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My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

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Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#431

Post by dgdosen »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #427
dgdosen wrote: post #417

The first thing I wondered about these comments is how often "Peak Oil" would be mentioned. There has been no peak oil related crash. I think the world's economy and markets are now resilient enough to safely say 'peak oil' will never be a cause for the collapse of civilization. Rising energy prices will just usher out the age of fossil fuels faster. I now wonder what happens when (if?) we get to 'net 0' (which hasn'…

How would we ever get there? The cost to build and maintain powerplants is expensive - whether it's solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear. This cost needs to be amortized over the life of the plant. It's hard to imagine this getting to less than $0.05 / kWh. Construction costs alone make Nuclear Energy cost ~$0.08 / kWh even in China where construction is relatively cheap. Even if we get Fusion energy, AFAIK it's unlikely t…

Would a Kardashev Type 1 civilization have too many powerplants?

If we can get to net zero first, that would affect your model's calculation that we would require endless power plants.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#432

Post by harimau777 »

jonfw wrote: post #420
harimau777 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One approach might be to compare how much wealth someone is attempting to attain with how much they could conceivably be outperforming the average person. For example, if we make a back of the envelope estimate that an elite person has skills that are 10 times those of an average person (10 times smarter, stronger, more charismatic, better educated, etc.) and works 3 times longer then they could conceivably be 30 tim…

What if our elite 30x productivity person takes a significant risk? If he flips a coin and wins he should rightfully expect 60x And you can be much more than 10x more productive than your average person without being 10x smarter. You can just have skills or have an idea that allows you to scale your contributions much more than an average person. For instance, if we can teach cars to drive themselves, we have the cap…

I agree, it's perfectly reasonable for someone who takes a risk to receive more than I do. I could even see them receiving hundreds of times more than I do. That's a lot different than them receiving 8000 times more ($1 billion divided by the median net worth in America of $122 thousand).

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#433

Post by nine_k »

tarsinge wrote: post #419
belorn wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem which we already have the technology to fix is food. What people eat is cultural and is effected by cost and availability. There is much we currently discard or do not cultivate because it not what we traditionally see as food and because there is no cost incentive to encourage a change in culture. Changes can however occur given the right triggers, like how large portion of Europe went over to potatoes d…

To add to that there is the obvious low hanging fruit of meat as the main source of proteins. Feeding animals perfectly good proteins and using the majority of agricultural land (more than 70% if I remember correctly) and a lot water to finally to eat them after so much waste makes no sense as a main source of feeding a population, it’s not political or philosophical question just a practical one (I’m not vegetarian…

Refine the "impossible burger" technology to the point where it's cost-competitive with beef burgers (or maybe see the beef prices rise a lot), and I suppose many people would switch without noticing much.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#435

Post by nine_k »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #374
saurik wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not believe that everyone deciding to eat something different is "fixing" the food scarcity problem in the same way that desalinization (ignoring all other issues with it as we assumed technology improved to solve them also) "fixes" water scarcity: if everyone is told tomorrow "all water will safely come from desal" we might breath a collective sigh of relief... "starting tomorrow, all food will be replaced by s…

Imagine the uproar if you tried to build a nuclear powered desalination plant on Long Island. That's basically what you're alluding to with the seaweed and food thing. Cultural and ideological hangups will go right out the window in a hurry when there's a real crisis and a culturally incompatible solution. People aren't gonna let things truly go to shit over something as trivial as what they eat or where their water…

Let's alter the start conditions a bit: the same Long Island with the same people, but the Hudson river dries up. And everything around dries up, too.

How about a desalination plant now? Even nuclear?

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#436

Post by BeFlatXIII »

notjes wrote: post #99
chestertn wrote: post #60

When I was an undergrad I discovered blogs about peak oil, the limits to the growth, and Turchin’s cliometrics. As an adolescent I really enjoyed Asimov’s Foundation and all of this knowledge resonated with me. I had a fried who read Von Mises’ Human Action and he labeled me as a neo-Malthusian . And, according to his “school of thought”, my understanding of the world and economics incorrect. We had many interesting…

Someone once said: If you are a teen and you aren't a lefty, you have no heart. And if you are in your 30'S and you are still a lefty, you have no brain. Many travel along those lines. And in analogy to this, I am very optimistic about the future, because the resources are indeed infinite, because the human ingenuity is infinite. There is no peak oil. There is no peak food. There is no peak climate. There is no water…

