Relocalization - A link to a good blog article

There are a few bloggers that I follow, and one of them is John Michael Greer, http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/.

JMG has been writing a series of articles that focus on economics. His latest contribution, released November 18, 2009, is a must read: How Relocalization Worked. While not physical geography, the concepts are the same - without cheap oil to pay for transportation, our life will become local in nature, forcing us to live within the limits of our local environment and within our own economic market. This particular blog contribution uses a very good example - the demise of the centralized Roman Empire and its replacement by local cities and guilds, which in fact didn't shutdown innovation - and is well worth a read by any would-be geographer.

Cheers from Dubuque,
Kevin Anderson

Follow-up on communications

As a follow-up to my earlier musing on communication technologies, I did pen recently a document summarizing the various licensed and unlicensed two-way technologies that are available to people here in the United States and Canada. Here is the current version of it:
http://home.mchsi.com/~anderson.kevin/docs/Communication_Options_TwoWayRadio_ver1_0_3.html

(Should a new numbered version get created of this document, you will be able to find the update by checking at this webpage: http://home.mchsi.com/~anderson.kevin/)

Two-way radio will only be a stop-gap measure, as eventually we won't have the parts or electricity to keep it going. But between now and then some people will want to have it available.

Kevin

I'm still alive, just....

Just a brief post to let the world (all none of you probably reading my blog besides me and my cat), that I am still alive. I just haven't been in the mood to post on a subject appropriate for my blog.

I'm still pondering the post-oil world. Lately I've been wondering about my retirement funds (assuming I get to use them in 15 years, let alone longer than that, if I get to retire at all), our economic system, and about banking. With regard to banking, I'm exploring my fiscal conservatism in light of ideas known as "narrow" banking or full-reserve banking. I'm struggling between wanting to see my money grow in value, even while in a savings account, let alone in bonds or in the stock market, against just wanting the guarantee it will be there any time I choose to withdraw it. Currently banks are required to keep on-hand in their reserve something like only 10%, with the rest being re-invested and "creating" money. What if banks had to keep 90%, or even 100% (full reserve), on hand? How would that affect the economy? Could we even keep up with cost of living and inflation so we aren't going backwards?

Just some of what I've been thinking lately. Maybe soon I will have something substantial to post. In the meantime I keep reading my favorite blogs (see early post) and just trying to survive.

Kevin Anderson
'who is tired on this Monday that I'm posting, but so far as I know not sick yet