Teasing out the shape of Australia’s future

Some of histories patterns are universal; e.g., Overshoot, imperial rises, imperial falls and the cycling of Civilisations, while others are specific to an area and/or civilisation type. E.g. the cyclical rise and fall of Chinese empires, the relative permanence of European borders (Gaul is roughly in the same are as France), the cycle of empires in the Middle East, the conflict between the East and West (its far older than Islam or Christianity) and the contests between settled and nomadic peoples. From these patterns it is possible to see the broad shape of the future (though not the details) over an area, the larger the area, the more accurate the vision. This is one of the reasons that makes historical analysis useful, many of the factors that determine how history plays out; such as geography, climate and agriculture potential, are relatively stable. Unfortunately, for Australia, this sort of useful historical analysis is unavailable.

We can’t look at pre-European history, since the Aborigines lived as hunter-gatherers and so had a radically different relationship with the land, therefore the factors that affect them affect us differently (to separate degrees). Since Australia’s original inhabitants were almost wiped out by European diseases (about 90% fatalities) and predation, most post-European history of Australia is that of colonisation and parts weren’t settled until after Federation. So, while some of our history is useful for this task, for most of it Australia wasn’t a settled country with established cities, populations and cultures, unlike Europe and Asia and for the section of history that is has, oil has been in major use. Since we’re entering the downturn phase of overshoot with established cities, populations and cultures, the situation has changed considerably. And then there’s the fact that the sections of our history that are similar have all taken place during the upward phase of overshoot, with rising fossil fuel usage and international trade. In short, historical analysis in the specifics is very difficult or impossible for Australia, even while universal historical analysis is possible.

This leaves us with a question, how do we see the broad shape of Australia’s future? What roles will the central desert and long coastline play? The Great Dividing Range? The tyranny of distance? The States and Territories? New Zealand, Indonesia, Pacific Islands and New Guinea? These questions need at least a cursory answer and I will be going over some of the possible questions and answers.

Federation vs City States

One of the most important and far reaching political decision (really lots of decisions under one overarching one) Australia will have to make in response to overshoot is whether to dissolve the federation and effectively become a nation of city states, roughly analogous to the current states, or to keep the federation in some modified form. Both choices have their advantages and disadvantages, which one is the best will shift as both the world internal and external to Australia changes in response to the downside of Overshoot, much as it changed to the upside. Another option is to shift between the two as the situation dictates, however this option is more complex and would require considerable organisational resources, so here I’ll focus only on the initial extremes, as opposed to the absolute extremes (such as dissolving the state governments). Note that while I’m treating this decision as a binary, it’s actually a spectrum, this is just simpler and highlights the important details.

Federation: This choice entail keeping the broad shape of our current governmental structure, Local<State<Federal, and possibly changing some of the details, such as the exact border/territories, rights, responsibilities etc.

Advantages:

• Continuity with the past
• Combines all the militaries
• Allows simpler trade and economic laws
• More unified resistance to imperial or other incursions
• Pushes Australia’s competitive energies to the outside world, rather than internally
• As it stands now, there are no major forces for disunity
• Allows more collective resources to be used to solve or mitigate problems
• can create uniformity when needed
• Allows Free trade inside the nation, while tariffs outside
• single foreign policy
•  

Disadvantages:

• Is an extra layer of complexity
• requires both physical and organisational resources
• can create uniformity, when diversity is needed
• if the system becomes corrupt, it all becomes corrupt
• Diseconomies of scale are introduced
• Less internal competition
• Model is untested for a non-fossil fuel era, unlike America’s is
• Provides a single target for hostile powers
• Some interstate rivalry

While some of the advantages and disadvantages are intrinsic to federation, other important traits depend on the context of the times and external world, particularly the ones to do with imperialism. If imperial incursions or the overall level of violence increases, then a combined military will ensure a safer environment and less predatory action by foreign powers. its main disadvantage is that the downside of overshoot normally brings a decomplexification.

