I've been thinking a lot lately about how much time we have until the civilization we have grown to take for granted comes crashing down around us. It would contend that given that it is built on the premise of ever expanding consumption and economic growth in a world that has finite space and resources it is only matter of time before it collapses. How long though? 10 years, 20, 100?
That's my thinking. It's sort of a house of cards. The fiscal cliff, the troubles in Greece, Spain, Italy etc... These all seem like the moans of a foundation getting ready to collapse. Maybe we can keep afloat for another 50 years or so, but it seems doubtful.
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Not very, imagine what a long term power loss could do in the wrong city, what a loss in city services do to budget or emergency could result in
Mismanagement has helped Detroit into shutting down services while charging increasing rates...they turned off street lights in suburbs resulting in increased crime.
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I've been thinking a lot lately about how much time we have until the civilization we have grown to take for granted comes crashing down around us. It would contend that given that it is built on the premise of ever expanding consumption and economic growth in a world that has finite space and resources it is only matter of time before it collapses. How long though? 10 years, 20, 100?
I requested Deutsche Bank establish a company which they will manage and lend it sufficient funds to build a million Siemens 6 megawatt turbines in the north sea to sell electricity to Europe. The specifics of these turbines being the extreme depth of the sea floor requiring specially engineered support columns from the sea floor to the surface. Once the wind turbines have paid off the loan, and sufficient funds exist to construct an identical capacity wind farm, the old columns will be used to support a city on the ocean. These wind turbines will pay for themselves within ten years of construction meaning a new wind farm can be constructed in 20 years when the old one reaches its expiry date.
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Not very, imagine what a long term power loss could do in the wrong city, what a loss in city services do to budget or emergency could result inMismanagement has helped Detroit into shutting down services while charging increasing rates...they turned off street lights in suburbs resulting in increased crime.
But picture a 5 day blackout. NO light,no card usage (including the welfare card), no refrigerated food, no tv. It would self destruct.
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But picture a 5 day blackout. NO light,no card usage (including the welfare card), no refrigerated food, no tv. It would self destruct.Not very, imagine what a long term power loss could do in the wrong city, what a loss in city services do to budget or emergency could result inMismanagement has helped Detroit into shutting down services while charging increasing rates...they turned off street lights in suburbs resulting in increased crime.
We had that...power supply failed when Substation went boom. Hot, Sweaty and nasty. All the food had to be dealt with - much of which was lost.
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We had that...power supply failed when Substation went boom. Hot, Sweaty and nasty. All the food had to be dealt with - much of which was lost.But picture a 5 day blackout. NO light,no card usage (including the welfare card), no refrigerated food, no tv. It would self destruct.Not very, imagine what a long term power loss could do in the wrong city, what a loss in city services do to budget or emergency could result inMismanagement has helped Detroit into shutting down services while charging increasing rates...they turned off street lights in suburbs resulting in increased crime.
And i think if that happens at the wrong time in the wrong place it is setting up for violence. The worst parts of chicago, south LA, etc could easily turn to riots and looting.
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And yet it doesn't. Sandy caused long term power outages in much of NYC, but it didn't self-destruct. There were problems, yes. Many of them serious. But not mass casualties. Not a breakdown of society.
As long as the damage is relatively localized, we adapt, partly by preparation, partly by support from less affected areas.
Remember how much damage LA suffered the last time they got news they didn't like? And it might as well be a collapse of society for the duration for those stuck in it. Make it widespread enough long enough at the wrong time and things can get ugly. It is just one piece in a potential recipe for disaster, without the other piece in place it may just be a bad day
I'm thinking something along the lines of a major pandemic sweeping through aisa or something similar being a good catalyst. Or perhaps a substantial economic melt down in the states or Europe, leading to a domino effect throughout the industrialized world.
Of course during the cold war everyone was terrified of a global nuclear war, and that never happened and seems fairly improbable these days.
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I'm thinking something along the lines of a major pandemic sweeping through aisa or something similar being a good catalyst. Or perhaps a substantial economic melt down in the states or Europe, leading to a domino effect throughout the industrialized world.
Of course during the cold war everyone was terrified of a global nuclear war, and that never happened and seems fairly improbable these days.
A pandemic or war in china would do more damage to our economy than it happening in many of our own regions. So much of out material goods come from there. Loaned money too.
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And yet it doesn't. Sandy caused long term power outages in much of NYC, but it didn't self-destruct. There were problems, yes. Many of them serious. But not mass casualties. Not a breakdown of society.
As long as the damage is relatively localized, we adapt, partly by preparation, partly by support from less affected areas.
It probably helps in that it was a shared sufferance. Though there was outrage that all priority was given to Manhattan in the aftermath when they were the least effected.
