Maybe alot of people still don’t realize that the game is over:
The rich western societies USA, EU and JAPAN have already reached their maximum possible wealth a few years go. Now they will all become much poorer for a number of reasons such as petroleum running out, science and technology have run their course and cannot further advance and have indeed stopped advancing some time ago, the economic worlwide poker game is ending given the 100 trillion dollar worldwide debts under various forms that absolutely no one on earth knows how to pay etc. ,
Most of the poor countries will never even reach a moderate level of wealth let alone the west. By poor I mean Russia, China, India etc. 90 % of these countries are really very poor, have absolutely nothing at all, and are trying to run to catch up, but they never will;
There is no real work available anymore for the millions of people graduating colleges in Europe, USA, JAPAN, CHINA, INDIA etc. What on earth will all these people possibly do ? Sell subprime morgages ? sell idiotic software to calculate stocks in the idiotic “financial industry” world ? They don’t have a chance, all work has been automated, downsized, optimized, the only work available is slave labor for peanuts;
The economic “growth” model is a bunch of crap, was never true, was just an ideological theory to convince all the young people that they could “possibly make it”, when in all truth there are no resources available anymore to make it; All the basic needs keep costing more and more, health care is skyrocketing, homes are skyrocketing, companies don’t give a pluck about laying off all their ultimately “useless” workers
since they really don’t have any real work to offer anymore;
We are ending up into a new dark ages, an agrarian society like about the year 1800. All the goods and things we take for granted are ending.
The world will continue to just chug along as usual. The party was only for about 300 million people between the EU, USA, JAPAN and a few other rich countries anyways. In any case, if there is a large increase of poverty because of wars, terrorism, weather that goes crazy, economy goes crazy etc. we will just adapt, use buses to go around, use much less stuff, use telecommuting to work or whatever. We adapt to lower and lower standards of living so the problem is licked. The poor countries will all simply starve to death so 3 billion people will just get out of the way in the end.
China has a billion people that want more, can you give ? they need power, cars, there is not enough. Europe has people from Africa asking to come in to work, can they give, no they don’t have enough work. The weather goes crazy, hot, cold, snow, heat, fires, you killed it driving cars, now who is going to pay the bill ? Kosovo and Russia want to fight, Turkey wants to fight, Irak is killing all the time, Afghanistan is a black hole, Iran wants to nuke Israel, Pakistan has nukes and has crazy people governing it all. They are all crazy oddball religious types, the are killing for GOD, they are all very strange seperate bands of people, all small lunatic tribes, not even GOD knows what is going on in their quirky brains.
Technology can’t do anything anymore, science has finished discovering everything it could, the game is over.
So plant some cabage in your backyard, turn out the lights, sleep alot, save your energy, we are going into a long emergency, the dark ages, the mideavel times, the end of civilization as we know it.
Remove yourself from your tiny, personal perspective. The world has gone through worse than what you have observe, like two devastating world wars in the 20th century. In comparison, what you point to is small potatoes to what has gone on in the world before.
The world is basically a big family, acting dysfunctional, like all families do. There will always be conflicts in the world as long as there are people. But at least the conflicts are now more contained to regional differences. Most of the world is too invested in their opponents that they don’t want to destroy it by being overly aggressive. There is more cooperation between nations than ever before. There is now more a mentality of ‘live and let live’ between nations than before.
It is subtle, but the world is a better place than it was 50 years ago.
The coming poverty is due to the convergence of the following in order of importance:
There is no more work available for the millions of people searching for it in the rich world. How many people can work at Wal Mart ? How many can be lawyers, “financial analysts”, service operators, “programmers” ? In truth not many, most of these activities are useless anyways, don’t produce any tangible benefit to anyone except the super rich who always make more and to which all the economic progress of the last 20 years has gone to. The work that was available in the last 50 years was due to a given level of technology associated to a given level of economic development and to the fact that it was mostly concentrated in the 3 blocks EU,USA, JAPAN. Now that alot of all this work has been outsourced to China, India and others, there will be nothing left anymore, since technology finished off all the remaining work that was available. Technology automated and eliminated work as was forecast in the 1960s, so in a sense it is a victim of its own success. Technology automated all work. Of course many companies fail to see that they really don’t need all their workers anymore, but in time they will. In short the last 50 years was a QUIRK, A TRANSIENT situation that will never repeat again. Now there is a large transfer of wealth to the poorer countries, but it will fall far short of satisfying even more than 10% of their population. Notice that for 3 billion people in the world there was never any work and never any wealth, they are almost all starving.
Technology and Science have finished their course. There is nothing left to discover anymore and there is nothing left to apply any new technology to. There hasn’t been any new technology in a few years now. They are over, have delivered all they could, they are at the end of the road, THEY ARE FINISHED, LIKE, THERE WILL BE NO MORE TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE, IT IS OVER. Since the model of “economic growth” s based on this fairy tale - mythology of technology creating “new markets, products and activities” there will be no more new markets, products and activities, hence no more new “jobs” in technology. Funny how programmers have been outsourced to places where they are “cheaper” like India, but weren’t they supposed to be “high paying”, creative jobs ? No it was just another Bull Sxit that we have always been told. In truth we don’t even need so many technology workers anymore, most of what they do is totally useless anyways.