City-states: This choice would be to simply dissolve the federation, with new countries based on the current states, the territories would be either absorbed or let go, with the capitals where they currently are. The capitals will stay where they are for a few reasons, they’re all ports, most have rivers and currently contain the greatest concentration of human resources, materials, population and infrastructure. Similar to Renaissance Italy or Ancient Greece, hopefully without the constant warfare, just with far greater distances.

Advantages:

• Is a new order which could kick-start more innovation and experimentation (political and social)
• Provides internal competition
• Encourages diversity when needed
• Is at a lower lever of government complexity
• More adaptable
• if one part becomes corrupt, the rest is protected
• No single target
• Less diseconomies of scale
• Is one of those highly tested models

Disadvantages:

• Vulnerable to divide and conquer tactics
• Has difficulty stopping imperial, or other, incursions
• can create diversity, when uniformity is needed
• Hinders international trade and a integrated economics
• No major forces backing it
• Potential for internal wars
• Less collective resources for mitigation and problem solving
• Could cause further decentralisation

If anything, this option’s traits are even more contextually dependent and since it lacks the advantages of centralisation and standardisation, under stable or growing conditions this is the worst of the two options. However since we’ll be going through a contraction phase, these disadvantages are not necessarily in play. Otherwise it lacks good defences from foreign powers, relative to federation,  this needs to be considered in the final decision. Its main advantage is that the human world is entering the environment that makes this option an adaptable one.

The point of the above comparisons isn’t to sway you one way or another, I have done my best to be impartial, but to simply highlight some of the important differences and show that each option comes with its ups and downs. Also that some of the advantages are also disadvantages, there is no perfect option.

How will this decision affect the common person? An important element of any political decision of this magnitude is, how are the lower and middle classes (the upper classes can look after themselves) affected? How does the decision affect farmers, workers, craftsmen, artisans, artists, small businessmen, merchants, local or regional government officials, fishers, loggers and so on?

While in an important way this decision doesn’t affect the lower classes that much, one boss is much the same as another and chances are most of Australia will be democratic anyway, in an important way it does. How easy is it to trade goods or move across borders markedly affects merchants and thus the goods available to people, while also affecting local industry. The economic policies of the government, from taxes, incentives, infrastructure and others, affects everyone and dictates the opportunities and day-to-day economics of individuals and families. The governmental structure will affect how many wars are fought, where they are fought and of what type they are, this further compounds in the civilian support structure e.g. will a farmer will be taxed 10%, 30% or 50% of his crops/biofuels to support the military/civil infrastructure. Education and healthcare are similarly affected, along with the legal and justice systems. The majority of the effects will be felt not in the immediate years after the decision, since the structures will take time to change, but in the decades after as the differences pronounce themselves, this is why is requires careful consideration. The point of the above is to simply correct what can sometimes be a problem in political discourse, especially ideological discourse, in that the effects on the common person are either ignored or glossed over. The effects on day-to-day or year-to-year living are the most important part of this sort of political decision, both the long and short term.

My take on it: Now that we’ve finished with the analysis of the issue and you the reader have started to form an opinion on what is in essence a political question with important military, economic and cultural implications, I’ll give my own opinions. Feel free to give yours in the comments, reasoned discourse is the lifeblood of both democracies and republics.

For the short (10-20 years) and medium (20-50 years) I favour the federation option, for the long term (50+ years) I think that the decision should be left up to the generation after the next, since that why more experience will be accumulated and a wiser decision made. My reasons are thus; It’s always easier to destroy than create, so if keeping Federation turns out to be best, but we’ve dissolved it, is a harder mistake to correct than keeping federation when dissolving it is necessary and for some structures, such as standardisation and the military, the federation is appropriately big. This isn’t to say that the federation shouldn’t be weakened in some areas, just that for certain things it is far better than city-states. The other reason is that the world is likely to become a more violent place and the next imperial powers could easily look at previous allies of America to fortify their claims, a larger military would certainly help in dealing with these twin problems, both here in Australia and our overseas interests. The overseas interest are everything from outposts in Antarctica, access to trade routes and joint treaties with other countries

Historical comparisons for a potential mass migration from Indonesian

One of the things that happens when an area goes through Overshoot is that populations will sometimes respond by picking everything up and move somewhere else (other options include dwindling, internal war or other forms of collapse). While it’s certain that this will occur somewhere during our current process of Overshoot (which is more or less global in scope), I’ll look at the specific potential of an Indonesian mass migration to Australia. In this post, I’ll look at the similarities and differences to this possibility of three past mass migrations and in one case a theoretical one. This is a broad analysis as opposed to a detailed one.