So I suppose what would gut the USA is if there was subsidence of the Mantle resulting in a sink hole on the surface that expanded progressively pushing people out of the rural regions into the coastal cities and the response was to treat the tide of millions of refugees poorly. Then you might have Armed resistance among the refugees on the Streets of New York.
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The US does not have much longer before economic meltdown.
Social security is a Ponzi Scheme. The money has already been spent and the only way to pay the IOU's the government wrote to itself is higher taxes for services already payed for once. That's not going to happen.
We borrow too much, both individually and as a nation. Our children are already bankrupt and somebody will try to collect eventually.
People demand high rates of services and low taxes. Government is so polarized that each side is only willing to address half the problem and unwilling to compromise.
Infrastructure is already nearing the breaking point in many cities. Both Maryland and Virginia are running out of money to simply maintain existing roads, and yet people are demanding huge new transportation networks to solve existing transportation problems. Don't dare mention raising gas taxes that have been static for decades. Find the money somewhere that won't affect me.
Those who have money want reduced services. Those who do not want somebody else to pay for them. The wealthy 1% already control nearly everything. Large segments of the population are already little more than wage slaves. Paid barely enough to afford housing and food. (Except for the entitlements they rely on to make ends meet.)
Health care is a for profit industry & and an entitlement. Entire segments exist simply to extract as much money as possible from the system while providing minimal services. Why provided preventive care to the poor when you can charge Uncle Same emergency room rates.
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It's no bloody wonder the US is strapped for money. You guys are fighting wars all the time, which is the most expensive thing anyone could be doing today. Sure, entire regions live or die depending on defense contracts, but in total, that's tax money that is lost forever in a big black hole. Add to this the completely insane spending on securitheatre b%$%@#$$ ("Every section of society will have to cut spending, except security of course"), which doesn't provide any sort of measurable benefit to the economy, but rather increases costs across the board and thus slowing the wheels, and you get a pretty dirty picture. Even without any other country in the world to compete with, the US would be going broke. Senseless policies is not a recipe for economic survival.
The remedy is simple: Go home again. Let dictatorships solve their own problems. Chart the entirety of the securitheatre and their money and shut them down. Put the Guantanamo prisoners on boats and give them food for extended ocean trips, let them find solace where they can. Accept the occasional terrorist act as the cost of living in a free, prosperous society. Reinstate rule of law and tear up the putrid laws. Economy doesn't work without predictable use of force in a society, and this will in all likelihood be the biggest factor for what future economy looks like. Spend some of that money on charting the people involved in bringing you to this point. Put the responsible ones away for the rest of their lives. The camps should still be there to use, right? Or else, give them 24 hours to run and put a billion dollar bounty on each of their heads. It would be so much cheaper, anyway. And hey, these people have been undermining rule of law for quite a while, letting them have their wish will probably do them good. Next, reshape your foreign policy to stop pressing your allies to abandon democratic principles for your advantage. You don't spread democracy by demanding ubiquitous surveillance in their countries.
Do these things, or even just get started on the list, and you will have an economic future the rest of the world will envy. Recruitment of terrorists will stop.
All you have to do is be who you want to be.
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This is why I love the Internet. Trying to find all you hilarious doomsayers on street corners was just exhausting. So how many of you think some collapse is actually going to happen and how many just want it to happen?
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This is why I love the Internet. Trying to find all you hilarious doomsayers on street corners was just exhausting. So how many of you think some collapse is actually going to happen and how many just want it to happen?
It doesn't have to happen. The US Government could realize that Resources are Public Property and that industry should be paying rent on their use - not getting them for a pittance of their value.
They could also realize that the US government needs to be the energy provider for industry and run out and build a million of those siemen's 6 megawatt wind turbines over ten years which will produce a profit sufficient to pay of the US debt in twenty years.
...ever expanding consumption and economic growth in a world that has finite space and resources...
Space and resources are finite, but technology keeps improving and thus we can make more efficient use of the finites.
The large global challenge (besides political instability) is energy. Water, food, pollution, global warming and poverty are also huge issues but the solutions are connetced to energy. (If you have excess of cheap clean energy then you can solve the others).
At the same time the energy potentially available from solar, wind, wave, geothermal is orders of magnitude above what we use today. I see no reason to believe civilization isn't sustainable, but it has to evolve and adapt - as it always has.
"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-masterand journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."
Darl Jubannich, On Government
Vive le Galt!
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This is why I love the Internet. Trying to find all you hilarious doomsayers on street corners was just exhausting.
Why stand out in the cold, the wind, the wet, or the heat preaching on a street corner where a small few at best will hear the message, when you could be safe, secure, pleasant, and able to reach countless many more from the comfort of your own home?
The end is nigh. Have a pleasant day!