Oil is finishing, Natural Resources are all finishing, population is growing, the environment is damaged and is doing funny things, like crazy weather. Compexity and Instability due to population explosion and Globalization can potentialliy create much havoc, disaster in a simple word:
THE APOCALYPE
In short be prepared, it is all over we are heading toward the dark ages, THE STONE AGE.
Hey CRAZY CLOWN I explained to you many times that work, economy, technology, wealth, science etc. don’t really exist, they are all a cultural invention, an anthropological construction. We live measuring things according to our own quirky set of values and rules. The work of tomorrow may consist of everyone being paid 100,000 dollars a year to be dog sitters. There is no reference for saying what work is or isn’t, a group of people decide that something is valuable, some activity can be paid by exchanging it with some other. Who is to say what ultimate value it has ?
So may be said with “science” and “technology” and “progress”. They have meanings only in our very arbitrary and limited civilization, outside of our civilization they are meaningless. The cargo cult worshipped aircraft, if you explained to them how they worked, they would not have understood but especially they would not have cared since they already inserted the steel birds in the sky inside their own narrative of the world. We measure progress through numbers, more GB of memory, but the act of using this measure is arbitrary and is based on our intention of how we will use it. Usage of things are arbitrary, the stone age may not be as primitive as you think.
Just create different meanings and values and all our concept of wealth, science and technology disappear, are irrelevant. Why do we need to change designs of nature to obtain something that we think is better ? Ancient civilizations just changed the meanings of things and probably obtained a much higher “return on investment” by simply changing their experiences towards things.
You will soon find yourself in the stone age much sooner than you think. You see it is all tied up, technology and science had to have, was forced to have a high rate of progress and deployment to keep up with the population, economy, consumption rates and environmental damage that our modern Capitalistic - Technology driven economy had. Since this rate of innovation and improvement has been constantly decreasing with a smaller and smaller return on investment in the last few years, at this point we can conclude that SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ARE BASICALLY OVER, HAVE PEAKED, JUST LIKE IN “PEAK OIL”.
Along with that all else is also “PEAKING” like WORK, NATURAL RESOURCES, AND OIL.
Look at JAPAN, it has been in a kind of recession for 15 years, and yet they have invested in technology, did all their homework, but alas they can’t get anyplace anymore. Why ? because there is no longer any kind of progress possible. The only kind of progress that would now be possible is a behavioral change, a very rapid and radical change in the way our societies behave, a SYSTEMS change. That would include greatly reducing the work day to just a few hours and working only in things that have real value, not hours on end that just produce fluff AND MOSTLY WASTE GREAT AMOUNTS OF SCARCE AND VALUABLE NATURAL RESOURCES. That would include a huge deployment of PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION ALL ACROSS THE USA throughout all the suburbs, with light electric buses, and maybe internet scheduled bus transports in suburbs. That would include a radical decrease in all consumption of all goods, HENCE IT IS MUCH MORE PREFERABLE TO HAVE A RADICAL CONTRACTION OF THE ECONOMY AT THIS POINT, AN ALL OUT VERY DEEP DEPRESSION!.
A. Certain resources ARE running out, that means painful change but that is exactly what free market capitalism is designed to deal with. The pain of change has to be surpassed by the pain of continuing on. We are just now starting to seriously look at new energy sources because continuing our oil habit is starting to hurt. Frankly like any addict we have yet to hit rock bottom before we quit searching for a fix and I believe we will end up on a methedone like substitute before we truly free ourselves.
Still just because we will eventually run out of oil, this by no means will send us back to the stone age. It won’t even send us back to a primarily agrarian society. It will just make it more difficult to continue as we have.
B. No work? That is laughable. Will there be less work in any particular country for any particular class of worker…yes, but that has been the way of things since we invented a division of labor. If we do peak and destabilize there will suddenly be vast opportunities in the security sector as those who have things will want to hold on to it. If we slip back into a more agrarian society there will be plenty of work as farmers. If oil runs out a new industry will replace it. Life may change, it may very well become harder, but it will not out pace the human capacity for adaptation or endurance.
Only a fool tries to predict the future. The future always turns out exactly as nobody expected it to be. Our system - society may simply chug along exactly as it is today for the next 3 billion years, and in the year 3,665,671,952 the world will be exactly as it was in New Jersey or Oklahoma City in 1952.
Or next monday we may be immediately in the STONE AGE. Or maybe next monday we may be immediately inside Instant Singularities in other universe - worlds, etc.
Because you drove a car and completely destroyed the weather system. Now only havoc and extreme disasters will come. Because you drove a car and completely depleted all the oil and along with that all the natural resources of the world. Because you went to the mall and depleted all the resources nature gave us.
There is no longer any way to fix a broken planet. Technology has thrown in the towl, there won’t be no magic solution. Our civilization will self destroy like with “security jobs” aka “WARS” something like that clusterpluck that is IRAK and AFGHANISTAN. It is all over now.
