home » Multiple peak oil 'survival' streams

Multiple peak oil 'survival' streams

by Paula | 7 May 2009 | permalink | comments [5]
Tags: entrepreneurship, peak oil
Email this article

The concept of “multiple income streams” is common among entrepreneurs and is pretty self-explanatory. It typically refers to setting up a handful of ventures that can all generate income simultaneously. For example, one might run an ecommerce website while at the same time selling products through Amazon, investing in income-generating financial vehicles, and doing consulting on a part-time basis. Lots of work and organization, yes, but the underlying principle is very sound: If one of your income streams takes a hit it’ll be a problem, not a catastrophe. On the other hand, if you have just one income stream — say, a full-time day job — and something happens to it, you’re just screwed. Think of it as income diversification.

As the post-peak world starts to take shape, jobs are becoming more scarce and people are starting to turn to self-employment to generate income. There may be some upswings along the way but I fully expect this trend to continue. In the United States, especially, lack of manufacturing capacity is colliding with lack of capital, and soon enough these will collide with skyrocketing energy costs to manifest a global clusterfuck that will hit the American middle class particularly hard, dependent as it is on wage-slave labor and cheap oil.

In this economic environment the notion of “income” will of morph into synonymity with the notion of “survival” — already this is the case for millions of people. And in the same way an enterprising middle-class person might devise multiple “income” streams, an enterprising formerly middle-class person can devise multiple peak oil “survival” streams. Really, what other choice is there?

I’ve put together a simple grid anyone can use to brainstorm potential survival streams, and to help weed out pragmatic choices from the not-so-pragmatic.

The columns are broken down into three modes of the economy everyone in preparation or pre-preparation needs to consider:

• Overt — Taxable, monetary income
• Barter — Taxable non-monetary trade
• Underground — Things to sell or trade that are unclaimable as income because they are illegal, controlled, subject to licensures and permitting, or would threaten an individual’s ability to survive if their full value were claimed as income

The Obama administration’s financial death sentence means a huge swath of people — perhaps most — will not be able to survive on net monetary income alone. The underground economy will grow of necessity and, no matter how law-abiding anyone wishes to be, basic survival will require doing things that are technically illegal.

Note that barter income is taxable. Any overt community bartering scheme will almost certainly draw the attention of the IRS as the federal tax base shrinks along with business activity, salaries and wages, and payrolls. Hiding barter income will also become necessary.

The underground economy mode of preparations does not get much ink but I strongly feel it is something to which everyone should be paying attention. Therefore I’ve built it into the grid as part of the full scope of survival streams brainstorming & planning.

The rows are broken down into sectors based on Charles Hugh Smith’s identification of the FEW economy:

• Food
• Energy
• Water

To Smith’s FEW I’ve added M and H:

• Medicine — anything related to healthcare, including medicinal herbs, health maintenance, and crisis response
• Household — anything related to household necessities, including cleaning supplies, clothing, hygiene products and the like

Each cell in the grid represents the intersection of a sector with a mode. For example, the first cell is the intersection of the Overt mode and the Food sector. It presents the question: What can I do in the overt economy to secure food for myself and my family? Depending upon your circumstances, your options might include growing a backyard garden, opening a small grocery, or organizing a local-foods buying club.

By way of another example, the cell intersecting Barter and Medicine presents the question: What do I have to barter in order to secure medicine/healthcare for myself and my family? Again, depending upon your circumstances, your options might include trading math tutoring for ongoing acupressure health maintenance, or harvesting wild medicinal herbs to trade with a practitioner for healthcare services.

You get the idea. The goal here is to get all options on the table, even relatively unattainable ones, in order to sort out the few that are actually do-able within anyone’s given circumstances.

Here’s a sample grid I put together. I chose to hash out options for one of the most vulnerable household types in America: a single, female condominium owner in the suburbs of a large metro area, who owns no other property and is employed for the time being.

