“a saturation point in product availability” – Andrew X:

A very interesting point.
From my economics lessons many years ago, I just about recall the Law of Diminishing Returns, the moral version of which is the Question of How Much is Enough ?
As a society, we in the developed world had More Than Enough in the late 1980s, which was when we should have had a decent recession, which would by now be well behind us. We did not have that recession because governments and financial institutions around the world wanted to keep the party going and keep themselves in jobs.
While thinking about how bad a recession would be for them then, governments and financial institutions were not considering how bad it would in the future when the music simply had to stop, as it now has. All they were doing was priming the economy for an even greater fall.
In a decent 1989 recession, some businesses, cities, ways of doing things, even some entire industries would have gone to the wall, but many others would have adapted and survived. Most importantly, new technologies and industries would have emerged, in a manner similar to those of the 1930s, as the world recovered from the Crash of 1929.
We can only guess at the positive changes which might have been, as we now find ourselves in a deeper global recession than we might have had in the late 1980s, with a significantly higher global population than we had in then and, arguably, a more unstable global political environment, with internal instability becoming the flavour of the decade. We are also largely dependent on the same old forms of energy and, which is much worse, largely the same old sources.
Regarding immigration policies, Spain became even more reckless as the warning bells rang louder, and even as recently as December 08 the UK agreed to import 5,000 halal butchers from Pakistan, which seems to me further evidence, if any were needed, that Labour is The Party of Islam.
I can only speculate as to how bad it will get, but I do agree about the potential value of getting one’s own ox. Or water-buffalo, or milk-camel, depending on location. And remember, if you must get a goat, zero-grazing is a the only way to be a good neighbour.