Going the way of the Ming empire

[Typhoon]

I've wondered if the cost of maintaining an industrialized society is far greater than that of building an industrialized society.
Beneath all the rhetoric is entropy the real culprit?

No.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_A ... ef_Program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_R ... ct_of_2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_waste

"We must spend our way out of bankruptcy" -Joe Biden.

Complete societal collapse is rare. Such predictions should be taken with a very large crystal of salt.

Real Estate always goes up.

There have been countless real estate crashes throughout history and very few complete societal collapses.

[Mr. Perfect]

So I'm told. Unfortunately the ingredients that have caused them in the past all seem to be with us throughout the developed world in the present. Plummeting fertililty coupled with ponzi scheme retirement systems and unprecedented skyrocketing debts, well... 2+2.

[Endovelico]

So I'm told. Unfortunately the ingredients that have caused them in the past all seem to be with us throughout the developed world in the present. Plummeting fertililty coupled with ponzi scheme retirement systems and unprecedented skyrocketing debts, well... 2+2.

I have often defended here a global debt pardon to solve the most immediate problems of our capitalist distorted economies. What is important to economy are real assets, not the gigantic capital bubble which is mostly imaginary. Only a small fraction of that capital would be necessary to keep the economy running, the rest is irrelevant. Wipe debt out and people will consume, firms will invest and produce, workers will find jobs. Who will lose? Mostly useless money lenders. And individual holders of public debt, who could easily be protected if their livelihood would depend on the interest. Banks would have to be rescued, but the best way to do it would be to transform them into mutual banks and cooperatives benefiting from state guarantees until their new credit book was large enough to cover for costs. Of course, after all that one would have to take care not to repeat the same mistakes over again. Why don't we do this? To protect a few thousand leeches all over the world.

[Mr. Perfect]

In 2007-2008 a few million people decided to forgive their own debts by defaulting on the mortgages. It created the current economic apocalypse.

[Typhoon]

Environmentalism has unfortunately mutated into a mysticism based on the irrational fear of the new.

Even the supposedly rational Germans have opted to shut down their nuclear power plants, given Germany's history of earthquakes and tsunamis, to be replaced by unworkable medieval windmills.

For a scientist you have a particularly closed mind... Those "unworkable medieval windmills" already supply more than one third of Portugal's electricity, saving us a lot of much needed money.




Can you notice the difference?...

20.4% according to REN.

Wind Power Monthly | Portugal's wind market is facing stagnation.

Good luck with the maintenance of so many windmills and associated operating costs.

Also, when the subsidies eventually come to an end, my bet is that these wind farms will be abandoned.



I can understand why industries in Germany are threatening to move overseas.

Especially when winds are light, sometimes the turbine is simultaneously operating under a medium-sized load at low speeds and a low load at high speed. This leads to the breakdown of the lubricating film that’s necessary for long bearing life. Wind turbine gearboxes have yet to achieve their original design life goals of 20 years. Most turbines require significant repairs and even complete overhauls in the 5-7 year range, well before that benchmark. High repair rates of the expensive gearboxes are one of the major contributors to wind turbine operating cost increases and the escalating cost of wind energy.

The Elephant [pdf]

[Alexis]

And if one includes the energy and the mineral resources, I can't see a single country on this Earth which is living within its means. All are consuming non-renewable one-time-only resources which will be severely depleted within the lifetime of most presently alive people, without any solid idea of how to replace those resources.

It's humankind as a whole which is not living within its means, which is consuming the werewithal of our own children.

Fossil hydrocarbon fuels are a non-renewable resource, so we will eventually run out.
However, I doubt that it will be within the lifetime of any poster here.

I agree about complete depletion of every and all fossil hydrocarbons.

But much sooner than complete depletion, we will have forced decrease of fossil fuel extraction rate, which will create a host of economic and other issues as this will tend to force transition from a growth economy to an economy whose size diminishes every year. In theory the size of global economy would not necessarily diminish, since switch to other energy sources than fossil and rise of productivity as computed relative to energy intrants could prevent such decrease. However, rise of energy productivity has historically been less than 1% annually and energy sources able to replace fossil ones are nowhere near operational (we're speaking 4G nuclear and/or fusion and/or space based solar), while the de-growth force will be larger and larger as time passes, therefore counter-balancing that pressure for de-growth will really be a tall order.

