since then. Right, right. Okay, go on. Well, so the way to think about it is this, you know, we had this era of cheap oil and you Compare a Texas classic Texas oil well, of the mid 20th century to a shale oil. Well, classic Texas oil well East Texas 1930s. It costs about $400,000. In today’s money to drill, it produced thousands of barrels a day for decades of tremendously high flow, tremendously cheap to produce, easy to work with room temperature, you could drive to work, didn’t have to worry about, you know, being up in the Arctic Ocean or anything very easy to go there. Okay, North Dakota. The average well in North Dakota costs between six and $12 million in today’s dollars. The average flow of the BOC in North Dakota. shale oil is about 80 barrels a day. That’s compared to thousands of barrels a day in Texas, okay. 80 barrels a day. It loses it depletes by all Over 50%, the first year and over 20%, the second year. So unlike the Texas oil that produces for decades at high rates, the Bakken Shale oil craps out after a few years. And that’s what you’re going to see. And you’re also going to see something else, you’re going to see that the capital is not there to do the production. Because one of the problems with expensive oil is that it impairs capital formation in the kind of financial system that has that we have evolved into. And the capital is not going to be there to perform these expensive operations to get the shale oil out of the ground. So not only is it going to deplete very quickly, but we’re going to find that we don’t have the money even to pursue it after a certain point. So I think that what you’re going to see is that this is a delusion that the the media has been suckered into this story by the oil industry which is death. To get as much investment as possible to keep up doing what they’re doing, because they got nowhere else to go, most of the other places where they did business where they did oil exploration and production in foreign countries, that oil has been nationalized. And they’re so they can’t go there anymore. The only thing that’s left for them is is the dregs of what’s in North America. So that’s what you’re seeing what you know, what’s going to happen with shale oil is the the American people are going to be hugely disappointed, and they’re going to feel that they were allied to this will be just another thing that they will have been lied to about. And it will be just another thing that will erode the legitimacy and the authority of the people who run things in this country. And that’s a very dangerous thing to do politically.
Jason Hartman 8:47
Well, hey, I don’t think there’s much legitimacy and authority for people who run things anymore. Whether it be at the highest levels of government or the financial system still running.
James Howard Kunstler 8:57
They’re still running their stuff, fair
Jason Hartman 8:59
enough. There hasn’t been a revolution
James Howard Kunstler 9:02
going on. So reading that shows is that all that shows that we haven’t reached the tipping point of people really being disgusted with it.
Jason Hartman 9:12
Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. And they should be more disgusted, no question about it. But we’ve, we’ve got this complacent society, we’ve got the bread and circuses, we’ve got enough comfort and food stamps to keep people fat and stupid, and it’s just ridiculous. But that’s almost another discussion, which I know you’ll have something to say about. So it’s fair to say then that you’re, you’re a peak oil guy, right?
James Howard Kunstler 9:33
Yeah. And Peak Oil is not yesterday’s story, contrary to a lot of the other propaganda out there. It’s still it’s still with us very much with us.
Jason Hartman 9:42
Okay. And what about natural gas?
James Howard Kunstler 9:44
Yeah, well, natural gas is a very similar story. There’s, there’s kind of a myth going around that we have 100 years of shale gas 100 years of natural gas and, you know, it’s just not gonna happen. We produce a lot of it in a short amount of time. We drilled a lot of wells Since 2007 2008, and we drove the price down and and by the way, a lot of that those drilling rigs have now gone to the shale oil plays. So they’re not there anymore, the price of shale gas will probably be going up, that will help the producers because at the current price, they can’t actually make a profit drilling for shale gas at three and a half dollars a unit. So that’s just another thing that’s going to end up disappointing the American people that, you know, we don’t have enough shale gas to keep on running Walmart forever.