A) The point is there doesn’t seem to be a new technology around to save the day. Add to that old6598’s theory of science is over, well then no solution. Capitalism can easily become 19th capitalism, that is brutal as it is in many parts of the 3rd world. Only strong counter forces like unions or governments force employers to behave.
B) work can be infinite or zero according to how you define it, or how a given society counts it. In JAPAN just waiting for the boss to leave at midnight is considered “work” because of their feudal, quasi-religious take on their hierarchy, corporations, etc. In many other societies it would be considered just nothing at all (not even relaxing). Many hours of work are spent in “meetings” which in many other cultures would be seen as a form of partying, etc. But yeah, if push comes to shove, some dictator will force slave labor upon any untold millions of people to make up for the energy slaves lost from oil finishing and technology failing.
In a sense the real pain of the whole situation is that of diminishing expectations. The future will be worse than the past. Third world countries and people who lived before the free lunch of OIL, INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION - TECHNOLOGY - SCIENCE - APPLIED SCIENCE and CHEAP LABOR to run thousands of factories, those people who lived before all this, had a kind of steady state life tending towards frequent loss, towards commonly worsening futures, towards not expecting anything at all and actually being content of just being alive. That is why religion was so important, they only had the afterlife to look forward to. But in the last 200 years we in the rich west (EU,USA,JAPAN) have become accustomed to improving standards of living, to improving technology in a word to PROGRESS, the future will always be better, we are going FORWARD.
That is the basis of the desire to always see the economies GROW, that is why people buy expensive college education, because the future will have to be better, that is also the mythology of profit, of markets growing etc. But all of this is probably ending quite soon, in fact the standards of living in the west have not improved at all in the last 20 years, that must mean something. Only the very rich are pocketing all the gains. The US did make and sell BIGGER homes, with this continuous illusion of a “better future”, we are going forward, but the truth is it has all be done on debt.
So those who will suffer the most are the relatively rich “middle class” of the west (EU,USA,JAPAN) that will see their standard of living go down the drain. They will have to get used to DIMINISHING EXPECTATIONS. They will then ask WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO PROGRESS ? WHY DID I SPEND ALL THAT MONEY FOR A COLLEGE EDUCATION ONLY TO FIND MYSELF WORKING AT WAL MART ?
I do agree with you here. While I don’t see a huge reversal of progress leading us into squalid dark ages, I do believe that our economy is going to go steadily downhill over the next century. China and India are going to be gobbling up a larger share of the pie and the those of us who have had the biggest pieces are going to find our shares smaller. Still, it’s always been that way…adapt, compete, or be satisfied with a smaller portion. Thomas Friedman is a good one to read on the subject. He calls it the “Flattening” of the world. It used to be better to be a C student in Brooklyn then an A student in Bangalore…the internet has made location irrelevant. Deal with it or Mr Darwin will eat your ass.
Still I am an optimist at heart. Twenty years ago no one knew that the machine Mr Wozniak and Mr Jobs were building in their garage would change everything. I have a feeling that somewhere some dude is getting off his shift at McDonalds and building an engine that will run off of coffee grounds. You never know.
Yeah, like maybe old6598 is getting off his shift and creating an INSTANT SINGULARITY.
By changing neural circuit organizations, the decoding of reality, sense organs and emotional and pain/pleasure circuits, inserting chips in the brain you can leapfrog a trillion years of scientific and technological evolution, actually you can overcome all the bottlenecks that our presently wired brain can’t overcome and enter a new universe, with new laws of physics, a new world …
I am fairly certain that Godel’s uncertainty principal will kick in at some point in the near future and prevent the dreaded Singularity. Computers no matter how fast and powerful rely on a formal system of calculations and I don’t think that they will ever be compatible or even comparable to human thought.
The wealth that the developed nations have accumulated from the rest of the world is being recalled.
Wether the economic systems of the west which depend on perpetual economic growth can cope is a significant question as they are losing their ability to command the resources necessary to do so.
Lets put this thing up on two feet. between 1960 and 1990 the US, EU and JAPAN (and some others like SOUTH KOREA) had a very high economic growth level, they became fully developed and are now mostly saturated. They have been saturated for maybe more than 10 years, their growth is essentially over, maybe the USA has a little more head room due to cultural, and structural differences, but even the USA is a finished economy, has grown, is over, is saturated.
Now we have CHINA, INDIA, INDONESIA and BRAZIL that may have combined 500 million people that aspire to western middle class life. So companies will invest there and those economies will be the only real ones growing and developing. There will be huge profits to be made, science and technology have nothing to do with it, maybe the use of technology will be forced to optimize and compensate the pressure on natural rsources, but they don’t need new technology, they just need to imitate the USA circa 1965 with cars, TVs, homes, refrigerators etc.
So maybe we have 30 years left for the current growth model, but it surely will end, it will get saturated and will leave out 3 billion people anyways. This is the capitalistic model of opening new markets in other countries and making huge profits. The west will just be a slowly decaying retiring home that gets poorer and poorer.