One of the assumptions that this forum's members seem to have is that
conditions in the U.S. or the world are going to change slowly as usual,
but it seems more likely to me that they will change quickly, probably
getting much worse before they get better.

That depends on what you regard as slow or quick. But in reality, that does not matter so much. The replacement is already there (actually since 1969) and waiting for being used as a global replacement for national fiat money. It's called Special Drawing Rights, issued by the International Monetary Fund. Even the central bank which will govern the use of the SDRs among the world's banks is already there, the Bank for International Settlement in Basel. SDRs are already used for financial transactions and book-keeping in several international organizations and some countries.

There will be some turmoil, when the national currencies collapse, and everybody will be relieved to see it replaced by "something much better and efficient", even with a global reach, shortly afterwards. It may not be called SDR by then, but get a more popular name, just like the former European currency unit ECU was named Euro prior its release to the public.

So, when (not if) the present currencies collapse, nothing catastrophic will happen because of that. The contingency plan is already in place and tested, and personally, I believe that it is the intention of the global plutocracy to install the SDRs as the global currency as soon as possible. They only need a valid and broadly acceptable reason, or even better to be recognized as white knights presenting a formidable solution for a serious problem. Before Hyperinflation will become a true problem to the big currencies, they will end the game and switch to the new one - which basically is the same as the old one, only with a new paint.

Of course, they will not say, that this new currency will collapse as well by the end of this century the latest, because all fiat currencies based on interest, credit and economic growth inherently must collapse after 50 to 70 years the latest because of to much inflation pressure.

... people may have to leave the cities and move out into rural areas to survive.

This will not happen, because of three reasons:

1. The ability to provide for oneself was successfully removed from the people over the last 60 to 70 years. Most people in the developed countries do not have the ability anymore to get food, energy, clothing or shelter without other people who provide that for them. Even if they would move to rural areas, they would not know what to do.

2. The law is against them. All land is possession of someone. The 10 million New Yorkers cannot simply leave their city and walk to Pensylvania or Oregon and simply settle on some land, joining the other millions from Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami and all the other non-rural cities. The judges and the police will be the first line of defence against that occupation. And in the US, homeland security has already purchased 2 rounds of hollow point ammunation per citizen of the USA ...

3.  The resources are not there. No housing, and no material, tools, people or machines to build that many houses within just a few months. In such a scenario, fuel will be on short supply, and people on the run will have a hard time to find food and water.

What will happen, is that people will sit in front of the supermarkets, waiting for the next delivery. And if there simply will be no next delivery, they will kill each other for what is remaining on the shelfs. "Three days without food is long enough to remove most of the subtle differences between a civilized man and a savage." Only few will leave the cities, and these will be those who have friends or relatives in rural areas, and even less who either have some common sense left or did themselves prepare for such a situation. And since there are no angels, there will be no protection.

But as I wrote first, I don't think that this will happen. Not now. But at the end of this century the latest, exactly that will happen. And our grandchildren will look at our generation, and that of our fathers and grandfathers, and ask themselves, what they were thinking, taking everything, including skill and knowledge, and leaving nothing.

It sounds like you expect major depopulation. Is that the case?

Let's start with your last question, because it is the most important one. At first I frowned upon the word "depopulation", but thinking about that, this is just the case, even in the sense of it being planfully instrumented by someone.

The reason for this depopulation is in fact quite simple: 99,9% of the people in the world do not understand the concept of continous growth and its exponential effects. Some just happen to realize it, and  use it to their advantage, but most who are aware of its effects surrender in realization of their impotence to change things. There are five reasons for the coming depopulation, and one does not need to be an oracle or a genious to understand that:

1. Economic growth (data sources from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, Japan)

For the most part of recorded history of man, the economic growth was somewhat stable around 0,25% annually. With the advent of industrialization in the 18th century, this number doubled to around 0,5% annually in that century. With industrialization taking off, the number again nearly fourfolded in the 19th century to around 1,8% p.a., and again doubled in the 20th century. The average growth rate for the last 100 years was around 3.7%, and that includes two world wars. After WWII, during the past 60 years, the average annual growth rate in the world was nearly 5%.

