Stephen Morgan wrote:brainpanhandler wrote:The great contraction is unavoidable.
Bullshit. The world is full of potentially productive land laid fallow by disadvantageous economic regimes, the sun, rain and the heat at the centre of the earth provide an easily tapped and functionally infinite source of energy. Not to say that a great contraction WON'T happen, only that it needn't.
Rain is "an easily tapped and functionally infinite source of energy"?
If we were having this conversation 3 decades ago then you might be justified in calling bullshit.
"Not to say that a great contraction WON'T happen, only that it needn't."
Perhaps, but the mere fact that peak oil and the effects it would have on modern industrial economies has been understood by those that could have done something about it 3 decades ago suggests to me that the game plan was to squeeze as much wealth out of the current way of life as possible, for as long as possible, and allow the consequences to fall on succeeding generations. It's not like the ptb did not see this coming. They may pay scientific hacks to spread disinfo, but they don't believe it themselves. The monied oligarchy may be rapacious, remorseless, sociopaths, but they're not stupid.
Climate change, peak oil = war, famine, massive poverty. I think at this point these forces have a momentum of their own and even the good intentions and hard work of hundreds of millions of human beings would not be enough to stop it.
If the thought that maybe it's not such a bad thing that this whole monstrous way of life cease by one means or another crosses my mind, then what are the ptb thinking? It seems obvious enough to me that they see most human beings as useless eaters that lost in the game of life. So what are they going to do to avert catastrophe when anything they might do would disadvantage them? Answer: nothing. In fact, it seems to me that the ptb are intent on hastening the process.
Maybe I'm being too pessimistic, but I don't think so.
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr.