SPONSOR

Vaulted Invest in Gold

Visit this blog’s sponsor. Vaulted is an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold: Kunstler.com/vaulted


 

Support JHK on Patreon

 

If you’re interested in supporting this blog, check out the Patreon page or Substack.
 
Get This blog by email:

Attention Movie Producers!
JHK’s screenplay in hard-copy edition

Click to order!

A Too-Big-To-Fail Bankster…
Three Teenagers who bring him down…
Gothic doings on a Connecticut Estate.
High velocity drama!


Now Live on Amazon

“Simply the best novel of the 1960s”


Now in Paperback !
Only Seven Bucks!
JHK’s Three-Act Play
A log mansion in the Adirondack Mountains…
A big family on the run…
A nation in peril…


Long Emergency Cafe Press ad 2

Get your Official JHK swag on Cafe Press


The fourth and final book of the World Made By Hand series.

Harrow_cover_final

Battenkill Books (autographed by the Author) |  Northshire Books Amazon


emb of Riches Thumbnail

JHK’s lost classic now reprinted as an e-book
Kindle edition only


 


Futurist, Strategic Analyst, podcaster, and rock and roll musician Eric Garland, talking with JHK from the troubled heartland city of St. Louis, Mo. Among other things, Eric and I talk about the Big Box shopping model, the contagion of business idiocy in the USA, the causes behind the Ferguson riots of 2014, and the current financial system as a raft of fraud going down a river of no return. His “Competitive Futures” podcast is available free on iTunes. His website is www.competitivefutures.com

Direct download:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/kunstlercast/KunstlerCast_265.mp3

Please send questions and comments to jhkunstler@mac.com.

The new World Made By Hand novel
!! Is now available !!

Kunstler skewers everything from kitsch to greed, prejudice, bloodshed, and brainwashing in this wily, funny, rip-roaring, and profoundly provocative page- turner, leaving no doubt that the prescriptive yet devilishly satiric A World Made by Hand series will continue.” — Booklist

HistoryoftheFuture_Thumb

My local indie booksellers… Battenkill Books (Autographed by the Author) … or Northshire Books
or Amazon

Also: Published as an E-book for the first time!
The 20th Anniversary edition
With an entertaining new introduction by the author

GON_thumb

Bargain Price $3.99

Amazon Kindle …or … Barnes & Noble Nook …or… Kobo

About James Howard Kunstler

View all posts by James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

16 Responses to “KunstlerCast 265 — Yakking With Futurist Eric Garland”

  1. hiruitnguyse February 25, 2015 at 10:01 pm #

    41:39 Not even worth propping up for target practice.

  2. chipshot February 25, 2015 at 11:37 pm #

    Such a rational conversation only to end
    with the optimistic conclusion that America
    will find it’s way ?! Have I missed or misinterpreted something?

    • routersurfer February 28, 2015 at 9:35 am #

      No, you really have not missed anything. Life will go on for many. Just not for everyone and not in the same way. Not even sure the concept of USA will be around in 200 years. But people will be. chipshot I would invest in a farm or a nice greenhouse not a new set of clubs. See you at the end. Doomer ? Me ? No-even worked for TPC 🙂 Times have changed and they are going back not forward.

      • chipshot March 1, 2015 at 8:58 pm #

        Definitely farm or greenhouse over clubs.

        TPC?

        How can you (or anyone) be so certain people
        will be around another 200 years? At some point
        ecologies are going to collapse, not sure humans
        will survive that.

        Humanity has inflicted an awful lot of damage on
        the planet the past 150 yrs. How much more can
        the system take?

        • routersurfer March 2, 2015 at 12:52 pm #

          The Players Club (Sawgrass.) TPC MAJOR golf course. A few people will be left. I like JHK’S novels as a good view of the downward slide. Not a doomer but I feel more like 1910 BCE will be the stopping point. What type of seeds you pick will really be important. Would love to hear any ideas you have. Total eco melt down is only a small chance. DNA/RNA is plastic. Who knows ? All I know is we really messed it up for a bit of silver and gold. Best wishes.

          • chipshot March 2, 2015 at 5:31 pm #

            Seeds will be valuable, maybe even become a form of currency.

            But if the climate deteriorates too fast, we could lose much
            of our ability to grow food.

            Still not sure total eco melt down is a long shot.
            Yes the planet is big, but look at all the different
            ways we have harmed it and our population continues
            to increase by 200,000+ every day!

            The oceans appear to be headed for the brink.
            Many warning signs such as coral bleaching world-wide
            and massive die-offs of plankton. Don’t think there
            are many bigger red flags than that.

            Enough tipping points get reached and collapse
            is likely to occur exponentially, not linearly.
            There are numerous tipping points that might already
            be unavoidable, making eco collapse a matter of when
            not if. Don’t know how anyone can rule out it happening
            within a decade or two.