Jason Hartman 10:33
Right. Right. And when What about alternative energy? I mean, do you have any hope that there’s something that works out there or that anything we have now works or something? Well,
James Howard Kunstler 10:44
there are a lot of work, but they don’t they don’t work in the way that people expect. And this is this is another rather tragic problem is that we’re going to be disappointed by what renewables and alternative energy can do for us. You know, they can they can do things, but we’re not going to run the interstate highway system while Disney World suburbia, Walmart, the US Army, and all of our other stuff on any combination of solar wind, algae secretions, ethanol, biomass, dark matter, you know, it’s just not going to happen. And it’s going to be another one of those things that will disappoint people about technology. And, you know, all these things that I’m saying, are not, they don’t amount to an invitation to be depressed and become suicidal. The message here is that we got to change our behavior. We have to live differently in this country. This question that you asked me about, you know, what about alternative energy? Well, the subtext to that which your listeners did not hear because you did not state it is, is and I don’t even know if you if you thought this but but it’s really in there. The subtext is, how can we keep on running all the stuff If we’re running now by other means, and the answer is we’re not
Jason Hartman 12:03
we and we should end in your near mind we shouldn’t we should we should run less. Right? Yeah.
James Howard Kunstler 12:08
Well, that’s because in my mind, you know, I’m interested in reality I like to live in a reality based world rather than wishful thinking based world. And reality has plans for us and and what reality wants us to do is find some new ways to live and to change the way we operate. Many of the basic systems for daily life, including agriculture, we got got to do that differently. The way we do commerce and trade, we got to do that differently. The way we make our household goods, got to do that differently. The way we do transportation, we’re definitely gonna have to do that differently.
Jason Hartman 12:45
Well, that’s great statement. So drill down on those if you would, those bullet points you just mentioned, how should we do them different? Well,
James Howard Kunstler 12:52
let’s start with transportation because, you know, the automobile is behind a lot of our desperation, right. You know, having Built a society that is tragically dependent on automobiles for everything we do every day. You know, we can’t imagine what what might happen if we if we can’t do that. And I think the truth is we won’t be able to run our cars the way we have been probably in a very short time. The same thing is true. By the way, the airlines, I think the airlines are going to go out of business, they’re already kind of in the process of dwindling. They’ve been doing it by increments and and by, you know, merging and by dropping routes, and by firing everybody, they could fire and eliminating the pensions of their former employees, etc, etc. They’ve done everything they can now and the only thing that’s left for them to do is to fly fewer routes and fly fewer passengers and that’s what’s happening now. So basically, we’re gonna lose the passenger airline system, and we’re gonna we’re gonna see the happy motoring system dwindle. What do we do? Well, one of the things we ought to do that we should have started doing three decades ago was rebuilding the railroad system in America, we’re gonna need it desperately, nobody’s interested in doing it. And that includes most members of the public and most leaders, including leaders in business and politics. Nobody sees any benefit. But I’m telling you, you know, if we don’t do that, we’re going to be in terrible trouble, we’re not going to be able to go anywhere in this very large country. So that’s, that’s one project that’s terribly important. And the reason I mentioned it first is that it’s something that we could do if we just had the political will to do it. And and if we did do it, we would accomplish something very important. And on top of accomplishing something important, we would, we would set an example for ourselves, to demonstrate to ourselves that we were capable of doing the other things that we have to attend to, you know, we’re going to have to reform agriculture because we can’t just keep on turning oil into food. You know, we were going to have to Make agriculture smaller, finer, more local, we’re gonna have to grow our food closer to home on smaller farms, probably using more human labor, probably using more animal labor. You know, we’re making no plans for these things. In the meantime, you know, we’re destroying the soil. And we’re, we’re running out of capital because the other big input for industrial agriculture after oil based fertilizer, or oil and gas based fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, and the biggest input is capital. You have to borrow a lot of money to get the crop in every year and we’re moving into a capital scarce economy. So and I think that the way these things are gonna work out will surprise people. For example, the whole motoring thing does not just hinge on the price of gasoline. A lot of people you know, that’s the only metric they can understand this. with, you know, is is the price of gasoline up at the pump. pours it down at the pump. Well guess what? When you enter a, a period of capital scarcity, what that means also, is that there going to be far fewer car loans available, and far fewer people who qualify for them, right?
Jason Hartman 16:13
So the cost of ownership goes up a lot. Well,
James Howard Kunstler 16:17
it’s not that a cut goes up is that the fewer people can afford it, whatever the price, right, right.
Jason Hartman 16:22
Yeah, but but but most people buy a car on a payment, not the price of the car. So even if the price of the car drops, but the cost of financing or the unavailability of financing with financing scares, the the, the little that’s out there will be more expensive.
