Speaking of Shortages and Delays...

[ecosophia]

Quite a lot of things these days are running short on store shelves or being hit by production and shipping delays of various lengths, and it was probably inevitable that one of my books would be among them. I've been informed by the publisher, Founders House, that the new edition of my book The Ecotechnic Future has been hit by a delay in production. I don't have a new release date yet but I've been assured by the publisher that the printing is now going ahead and that everybody who placed an advance order will be getting their copies as soon as possible.

As we move deeper into the penumbra of the deindustrial age, this kind of thing is going to become more common. Brace yourselves, and make sure you have enough of anything critical on hand to tide you over as things tighten up further. 

***Update:***  I've just been informed by a different publisher, Aeon Books in England, that the printer who was going to do the card deck for The Sacred Geometry Oracle is having difficulty getting the card stock!  They're trying to find another supplier, but in the meantime there may be further delays in getting this back in print. 

Welcome to life in an age of decline. At this point stocking up on necessities is looking like an even better idea than it usually does...

Comments

[brenainn]

I got an email yesterday about this. How ironic is it that an updated book on the post-industrial future is delayed by the faltering industrial capabilities of modern civilization? But yeah, this is a good reminder to get stocked up on necessities and to learn the skills needed to live in an age of growing shortages. I really need to order a copy of your book "Green Wizardry."

[ecosophia]

Get it while you can!

[booklover1973]

The interesting thing is that this is the same kind of dysfunction which befell the late Soviet Union, despite the different political and economic systems of the West and the East. Equipment for telescopes for hobby astronomers is one example where such delivery delays seem to be common.

[ecosophia]

Trust me, I've been thinking of the same thing. Dmitry Orlov's writings on how the US could collapse the same way the Soviet Union did seem even more prescient than usual just now.

[realmscryer]

This whole decline process is fascinating to observe.

Just last week I was talking with an electrician friend. He said he is carrying more inventory than he ever has had to in the past. It is getting to the point of needing the inventory on hand to get hired for the projects. When I had talked with him he had a few days prior just bought nearly all the breakers available on the shelf at a local big box store.

The other thing that came out of the conversation was indications of the growing importance of gift and barter forms of trade. When I had mentioned I couldn't find a certain type of breaker he offered he might have one in his inventory if I needed it. Not a big priority but if I really needed it though I could be waiting weeks or months to find one.

Knowing who has what is going to be getting more and more important with time. That and making our own equivalent or substitute products for ourselves and others as needed and if able.

The only thing critical in my life I do not know how to compensate for is insulin. My wife is a Type 1 diabetic and there's no substitute for insulin. Hopefully these folks will be able to keep making progress.
https://openinsulin.org/

[(Anonymous)]

Funny thing is that here in Germany you frequently hear the story that our shortages are partly caused by booming economies abroad - most notably China but also the US. What I can read here and elsewhere doesn't sound like it's booming very loud in the US, though.

Good luck with the insulin! I guess many people who are dependent on insulin or other medications and are able to look beyond mainstream news feel a growing concern about the future... So weird that those things which are among the really positive results of progress seem to be among the first coming under pressure by the decline we're facing.

Greetings,
Nachtgurke

Feedback Loop

[(Anonymous)]

If everyone has to order a spare of something every time they place an order for something critical, that puts even more pressure on already stretched supply lines (at least initially -- there is the relief that comes from that extra order not getting placed later on). Everyone's response to the problem just makes it worse overall, a nasty little feedback loop.

Maybe we could call it the toilet paper effect, in honor of last year's looniness.

Re: Feedback Loop

[michaeliangray]

Funnily enough there is a name for this and it goes a lot further than just the initial step. The Bullwhip effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect

[(Anonymous)]

10-4! We can wait.

The New Normal

[laruse]

Over the autumn of 2020, I helped "GoFund" an oracle deck to help an artist recover from a devastating midwestern derecho last summer that damaged her studio. That deck is somewhere between here and China. Nothing to be done for it. It was originally supposed to go out to the GoFunders in May. Then June. Now it's July. No shame on the artist. She cannot control the supply chain and our funds helped her get her studio back up and running so if the deck never arrives, my heart won't break - the cards are just a bonus. This is just the new normal.
Today, I am canning tomatoes from my garden and figuring out how to store more flour in my stash as I see the wheat harvest from the West is expected to be severely hit by the drought. But at least toilet paper is plentiful now?

