Right-Sizing Ingenuity

What if we right-sized ingenuity by focusing on doing more with less?

We’re in a peculiar state globally. Locked in the mindset that economic growth is necessary lest the system implodes, we’ve persuaded ourselves that growth is also inevitable, for since human ingenuity is boundless, growth will also be boundless as long as we apply our ingenuity to generating more of everything, i.e. growth.

But at the same time as we assure ourselves ingenuity guarantees permanent growth, we’re now dependent on the endless expansion of credit/debt to generate economic growth--or if we take the sum of all the parts, the illusion of growth, for the peculiar state becomes even more peculiar when we consider the trajectory of ever-expanding debt, which accrues ever-expanding interest which must be paid out of future earnings.

As the interest payment consume an ever larger share of that income, the sum left for discretionary spending of the kind that supports growth shrinks, until it reaches the point of debt saturation: there’s no income left to support additional borrowing or consumption.

At this point, borrowing and consumption cease expanding, and growth collapses.

This is a peculiar conundrum: we must continually borrow more from the future to spend today to prop up the illusion of growth, for if growth falters, we can no longer pay the interest on all the money we borrowed to stimulate growth. Yet as interest payments increase, they consume so much of our future income that growth collapses.

Once we rely on debt to fund growth, the collapse of growth becomes inevitable. This is the trap we’ve set by making our economy and society dependent on what was always impossible: endless expansion of consumption funded by the equally endless expansion of debt.

All of which poses a question: rather than apply ingenuity solely to the task of generating more of everything by any means available, including soaring debt, planned obsolescence, monopolistic exploitation and a host of other self-liquidating ills that I term The Waste Is Growth Landfill Economy, what if we right-sized ingenuity by focusing on doing more with less?

Perhaps we can start by observing that depending on wasting irreplaceable resources, labor and capital as the means to expand “growth” is, well, a state of delusion that may well qualify as a form of insanity.

Yes, tens of millions of vehicles stuck in traffic jams around the world every day is “growth” because they’re all burning fuel (or depleting batteries) while they’re going nowhere, but is this a wise use of precious resources?

This example is just the tip of the iceberg of waste being pursued with manic vigor because it expands consumption, i.e. “growth.” That we’re paying for much of this consumption with money borrowed from future consumption of energy--for without ample affordable energy, there’s no economy and no earnings to pay interest on the debt, never mind paying down the principal--is another form of disconnect from reality. The more we waste today, the more we borrow from the future to pay for it.

If this strikes us as perfectly sane and sustainable, then we might as well join Emperor Norton in declaring ourselves emperors of all we see, for the state of delusion is remarkably similar.

Wouldn’t it be wiser, more sustainable and more sane, to ask: what is the minimum consumption required to maintain a healthy, stable, secure, sustainably high quality of life?

This seems to me to be the better focus for our ingenuity, and it’s where I direct my own practical ingenuity. This can be applied to three basic questions:

1. What is the minimum set of resources we would need to be comfortably off-grid and without water for a week or two? This question arose in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene last year, which left large swaths of North Carolina without utilities and road access for days or even weeks.

As weather events become larger and more extreme, and emergency buffers thin, such outages may become more common / widespread.

2. What is the minimum (i.e. no waste) level of water, energy and food needed to operate our household at a high quality of life, i.e. good food, comfort, Internet, lighting, etc.

3. What can we invest our time and ingenuity in that pays handsome, tangible, practical rewards?

Questions 1 and 2 are of course related, as once you pare down your consumption to a minimum to go two weeks without utilities, then the question arises--could you continue this more or less indefinitely if push came to shove?

In our case, I’ve experimented with portable solar panels and batteries (with built-in inverters so you have standard 120v AC outlets) for months, testing how much juice is generated on overcast days, how much power refrigerators, laptops, lights, routers, etc. consume, and I now have a good grasp of what appliances can be run sustainably on our private electrical utility.

1100w panels and 5500w batteries cost the same as a family vacation to Disney World, which is estimated at around $7,000. (Estimates of a vacation to Las Vegas seem to run around $1,000 a day and up, so that’s a similar cost.) Millions of people manage to afford vacations, so I consider this private electrical system within reach of many households.

If we get occasional sun, a 17-cubic foot standard fridge and all the Internet, TV, laptops and lights will be no problem. If we get days of rain, then we’ll downsize to a 4.3 cubic foot fridge--small, but better than nothing. Cooking and a bit of hot water for camping/sponge baths is via propane stored in portable tanks. Water is provided by a 500-gallon tank refilled by rainwater / catchment.

I’ve been surprised by how much electricity can be generated even on shadowless days if you redirect the panels to face the sun a few times during the day. (This takes 5 minutes, so 15 minutes a day--a small investment that boosts your total watt-hours generated significantly.)