James Howard Kunstler 16:36
Well, the point is that they have to buy the cars on installment loans period. And and and if the money for loans is scarcer, and if if fewer people qualify, there will be fewer people participating in the motoring system. And, you know, you can say the same thing about maintaining the infrastructure for motoring because we’re seeing already that states and municipalities and counties are going broke, the Capitol is not there and and we’re going to enter a period of triage, where we have to make very difficult decisions about what stuff we fix and what stuff we don’t fix.
Jason Hartman 17:13
Okay, so I know I’ve got so many questions for you. This is so fascinating. So first of all, I mean you’ve been very critical of suburbia and I know the reasons why the you know the car into the dependency in the car just the whole equation doesn’t
James Howard Kunstler 17:27
also admit you know, it’s generally a miserable place to live.
Jason Hartman 17:31
Yeah, but now why is it miserable because there’s not enough to do because all the houses are cookie cutter or Why do you say that?
James Howard Kunstler 17:36
That’s part of it because it’s it’s it’s monotonous to an unbelievable extreme. And but it also it has no connection at all. With the things that make life rewarding. It has no connection to amenity, other than having a lot of bathrooms in proximity
Jason Hartman 17:54
to where you live. Okay, so what kind of amenity like culture, performing arts
James Howard Kunstler 18:01
Culture, commerce. social interaction. I was in irvine california.
Jason Hartman 18:07
Yeah. Oh God I yeah, I think that’s that’s the prime example. You know, I spent most of my adult life in Irvine and I used to love it and now
James Howard Kunstler 18:14
I hate it. Well, yeah, I you know, I I was just amazed at how dead every place was that I went to, except for the strip mall.
Jason Hartman 18:23
James, I’m gonna tell you something funny about that. You know, I sold real estate there for many, many years. Okay. And in Irvine, it frequently rent wins the FBI crime ranking for one of the safest cities in America over the only thing that we hang on you, you’re gonna like what I have to say. So you know what frequently wins this and a couple of years ago when it wanted again, I posted on my Facebook I said, Here we go again, Irvine wins the safest city in America. So at least we know if we live there, we’ll probably never die. The only problem is we may never live because it’s so boring. Yeah, no, I agree.
James Howard Kunstler 19:00
That’s just this stupid metric. You know, it’s just such a one dimensional stupid way of understanding the human habitat.
Jason Hartman 19:06
I know. But if you talk to the typical, like, family person there, and I’m single, so I hated it. But you know, you talk to the typical, like family person there with 2.2 kids and a dog and a couple, you know, they seem to like it pretty well. I don’t know.
James Howard Kunstler 19:22
Well, that may be what they would tell you superficially, but I think if you dug a little bit deeper, you’d find that, you know, they’re spending half their day in the car, that they rarely see people be anybody Besides, they go in and out
Jason Hartman 19:33
of the garage. I know, you know,
James Howard Kunstler 19:35
and, and that, in fact, there’s a tremendous amount of on way boredom, anime, purposelessness, and, and, you know, just plain depression.
Jason Hartman 19:45
Well, it’s like the show Desperate Housewives. You know, that’s sort of a metaphor for it. So who do you think is doing it right or is anybody doing it right? Like is Europe doing it right with the cafe culture and the high densities inner city corners?
James Howard Kunstler 19:59
We’re talking strictly about about the human habitat, right? Yeah. Well, there’s no question that, you know, anybody who has gone to Europe, anybody who spent any time in France or Italy or Spain or Denmark, you know, or other places, there’s no question that their towns and cities are just better than anything in America by orders of magnitude, just the richness and rewarding quality of these places. You know, they have problems with their economy, oh, with their economy. They have problems that are every bit as complex as ours, but at least they didn’t screw up their towns and their cities.
Jason Hartman 20:38
Yeah, well, they bought them a long time ago when they did the car and the cheap oil. And so so America was afflicted with a different point in time.
James Howard Kunstler 20:47
That’s true. And and, you know, I think that what that points to is, you know, a certain theory of history that I subscribe to, which is that societies do things because they seem like a good idea to The time and you know, American society did what it did in the mid 20th century, we made the choices that we made, because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Now the catch is that life is tragic. And sometimes groups and societies make bad choices. And then you’re stuck with the consequences. So, you know, what seemed like a good idea at the time, is now a banquet of consequences that we have to feast that rather on happily.
