Depression-resistant Promising Businesses – and Fields to Abandon

We face a “punctuated decline” as oil supplies decline and prices increase. There will likely be an initial ’step down,’ followed by a partial recovery. In such times it is difficult to know what will provide a secure income. I have put the promising (and not-so-promising) fields first and the justification for the decline after, to spare those well aware of the reality we face.

UPDATE: It seems I’m in good company; The Atlantic Monthly just published the following article: How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America.

This article covers the timeframe of the first step down and the first partial recovery. John Michael Greer, based on past civilisational collapses, estimates that each stage will last 10-25 years and that we are now taking our first step down; the crisis years have begun.

What jobs may offer some security during the first crisis of a punctuated decline, where that crisis may last 10-25 years? I have written other articles about career choices for an actual collapse, meaning the crisis is very severe, but this article addresses surviving and even thriving in the early crisis years. You don’t need to know how to make beef jerky out of roadkill for this step, although you will probably be better off if you can grow some of your own vegetables.

All the fields listed are, I believe, decent bets (you cannot do better than an educated guess at a probability) at being valuable during the first step down and the first partial recovery. After that, it’s anybody’s guess.

Depression-resistant Fields

First, forget the idea of a secure job; there is no longer any such thing and there will be no such thing in the future. There will, however, be opportunities.

OpenOffice consultant: I started with the unexpected for a reason; you need to think differently to thrive in today’s future. During an economic downturn that is seen as permanent, many companies, organizations, governments, and individuals are going to consider free software seriously. Microsoft Office costs $499; OpenOffice is free. Microsoft Windows 7 costs $299; Ubuntu is free. Adobe Photoshop is $699; GIMP is free.

People who are experts in these programs are likely to have opportunities to make money. Trainers, people to migrate data from Microsoft formats to OpenOffice formats, management consultants, and so on will be needed. Because most of this free software is open source, there is a good chance that governments and companies will pay for customisation, meaning jobs for developers. Not as many as Microsoft is currently employing, but some.

Green Energy: As oil prices go up, this field is going to explode. In reality, it has been growing at a fantastic rate only slowed recently by the recession; we don’t see it as much here in Canada and the U.S. because the field is still very small and it has not become the priority that it has in Europe and Asia.

To oversimplify, there are several, sometimes overlapping categories of green or greenish energy: small and large, simple and complex. All are likely to boom. Examples of simple include small wind turbines capable of supplementing a house (pictured below), or even a black, water-filled hose coiled on a roof to heat water. Examples of complex include solar PV and large wind turbines putting out megawatts. Complex alt-energy solutions require advanced manufacturing capabilities and often exotic materials – and very large investments. As a result, the simpler solutions are likely to be more resistant to severe collapse, but all will continue to grow during the first crisis as governments and investors throw money at alt-energy.

Green Investment: Facilitator or investor, if you can find or place investment funds in green energy and conservation, your dance card will be full. Governments will also be throwing money at green energy of all sorts, and may even mandate that existing energy companies – the oil companies that have been making record profits the last few years for example, may find themselves legally required to invest a much higher percentage of their income in alternative energy.

Conservation and Heating Contractor: The price of energy has nowhere to go but up. Even a crash program to install wind or nuclear or whatever your favourite energy source happens to be will not forestall this, and this is a major driver of the first step down. However, people will still need heat. The higher the price of energy, the more popular conservation is going to become.

People who can add insulation to homes will be in demand. So will anyone who can reduce – or even eliminate – heating costs. If you can build a solar greenhouse that adds significant heat to a house in the winter (and not in the summer), you’ll be in demand.

Heating is necessary if passive solar and insulation aren’t enough, as they will not be in most cases because we didn’t build with this in mind. You can’t add a solar greenhouse to a building that gets no sun. However, after insulating as well as can be done, heating can be made more efficient or more cost-effective.

On the large scale, district heating will rise in popularity as companies realise that their waste heat is a valuable resource and that waste becomes more costly. If you can facilitate this process, you can do well. On a more local scale, in many areas woodstoves are going to increase in popularity. An even better option could be a masonry heater (pictured), in which a short, hot fire produces enough heat and hot water for the day. (And, if a cooking oven is installed, can also be used to roast turkeys and bake bread.) It follows that people who own woodlots will have a product this will be in ever greater demand as the price of other sources of energy rises.

Mass Transit: There is almost certain to be a push for more mass transit during the first step down. More people will find driving to be an intolerable drain on their income, and with those who already cannot or do not drive will push powerfully for more and better transit options. This means more jobs making buses, streetcars, and related infrastructure, especially electric-powered. Even intercity rail is finally likely to get a boost as diesel prices and road maintenance costs go up, and government revenues and therefore subsidies to these industries (including provision and maintenance of roads and other infrastructure) decrease.

Low-cost Transportation: Our economy is global, meaning goods are made anywhere and transported everywhere. This works when transportation is inexpensive but will contract as transportation costs rise. As almost all transportation of goods and people is by oil-fueled carrier, cost of transportation is going to increase significantly. If you can provide a low-cost means of transportation locally, regionally, or internationally, you will have a booming business. For example, there is an enterprising group in France currently transporting their wine to England via old sailing ship; their energy cost is near-zero. Sail-powered or assisted vessels are going to come back into style even in this first step down.

