Sunday, February 15, 2009

Small-scale technology

One of the many things we discussed at Thursday night's meeting which I didn't mention in my earlier post is small business and small-scale technology appropriate to the kind of localised economy we will see in the future. Geoff Montague was saying how difficult it was to get someone in to bale his hay: the quantity was too small for a lot of contractors to bother with and in any case it was hard now to find someone willing to do small square bales. All the bales done these days, round or square, tend to be monsters needing machinery to move them. Anyway I came across this picture:
It was in an interesting article about Amish technology which is here. The baler is diesel powered (you can see the small diesel on top). There is a lot of old machinery lying around which may be perfectly appropriate in the future. In fact rather than have money in the bank (lets hope you're right out of the markets by now!) the smart thing to do now is stockpile useful tools of all descriptions.

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