How Did You Go Bankrupt?

Felix Vallotton

The title of this post comes from a Hemingway novel in which the protagonist is asked the question “How did you go bankrupt?”, and his answer is “Gradually, and then suddenly”.

…But far more importantly, just as it describes how financial and economic collapse occurs (through many, many depressions and appropriately-named “shocks”), how evolutionary dead ends occur (so-called “punctuated equilibria”), and how social and political collapse occurs, it also describes how ecological and civilizational collapse occurs.

When I predict that our thirty-millennium-long* civilization will soon end, I mean we will see a series of sharp declines and partial recoveries over the next six or so decades, before its heart stops beating once and for all. The last 60 years of a 30,000 year ‘life’ may seem drawn out, but it is only 0.2% of the civilization’s total lifespan, the equivalent of the last 60 days of a long human life. Just as 50% of medical costs of a typical human are spent in the last 10% of their life, we look likely to extract 50% of the world’s resources, and render extinct 50% of its species, in the last 10% of our civilization’s life, just desperately trying to keep the useless old bugger alive a little longer.

And like a human life, it won’t be a precipitous health collapse, but a whole series of small shocks…