	O Overt	B Barter	U Underground
F Food	Organize a local foods buying club for your building Organize a local foods brokerage supplying small grocers & restaurants Make & sell baked goods at the farmer’s market, all sourced locally	Child care —> garden plot at a neighbor’s Tutoring —> venison, fish, or other wildcrafted foods Wildcrafted foods —> grown foods	Make beer, wine, and other alcohols Prepared "potentially hazardous foods" — e.g., canned beef stew Locate a safe place for off-season trapping, hunting or fishing Purchase a breeding pair of meat rabbits & learn to butcher & clean them in your kitchen
E Energy	Organize or join an existing solar-power cooperative Learn how to make & sell solar ovens		Join with friends to set up a biodiesel still
W Water	Join with friends to purchase a small plot of land that includes water access — a natural spring, a creek, river frontage	Learn how to install solar-powered water pumps and filters for well water —> X # of gallons of water per month for a year for each system installed	Join with homeowners in your building to create (and hide) a rainwater catchment system Join with homeowners in your building to create (and hide) an illegal well
M Medicine	Learn to identify and sustainably harvest medicinal "weeds" around the neighborhood Learn to wildcraft, and sustainably & legally harvest medicinal herbs from public land Learn to cure & prepare medicinal teas, poultices, etc. Grow a medicinal herb container garden on a balcony or in a sunny room	Herbal preparations —> ongoing healthcare Teach sustainable wildcrafting —> a small amount of each student’s harvest	Grow potent but illegal medicinal herbs Learn to practice herbal medicine safely & sustainably under various licensing radars
H Household	Learn to make necessary household items: toothbrushes, cooking utensils, etc., to sell and/or barter Join with homeowners in your building to create a large, outdoor, wood-fired cookstove Purchase 3 or 4 angora rabbits & learn to harvest & spin their wool	Angora wool yarn —> firewood Access to stove time —> cooked food	Stake out a handful of potential squatting sites ahead of time Learn to strip abandoned buildings of salable materials

Among peakniks, condo life is typically presented as hopeless and being single as a terminal pathology. Everyone needs to marry and run off to some rural commune, and if you can’t do that you’re shit out of luck. But according to this grid, there are many options available to our single, female condo owner. Some are more realistic than others; as economic conditions change, some options will close while others open.

Different types of households will have different options. A young urban family will have different options than a middle-aged rural couple with grown children. But few are entirely lost just yet.

One last note: filling in the grid should be approached from the point of view of how to attract what one needs, not from the point of view of what one has to contribute. The point here is to figure out a diverse system for securing necessities to cover overt obligations that require actual dollars, to necessities that can be secured without dollars, to necessities that cannot be obtained legally due to lack of money, crushing regulations and the like. Contributions can come later. As Catherine Austin Fitts likes to say, put on your own oxygen mask first so you’ll be in a position to help where you can.

I’ve built a worksheet containing a blank grid for download in two formats: one in Word, and one as a PDF. If you download and use this grid I’d like to hear your thoughts — please share your experience either in the comments, or by contacting me directly.

comments

1. A huge thank you, not just for this post but for the site and all the great information you are offering here!

   I’ll let you know how I get on now that I have downloaded and printed the PDF form of the matrix.

   — james samuel · 3 June 2009, 07:26 · #

2. Hi James, yes please do let me know if the grid works for you. I’m also interested in making it better so if you notice any tweaks or changes that would improve it, let me know that too. Looking forward to your feedback :)

   — Paula · 3 June 2009, 17:44 · #

3. Hi Paula, I have been pondering this and my own need to generate some income after more than 18 months of volunteering in support of the New Zealand Transition Towns movement

   I am slowly but steadily working my way through a process using your thoughtful offerings, and a wonderful book called The Back of a Napkin by Dan Roam – which offers a fabulous way of seeing patterns in large amounts of data, and then visualising the possibilities that arise from it.

   I have also been busy developing our local Community Supported Agriculture project, that is gaining momentum.

   I see many more fabulous posts from you, since I last visited. It’s hard to keep up with you! :-)

   Kia kaha (be strong)

   James

   — james samuel · 5 July 2009, 04:27 · #

4. James, thanks so much for your feedback. It definitely makes me feel good to know my thought processes are of some use to somebody.

   I like “kia kaha” — I’m going to start using it in my emails!

   — Paula · 12 July 2009, 22:50 · #

5. See also these:

   http://transitionculture.org/2009/07/01/what-employment-opportunities-arise-from-embracing-transition/

   http://transitionculture.org/2009/01/22/the-200-artisan-skills-required-to-make-a-victorian-town-functional/

   — risa b · 16 August 2009, 04:16 · #

Name	Remember
E-mail
Website
Message	Textile Help