Cities, with their large and varied-skill workforce, will suffer less than the countryside.
Cities have a large and varied workforce, but many of their skills lie in things that rely on civilisation remaining intact. Tax lawyers, bartenders, yoga instructors, investment bankers etc. all seem like they would be more of a liability than an asset in such a scenario. Whereas the countryside has skills more focused around food production, and a lower population density reduces the risks of food riots.
It would be interesting to test this. Scratch that, it would be interesting to look at natural experiments that test these theories; setting up a deliberate test would be a terrible idea.
It’s not so much the tax lawyers and yoga instructors, but the population of skilled and flexible people from among which some have become tax lawyers and yoga instructors. These could become cheap accountants and work crew leaders, for instance. Bartenders would still be needed, to dispense drinks to the population; I’m pretty sure there were still bartenders in Berlin, just before it fell to the Red Army.
If I’d reading the Argentine situation correctly, cities fare much better under minor collapses, which makes sense seeing how little agriculture represents in GDP. And, everything being interconnected, this means that the countryside is dependent on the city for tools, fuel, maintenance, knowledge.
It may be different for a larger collapse, but a country will still need an industry, transport, maintenance, a functioning economy (which means ways of allocating resources, including some forms of banking), etc… these things are much more likely to be designed and adapted in cities than in the countryside.
It is possible, thinking about it, that both cities and countryside could suffer immensely, as the cities starve and the countryside is deprived of resources (and then starve for lack of modern agriculture). And there may be a short term vs long term issue; food reserves are practically non-existent for the moment, which is a huge vulnerability.
Cities have a large and varied workforce, but many of their skills lie in things that rely on civilisation remaining intact. Tax lawyers, bartenders, yoga instructors, investment bankers etc. all seem like they would be more of a liability than an asset in such a scenario. Whereas the countryside has skills more focused around food production, and a lower population density reduces the risks of food riots.
It would be interesting to test this. Scratch that, it would be interesting to look at natural experiments that test these theories; setting up a deliberate test would be a terrible idea.
It’s not so much the tax lawyers and yoga instructors, but the population of skilled and flexible people from among which some have become tax lawyers and yoga instructors. These could become cheap accountants and work crew leaders, for instance. Bartenders would still be needed, to dispense drinks to the population; I’m pretty sure there were still bartenders in Berlin, just before it fell to the Red Army.
If I’d reading the Argentine situation correctly, cities fare much better under minor collapses, which makes sense seeing how little agriculture represents in GDP. And, everything being interconnected, this means that the countryside is dependent on the city for tools, fuel, maintenance, knowledge.
It may be different for a larger collapse, but a country will still need an industry, transport, maintenance, a functioning economy (which means ways of allocating resources, including some forms of banking), etc… these things are much more likely to be designed and adapted in cities than in the countryside.
It is possible, thinking about it, that both cities and countryside could suffer immensely, as the cities starve and the countryside is deprived of resources (and then starve for lack of modern agriculture). And there may be a short term vs long term issue; food reserves are practically non-existent for the moment, which is a huge vulnerability.
Katrina?
You need larger scale. Something like Russia in 1917-1920 or one of the Chinese famines.