Re: The New Normal

[fringewood]

May I suggest you buy the wheat in bulk and get a grain grinder to grind your flour? We have been buying oat groats and corn in bulk for years and grind our flour from them. We also buy millet, lentils and pinto beans and noticed that the price of all our bulk buys has gone up except for the corn. We expected that so the corn was a nice surprise. We store everything in food grade 5 gallon buckets for the home and the 50 lb bags go outside in large heavy duty storage bins that hold three 50 lb bags each. We have chickens and rabbits and grow most of the rest of our food and medicine so we rarely go to the store. We have also bought a lot of hand tools for the future. Good luck and best wishes to everyone living in these 'interesting times'.:^)

"This kind of thing is going to become more common"

[barefootwisdom]

"As we move deeper into the penumbra of the deindustrial age, this kind of thing is going to become more common."

Very much so! Exhibit one, from the Associated Press today: ‘Scary’: Fuel shortage could ground firefighting aircraft

Of particular note: "Cyphers said his company has even been trucking jet fuel to airports supplied by pipeline because they hadn’t received their full allocation of jet fuel."

And: "Decisions on where the fuel goes can be difficult. Commercial jet travel can be a huge economic driver in many communities. Air ambulances also need fuel. Industry officials said problems at large commercial carriers this year appear to have more to do with worker and pilot shortages than lack of jet fuel."

So much to be said about the latter quote...


Hope the book delays can be resolved soon and successfully! I see that the Sacred Geometry Oracle has also been pushed back, now to October.

Re: "This kind of thing is going to become more common"

[ecosophia]

Good heavens. That's drastic.

[(Anonymous)]

I enjoyed this book when I first read it several years ago and am glad there's a new edition. This 54 year old never thought he would see days like this! When I was a kid we were taught to pity the Soviet Union and other such places for the same kinds of shortages and delays of goods. Truly amazing.

Yes, something’s changed.

[adwelly]

I trailed up to central London yesterday - 3 hours of masked train travel - in search of 3 books published in the last few months, a few classics and a laptop sleeve. Struck out completely. All frivolities of course but these are the sort of things I would expect to vanish first.

I was told by the smallest shop I tried that they can order in, and I will do that because the owner looked utterly miserable, and I have a sentimental attachment to that bookshop. It’s not a sustainable way to run a business though.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow! My public library in Vienna, Austria, had the book. I hope they haven't ditched it yet as "outdated". I got your book "The UFO phenomenon" as a library sale item via the used book market, for what it's worth.

On the other hand, a few years ago, the big A company offered me "The Celtic Golden Dawn" new for 2 Euros (shipping included). I confess that I jumped on the occasion and bought it. I wonder if that was a hint from above as to which one of your training programs I should follow, as I was pondering the question in the period after that. I went for "The Druid Magic Handbook" and keep progressing ever so slowly. The second volume of "The Dolmen Arch", ordered via the publisher, got lost in the mail...

Already experiencing shortages

[neptunesdolphins]

I live in D.C. and we are experiencing strange shortages of foods. Well, not very dramatic but in the sense that there are no choices in what is available. People have to take what they can get. For people who are used to a lot of choices and special brands, it is hard when you have to go to the Dollar Store for paper towels and such.

Me - I learned to be very flexible and trained my family not to expect anything except the basics.

Shortages and cost increases

[(Anonymous)]

I saw hopeful articles about the price of OSB/plywood coming down. I checked the big box stores and the prices for the basic OSB is $80 - compared to $10 a couple of years ago.
So at least in this case, "the market" did its job and adjusted the price when the shortages (or manipulation) occurred.

Do you know why there are many shortages where the prices do not change?
That suggest central price control (a la soviets) and maybe even controlled collapse.

Pennies!

[(Anonymous)]

I've been seeing some skimpy store shelves lately. We do seem to have toilet paper though!

