The Crash Course

Yesterday I stayed home from work sick and spent a chunk of my day digesting "The Crash Course" online (http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse). This online audio-visual presentation lasts over 3 hours and makes the case that the next 20 years will be very different due to economic, energy, and environmental forces. Allow me to sum up:

• A massive change is coming


• A declining standard of living is coming - down from the current USA standard, that is


• World population is nearing the Earth's capacity


• Our economic system is inflationary, and therefore discourages saving and encourages speculation and risk-taking with capital


• Our nation's % of debt to GDP is around 342%, which is way higher than its historical limit of around 160%, and which far exceeds the last great spike. All of which is dangerous because you can't sustainably spend (debt) more than you create (GDP).
  
• Citizens are acting no more responsibly than the federal government: our savings rates have dropped to near zero levels since 1985 - the same time when the national debt began to spike.
• Inflation statistics are manipulated. Actual inflation is around 13%. He makes some interesting insights here.
• Oil production has remained flat, even while the price shot up from around $50 to over $130. This leads to the conclusion that we must have reached peak oil and a decline will be coming soon.
• Hyperinflation is very likely in the near term.
• The world's resources (e.g., food, metal, other raw materials for living) are becoming harder and more costly and more laborious to extract. And since the population is growing, more people will be demanding these increasingly scarce resources - hence, higher prices.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say that blogger.com is irritating in how it creates bullets and block quotes and every other formatting change, including inserting images. Sorry for the diversion.

Mr. Martenson never tells us exactly how to handle these impending issues. I suspected he would try to sell us a "Prepare for the End Times" DVD series, but no such thing exists. He didn't try to tell us gold or any precious metals. Interestingly, Mr. Martenson doesn't seem to be trying to sell us anything, except his ideas, which he offers at no cost. He does ask for donations to allow him to preach his message to all who will hear. He got me so nervous, I decided I couldn't afford to donate anything.

He also did not go into too much detail as to how the next 20 years would be so different - he seems to be averse to predictions. That doesn't stop him from making this the most frequently seen slide in "The Crash Course":

Lest you take Mr. Martenson for a fool, he reminds us of a quote of old that all truth passes through 3 phases - ridicule, violent opposition, and finally, acceptance as self-evident.

I enjoyed the 3+ hour presentation, and feel that it was honest and informative. I am certain he left out some information and that there were some logical fallacies and statistical manipulations (not malicious), but it's food for thought. I do believe that our current economic system is unsustainable. I think we have too much debt, too much disparity between rich and poor (which appears to be accelerating), and too much of an impact on the environment. If everyone lived as US citizens do, we'd need more Earths than we've got. And the number of people living like US citizens is growing - China and India are great examples.