So what's the problem? Growth is good, we all learned at school. It is the goal of the presently dominating western style economies. In Germany, and supposedly in many other countries as well, it is official national policy to support growth. The German government has operationalized this goal with 3% annually. The Chinese are aiming for at least 10% annually.

The problem is, that nobody really projects that into the future. Nobody realizes, that 3% growth per year does mean, that our world needs to produce 16 times more goods and services by the end of this century. Nobody sees, that maintaining the nearly 5% growth across the world we had on average the past 60 years would result in more than 60 times increased production in 100 years. Imagine, we would succeed in instigating even larger growth rate, let's say to 6% annually on average for the next 100 years. That would mean more than 250 times production output compared to today. Is there anyone who thinks, that even a "small" increase of 16 times would be sustainable? Even if everything collapses and the economic growth will be reduced to what it was at the beginning of the industrialization age, we still would produce around 5 times more then today on our planet by the next turn of centuries.

2. Population growth (data sources from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, Japan and United Nations)

During the last 60 years, the world's population has nearly trippled from around 2.5 billion to over 7 billion. Now the UN specialists predict, that in the next 40 years the population will increase by a mere 2 billion and than virtually stops. That is an outright lie, or simply insane.

Ever since the 17th century, after the 30 years war in Europe, the growth rate of the world population never was lower then 0,5% annually. Since the industrialization in 19th century, this growth rate was never again below 1%. Even China with its harsh 1-child-policy could only reduce its growth rate to 0,5% in the last 3 years.

Population growth used to be a big topic from the 70s to the 90s of the last century. Then the climate change took its place on the headlines. In that few decades in the last century, there were conferences, summits and international agreements and treaties to reduce population growth, namely the Cairo Conferences. However, nothing of this worked or works. Measures to reduce population growth are neither effectivly funded nor systematically enforced. However, the UN states in its world growth reports, that the population most likely will stop at 9 Billion in the mid of this century and then remain more or less stable.

It's the women, who have the babies. For the last 400 years on average each women able to give birth produced 0.025 children per year. This number has quite steadily increased in the last 300 years from 0.01 births per fertile woman and year to 0.08 births per fertile woman and year.

Now comes the UN and predicts, that by the end of this century, there will be only 0.005 births per fertile woman and year, a fraction of 1/16th of what we have at present. Or in other numbers: Around 2.7 billion fertile women will have just as many children by the end of this century, as less then 0.5 billion fertile women had at the beginning of the last century. In their longterm predicitions, the UN foresee, that the than 2.9 billion fertile women will produce not more children then the less then 300 million fertile women in the beginning of the 19th century did. According to the UN, the number of children per woman will decline by a staggering 97% in the midths of the next century compared to the end of the last century.

I tried to find the reasoning behind this abstinence of women to bear children in future, but could not find any. It is just said that this will happen.

So just extrapolate what we know from history for another 100 years or so. Let's assume, that we keep the 1% population growth rate we had on average over the last 200 years. That would mean, that we have some 20 billion people on our planet by the end of this century.

3. Peak Everything (compare Niko Paech, Professor at University Oldenburg, Germany or Richard Heinberg, Post Carbone Institute, Santa Rosa, USA, and many more)

This one is easy. We are living on just one planet, and this planet is not infinite. Summerizing what I learned so far, we have managed to use up approx. half of all non-renewable resources our planet managed to produce over the last billions of years – in only 200 years. Within this century, more and more resources of all kinds, namely mineral oil, silver or phosphate (the latter a still irreplacable ingridient for artificial fertilizer) will become so scarce, that it will not be available in industrial amounts anymore.

Regardless how much is still available, we need to take into account, that what we still have, is all what we have for the foreseeable future. Or grand-grand children need something to live from too, and there grand-grand children as well. As long as we can't replace something, we need to rationalize it for the future, regardless what it is, or how much we have of it. Only if we have a means to provide substitutes in abundance and renewable, we can start to use up what we have. Everything else will have the potential to destroy the future of our children and their children.