This is what a lack of comprehension of exponential growth does to a person.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#437

Post by naasking »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #163

I love that there's a "technology will fix things" model. This assumes we'll discover some magical bullet, that we haven't thought of, that will counteract erosion of topsoil, water shortages, and climate change. Another implicit assumption is that we'll be able to move forward unilaterally with such a solution, instead of it becoming a political football until it's too late to do anything, like climate change. A lot…

> This assumes we'll discover some magical bullet, that we haven't thought of, that will counteract erosion of topsoil, water shortages, and climate change.

Who says we haven't thought of it? There are plenty of candidates technologies, like moving food production into cities via vertical farms so top soil erosion is irrelevant. Lab grown is on the short-term horizon as well (5-10 years).

Water shortages are a non-issue, as we have an abundance of water. Certainly desalinated water is more expensive than water from fresh lakes and rivers, but it's becoming more cost effective, and if water increases in price, they'll meet somewhere and level off.

Climate change might be a challenge, but people will simply move away from the areas where it's no longer cost effective to live, at the very least because it's no longer cost effective to run businesses there due to insurance premiums.

The "Comprehensive Tech" model isn't too far fetched. It requires some disruptive changes, but not too drastic. Errors bars are wide due to climate change though, since it's effects are still unpredictable.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#438

Post by crispyambulance »

pirate787 wrote: post #398
crispyambulance wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Limited resources are] naturally self-correcting in a free-market, because as the resources become scarce their prices goes up hence leading to technological incentives to find alternative sources. You say that as though it's a theorem. It's not. It's perhaps reasonable when discussing small perturbations of resources, but it's not a magical phenomena that will "just work" in a free market (assuming one even exist…

The best way to understand global warming is that the market doesn't account for the true cost of carbon emissions. That's because the atmosphere is an unregulated commons, lacking property rights or other legal mechanisms to assign the costs of carbon emissions. A carbon tax or some other way to assign a "price" to carbon twill begin to assign that cost, and the market system will naturally, in a million small ways,…

> ...the market system will naturally, in a million small ways...

You place a lot of faith in it but "the free market" is not a construct that functions according to immutable natural laws. It's a man-made and very much corruptible system.

Nature does not comply with property rights, legal mechanisms, nor quarterly results. People have to force ecological concerns into their markets. That's a tall order and it won't just happen without a serious taste of what is to come, sadly.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#439

Post by adolph »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #384
belorn wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem which we already have the technology to fix is food. What people eat is cultural and is effected by cost and availability. There is much we currently discard or do not cultivate because it not what we traditionally see as food and because there is no cost incentive to encourage a change in culture. Changes can however occur given the right triggers, like how large portion of Europe went over to potatoes d…

The Netherlands is a net exporter of food and it does this by producing what people want to eat. See https://aboutthenetherlands.com/why-does-the-netherlands-exp... Why should we have to change what we eat? Surely taking that choice away takes away part of what we are, reduces our autonomy. Why switch to seaweed when we can already produce what we already know we want?

"Net exporter" in terms of calories and protein or "net exporter" in terms of currency? The Netherlands ag economy is focused on high value crops. But you can't eat tulips.

One-third of the world's exports of chilis, tomatoes, and cucumbers goes through the country. The Netherlands also exports one-fifteenth of the world's apples.

Aside from that, a significant portion of Dutch agricultural exports consists of fresh-cut plants, flowers, and flower bulbs, with the Netherlands exporting two-thirds of the world's total.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#440

Post by kiliantics »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #163

I love that there's a "technology will fix things" model. This assumes we'll discover some magical bullet, that we haven't thought of, that will counteract erosion of topsoil, water shortages, and climate change. Another implicit assumption is that we'll be able to move forward unilaterally with such a solution, instead of it becoming a political football until it's too late to do anything, like climate change. A lot…

Which is why we should push for the stable world (SW) scenario, rather than gambling with our collective future on something that is not a sure bet.

Why do all climate policies currently being adopted allow increased carbon emissions and assume we will have carbon capture technologies to negate them right in the nick of time? This is the kind of irresponsible behaviour that we usually see only in addicts or psychopaths. How are we allowing this?

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