The broad characteristics of this migration would be:

• North-South Migration
• staging point of the North Coast (for further expansion)
• Multiple hops as opposed to one via long distance Sea travel
• Established population on the other end
• Fuelled by overpopulation
• in a decline phase
• The North Coast is a very inhospitable place for agriculture, by Indonesians and Australians
• Potential military invasion and a large (in the millions) population movement

1) The Austronesian Expansion

The colonisation of Islands as far east as Easter Island and Madagascar, is the main migration (non-western) in the Asia-Pacific’s history via Sea.

Similarities:

·         Fuelled by population growth

·         Long distances travelled by Sea

·         Done by the ancestors of Indonesia’s current population

·         Variety of environments and land types encountered

So, as can be seen the Austronesian expansion shares some important traits, not least of which is the shared people as well as a potentially similar technology (once motors pass away).

Differences:

·         West-East migration rather the North-South

·         Mostly to uninhabited islands

·         The majority of Islands were fertile or had good access to food

·         Generally, only small amounts of people were moving at any one time; say by the hundreds or thousands in any one year as opposed to tens of thousands.

However, these differences are quite big and the difference of scale for how many people involved completely changes the logistics and organisations involved, the size of ships needed as well as the lack of previous settlements.

Verdict: While it does share the large distances involved, this migration was more the colonisation of virgin land or in some cases a slow process of interbreeding with the locals rather than the displacement of another population. Also, the northern coast of Australia was continually visited but never settled by the Austronesians. This marks the Austronesian expansion as an unsuitable model of a potential Indonesian mass migration.

2) Why it’s called Anglo-Saxon

Overly simplified summary: The decline of the Roman empire left Roman Britain weakened and under constant Pictish assault, as well as a large famine and plagues. So they hired Saxon mercenaries to defend themselves, purportedly to bury the dead as well. Said mercenaries liked the place, so after two invasions (the guy who Arthur is based of stopped the first one) they took over and then interbred with the locals while dramatically changing the culture (e.g. back to paganism instead of staying Christian). More a cultural change than an ethnic change, but we can treat it as ethnic to explore possibilities.

Similarities:

• Happened during an Overshoot period of history
• Happened to a peripheral part of an imperial system as that system declined
• Happened to a settled area

The overall context from the human element is effectively the same, no small thing. It can clearly be seen why a comparison is so readily drawn between this example and our vision of the future.

Differences:

• East-West migration rather than a North-South
• Britain is really small compared to Australia, e.g. the Woomera test range (in South Australia) is as big as England and used to be twice as big
• The north coast is relatively infertile (as in barely farmable) compared to England and natural land routes out of it to the rest of Australia are through deserts and/or mountains
• No equivalent to the Picts, however famine and plague is possible.
• Completely different motivators, as far as I’m aware the Saxons weren’t overpopulated and were just opportunists

While it clearly shares the human context, as seen above an equally (if not more) important element is completely different, the environment and natural world in which this process took place is very different to Australia’s.

Verdict: Shares the context of our situation and while there are only three similarities, they are important similarities.  However the differences are equally massive and affect both sides e.g. their aren’t going to be many locals who are going to support the invasion compared to the Saxon invasion, who were supported by several cities who rebelled and aligned with the Saxons. There also lacks the positive feedback loop in the initial stage to reinforce their migration by bringing more easily farmable land under control with each step. While useful, large differences exist and need to be kept in mind because they are potential game-changers.

3) Failed Greenland Norse colonisation of Vinland (America) and a successful alternative history version, similar to Britains colonisation of America and Australia.

