It pays to remember that societies get what they deserve, not what they expect.

Suburbia is the insidious cartoon of the country house in a cartoon of the country.

The skyscraper - any building over seven stories really - will come to be seen as an experimental building type that doesn't work well in an energy-starved economy.

Anyone who studies the energy predicament understands its connection with the operations of capital - and by this I do not mean capitalism as an ideology, I mean the behavior of acquired wealth and its deployment for productive purpose. (A lot of educated idiots don't understand this, and we waste a lot of time blathering about capitalism.)

We have to do commerce differently because the WalMart system of big box chain retail will soon die. This means rebuilding local main street economies (networks of local economic interdependency).

We might hope that the law as a profession does not vanish, because justice may vanish with it - but we could probably do with far fewer lawyers. Since I think agriculture will come back closer to the center of life, I think there will be many vocational opportunities there - especially with the so-called 'value-added' activities associated with food production. That's a windy way to say more local wine and cheese-makers - and probably fewer giant factories producing cheez doodles and Pepsi Cola.

I abhor the word "consumer." Consumers, unlike citizens, have no implicit duties, obligations, or responsibilities to the common good. It's a degrading term. The use of it degrades the public discussion.