thought for the day... again... capitalism? dying? dead?

[worm]

natural resources are finite and all the technology in the world (none of which can exist with natural resources in some form or other) cannot undo that simple fact

[worm]

However close we are to lareg scale in vitro meat production (40 years, maybe?) it's only a tiny part of the problem

[Purple Monkey]

I think the main problem is that the money being driven by consumerism is in turn driven by the west, a culture so blatently divorced from the reality of global cause and effect.

[abdoujaparov]

This isn't fact. For example, material is infinite. The form of material isn't.

Water is infinite. The form of the water is not. So the problem is in fresh drinking water and the distribution of it throughout the world as per human need. Therefore, science and technology is the requirement, not water.

Same applies. Can we make phosphates in a lab or phosphate substitute? I'm unsure of the exact science, but I'm pretty sure it's being worked on. So again, science and technology.

With regards to oil: Oil is finite, but harnessing energy is infinite. We don't need oil, we need energy. So it's all about science and technology, not resources.

[worm]

As for positioning for it... Some form of trade will always exist... Real objects will always have "value"... Such as property (even if much less compared to its current value)... To think otherwise is somewhat barmy.. I have placed money in real things and not just paper money in the cloud (stocks etc)...

[abdoujaparov]

As for positioning for it... Some form of trade will always exist... Real objects will always have "value"... Such as property (even if much less compared to its current value)... To think otherwise is somewhat barmy.. I have placed money in real things and not just paper money in the cloud (stocks etc)...

[eFestivals]

This is precisely what I'm talking about. You have a go at me citing Brave New World because of it's post capitalist dystopian vision, yet here you are giving your own. How is Brave New World's dystopian vision not relevant, yet your mindless end-of-the-world vision is?

Brave New World raised some excellent points on a post capitalist, post consumerist society. It pretty much created the Zeitgeist model that has been at large for several decades now. A society of savages depending upon coarse natural resources and a society dependent upon technology and synthetically replenishable resources.

What I've given is my own version of what might happen, and it's worth nothing more than a single person's opinion ever is.

The exact same thing is true of Brave New World, yet someone around here .... I wonder who .... is presenting it as some sort of bible, of greater weight and worth when it's nothing of the sort ... that's related to any sort of reality, anyway.

If you think it's invented anything of relevance to today's society, you're living on a different planet to the rest of us. Yes, this society has sheep too, but not exclusively. And there's certainly nothing of a collective utopia about today's world.

Edited October 11, 2011 by eFestivals

[worm]

A general observation: I dont share your touching faith in science.

[eFestivals]

Could you perhaps expand upon this point about natural resources?

As far as I'm aware, technology is making natural resources ever more efficient and the great 'in vitro' experiment is ticking along nicely. Soon we'll have little need for farm land due to meat grown in a lab, which is reported to be the cause of 30% of world poverty. There's many other examples, some more obvious than others.

So surely it's the resources of science and technology that will be the cause of conflict, not natural resources?

As far as I'm aware, our resources are depleating rapidly, and certainly couldn't sustain the world's current population at the level the UK's at now anyway.

What'll be the cause of conflict is a view that we can have it all, when we can't. A view rather like you've laid out there, as it happens. The 'hordes' are coming, and either you accept that they'll strip you bare or you'll fight to hold onto what you have.

Whatever you or I might personally want doesn't much matter. It'll be the fight.

[fred quimby]

No. Objects only have value within an economic system based on market exchange. I f we end up with no markets, your assets have, by definition, no value

[abdoujaparov]

I don't have faith in science per se. I have faith that mankind will do whatever it can to extract what it needs from the natural environment, something like a virus.

[worm]

As far as I'm aware, our resources are depleating rapidly

[worm]

I dont doubt that mankind will do what it can to get what it wants. That doesnt change the fact that natural resources are finite. Nor does it guarantee that the transition from the use of natural resource X (whatever it may be) to super new technology Y will happen at the right pace, in the right places or without negative side effects

[eFestivals]

I have faith that mankind will do whatever it can to extract what it needs from the natural environment, something like a virus.

That's a decent probability.

But what it excludes from saying is what portion of mankind will be the ones who benefit from any such extractions, or what happens to the rest.

[worm]

THIS

[worm]

But what it excludes from saying is what portion of mankind will be the ones who benefit from any such extractions, or what happens to the rest.

[abdoujaparov]

Drinking water isn't a natural resource though. It occurs through a mechanised human system based upon science and technology. Phosphates and oil go through the same system of science and technology.