The Norse Greenland colony shows the importances of having a well-resourced and equipped staging point if the journey can’t be done in one go. British outposts along the way for supplies and way stations helped the white settlement of Australia. The Vikings abandoned their settlement in Vinland due to a variety of factors, lack of equipment, support, numbers, hostile natives and problems back in Greenland which prevented adequate support. Britains colonisation was under entirely different circumstances and didn’t suffer most of these problems, such as over 90% of the natives being killed by disease and therefore not putting up major resistance. The successful alternative has a concerted attempt by the Norse (non-Greenland included) to colonise Vinland, using Greenland and Iceland as way stations.

Similarities:

• Has the jumping points, similar to the role the North coast would play
• Greenland’s habitability is the closest to the North Coasts compared to all the other alternatives. Note that the climate cycle (on the 100-year ranges) favoured the Norse in Greenland.
• Distances are in the same realm rather than being different by magnitudes.
• Is to a settled area
• A concerted effort is a possibility

The closest of the scenarios surveyed so far, superficially this looks like an appropriate model.  

Differences:

·         Neither population is in a similar position as their counterparts, e.g the Norse weren’t overpopulated and the Native Americans weren’t in decline

·         East-West migration instead of a North-South

·         Wasn’t a period of great change, among which the dominant transport option is in decline.

The Vikings could rely on most of their boats and the underlying tech, the modern world doesn’t have this luxury and since boats are a relatively complex technology (compared to feet and carts) which require appropriate infrastructure to build, run and maintain, not traits that facilitate mass usage during catabolic collapse. With fuel supplies declining, it will be increasingly harder for standard maritime operations, let alone the successful settlement of the North coast, which would require supply runs and boats taken from other operations, since new ones can’t be built quickly and sail based ships will still be redeveloping. In their own way, these differences are important.

Verdict: While this scenario is the closest, there are still large gaps and to succeed the alternative history required the Norse to unite behind this single goal and bend their power towards it, which requires a strong stable government. In current terms it would mean that the Indonesians would have to reallocate significant resources during catabolic collapse (unlike feet, fleets have to be built) which isn’t a trivial task. Also, while Greenland was in its habitable phase of its many cycles, the northern coast doesn’t have a habitable phase as its problems are to do with the soil and wildlife rather than climate.

Important notes:

• All of these past migrations were East-West or West-East rather than North-South, this is a massive difference. Climate and biome types (e.g. desert, tundra, taiga, grassland, forest etc) changes slowly or not at all when travelling East-West (assuming altitude stays the same) but changes rapidly when moving North-South. for a full discussion on how this affects technology and population movement I recommend Guns, Germs and Steel (by Jared Diamond). This means that an Indonesian migration would have to either skip areas (like Europeans skipped to South Africa) or spend a long time adapting, which would require a good transport and communications network to use all of their options, since no one place will have them all
• The Austronesians annually travelled to Northern Australia but never settled there for two reasons. First, the Northern coast isn’t a good farming area, its barely marginal and its telling that 50 years of Industrial agriculture has failed to succeed, and if any farming system can ignore the negative local conditions it’s the Industrial system (since that’s a large part of its design). Second, due to the effect mention in the paragraph above, the Austronesians who travelled to Australia lacked the appropriate skills, crops and animals that were only available further north. Since this is mostly solved the Indonesians (and hey, potentially the New Guineans as well) will certainly settle the Northern Coast (well, bits of it, since large sections are uninhabitable except for hunter-gatherers). I’d guess at a population of around 10-50 thousand with the lower range more likely.

Summary: None of the historical examples are fully adequate to examine a potential Indonesian mass migration because all have major differences, and since all these factors affect each other, the similarities aren’t actually as good indicators as a glance would show. This doesn’t mean they’re useless examples, but is has to be recognised that as Australia is also a continent, the differences it causes among human patterns are just as great as those between Europe, Africa or Asia. The human patterns, structures and processes of Europe (or any other continent) are an imperfect model for human patterns, structures and processes in Australia. As Overshoot progresses we will see these differences manifest as the fossil fuels that have been used to ignore environmental conditions go away in the wind.