Jason Hartman 21:25
And so who, like I get, I get the picture of suburbia, and kind of like, Who’s to blame for that. It’s just sort of history and the way we made choices at the time. But when you when you look at all of this overall, and all of these challenges that we face, and we haven’t even jumped into the monetary policy side of things, which I really would like to cover that with you as well, but because you have some interesting thoughts on it, but who’s to blame? I mean, is it is it this sort of fake prosperity is it getting off the gold standard back in 71, and expanding the money supply And, and you know, I look at it as like this just smoke and mirrors economy in which we live it’s a joke. It’s just a it’s really a Ponzi scheme.
James Howard Kunstler 22:07
Well we’re trying to offset our inability to create more wealth or to form capital with really a banking system and a financial system and it’s based on accounting fraud and, and interventions and manipulations. And the people behind it at the Federal Reserve and, and probably even the Wall Street banks are not necessarily evil guys twirling their mustaches, you know, they’re human beings with families and feelings like everybody else, but you know, they’re doing something which is a tragic thing. You know, they’re they’re trying to replace an economy that is in the process of contracting with tricks, and it’s not gonna it’s going to end up producing a lot of hardship and a lot of misery.
Jason Hartman 22:55
two books I want to ask you about, man, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with him, but I I get really negative on on the future a lot for many good reasons, I think. But then I kind of turn a little bit after I read a book like abundance by Peter Diamandis, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that when I had Steven Kotler his co author on the show, and gosh, you know, it’s like, there’s so many today’s technology, the basic premise is, is technical. Will technology save us from ourselves? You know, maybe it will?
James Howard Kunstler 23:24
That’s not my opinion. You know, I think I think that we’re investing too much hope and too much wishing that, that some mythical, they, in quotes, we’ll quote, come up with a set of rescue remedies that will allow us to keep driving to Walmart forever. You know, that’s sort of the master wish, in America these days to keep on driving to Walmart forever. And the American
Jason Hartman 23:50
mentality more is more instead of less is more, you know, yeah.
James Howard Kunstler 23:55
That’s the master wish. I think that the fact of the matter is that The money’s not gonna be there. And we’re in a comprehensively contracting economy. And we have to the biggest task that we face, that is kind of a comprehensive task is managing contraction. It’s very, very difficult because, you know, so many of the mechanisms of our economy and culture that we have dependent on, just don’t work in a in the context of contraction, like credit issuance, and and the repayment of debt does not work in a contracting economy. And so we have to find some other way to do our stuff, you know, in the old days, you know, let’s say in the 19th century, a lot more business was done on the basis of money that had already been saved, not just on loans. You know, people started started corporations with With capital that had been saved up by people, you know whether it was actually
Jason Hartman 25:04
actual real honest to god capital formation. Yeah. Right.
James Howard Kunstler 25:08
And we probably have to get back to something like that if we’re even going to continue operating civilization at a lower level. But I don’t know how we’re going to get to that point. My guess is, and this is probably one of the reasons that people think that I’m, you know, a Doom or gloom or, although I don’t see myself that way. But it seems very, very likely that we will go through some kind of a bottleneck that will be well represented considerable, considerable amount of hardship for people. And you know, nobody likes to think about it, but we’re probably we’re probably heading into it and we’re not doing anything to avoid it. You know, we’re not making any plans. We’re not reforming any of the systems that we need to reform. You know, we need to reform agriculture and do it differently. There’s no conscious effort, there’s no leadership to do that. We need to rebuild and change the transportation system.
Jason Hartman 26:06
Before you go on on the agriculture issue. I mean, you know, you’ve got so all these entrenched interests like these huge, that’s losing space. I mean, listen, I I don’t I don’t like it. I’m just saying it’s, it’s I don’t like it either. But that for congressi is the reality the corporatocracy and their affiliation with government. I mean, we’re in this sort of socio fascist environment.
James Howard Kunstler 26:28
Well, then, you know, the consequences of that is that we won’t do what we got to do. And then we will live in a disorderly contracting economy and a disorderly society. People might say, I’m a dreamer, but one thing I don’t believe is making. I don’t believe in making excuses for why you’re not doing stuff. And I don’t believe in being a crybaby, and I don’t even particularly believe in casting a whole lot of blame on people. You know, there’s really an awful there’s an awful lot that we can do and we’re wasting our time. wringing our hands.
Jason Hartman 27:01
Yeah, right. Right. So is the future. On the monetary and economic side? Is the future inflationary or deflationary?