So let me put this another way in light of your retorts:

It is due to a lack in science and technology that we will have a conflict over resources. I'd also suggest that this lack is about desire as much as it is about practical factors. Namely, the desire to change our ways.

[eFestivals]

Have we not always traded though, there are always markets, maybe these will alter from the ones you understand but we will always trade with each other.

I don't really doubt that we'd continue to trade with each other.

The problems would come with what was tradable and what was basically worthless. Cos in a land with no food, absolutely nothing matches the value of a gun (and the bigger it gets the more its worth), and a house is completely worthless.

As for the impending doom you (and others) paint have we not always lurched from one doomsday outlook to another.

Hmmmm .... I reckon you're under-estimating just how quickly things could break down in society.

Remember those fuel protests about a decade ago? The govt was less than a week from calling in the army, because we were very definitely less than 2 weeks away from food riots. And that took a while, cos there was still fuel available for just about everything to carry on much as normal in reality. If the banks collapsed tomorrow, then everything would come to a grinding halt before the end of the next day. Everything!!

[worm]

it's a different defition of the same problem. We have a crisis of natural resources. We could, perhaps, overcome this with technology, but in the time available this is very unlikely to happen.

I see this as a crisis of resources - we cannot go on using them at the current rate. You see it as a problem of technology. The outcome is the same, either way

[eFestivals]

What are those resources? That's the question I asked. Water is abundant, but the means to get drinking water to everyone in the world is not. Nor too is the desire, given that the insular and conservative gaze of the western perspective. Oil is unnecessary, but the energy that oil currently provides is not. Again, we lack the desire to change the way in which we produce energy. Etc...

Looked at in isolation, just about anything is possible. Looked at as a whole it quickly becomes clear that it's not.

There's enough sources of water but not the means to deliver it in a usable state - true. But to get it into a usable state required huge energy usage and plant, and all the extra people to run it compared to normal extraction. It's far less efficient than the most simple forms of water collection, and that will never change.

It's not so different with 'new' fuels. The new sources of energy can be utilised, but at a hugely greater cost in both energy and to get those things to the state be utilised, and on-going maintained, etc. It's less efficient.

I posted a while back that society can't afford the ever-increasing burdens caused by improvements in health care & medicine forever and that because of that fact society ought to have a grown up discussion about where the limits of treatments are - and you called me heartless and worse and failed to have that grown up discussion. Yet these are ever growing burdens onto society too, just like those two above.

The same is repeated all-round. There are often alternatives, but they're less-good and less efficient than the things they replace and so create a bigger burden on society. Some can be managed, but definitely not everything - and that's with everything remaining stable enough to bring them about in the first place.

Edited October 11, 2011 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

Individually, those who extract it. Socially, it depends upon the model in use.

Socially, it depends how much people are prepared to watch others die while they live it up.

And given how happy so many are to watch others die in the good times, it doesn't look good for the majority of the world in the coming bad times.

But hey, you're living in the west, so you'll be all right.

You hope.

[abdoujaparov]

I think the key is that I see it as a crisis of the means of western industry, which underlines a need to change. I think this is a significant difference because seeing it as a crisis of natural resources implies that we cannot change our means of production, when this is exactly what we can do and must do. We need to find and create new resources for new technologies.

Otherwise, I agree.

[abdoujaparov]

double post

Edited October 11, 2011 by abdoujaparov

[worm]

Looked at in isolation, just about anything is possible. Looked at as a whole it quickly becomes clear that it's not.

There's enough sources of water but not the means to deliver it in a usable state - true. But to get it into a usable state required huge energy usage and plant, and all the extra people to run it compared to normal extraction. It's far less efficient than the most simple forms of water collection, and that will never change.

It's not so different with 'new' fuels. The new sources of energy can be utilised, but at a hugely greater cost in both energy to get them things the state be utilised, and on-going maintained, etc. It's less efficient.

I posted a while back that society can't afford the ever-increasing burdens caused by improvements in health care & medicine forever and that because of that fact society ought to have a grown up discussion about where the limits of treatments are - and you called me heartless and worse and failed to have that grown up discussion. Yet these are ever growing burdens onto society too, just like those two above.

The same is repeated all-round. There are often alternatives, but they're less-good and less efficient than the things they replace and so create a bigger burden on society. Some can be managed, but definitely not everything - and that's with everything remaining stable enough to bring them about in the first place.

[abdoujaparov]

Our western lifestyle ?

You might want to take a look at China and India and see what there "consumption" levels are like..

To view any of these issues as western issues is dumbing it all down more than you was trying to do earlier...

Technology is the key...