One thing I had thought was over was the money shortage (coins and bills) from last year. I hadn't heard anything on the news about cash still being in short supply. I did see a couple of stores/restaurants that had signs asking for exact cash only, but those had been up before and I assumed the management hadn't bothered to take them down. But I was at the dollar store today, and when handing me my change the cashier asked if I wanted the two pennies. I said naw, I had a bucket full of them at home anyway. That's when she told me that there was a shortage of pennies, and the bank would only give them $4 of pennies a day. I was surprised; pennies? The coin no one wanted to bother with, the coin that they used to talk about eliminating; this coin is now in demand? The cashier said she'd buy pennies from me, she was so desperate to get more. I only had enough penny rolls for $10, so I rolled them up and went back to the store with them. She didn't blink an eye when I walked in, just opened her drawer, gave me a ten, and immediately dumped some of the pennies in the drawer. I even asked if she wanted my phone number, in case I miscounted, but she didn't care. "I'm not worried over a couple pennies missing". Guess I better take the rest of the bucket to the credit union and get them into circulation. Or get more rolls, and keep my local dollar store supplied!

Joy Marie

Re: Pennies!

[(Anonymous)]

Over here in NW Indiana the local Speedway stations have signs up asking for "Credit, Debit, or Exact Change." Part of me wonders whether it's an attempt to institute a "Card Only" policy, but it indeed seems to be larger than that.

(BTW...do the rolls. If it's an honest shortage you're helping out locally, if they're being removed you're extending their useful life.)

– Godozo

Book Shortages

[boulderchum]

On the subject of books and shortages, when I was first starting the Celtic Golden Dawn I wanted to buy the limited edition hardcover version (I despise how softcover books curl up like potato chips) and I found a few on abebooks. Long story short, I thought the first copy had gotten lost in the mail and ended up buying two copies of the hardcover plus the ebook, now I have an extra hardcover CGD book I don't need.

If anybody is starting the CGD and wants the hardcover version of the book, I'll ship it to you for just the cost of shipping (can be about $30 if you're not also in Canada, so be warned).
I don't need two copies, and I'd rather it go to some of the nice members of this blog first, rather than sit in a warehouse or collect dust in my closet. PM me if you're interested.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you think the Sacred Geometry Oracle is cursed? It seems to have run into way more problems than seems reasonable.....

[ecosophia]

No, it's an unusually complex project because divination cards are a specialty item. Other oracle decks are also having problems with supply.

Card stock shortage?

[(Anonymous)]

It looks like I’ll to have to ramp up my humble paper-making capabilities for the cottage industry publishing enterprise I want to start. Same thing with ink. Or, as you once said to someone on your earlier blog, if you want to be sure of access to toilet paper, you’d better learn how to make some.

Re: home-grown toilet paper?

[(Anonymous)]

I've read, though I haven't tried, the idea that the fuzzy leaves of the Great Mullein plant make good "toilet paper" (fresh or dried). Growing a plot of it seems much easier that processing any other fiber into something like toilet paper. But I wouldn't assume that they're flushable.

Another DIY sanitation option is re-usable cloth wipers. If we could live with cloth diapers for our kids, we can live with cloth wipes for the rest of us. It'll be easier to do more laundry than to build a DIY paper mill (never suspected of being environmentally-friendly).

Lathechuck

Sacred Geometry Oracle

[barefootwisdom]

JMG, so sorry to hear about the additional difficulties with the Sacred Geometry Oracle (and a bit sorry that I mentioned it upthread!).

If this project continues to run into problems, is there any chance of releasing it in a format where the reader would use ruler and compass to make his own cards?

Re: Sacred Geometry Oracle

[ecosophia]

I'll make sure the cards become available one way or another. My own set was produced by generating the images on a computer and then printing them onto heavy paper!

Storm Clouds

[(Anonymous)]

The Reddit "meme stock apes" are of the opinion that Something Big Is Going To Go Down in the financial world, a la 2008. Among the many posts on 'Superstonk' and 'AMCStock' are a running tally of the various creaks and groans happening in the financial system, such as record volumes of "reverse repo's" (a kind of overnight central bank loan), and a regular drumbeat of pictures of bank and other financial headquarters buildings with their lights all blazing at 2 am on a Saturday. (The latter is worldwide, BTW, not just the US.)

One guy, "atobitt", says that *everything* is 'shorted' (https://www.reddit.com/r/GME/comments/mgucv2/the_everything_short/) and that eventually there must be a reckoning. Certainly, we are in a lot of bubbles right now, housing included, despite what the MSM say. And oh, look, CPI inflation is going up, but the Fed says "oh, it's no big deal."

