Dog-Eat-Dog
A Precarious Revolution Is Brewing
The American Revolution arose not from politics but from rapid social and economic changes that revealed the precariousness of the colonists' prosperity. Conventional histories focus on the political context (Boston Tea Party, etc.), but more important were the changes in social relations, and the impact of the economy moving from quasi-feudal forms of patronage to an economy of impersonal market forces.
As I noted last week in What If Politics Can't Fix What's Broken?, politics as practiced in a bygone era of stability no longer offers any solutions to these profound disruptions. Middle ground has vanished, and ideologies have become quasi-religious because they no longer offer any practical guidance to a society and economy that are being transformed by the 4th Industrial Revolution, resource depletion and demographics.
Once again Americans are awakening to the precariousness of their prosperity and liberties, and traditional forms of belonging, loyalty and authority are unraveling. As the pie shrinks, the struggle to maintain one's own share at the expense of others becomes Darwinian, and so it's no surprise that finance and politics are increasingly winner-take-all or winner-take-most zero-sum endeavors.
DYI: Two
huge transformational secular trends that are both interconnected. Natural resource depletion is driving worldwide
demographics with birth rates below replacement
is why government financed social programs are coming under strain. This is especially highlighted in Central
Europe and Japan with birth rates below replacement for decades. Natural resource depletion is the main driver
especially for energy.
Hydrocarbons are the most
efficient in delivering high levels of Btu’s in a small concentrated form is oil
[diesel, gasoline, kerosene] and gas [and coal] powers the entire world’s economy. As more and more countries push their
societies to modernize such as China and India oil and gas overtime is
stretched for availability and cost. As
cost rises to compete for energy this drags their economies this cost is
handled by couples electing to have smaller families.
When this base of future taxpayers – due to
birth rates below replacement – overtime you will have smaller and smaller
numbers of workers supporting their generational government programs such as
their versions of Medicare and Social Security.
This in turn forces additional taxes to support these programs thus
slowing growth further creating the vicious circle with yet smaller families
until countries actually experience population decline [Japan].
This creates the winner take all mentality –
whether understood by the general populous or not – all the way to super rich
[elites] with a dog eat dog mentality so prevalent today. This is the mentality of driving a high
proportion of profits into a smaller and smaller number of winners versus the
losers. Income and net worth disparity is
all well known. Yes there are other
reasons for this as well that I’ve posted that explains [monopolies, fraud
etc.] for income/net worth disparity but the overall driving force for their
behavior is resource depletion. When
energy was plentiful the elites got richer and the common man experienced a
vastly increase in standard of living all made possible by cheap, easy to find
and developed hydrocarbons.
Until energy efficiency and alternatives
outpace natural resource depletion the world is in for more of the same dog-eat-
dog mentality. If God forbid depletion
is worse than expected then this will ramp up to a feverish pace. Hopefully there will be clever engineers
developing efficiency/alternatives at a break though pace – hope always springs
eternal. Hope for the best and plan for
the worst is a great motto to live by.
DYI
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