James Howard Kunstler 27:09
Well, my just sort of gut take on it all is that we are heading into a very serious deflation that could easily mutate into a hyperinflation. If we do the kinds of things that we have been doing, namely, creating more money out of no out of thin air, to try to make up for the fact that we’ve got a crippled economy so. So all the trends right now seem to indicate that we’re heading into a very serious deflationary contraction, because for the simple reason, that we have too much debt that can never be repaid and those debts will be repudiated. And when they are you know, money vanishes and wealth vanishes and capital
Jason Hartman 27:57
so when you talk about debt Are you talking about the debts of the nation are you talking about to the individual? All of Yeah, but it will, but it works out so differently. I mean,
James Howard Kunstler 28:08
well, it’s all, it’s all borrowed money, and it’s all money that they are at all amounts to a set of promises that cannot be met one person or one group or entity has made to another group or person or entity. And, you know, obligations that can’t be met or obligations can’t be met. And it doesn’t really matter that much, whether they’re public or private. Ultimately, they will all be expressed in the disappearance of wealth and money, or the disappearance of the value of money.
Jason Hartman 28:40
So a couple couple things there are and really we should call it currency probably and just to be more accurate, it’s, it’s not money. But James, do you think the US would could lose its reserve currency status?
James Howard Kunstler 28:54
Sure. Of course. Yeah, I think we could destroy the dollar but I’m not sure than any of the other currencies in the world would take its place. Oh, that’s in the novels that I wrote in world made by hand and the witch of Hebron. The situation had gotten to the point, not in the not very distant future, that the American the American people were using circulating silver coins, because there were no paper currencies that that people that had any credibility anymore. So, you know, I think that that’s a possible you know, mid to longer term outcome.
Jason Hartman 29:30
Yeah, you must be fascinated by this whole Bitcoin situation. I bet you’ve been following that.
James Howard Kunstler 29:36
Yeah, I have been but I think that it’s really just another kind of, it’s a fad.
Jason Hartman 29:41
I put it out of business.
James Howard Kunstler 29:43
It’s kind of a technological scam. That seems to have a lot of appeal right now. Because you know, you there are things you can do with computers that appear to protect people. But you know, it’s not real. It’s you know, it’s, it’s It’s just ephemeral wealth that has no real anchor to anything so I’m not persuaded that Bitcoin is going to
Jason Hartman 30:10
I’m also oh me neither I I’ve always said I think that any thing that is a competitive force to the Federal Reserve to the fiat money system will be destroyed they will figure out a way whether it be FBI re
James Howard Kunstler 30:27
regulatory tried to destroy it, they won’t succeed. Oh, really? Okay. All right. Well, what are they gonna do? Go gather up all the silver coins in America? Yeah, well, all the all the pre 1965 silver coins? I don’t think they’re gonna that can happen, you know? Yeah,
Jason Hartman 30:42
I mean, it’s awfully hard to do that with with the metals, but we did it a little bit in 1933. Right. So but but you know, with Bitcoin, they can just say it’s illegal. You know, like they said pyramid schemes were illegal or something. I suppose they can just add a lot. I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know either. I’d say it’s interesting. Well, Any thoughts on just kind of wrap up here on what we should do as individuals?
James Howard Kunstler 31:06
Well, I think that young people especially have to be very careful about the place that they decide to move to and start to try to make a life in there there are parts of the United States that are just not going to make it
Jason Hartman 31:21
and so do you want to make any recommendations?
James Howard Kunstler 31:25
I just wouldn’t move to Phoenix Arizona I you know, I’d stay out of Southern Southern California Southern
Jason Hartman 31:30
California is gonna be the worst of all whites Phoenix so bad.
James Howard Kunstler 31:34
Well, the you know, the, the climate is terrible and will get worse. And
Jason Hartman 31:39
so you’re saying because of global warming,
James Howard Kunstler 31:41
it’s live will get worse. Okay. It’s already bad enough so that, you know, if this became a poor society, I mean, the only the only reason that Phoenix works is because absolutely everybody can have air conditioned right right now, including the guy who you know, cleans your pool.
Jason Hartman 31:56
Yeah, yeah. But remember, that’s only an issue about four months ago. Hear the other way, that’s pretty nice.