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Okay... I will quote the guy I saw when I was at Speaker's Corner in London. He looked like a caricature of a doomsayer, wearing a cardboard poncho-sign, saying not "The end is nigh!" but "It's going to get worse!"
In retrospect, I have to hand it to that guy. He knew what he was talking about. I saw him in 1992.
This is why I love the Internet. Trying to find all you hilarious doomsayers on street corners was just exhausting. So how many of you think some collapse is actually going to happen and how many just want it to happen?Im sure many in carthage and rome felt like you. All empires fall in time.
But they rarely come down crashing. It is usually a very slow, very gradual process. Rome took well over a century to actually decompose, and that's not considering the fact half the empire still sat pretty and powerful 1,000 years later.
Carthage was more or less masticated from the outside, rather than falling all by itself. The Romans really didn't like competition for the Mediterranean.
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"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-masterand journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."
Darl Jubannich, On Government
Vive le Galt!
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson
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"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-masterand journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."
Darl Jubannich, On Government
Vive le Galt!
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson
Just because it has been said or written a couple of centuries ago, it doesn't have to be true.
-common sense-
It doesn't have to be. It can be, though.
No apology necessary. Thing is, the Jefferson quote is pretty important. In every society is a process of stagnation. This can not be effectively stopped as long as the current societal model remains, simply because people adapt to the situation as it is. Thus, to allow for fresh growth, conflict and change WILL require blood every so often.
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The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson
Just because it has been said or written a couple of centuries ago, it doesn't have to be true.
-common sense-
It is true, and is happening every single day. Look no further than the middle east.
Of course it isn't. That's why what we consider to be civilization changes every day.
It is true, and is happening every single day. Look no further than the middle east.The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson
Just because it has been said or written a couple of centuries ago, it doesn't have to be true.
-common sense-
Considering how long they've been supplying said blood, and how many gallons have been shed, the Middle East should be the most liberated region in the world!
And yet...
Sorry, but in my eyes, that statement is a matter of belief, nothing more.
I wasn't aware it was claimed to be anything more. If someone's quoting it, you can probably be pretty assured that they agree with and believe in it.
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There is no proof to be had in matters of belief, feytharn. I am sure eventually someone will find a way to give such proof, but until then we are stuck with what we believe in.
I choose to see it this way: Liberty is a choice, and needs to be actively fought for. There is no general trend toward freedom, rather the system left to its own devices tends to grow ever more intrusive and controlling. The price for trying to limit that authoritarian process tends to be paid in blood and lives, which we can see in any number of places today and through history. Thus, every ounce of freedom we have is due to people who believed enough in freedom to be willing to fight that fight and die if necessary to achieve it.
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Sorry, but in my eyes, that statement is a matter of belief, nothing more.I wasn't aware it was claimed to be anything more. If someone's quoting it, you can probably be pretty assured that they agree with and believe in it.
I may have misunderstood, but I generally make a difference between 'I believe' and 'It is true'. I don't want to belittle anybodys believe, surely my doubts on the truths of Jeffersons quote are based on my belief (and disbelief), too. All I wanted was to state that this belief doesn't represent a truth, but a possibility.
I choose to see it this way: Liberty is a choice, and needs to be actively fought for. There is no general trend toward freedom, rather the system left to its own devices tends to grow ever more intrusive and controlling. The price for trying to limit that authoritarian process tends to be paid in blood and lives, which we can see in any number of places today and through history. Thus, every ounce of freedom we have is due to people who believed enough in freedom to be willing to fight that fight and die if necessary to achieve it.
Funny thing is: I share the belief in most of what you said - I just don't think that the fight for freedom and liberty has to involve bloodshed, not even that it is most effective when it does.
Jeffersons quote came from an era of change. Monarchic regimes made way for democratic states - most through violent revolutions. That said I see no indication, that repeated violent revolutions are a necessary to keep to democratic / liberal systems.
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Sorry, but in my eyes, that statement is a matter of belief, nothing more.I wasn't aware it was claimed to be anything more. If someone's quoting it, you can probably be pretty assured that they agree with and believe in it.I may have misunderstood, but I generally make a difference between 'I believe' and 'It is true'. I don't want to belittle anybodys believe, surely my doubts on the truths of Jeffersons quote are based on my belief (and disbelief), too. All I wanted was to state that this belief doesn't represent a truth, but a possibility.
I choose to see it this way: Liberty is a choice, and needs to be actively fought for. There is no general trend toward freedom, rather the system left to its own devices tends to grow ever more intrusive and controlling. The price for trying to limit that authoritarian process tends to be paid in blood and lives, which we can see in any number of places today and through history. Thus, every ounce of freedom we have is due to people who believed enough in freedom to be willing to fight that fight and die if necessary to achieve it.
Funny thing is: I share the belief in most of what you said - I just don't think that the fight for freedom and liberty has to involve bloodshed, not even that it is most effective when it does.