Forced decrease of fossil fuel extraction rate is also known as "peak X", X being oil, gas or coal. Peak classical oil was probably 2006, peak liquid fuels (including biofuel, tight oil and LNG in addition to classical oil) will probably be this decade, peak gas probably next decade that is before 2030. Peak coal won't be before several decades, but coal cannot replace all uses of fossil fuels.

The one thing that all such predictions have in common is that they have to completely wrong in their timeline.

The one thing that predictions of oil extraction since approximately 2000 have had in common is that they have proved completely wrong.
Since that time, the IEA has repeatedly adjusted down their rosy predictions of future oil extraction... always with a flatter curve than the last time.

What other non-renewable resources are we consuming?

1) Most metals, to begin with. They are renewable in theory, since lower grade mines can generally be found after we have used up the higher grade ones, and dumps can be used as very low grade mines (recycling)... however, this costs more and more energy.

Increased energy cost of getting the metals our industrial economy needs will more and more collide with the lesser availability of energy.

Need to mine lower grade ores and to turn to recycling wouldn't be a problem if we had hundreds of commercial 4G nuclear reactors in the process of being built. Or if we had hundreds of commercial fusion reactors presently in works. Or if we had giant solar satellites in process with associated giant receiving stations on the ground. But all of this is conceptual at best for the time being, and the kind of concept that gets scarce funding.

2) Then, more important, we have arable lands, tropical forests, fish populations... Yes, these are renewable resources, but only given a big amount of time.

And we are presently losing 0,5% to 1% of global arable lands annually. We have fish population collapsed in many parts of the ocean. We have size of forest down globally... the list is very long, and has to include pollutions of many kinds.

This even discounting human-originated global warming, which I now you contest and I don't think fruitful to debate again. But even assuming that global warming is an illusion, loss of natural resources is extensive with a time constant that prevents these natural resources to be replenished again.

Complete societal collapse is rare. Such predictions should be taken with a very large crystal of salt.

I am not making define predictions.

That being said, I note that societal collapse will appear all the rarer, the narrower it is defined. Of course, societal collapse on a scale of Easter island populations is extremely rare. But then, measured on this scale, post-Soviet collapse was no more than a very small and temporary setback, and yet from the point of view of the people who lived through the period, it was far from a walk in the park.

The pessimistic outlook on our situation is that industrial civilization will collapse globally during the next decades, bringing down with it a large part of the natural system that enables our existence, resulting in a planet able to host no more than 1 to 2 billions of us, with transition resulting from increase in death rate rather than decrease in birth rate.

My money is with the optimists: I imagine a long adaptation period (a 44 year old guy like me could not hope seeing its end) with a late, therefore very difficult, often chaotic, however ultimately successful transition towards an industrial civilization that is based primarily on nuclear power, that stops degradation of the biosphere allowing time for its slow and gradual improvement, and that provides good living conditions to billions of people. I cannot realistically hope for this transition to be sweet and agreeable though, I can't see how it could fail to entail much suffering to many people, including in countries presently the most developed.

But of course, choice between a more pessimistic or a more optimistic outlook is based primarily on non-rational factors. Only the future will tell who was in the right, the pessimists or the optimists.

[Mr. Perfect]

The energy is not the issue. 10-15 years ago the saying was that oil above $20 would cause a recession, we've weathered years of $100 oil just fine from a collapse perspective.

The problems is the bubble we're in now and insolvent gov'ts. With so many people completely dependent on them when they go (sooner than decades) mass die offs will result. No one can conceptualize how horrible it will be, or what the "soft landing" will look like.

[noddy]

A society that doesn reproduce or live within it's means simply ends. Regardless to friendliness.

Yes.

However, I don't know a single developed country presently living within its means, even just speaking about the financial and the monetary.

I've wondered if the cost of maintaining an industrialized society is far greater than that of building an industrialized society.
Beneath all the rhetoric is entropy the real culprit?
.

i wouldnt call it entropy, its not about running out of energy per se, its about the evolution of systems and their refinement into perfection against a backdrop of chaotic change.

starting from nothing you can build the perfect structure for that point in time but if the conditions change its really hard to modify a structure to suit.

this shows up in all engineering from buildings to software, their is always a point you cant hack the old architecture into the new requirement and have to start with a clean slate.

we are struggling with the fact that globalised industrialisation has made the current structures and assumptions of our societies somewhat irrelevant.

the "get educated, get a stable middle class job, pay lots of taxes for lots of services" paradigm has perhaps peaked and the dissonant political arguments we all have is about how to deal with that.