The Decline Of global Imperialism

The Spanish empire started the trend of their being only 1 or 2 global empires that dominated the world stage. Great Britain was at the zenith of this trend when it directly ruled 20% of the world’s landmass and controlled the majority of world trade; this trend (and Britain) has been on the decline since. In the wake of Britain’s soft collapse the USA and the USSR fought, during the cold war, to claim Britain’s lost position of dominance for themselves, the USSR fell and so the USA gained status as the world’s sole superpower, and the end of the USA dominance is now approaching. In the wake of its decline and collapse, new world orders will appear, most likely after the competing powers have sorted themselves out through the standard imperial sorting method of war, strategic positioning and international politics. In a continuation of the current trend, another (or two) global empire/s would arise, the main contenders currently including China and a now resurgent Russia. However, with the process of overshoot entering the decline phase, this assumption needs to be questioned and alternatives examined. The decline of global transport and communication infrastructure will hamper force projection, whether it’s economic, militarily, cultural or political projection. Relocalisation of industry will strengthen local powers at the expense of imperial ones, the technology gradient that has existed since the days of Spain when European armies could outfight any locals using superior weapons, training and tactics has diminished greatly and military tactics/technology has changed in favour of the defender as opposed to the attacker. See the 2006 Lebanon war where Hezbollah used defences to negate the Israeli armour and airforce. How can a global hegemony function in these conditions? What imperial structures can exist and thrive under the stress this change brings? I propose a potential model based on the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) nations with a potential, though unlikely, continental European empire.

This system would mark a dramatic shift in the way major powers relate to one another and act in the world. Under the current system, each empire (or group of empires) has only one major opponent at any time and everyone coalesced around one of the contenders. Think of the Axis and Allies or the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance. This new system is more like the constantly warring Greek city states or Renaissance Italy, with multiple powerful factions unable to permanently dominate, note this system can and has changed into a similar form of what we have now e.g. the Peloponnesian war or France and Spain entering Italy, Machiavelli mentions this in the Prince. For each major power, there are now multiple major enemies at any time and they are restricted how far they can act against any other power, major and minor, before their ability to respond to other powers is compromised. This creates a highly complex playing field where even minor powers can have significant effects on the grand scheme. To accommodate these changes Australia’s foreign policy and actions on the world stage would have to adapt. I’m assuming the Federation will remain for mainland Australia, however this isn’t a certainty and it would further complicate things if the federation dissolves.

Gearing for a more independent role and more ties with the other regional powers around us, rather than choosing America or China as imperial powers (yes, China is a regional power but the relationship is very different) and worrying about global problems or areas far away, like Iraq or Afghanistan, is the sensible path forward. Since the global empire/s would have less control overall than the USA or Britain did and we live in a peripheral part of the world (less than the days of Britain but still peripheral), we and our neighbours will now have an opportunity to write our own history (bloody as it may be) independent from powerful outsiders. Moving our military focus towards our navy (but in a non-expeditionary way) as opposed to our current focus on our army and expeditionary forces (see the Canberra Class), we’d still have an army, just a modified form, would be among the first steps since Australia and all our neighbours are islands, instead of simply allying with the next rising power, instead becoming a fully independent actor with which an imperial power entering our region must entreat, and deal with. Using our strategic position, isolation and superior local forces we could wring a few concessions out of them and via the support of local resistance (guerrilla or otherwise) we could drain the forces of any imperial power that decides to enter our region against our will. This path will require us to take more responsibilities and a far more active approach in our region; alternatively, we could become highly isolationist.