4. Water and rural areas (source Food and Agriculture Organization)

One out of three countries in the world is already listed as a country in water distress. Each year tens of thousands of square kilometers of rural and fertile land is destroyed. By the end of this century, we will have far less potable water and far less rural land for acriculture then today. And this day already more then 30,000 people die from hunger, every day, most of them children.

5. The economic system

Here everything culminates. Our economic system is dependent on growth, but it cannot grow anymore, because there is simply no more room to grow into. Up into the 19th century, people just could move to other places to allow for growth. Today, there are no other places anymore. Aditionally, subsistence (what in fact is the true enemy of capitalism) has been killed in most places in the world, and with this the ability of people to provide for themselves.

The resources needed to feed growth are dwindling, and the ability of the world to increase production even more as it is right now is at its end as well. However, only economic growth can feed the monetary system, because only with growth interest can be paid. The monetary system is instrumental in transporting wealth from the workers to the owners: On average, in all prices paid today in the world nearly 40% interest is factored in – money directly moving into the pockets of the money owners.

The system will fail to provide for the people on our planet by the end of this century the latest. The logistical strategies will not work anymore. People then will see no other option than to fight for their life and the life of their families. They will simply try to take what is not given to them freely but needed to survive. And those who have, will defend their possessions. It will be the ultimate fight for survival. When you have children in school right now, most of them will experience the beginnings of this war.

Unfortunately, there is no sign in sight, that anyone will be able to stop this, or anyone in power would be willing to stop this. The only thing you can do is to prepare for this. OSE is a good concept in this regard. I try to promote a possible social and economic concept for a post-growth world.

6. Conclusion

The University ETH Zürich recently published a statistical analysis about the worldwide network of companies who are responsible for the global turnovers. They identified around 43,000 companies who did transnational business. The 10 most cross-linked companies alone influence more then 20% of the worldwide transnational business. All of them are financial industry. Actually, all of the top 50 are financial industry, with just one exception.

The UN published an analysis a couple of years ago about the global wealth distribution. There are just around 1,200 billionaires in the world, and they own four times the wealth than the poorer half of the planet's population all together. The richest 2% own 51% of the world's wealth.

The people behind those companies, the billionaires and multimillionaires, which are related to each other, married to each other or befriended to each other, these are those who benefit from that all. First they will get all the things they loanes are secured with, mainly real estate, when the financial system collapses for good, because that is the law and their right. (Read „This time is different“ on this).

When at the end of this century some 20 billion people will fight for food and water, without any resources to produce the things they need from, those few hundred clans of the world's rulers will retreat into their bunkers and wait a few decades till the majority of the world's population will have killed each other on the battlefields or as collateral damage in the cities, or died from starvation or diseases. After this, they will rightly own everything and everyone. In 200 years from now, our planet will be a slaver's planet, with a few hundred thousand people being served by a few hundred million people. What, when you think about it, is, with adjusted numbers, not very different from today.

Today's greed of a small group of people and their executers in their companies and governments are directly responsible for the bloody and violent death of billions of people during the next century. Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin are amateurs compared to the rulers of today's global plutocracy.

And I did not even factor in climate change at all in all this ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_drawing_rights

Andy, relating to population growth, four figures are important to me:

1. The worldwide population growth was never lower than 0,5% since the early 17th century.
2. The worldwide population growth was never lower than 1,0% since the early 19th century.
3. The worldwide population growth right now is 1,1%.
4. The UN is predicting that the global population growth will shrink to 0,35% by 2050.

I don't look at peaks, which in fact reached more than 2% in the 60s of the last century, but at the averages.

Please look at table 1 (Tabelle 1):



This table shows in column 1 and 2 (von / bis) the timeperiods.

Column A indicates the average number of people in the world (in millions) in the past, or as predicted by the UN in the given timeperiod. So in the timeperiod from 1700 to 1750 we had an average 738 million people on earth.