[Typhoon]

A society that doesn reproduce or live within it's means simply ends. Regardless to friendliness.

Yes.

However, I don't know a single developed country presently living within its means, even just speaking about the financial and the monetary.

I've wondered if the cost of maintaining an industrialized society is far greater than that of building an industrialized society.
Beneath all the rhetoric is entropy the real culprit?
.

i wouldnt call it entropy, its not about running out of energy per se, its about the evolution of systems and their refinement into perfection against a backdrop of chaotic change.

starting from nothing you can build the perfect structure for that point in time but if the conditions change its really hard to modify a structure to suit.

this shows up in all engineering from buildings to software, their is always a point you cant hack the old architecture into the new requirement and have to start with a clean slate.

we are struggling with the fact that globalised industrialisation has made the current structures and assumptions of our societies somewhat irrelevant.

the "get educated, get a stable middle class job, pay lots of taxes for lots of services" paradigm has perhaps peaked and the dissonant political arguments we all have is about how to deal with that.

This fellow agrees with your last point:

Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class

Kodak employed 140,000 people. Instagram, 13. A "digital visionary" says the Web kills jobs, wealth -- even democracy

At least in diagnosis, if not prescription.

[monster_gardener]

A society that doesn reproduce or live within it's means simply ends. Regardless to friendliness.

Yes.

However, I don't know a single developed country presently living within its means, even just speaking about the financial and the monetary.

I've wondered if the cost of maintaining an industrialized society is far greater than that of building an industrialized society.
Beneath all the rhetoric is entropy the real culprit?

And if one includes the energy and the mineral resources, I can't see a single country on this Earth which is living within its means. All are consuming non-renewable one-time-only resources which will be severely depleted within the lifetime of most presently alive people, without any solid idea of how to replace those resources.

It's humankind as a whole which is not living within its means, which is consuming the werewithal of our own children.

Fossil hydrocarbon fuels are a non-renewable resource, so we will eventually run out.
However, I doubt that it will be within the lifetime of any poster here.

The one thing that all such predictions have in common is that they have to completely wrong in their timeline.

What other non-renewable resources are we consuming?

Your point about such societies coming to an end is not necessarily wrong, that being said...

Complete societal collapse is rare. Such predictions should be taken with a very large crystal of salt.

Thank You VERY Much for your post, Typhoon.

I've wondered if the cost of maintaining an industrialized society is far greater than that of building an industrialized society.
Beneath all the rhetoric is entropy the real culprit?

What worries me is the question of whether a space capable industrial society could/would be built again....

Yes: the needed knowledge problem would be less: just knowing it can be done makes it easier...
No need to disprove geocentric dogma for example....

No: lack of easy to get at resources......... Maybe Luddites too....

And less time before the space rocks or some other disaster intervenes..........

[noddy]

This fellow agrees with your last point:

Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class

Kodak employed 140,000 people. Instagram, 13. A "digital visionary" says the Web kills jobs, wealth -- even democracy

At least in diagnosis, if not prescription.

internet connected smartphones/tabglets are probably going to be the biggest disruptor in the history of disruptors, its amazing just how many industries they destroy and how fast they are destroying them - for example ebooks not only disrupt the publishing industry and the book store industry they also put a big dent in the cabinet making industry.

so many things are now apps or could become apps, cameras is but one of many specialised items that are in jeopardy against the generic device.

we can all cry until the cows come how about how the dedicated gadget is superior to the app version but with humans the qualities of being cheaper and good enough for purpose is all that matters.

a recent contract in my company was getting rid of real estate admin staff by having the rental inspector doing it online on a tablet directly into the database, efficiency baby.

with qcodes and other phone friendly bar code technology all the point of sale equipment industry is staring down the barrel, it just goes on and on.

[Alexis]

The one thing that predictions of oil extraction since approximately 2000 have had in common is that they have proved completely wrong.
Since that time, the IEA has repeatedly adjusted down their rosy predictions of future oil extraction... always with a flatter curve than the last time.

I finally put my hands on the graph comparing successive predictions of oil production made at different dates!



The legend reads: "Evolution of International Energy Agency predictions of future oil production within the World Energy Outlook since 1994"

The black line is the real production.

(note: while oil production has been in decline for several years, total production of liquid fuels continues to slowly increase because of biofuels + LNG + tight oil... all of which are limited in expansion capability, meaning that they won't compensate for the decline of oil production for many more years)