I think the coin shortage may be a bank-dependent thing. As you know, businesses use banks too, and some banks are probably in a rougher state than others. My local Ralphs grocery store has a coin shortage, but the Trader Joe's just down the strip mall from them has no complaints. They probably use different banks.

- Cicada Grove

Re: Storm Clouds

[ecosophia]

I haven't visited the apes and autists recently. Thanks for the heads up -- those lights blazing at 2 am are a major warning sign.

Limits to Growth update

[(Anonymous)]

Appears Limits to Growth is right on target. UK's Daily Mail reporting on this today:
https://advisory.kpmg.us/content/dam/advisory/en/pdfs/2021/yale-publication.pdf

Jay Pine

Re: Limits to Growth update

[ecosophia]

I saw that, and cackled.

[snaegl]

Looks as if collapse theory is becoming fashionable again:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xw3x/new-research-vindicates-1972-mit-prediction-that-society-will-collapse-soon?utm_source=digg&fbclid=IwAR13C2Clmhlrqxa66dbKVewP3VsiVGdgR2QJa-XcFV8l-0Rh_Cjdj9VlgjY

As usual, it's the problem of apocalyptic thinking rather than punctuated disequilibrium, but heh. Maybe more heads will be pulled out of the sand? Hope springs infernal...

[ecosophia]

I saw that, too, and cackled again. Here we go... ;-)

South Africa on Cue

[(Anonymous)]

To take it past the LARPing stage, South Africa is giving a prelude of things to come. It looks like rioters are targeting things like power stations, printing facilities, and of course the stores where goods are, as well as businesses owned by "furriners". The most valuable natural resource in the near future will be a strong cultural community where rule of law is respected simultaneously within that holon. That particular balance or combination is not as easy to have as some might suppose. You get strong communities even when dysfunctional or simply based on ethnicity, and you can have rule of law imposed through draconian measures, but you can't have the genuine article of either one without the balance. South Africa was supposed to be one of the global models for multiculturalism. Cultural or religious homogeneity can substitute to some degree for ethnic gravity, and common language/history can substitute somewhat for security, but the whole thing just looks like elites experimenting on the human cattle, at this point. Maybe they can pull something out of their hat. But what a situation to find yourself in, with industrial excess drawing down...hope we can get ecotechnic thinking up and running PDQ - Celadon

Re: South Africa on Cue

[ecosophia]

I've been watching that situation. Remember the "Arab spring" just before the last spike in oil prices? And all the food and other shortages then? Here we go again.

[(Anonymous)]

Those oracle cards look wonderful. They have a classic feeling about them. Like a traditional French tarot deck.

And speaking of Limits to Growth, parts of western Europe have been hit by a flooding caused by rainfall 'not seen in 100 years' in Europe.

- Spork -

[ecosophia]

Thank you! I was delighted to get cards that follow my original vision so closely -- not like the butt-ugly ones in the first edition, which were published over my repeated protests. \

As for the floods, yes, I read about that. Poor souls.

More data points

[goats_and_roses]

From Portland Oregon-- more data points. There was a chlorine shortage a couple months ago that affected summer opening of pools. A friend custom ordered a simple truck canopy, and the person constructing it has been waiting weeks to get the sheet metal for the sides. I went to the paint store to gather color chips and a couple small sample cans, and they cannot sell any samples because they have a shortage of the white base for light colors.

Re: More data points

[(Anonymous)]

From Ohio - Wire rack is still in short supply. Anything used for fire and water damage restoration is inflated. Commonly used plywood is inflated, but cabinet grade is up only a few dollars.
The most interesting thing to me is that professional duty hand tools - operator powered, not battery - are back from the past and reasonably priced.

[(Anonymous)]

There may be shortages of stuff but money has been 'happily' on tap. Guess this won't now help a thinly stretched system and may be part the reason for the 2AM head-scratching meetings at the banks.
Jay Pine
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jul/16/bank-of-england-creating-money-lords-quantitative-easing

Chips

[(Anonymous)]

I talked with an engineer , he told me simple chips had a 2 year wait. I told him because all available chips are in the vaccines going into everybody’s arm. Lol

Re: Chips

[open_space]

That's funny!

I have a friend that works in the pc industry and he says the stock for his company has been out for a year, and it's one of the big players. He says the only sales that happen are because the worldwide stock has been shuffled to the main countries by buying power. The only thing that saddens me is thinking which poor Mountain are they gonna blow up to get more rare earth minerals.