Jeffersons quote came from an era of change. Monarchic regimes made way for democratic states - most through violent revolutions. That said I see no indication, that repeated violent revolutions are a necessary to keep to democratic / liberal systems.
I think the disconnect is perhaps you think we live in a liberal/democratic system.
This is a great myth. Social Security is not part of the general debt. It is separately funded, and is solvent till at least 2040. Are there things that need to be done? Yes, but it is not the flaming house of cards that Tea Party fanatics like to depict.The US does not have much longer before economic meltdown.
Social security is a Ponzi Scheme. The money has already been spent and the only way to pay the IOU's the government wrote to itself is higher taxes for services already payed for once. That's not going to happen.
To take this line of discussion even further, more moderate examinations and predictions regarding the state of social security project that it will not only be solvent until ~2040, but that it should even stabilize and begin an unprecedented era of growth once we make it past the gigantic baby boomer bubble.
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I think the disconnect is perhaps you think we live in a liberal/democratic system.
I have spend time with quite a few people who grew up in Eastern Germany and I have spend time with grandparents and a father who saw the Nazi Regime in Germany. - Comparing that I am at least sure neither you (as far as I guess living in the USA) nor me (living in Germany) do live under a tyrannical system.
When I look through definitions of democracy (as the philosophical base for a political system such as a republic), yes, I do believe we both live in a democratic system (I won#t touch that liberal thing, I have learned that it seems to defy common definition).
Is it flawless? No. Is it completely fair? No. Can and should we strive to improve it? Yes. - But democratic it is.
Rule of Law makes corruption more difficult, and gains from such get smaller. Thus, every pissy little self-important politician feels that Rule of Law is a Problem. Certain "small" "reforms" to "improve" the "safety" of the general public would much improve the situation of pissy little self-important politicians everywhere. Take a look at the recent crop of laws... See a pattern? Think the current crop of abovementioned politicians will let their corruption income be threatened while they have the power to smash any such threat with violence?
Me neither.
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This is a great myth. Social Security is not part of the general debt. It is separately funded, and is solvent till at least 2040. Are there things that need to be done? Yes, but it is not the flaming house of cards that Tea Party fanatics like to depict.The US does not have much longer before economic meltdown.
Social security is a Ponzi Scheme. The money has already been spent and the only way to pay the IOU's the government wrote to itself is higher taxes for services already payed for once. That's not going to happen.
Social Security generates, and will continue to generate until 2040, a surplus of revenue. Said surplus revenue is invested in treasury bonds (loans to the government). In theory, those loans are accruing interest, which will be repaid.
Where is the US going to come up with the funds to repay those loans and the associated interest? Higher taxes?
The US government relies on new investments in the SSN system to pay the benefits of those who invested in the system decades ago. The funds input by the original investors have long since been spent. This is the same mechanism used by ponzi schemes.
Yes, I do. So you see, it is a matter of belief - and your belief and mine obviously differ.
Either that, or you have far, far greater faith in our rulers than I do.
But then, I feel that pessimistic about humanity in general. 's why I'm pretty much a hermit.
Every city that has been hit by a nuclear weapon has survived.
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To take this line of discussion even further, more moderate examinations and predictions regarding the state of social security project that it will not only be solvent until ~2040, but that it should even stabilize and begin an unprecedented era of growth once we make it past the gigantic baby boomer bubble.
Ponzi schemes don't fail until existing investors try to withdraw more than new investors are inputting.
Unlike a normal investment firm, the US can restrict access to invested funds. By raising retirement ages, lowering monthly benefits, etc. the US can try to ensure incoming investments remain greater than payments.
In the meantime, the treasury bonds purchased by Social Security are sitting locked away generating compounding interest. Those bonds ARE part of the national debt.
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You're discssing complex issues in one line questions. Do you think that two word or one word sentences are going to answer the question? I can say Higher Taxes, or Lower Taxes, but those aren't answers, they're sound bytes. The system is sustainable but over the last few years the United States has been moving towards greater and greater imbalances in income. A head of a company used to considered obscenely compensated if he was paid more than 50 times his lowest paid workers. Now the minimum expectation is over 500. We have had an ongoing transfer of wealth from the middle and lower income classes into the top tier with the belief that the benefits that trickled down would more than make up for it. That's the true PONZI scheme you should be looking for. And the real major threat to the democracy and solvency of this country.
I agree, and wealth disparity was one of the issues I raised in the same post as social security. No single issue is overwhelming. Collectively, social and economic systems can and do collapse if balance is not maintained.
Social Security is not a ponzi scheme.
People think of SS as a savings program, except that is wrong. It's a government program funded by a specific tax. It just turns out that our current method of paying for it and it's spending do not equal each other.