James Howard Kunstler 32:02
It’s gonna be a problem. What will be a bigger problem probably is that, you know, you can’t really grow a lot of food there without heroic. Right? Right, you’re Asian. So and it’s also the way it’s been designed. It’s so drastically automobile oriented, that there’s the capital’s not going to be there to retrofit it for, you know, walkability or anything that we really need to do. So it’s just going to prove to be a throwaway city.
Jason Hartman 32:31
Okay, so give us give us a couple others. I say Southern California when the when the government aid stops, you know, I grew up in LA, and I hate LA. But I did grew up there in you know, that’s just gonna be a disaster. I mean, the civil unrest is gonna be immense in Southern California. That’s gonna be a very dangerous place. If he asked me,
James Howard Kunstler 32:50
Well, I think it might be. I’m generally a little bit. I don’t think that the entire sunbelt is going to be a very favorable place. I think It’s going to end up being a, you know, an agricultural backwater.
Jason Hartman 33:03
So, so what what is what is favorable Oregon?
James Howard Kunstler 33:07
Well, I think that Oregon has some appeal. And I think the Pacific Northwest in general has, you know, there’s there’s reasons why people might want to be there. I think the Great Lakes region is highly undervalued because it’s excellent agricultural land, great farmland. I think that our economy in the years ahead as we d globalize, and D complexify. I think our economies are going to become much more internally focused in North America and that the Great Lakes and all the inland waterways are going to be much more important than they have been for the last 6070 years.
Jason Hartman 33:44
You know, Jim, I forgot to mention that other book, I mentioned abundance, which is pretty interesting. But also Chris Martinson’s new book called makers, which is a lot about 3d printing. Another technology could rescue us type of thing, but I don’t He makes a pretty good case.
James Howard Kunstler 34:02
I don’t know enough about 3d printing, so I’m really not equipped to talk about it. Fair enough.
Jason Hartman 34:06
So So do we will the globalization will actually subside rather than
James Howard Kunstler 34:12
not it’s not a permanent fixture of the human condition. Contrary to what Tom Friedman were like everybody,
Jason Hartman 34:20
yeah, the world isn’t that flat? I don’t think well,
James Howard Kunstler 34:23
it’s not that flat. In fact, you know, we’re not going in the other direction that a lot of look at the globalism happened because of a set of special circumstances in a particular time and place in history. And and, you know, you you can actually state with those conditions. We’re about a century of relatively cheap energy, and about a half a century of relative peace between great powers. And that allowed these long manufacturing supply chains and resource supply chains to evolve. And now we’re in a different century. We no longer have cheap energy. And we’re beginning to get friction between the great powers in what Michael Clare has characterized as, you know, a race for what’s left resource wars, or at least, you know, sort of a fight over the table scraps of the global resources. So, you know, this is going to create a certain amount of friction and conflict and already is between, especially between US and China. So, you know, I think that that’s only going to develop further and that globalism will be unraveling and unwinding.
Jason Hartman 35:40
You know, there’s this pervasive thought I think it’s like the it’s just the whole backdrop the whole context in which we all live, that in order to have a good economy, you must grow you must grow. And your October 16th entry on your on your blog is growth is obsolete, which is an interesting idea that growth does not equal prosperity. Can you just comment on that real quickly?
James Howard Kunstler 36:03
Well, that was actually an essay I wrote for Chris Mortensen’s website. And, and the full essay is there. But the point is simply this is that if growth is a word that’s getting us into a lot of trouble, because of the, the, because our energy is no longer cheap. We’re having a big problem that with capital formation, and we’re not going to get the kind of growth that is expressed in the beloved metrics of the economists in the statistics that they’re comfortable with with GDP and etc. And so my proposal is that we really have to replace the word growth with the term economic activity, because we certainly want to have activity we certainly want people to be occupied and to be to be eating good food and and leat living in clean well lighted places. And to be comfortable and have culture and and have civilization. But but we may have to express that wish differently. And and certainly not in just a stupid metrics of, you know, statistical analysis. And, you know, there’s one other final thing about that is that we have this, you know, as part of the the huge cargo of, of stupid beliefs that we have subscribed to lately in America, you know, the this thing behind econometrics and statistical analysis, which is so pervasive now, you know, we’re always turning to studies for the statistics to try to prove some point. Well, the reason behind that is this neurosis, that we think that if we can just measure everything, then we can then we can control everything. And it is a neurosis and we’re going to discover that we can’t control everything that you know, to some extent, reality has mandates of its own. And reality has a has plans for us. I
Jason Hartman 37:56
love I love that thing. By the way, reality has plans for us. Yeah.