Column B shows, how many millions of people per year was added to worlds population in that timeperiod on average. In the timeperiod from 1750 to 1800 the world's population grew by an average of 3 million people per year.

Column C provides the number of how many fertile women were living on average in the timeperiod, based on the assumption, that 50% of the population are women, and 50% of this women are fertile. In the timeperiod from 1800 to 1850 we had on average 365 million fertile women on earth.

Column D now shows how many children above the number to stabilize the population at the existing amount were born per women and year in the timeperiod. In the timeperiod from 1850 to 1900 each fertile women raised the world's population on average by 0,021 people per year (that is not to be mixed up with the birthrate, which is much higher).

This last figure is the important one, because it indicates how women contribute to population growth. What you see is, that since 1700 this number has steadily grown, quadrupling from 0,021 in the first half of the 18th century to 0,081 at the end of the 20th century. According to the UN, within the first quarter of this century this surplus number of children born by women (and actually surviving birth and childhood) will be halfed, and in the second quarter nearly halfed again to a value less then what we had at the beginning of the last century. How will this be done, when you factor in all the efforts of man to increase the lifespan of people and to fight death and deseases?

And here we come to the second table. The percentage on the right column shows, how much the average population growth per fertile women has changed from one time period to the next. You see, that it has always grown for the last 300 years. However, starting already now, the UN predicts, that for the first time in three centuries it will decline, and not just a bit, but radically, up to a point, where 2,900 million women will contribute to the growth of the world's population in 2150 exactly at the same number as 280 million did in the early 19th century. What will will lead to the effect, that 10 times the number of women will not produce more children in absolute above the stabilization rate, despite much better public health systems and medical knowlegde? I do not know.

What I see, is that the UN provides us with wishful thinking, that is not based on any historical experience. And we are not talking about technology here, but biology.

It is true, that we have a decline in population in many (not all, look at the USA for instance) developed countries. But I'm not talking about this exceptions from the rule. Those few countries will be outweighed by far by the population growth in most of the other countries. If we will keep the average population growth rate of the last two centuries (1%), then we will not have 11,5 billion people on earth by 2150 as predicted by UN, but nearly 30 billion people. And now we are talking about depopulation, because quite obviously, our planet cannot provide for 30 billion people.

Which leads me back to my contribution in this thread some postings above. This population growth is not the only problem, as I have shown in that posting. That catastrophe is unavoidable. What I try to do is to provide a means to be able to better survive the coming disaster. OSE and its GVCS can play an important role here. Talking about depopulation is easy in theory on paper or an internet board. But you must never forget, that we are talking about forcefully killing billions of people. What happens right now. The weapon has already been fired. We are doing it right now, to our own children and their children.

I do not plan or instigate those scenarios, I only predict that they will happen, and that we need to prepare for that to allow more people to survive it.

I do not know where you take your faith from, that women all over the world will stop having three or more children on a global basis out of free will within the next 150 years. I do not know, what is your reasoning to believe that in a time where futurists predict the decline of 95% of the people in the developed countries into total poverty (see Randers "2052" on that) with a 90% probability, that the now un(der)developed countries will reach a civilisation stage where the declining industrial nations are right now. Do you really believe, that India will ever reach stage 4 of population growth? Or Nigeria? If yes, please explain to me, where they will get the ressources from to do so, in a time of peak everything (look up at Post Carbone Institute) having had taken place. Not forgetting the Chinese, who still want to live like the Americans.

I'm convinced that this is wishful thinking. The women of the world will not suddenly stop acting the way they did since the emergence of the industrial age. And even if they for some reason did, I don't think that we will see a time again with a population growth rate which is lower than at any given time in the past 400 years. The rise of the global population rate to over 2% some 50 years ago and the decline to the standard level of the past 200 years is just a correction of an exaggeration, and I regard it very brave to extrapolate this corrective movement into the future, and say everything will be fine based on the prediction of a situation which will negate the history of 200 years of biology and society.