            You can be one step away from going over a cliff, but
            there are no consequences until you take that last step.
            And even then, the worst consequences don’t occur
            till you land. How far from the edge are we? Or have
            we gone over, with a crash landing in the future?

            Not many people you can have such a discussion with…

  3. HowardBeale February 26, 2015 at 11:15 pm #

    “A raft of fraud going down a river of no return.”

    Amazing. Does that stuff just spontaneously occur to you, or is it the old story of nobody knows how hard the genius works when nobody is looking: George Carlin-esque–as he himself admitted.

  4. Karah February 27, 2015 at 4:08 am #

    Segregation is an old story in America and has morphed into economic segregation fed by the big box store corporate culture. You have people working in stores they can not afford to shop. Then Walmart comes along and provides a “solution” for the poverty market giving a false impression of prosperity where 1% of the american work force can not afford health insurance. So Obama was ordained with the responsibility to communicate this to the insurance companies when he should have been used to communicate the “change” to corporations and businesses. All he says to cfos is raise the wage to pay the insurance agencies. So, you still have a bifercated america and people, x-ers, are feeling it more harshly than anyone because they are not going to work for next to nothing if they can physically and mentally work at all. Being an x-er, there is no way i could ever compete with my forebears in this economy because I was not mentally and physically conditioned by the military to do whatever it takes without question. Therefore, I have no guaranteed military pension and health benefits that I may invest in a business enterprise or realestate. Even if I was enlisted recently, I would be dead in iraq or somalia, taking psychotropics for my ptsd or not getting the same deal my parents got when serving my time.

    • routersurfer February 28, 2015 at 9:28 am #

      Karah, I feel for you. All I can say is do not copy or use the past as a guide. Look to make yourself an income and place in the world. Looking for a job is a dead end. Find a group ( not cult ) of sharp people your age working to break the mold. We did that back in the 60’s but that was just for sport because we could. It may become the way for many.

  5. routersurfer February 28, 2015 at 9:23 am #

    ” Not as big as Radio Shack.” This was the point the coffee jetted out of my nose. Eric is a great find ! Thanks, Jim. I was hoping to play bass for you in the post BS world but looks like Eric has that gig. One of the best shows ever. I started in music in 1959 as a young child working with my grandmother, a church organist. Gave me two years of music ear & theory training before I discovered I was learning & not just playing a game 🙂 Decades of playing,teaching,retail and about everything you can do in music backs up everything Eric says. Which is the same DAMN THING YOU HAVE BEEN SAYING !!!!! Yes, we will plod on- just not in the same way. Sorry if that annoys anyone. I just hope we stop about 1870’s on The Big Slide. I fear the return of a “Christian” based, Bible based, form of slavery. Work on a farm-cool. Owned by a farmer? No. This show was not about Music or GC. It is about the huge crack in retail. 70% + of our economy.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
  6. d-_-b February 28, 2015 at 9:50 pm #

    Some interesting ideas, but presented in a coked-out way that reminded me of some friends that became stock brokers in the ’80’s. Your comments and questions sounded so much more persuasive and reasonable. He should learn from your style, if he wants to influence folks. I’m troubled by how he could sound so right and so wrong at the same time.

    • routersurfer March 2, 2015 at 12:56 pm #

      I missed the wrong part. Throw me a line and help me understand your view point of Eric. Thanks in advance I really value many of the ideas expressed here.

  7. BruceMcF March 1, 2015 at 10:10 pm #

    The remark regarding Amazon not making a profit reminds me of the situation of the cable companies that spent much of the 80’s not making a profit, but continuing to attract investment … and then in the 90’s through to today reaping the rewards of building a network of local monopolies in distribution by making quite substantial profits.

    Individual parts of Amazon that have been in place for a while are profitable, but Amazon is willing to take those profits and additional investments alongside those in pursuit of monopoly or oligopoly positions in a range of new media markets.

  8. RVxx March 14, 2015 at 12:33 am #

    I was looking forward to this installment given the title but the guest spent way too much time talking about himself. Also, why the echo effect? Annoying with headphones.

  9. randyseck May 24, 2015 at 2:05 am #

    Guitar Centers. A Chain that literally only sells guitars, guitar strings, and amps. Nothing Else. They dont sell win instruments, pianos, keyboards, music stands, microphones, and almost never have lessons, connections to local music programs, connections to schools, and almost never sell sheet music of any kind. I dont need my worthless associates in business to tell you this company is garbage for several reasons. Even if their suburban wasteland of a business model is coming to an end they could have at least lasted longer by running an ACTUAL music store worth driving to.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. When Does Inequality Decrease? – Articles - May 19, 2018

    […] (about which to a greater extent than below). I don’t take hold the transcript, but inwards this podcast amongst Jim Kunstler too Eric Garland, Garland relates a storey where he talks amongst an Army […]

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack