To be fair, Cuba's transition wasn't exactly painless. Many suffered greatly during their transition.
They also happen to have a political system that was able to turn agricultural practices around on a dime.I think the old saying "we are only 3 meals from a revolution" will hold here, too. Rulers know that hunger breeds revolution, and I expect every functional government will take extreme measures to protect the food supply, letting other functions fail first.
China's growth (and oil use) is not declining so far,
My family will have plenty to eat, and plenty of fuel for ourI'm trying not to read that as, "I got mine, so there." But there are countless examples of rural areas doing far worse than cities in bad times. Homer Dixon-Smith shows that in ancient Rome, rural areas collapsed sooner than the cities, and people there were much worse off. The same for China in the collapse of the western Chou empire. In the Depression, a million people left US cities in 1930-32, thinking they'd be better off on farms, but from 1932-1935, 4 million people left farms for cities, showing they were wrong. There are thousands of abandoned camps in the rural South, left by people who couldn't make it in the country.
vehicles and machinery, but we'll also be a long, long way from any city
of any size.
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