Post in Scope for UDS to factor in oil prices ?

Jul 07 23:54 UTC

Hello Andrew,

I don't imagine that there is any planning for economic decline. The
rapid change in the way we move about the city, is not on the main
agenda. Those who have been talking for years about what is now
beginning to happen have been sidelined, if not silenced. Bigger and
better has been our objective.

Against urban planning as usual, is the higher cost of fuel, falling
real incomes, increasing cost for heating and energy and higher prices
for almost everything. There is the continuing economic decline in the
USA, now obvious and I'm predicting it will get much worse in the next
two - three years. The USA is much more fuel dependent than NZ,
financial corruption is rife, the political system is inflexible. The
Democrats might come to the Whitehouse, but in America nothing
fundamental will change, until there are riots and city burnings. The
economic flu from the USA will add to our troubles, but we've seen that
coming for years, so hopefully most of our investments are already
partly decoupled from that situation.

New Zealand is much better placed, we've already suffered a major
restructuring, our political system is fairly  responsive and amount of
corruption is low. Trust is high. On the energy front we have many
advantages. Because of the Green Party and others, lots of people have
thought about "how do we downshift". We know that alternatives are
possible. The key is to correctly understand the problem. That's one
advantage we might get from a forum like this.

Also in our favour is the understanding that GDP, is not a valid measure
of economic progress. Rising prices and declining markets will be a fact
of the near future. Output and employment will decline, and in the way
we normally measure things the economy will contract. If the burden of
that is forced down the chain to the growing group of unemployed (as
normally happens) the problem will be compounded.

So to a local strategy to cope with this problem:
The key tool we now have that's not been available before is the Internet.

Using the Internet the COST of doing many things is vastly reduced if we
do it online.
The biggest barrier to doing much more online is that huge numbers of us
are still uncomfortable working that way. Swapping jokes and family
pictures online, or searching Google, doesn't make people Internet literate.

Right now we need to be educating ourselves about how to downshift and
still maintain a living standard that we are happy about.
If people are forced out of the market, or forced into part-time work
they can still be productive. If we find ways to use that productivity
the real effect of the apparent decline in output will minimized. (The
easy way to increase GDP is to move unpaid work into the paid
workforce.) So we are talking about the reverse of that process. What we
don't want is a reduction of paid work becoming doing no work at all.

The BEST WAY to make what we have in our local area work for us, is to
be in touch with each other at a community level. This forum is a good
example of that. But there are only 200 people here. This forum needs
2000 plus people to be the sort of tool that could efficiently educate
people and initiate community action.

There are lots of other online tools that we should be using to bind our
community together. Social networks like Facebook, Xing, Ryze, LinkedIn,
Friendfeed,and Twitter (or 100 others) have the advantage of connecting
you to the world and to your own local community. But the knowledge of
how that works and why many more of us should be involved isn't widely
distributed. The low numbers of people on this list indicate the problem.

We KNOW there are bad, or certainly worst times coming. Online networks
are a key way to lessen the negative effects of things we otherwise
can't avoid. But we have to USE THEM, and sadly much of the community is
avoiding such use. If you want the support of an effective network in a
difficult time to come, you need to build the network before hand. We
could all help. Do something now. Invite five of your friends to become
part of this network.

There is no solution to the coming economic difficulties in employing
some high paid expert. The solution is HERE in you and in me, and in
what we choose to do together. The City Council and the Regional Council
can help or hinder what we need to do, but without our help, they can
have no answer.