James Howard Kunstler 38:00
We have to we have to get on board with with what reality wants us to do. And then try to arrange our lives around the demands and requirements of reality.
Jason Hartman 38:11
One last time before you go, I’ll just play devil’s advocate with you. I mean, back in the 1700s, you had these you know, you had a Thomas Robert Malthus, you have these Malthusian ideals that we were the scarcity. We had a population problem, and certainly the population is much higher now. I mean, hasn’t hasn’t technology rescued us to some extent. I mean, what what is why do we know this now? It was a
James Howard Kunstler 38:37
dumb idea. Okay. You know, obviously, you know, we blundered into a we blundered into a reserve of fossil oil of this liquid fuel that allowed us to postpone that particular reckoning for 200
Jason Hartman 38:53
years. That didn’t happen later, but all really well.
James Howard Kunstler 38:57
We had call first okay, right now just published his famous essay in 1798. So it was virtually the takeoff point of the Industrial Revolution. And so the industrial revolution happened. We took advantage of those fossil fuels. You know, we made food out of them, basically. And we supported an enormous population, which is now doing so much damage to the ecosphere, to the planet itself, that, you know, there’s just no way that we’re going to accommodate, you know, another billion or 2 billion or 3 billion people. So, you know, we have to get with the reality that we really have reached the limit for increasing human population and we’re not going to solve it with technology, we’re not going to fly off the planet within any imaginable period of time, and inhabit other planets like this. So you know, we have to get real with with living here in a practical way, and we’re not interested in doing that. So you know, the upshot will be that we’ll go through a rather painful collapse that population will go way down. And, you know, then we’ll have to reckon with the damage that we’ve done to the, to the, to our soils, to our aquifers to, you know many of the things that we depend on this planet. And, you know, we’re probably going to go through a very long period if the human race does survive. have, you know, relative austerity.
Jason Hartman 40:22
Well, good, good to hear all of this stuff. It’s certainly a warning call. James Howard Kunstler, thanks for joining us. give out your website if you would, and tell people where they can find out more about you.
James Howard Kunstler 40:32
My website is www. dot conseiller k un STL er.com. My books are on there. My weekly blog is on there. My essays are on there. And you can find out about me
Jason Hartman 40:46
fantastic, Jim, thanks for joining us and appreciate it.
James Howard Kunstler 40:50
Okie dokie.
Announcer 40:54
You know, if any, sometimes I think of Jason Hartman as a walking encyclopedia on the subject of creating what
Announcer 41:00
Well, you’re probably not far off from the truth bridge. Jason actually has a six books set on creating wealth that comes with over 100 hours of the most comprehensive ideas on investing in business. They’re in high quality digital download audio format, ready for your car, iPod, or wherever you want to learn.
Announcer 41:20
Yes, and by the way, he’s recently added another book to this series that shows you investing the way it should be. This is a world where anything less than a 26% annual return is disappointing.
Announcer 41:31
Jason actually shows us how we can be excited about these scary times and exploit the incredible opportunities this present economy has afforded us. We can pick local markets that are untouched by the economic downturn, exploit packaged commodities investing and achieve exceptional returns safely and securely. I like how he teaches us how to protect the equity in your home before it disappears and how to outsource your debt obligations to the government.
Announcer 42:00
He’s recorded interviews with Harry dent Peter Schiff, Robert Kiyosaki, Pat Buchanan, Catherine Austin Fitz Dr. Denis waitley, t harv, eker, and so many others who are experts on the economy, on real estate and on creating wealth, and the entire set of advanced strategies for wealth creation is being offered with a savings of $385.
Announcer 42:23
Now to get your creating wealth encyclopedia series complete with over 100 hours of audio and six books, go to Jason hartman.com forward slash store. If you want to be able to sit back and collect checks every month, just like a banker. Jason’s creating wealth encyclopedia series is for you.
Jason Hartman 42:58
Thank you for joining us today. With a holistic survival show, protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our creating wealth show, which focuses on exploiting the financial and wealth creation opportunities in today’s economy. Learn more at www dot Jason hartman.com or search Jason Hartman on iTunes. This show is produced by the Hartman media company offering very general guidelines and information. opinions of guests are their own and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalized advice, please consult an appropriate professional information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.