Transporter: Not like the film, but of people and things. As driving gets more costly, delivery becomes a better option. Most grocery stores currently offer free delivery; many stores will have to offer delivery services, free or otherwise, if they want car-challenged people to buy their products. These same people will also be taking more taxis, although they will get expensive, especially the non-hybrids, just as personal driving will.

Local Manufacturing of Costly Necessities and Luxuries: Many imported items are going to get more expensive as transport costs go up, which will make local production more cost-effective. However, what gets made locally depends upon demand and trade laws (which will eventually be revised, but not likely immediately) so think necessities. Soaps of all sorts, for example, will always be wanted. So will alcoholic beverages. For example, I live on Vancouver Island, Canada, and currently a bottle of wine from Australia costs the same, sometimes less, than a bottle of comparable quality from local growers. Unless Australia is heavily subsidising their wine industry, then transportation must compose a very small part of the cost of a bottle of wine. This will not last; the only realistic way to get wine from Australia to Canada is by ship, and ships are only powered by oil, which is only going to increase in price.

Depression-susceptible Fields to Avoid or Abandon

Many fields are likely to see decline during this first step down. Auto dealerships and manufacturers are going to permanently contract, for example, as this first crisis results in fewer people driving. Electronic geegaws of all sorts are going to decline in sales and go up in price. During the first step down, there will be a lot of people making less than they did before, and also a significant number essentially permanently unemployed and getting by as best they can. Big screen TVs, Kindles, and Blu-Ray players will be low on their list of “must-haves.” That doesn’t mean these items will disappear, but that, like the auto industry, there will be a permanent contraction.

New home construction is never again going to reach the peaks it did during the bubble, so there will be fewer jobs for tradespeople, architects, and other jobs related to building. This is not all bad; in my area at least there are an awful lot of people who jumped into the construction field because it was booming, not because they were any good at it.

Justification: Watch that first step – it’s a doozy

Our economy is almost entirely built on cheap energy in the form of oil. There are whole books devoted to the subject; suffice it to say here that essentially all transportation and agriculture in the developed world would grind to a halt very quickly if the oil stopped. This is why the U.S. declared that they would defend their “national interests” in the Middle Eastern oil fields with force – and why they are.

Peak oil is going to cause a major ‘restructuring’ of the economy and quite possibly eventually a major collapse. Peak oil means the end of cheap oil, which our entire economy is built upon, as we have exhausted the most easily-recoverable – in terms of dollars and, more importantly energy – oil. This restructuring is likely to take the form of a long descent; according to Greer, we’re in for a “punctuated decline,” in which successive pieces of technology and civilisation are lost as more people become permanently unemployed and we cease to be able to do things we previously took for granted, due to the lack of cheap energy in the form of oil. I believe there is the potential (due to war, terrorist attack on Saudi oil fields, etc) for the descent to be quite rapid, but barring a trigger like this, I agree with Greer’s idea of a long stairway to a preindustrial state.

According to Greer, our long descent will proceed by periods of crisis alternating with periods of partial – never full – recovery. Each crisis takes us a step lower, each recovery fails to get us back where we were.

When oil prices rise, the economy contracts. If oil prices stay high, or actual shortages develop, the economy is very likely to stay contracted. And because there is a fixed amount of oil, once we pass the peak – the point at which roughly half the oil has been extracted – up goes the price. A price increase equals a shortage for those who can’t afford it, and as oil prices increase, there are going to be more people who are priced out of the market.

During a period of crisis, society and the economy undergo some reorganisation to respond to the new reality. When the price of oil goes up, or it becomes hard to come by, then individuals and companies figure out ways to use less, get subsidies, or go out of business.

Ultimately, we are very likely to have less-than-full economic recovery this time around. Energy prices are much higher and may spike again as soon as demand ramps up, which would limit any recovery. Further, there is a lot of debt and a great deal of economic chicanery passed off as wisdom that will also limit a recovery. When banksters feel sufficiently confident to skim off enormous bonuses during a recession they caused, you can trust that the political-economic table is rigged in their favour, and so they will continue to attempt to gobble up any money that comes available.

This means many of us will never return to working a full-time job, and many will see salaries decline significantly.

Usually the way this goes in recessions is that those with jobs do OK; they may not get a raise, but they also don’t see significant pay cuts. Even during the Great Depression, many remained employed throughout and some hired the desperately unemployed as servants. Job seekers see offered wages decline – this is already happening. Employers know they can get someone for less during a recession, but also know that recessions end and don’t want any employees hired during that time to feel overly discriminated against. They offer toward the low end of the scale, but still keep to the scale. During a prolonged recession or depression, however, the bottom of the scale drops. There is no foreseen end to the economic troubles, so employers aren’t constrained.

Resources for this article

“But our civilisation will never collapse!” you say. Well, every civilisation before ours has, often due to overextension militarily or environmentally, and we have done both. From left-to-right:

Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed describes the fall of previous societies and the lessons we should have paid attention to.

In the second and third books, James Howard Kunstler and John Michael Greer explain in depressing detail why peak oil leads to a decline of our energy-hungry civilisation, and why alternative energy is unlikely to rescue us.

The final book is an overview of alternative energy systems from solar hot water to wind, from wood to microhydro, and is from the venerable Mother Earth News.