The economic path ahead: four or two things to think about for surviving the future

In this post I reflect on the main things I think will be necessary for ‘surviving the future’, to channel David Fleming. The post was prompted by comments under my last one, especially ones by Kathryn, Steve C and Walter. I was going to write my own comment underneath in reply, but I thought it warranted a somewhat lengthier treatment. At a high level of generality, I’d suggest on the back of those comments that fundamentally people need to attend to four things in navigating the collapse of our present high-energy, stable-climate, urban-industrial edifice: Skills of practical livelihood-making Physical capital Human relationships Media of economic exchange At an even higher level of generality, I’d suggest these four things become two: Things Relationships I’ll elaborate briefly. Skills of practical livelihood-making, by which I mean the ability to produce food and fire, shirts and shelter, and so on and so on. These skills mostly have to be learned from other people – hence this is…