So what could relations among the BRICS’s empires look like? An important detail is their respective strengths in light of their locations and different strengths and weaknesses. Russia and China are likely to be the strongest of the five empires, for historical, economic and military reasons, however Brazil and South Africa are on their own continents and so they will mainly act with the others in colonial or local sphere of influence events, as well as being distant from RIC, where their powers have a home advantage. India is in a more interesting situation since it sits on the opposite side of China compared to Russia and is in a very good position to cut of China’s sea routes to Africa and Europe, especially the Malacca strait, which India has looked into. While on its own, China could easily overpower or bully India into submission, Russia could be very interested in an alliance to contain China. These sorts of power plays would be quite common, the more empires there are, the more common, and complex they become. This is where Australia could affect the world stage in a substantial way, leveraging our strengths for or against one side, acting as a lynchpin of some plan or other or even as deal breakers or makers.

What is a city?

Cities are one of the main ways humans inhabit the landscape and organise themselves, though they have only recently, historically speaking (Data), become where most people live. They, historically, made up for their lack of population with concentration and by being major economic, cultural and political centres. While climate potentially change the locations of our major cities, possibly further inland, I think its more than likely that our current cities will exist during and shortly after overshoot. After all Sydney was founded by convicts with no access to fossil fuels and only indirect assistance from them (in the form of the British Empire). Therefore, if cities will play a role in overshoot the obvious question must be answered.

What is a city?

To aid the answer here is an appropriate extract from Terry Pratchet’s Night watch

    Everyday, maybe a hundred cows died for Ankh-Morpork. So did a flock of sheep and a herd of pigs and the gods alone knew how many ducks, chicken and geese. Flour? He’d heard it was eighty tons, and about the same amount of potatoes and maybe twenty tons of herring. He didn’t particularly want to know this kind of thing, but once you started having to sort out the everlasting traffic problems these were the facts that got handed to you.

   Everyday forty thousand eggs were laid for the city. every day, hundreds, thousands of carts and boats and barges converged on the city with fish and honey and oysters and olives and eels and lobsters. And to think of the horses dragging this stuff, and the windmills… and the wool coming in, too, everyday, the cloth, the tobacco, the spices, the ore, the timber, the cheese, the coal, the fat, the tallow, the hay EVERY DAMN DAY….

And that was now. Back home, the city was twice as big….

   Against the dark screen of night, Vimes had a vision of Ankh-Morpork. It wasn’t a city, it was a process, a weight on the world that distorted the land for hundreds of miles around. People who’d never see it in their whole life nevertheless spent their life working for it. Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were part of it. It drew in and consumed….

…and it gave back the dung from its pens and the soot from its chimneys, and steel, and saucepans, and all the tools by which its food was made. And also clothes, and fashions and ideas and interesting vices, songs and knowledge and something which, if looked at in the right life, was called civilization. That’s what civilization meant. It meant the city. 

So we can see that a city is also a process as much as a place and includes the immediate area it gains resources from and its products go to, e.g. in the past ¾ of some cities were metal works. From the hinterland come the raw (and sometimes refined) resources, such as wheat, eggs, ore and timber, that a city consumes and out it gives the refined products (like steel, weapons and tools), culture and now days machines/equipment. What can form from this is a symbiotic relationship that enhances both the city and rural communities. 

Here’s an example; a village machine shop maybe able to produce almost all the villages needs but lacks the skills, resources and time to make some of its own high precision equipment. Now instead of cutting other services to be able to remake this equipment or losing whatever capability the equipment provides. The machine shop could instead import the equipment from a city, which has far more machine shops, engineering works and the like. The village machine shop could then maintain the equipment without sacrificing capabilities and allow the village to produce more using the machine shops products. This can feed back into greater exports to the city and hence the overall economic activity and technological complexity. This form of symbiotic relationship will be important if we wish to keep a relatively high level of technology/technical skills.

The level of technology is quite important when thinking about sustainability on this scale as the smallest unit shifts as the tech level increases. While at most levels the village is the most basic unit as the tech level rises it becomes the village- town relationship and then the village-town-city complex. If we want an eco-technic future, we need more than eco-villages, at a minium we need eco-towns as well and then eco-cities. This is not to say that village level sustainability isn’t worthwhile, since villages can more easily downshift tech level, simply that to have an eco-technic future, rather than a medieval future, the cities that exist today will need to be involved.