Fridges with freezers are pretty efficient other than the defrost cycles, which suck up 3X the power of normal operation. Anything that generates heat--toasters, clothes dryers, etc.--consume huge quantities of electricity. In an emergency, they’re off the menu.

Food is a mix of stored goods and fresh produce from the yard.

Heating and cooling are power-hungry, and for most households, there won’t be produce to harvest in winter--but root vegetables, apples, cabbages, etc. store for long periods of time in cool cellars.

All this is where the ingenuity comes in: figuring out what works in your locale and household is aided by experimentation, trying things out, seeing what works best, researching others’ solutions, and so on.

Note that most rooftop solar arrays are under contract with the local utility, so unless they’re connected to a battery and inverter, the owner has no access to the electricity being generated by their rooftop solar panels should the grid go down.

Question 3 is one that is dismissed by the mainstream: growing your own food is a waste of time because you could buy more food by spending that time earning $30/hour working a regular job--and the same goes for cooking--why invest all that time when you can order takeout? (The average full-time employees’ annual income is now north of $60,000, or $30/hour).

I confess to finding this baseless dismissal irksome because it’s another disconnected-from-reality delusion that suits the status quo: there’s no point in doing anything remotely practical or productive for yourself, just make money and buy, buy, buy like a good consumer, and spend the rest of your time entertaining yourself.

So let’s explore cost and value of growing and preparing your own high-quality food.

#1, the net take-home pay from $30 is closer to $22, so if you’re creating $25 of value at home, you’re ahead of someone working extra hours at $30/hour.

#2, How do we value what’s not available, or better than anything you can buy? This includes organic vegetables and fruit we grow ourselves so we know what’s in the soil, food we grow that’s otherwise unavailable, foraged food, and foods prepared or baked at home that are unavailable in restaurants or bakeries, or of such a high quality they equal expensive fine-dining fare.

The value, and thus the cost, is much higher.

Here’s an eggplant pasta dish I made (using Sohla El-Waylly’s recipe) using cherry tomatoes and eggplant from the garden. Fair market value is $20 a plate, so there’s $40 for less than an hour of prep time.

Cherry tomatoes take virtually zero care, and eggplants only need water, some compost and occasional organic fertilizer--very little care. It takes very little time or effort to grow these veggies. The same can be said of a dozen other crops we grow: very little time / money invested for a steady bounty of fresh, healthy ingredients. (Chayote, Malabar spinach, Okinawan spinach, Tongan tree spinach (lau pele), taro, sweet potatoes, bananas, edible ginger, green beans, kai choi, yao choy, turmeric, breadfruit, Portuguese cabbage, pineapple, etc.)

Yes, many people have no access to land for a garden, but there may be community gardens available, or ways to trade labor with people who grow surplus food locally.

Our gardens are messy, we weed occasionally but we’re going for the food, not garden magazine neatness. We do whatever work is essential quickly and efficiently and then move on. The minimum is good enough.

So the claim that growing your own food is a laborious, low-value waste of time: false on all counts. The trick is to find out via experimentation what grows easily and well in your terroir.

A truly handmade quality meal at a restaurant is easily $30 a plate, with side dishes adding to the cost. If I make dinner for two in an hour, with many of the ingredients harvested from the gardens, then I’ve made $70 an hour--far more than I can make at a regular job.

Here’s a warabi salad made from our cherry tomatoes and fiddlehead ferns foraged by a cousin. Since it’s not even available in restaurants, shall we say $15 a serving? That’s $30 per two servings, and there are multiple servings, so that’s $60.

So who’s really ahead--the individual who bought the mainstream trope that gardening and cooking are so low-value that they’re not worth doing, who buys low-quality produce of unknown nutrient value and greasy, low-nutrient takeout slop, or the individual who grows high-quality food and turns it into high-quality, delicious, nutrient-dense meals?

Here are fresh-baked pans of classic Turkish simit from the household baker:

At $8 each (a bargain if you could find them handmade), this is $80.

The point here isn’t that we’re self-sufficient in any way--that is neither possible nor even desirable. The point here is that investing time and energy ingeniously on your own account, using experimentation and practical knowledge, pays off at a much higher rate and with much greater satisfaction than working extra hours at a conventional job.

Eliminating sugary beverages, snacks, ultra-processed foods, greasy takeout, junk food and fine dining, and replacing it all with homemade food not only saves a lot of money, it improves health.

Frankly, well prepared high-quality food is no longer affordable, and it’s often been modified to suit jaded tastes. By investing our ingenuity, time and effort in our own production, skills, knowledge and ingenuity, we earn much higher returns in value and satisfaction.

So let’s right-size ingenuity rather than squandering it on the hopeless delusion of eternal “growth” funded by eternally expanding debt.
CHS NOTE: If your curiosity and interests range far and wide and you favor independent analysis, welcome home. Perhaps something here may change your life in a highly useful way. I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and yes, it takes time and effort and yes, it’s unpaid if no one subscribes. That’s the deal. Thank you for your readership and understanding.