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The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

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Re: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

#31

Post by squirejons »

einhverfr wrote: post #29
spiderPig wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the detailed comment. But could you go into a bit more detail about how the elite actually benefit from factions within a large nation? Like with an example taking today's elite into account.

I am going to take a stab at this. I would look at two things: the first is the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the second is comparing Indonesia (as an American living in Indonesia) to the US. When Rome fell, the result of the lack of central administration meant that the institution of Roman slavery began to evolve from proprietary rights over other people's actions to proprietary rights over land entrusted t…

the USA is a livestock operation, and we are the livestock. Growth Uber Alles! is the underlying theme. Mass immigration is the primary tool of growth, that and using american military to open up new markets for exploitation, oops, I mean spread democracy.

Re: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

#32

Post by einhverfr »

squirejons wrote: post #31
einhverfr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am going to take a stab at this. I would look at two things: the first is the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the second is comparing Indonesia (as an American living in Indonesia) to the US. When Rome fell, the result of the lack of central administration meant that the institution of Roman slavery began to evolve from proprietary rights over other people's actions to proprietary rights over land entrusted t…

the USA is a livestock operation, and we are the livestock. Growth Uber Alles! is the underlying theme. Mass immigration is the primary tool of growth, that and using american military to open up new markets for exploitation, oops, I mean spread democracy.

I think that mass immigration is part of the substitute strategy to isolate people from eachother, actually. It's also a way we can discourage people from having kids at the cost of their careers here.

Re: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

#33

Post by waps »

einhverfr wrote: post #26
invalidOrTaken wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, this cannot be repeated enough. And I say this as an unemployed member of the masses, not as a large shareholder with my fingers in a bunch of pies. This of course raises the question of what is to be done; the answer is: live within your means, be responsible, know your neighbors, and don't be a weird conspiracy theorist.

> This of course raises the question of what is to be done; the answer is: live within your means, be responsible, know your neighbors, and don't be a weird conspiracy theorist. I personally think that collapse is coming. If I had to guess I would say 20-30 years out but to be honest, that's a guess. It could be ten years and it could be a hundred. I don't think the system can reform itself. The fundamental question…

Ah come on. I'd say there's at least a 50% chance that the US military and the Department of Energy find a workable new energy source in that timeframe (I have -very- little faith in the European academics who have locked themselves down on ITER and are at this point actively sabotaging other attempts. This is beyond stupid as ITER's timeframe is known and is too little, to late. The project should be cancelled, as there's only 2 outcomes : either it fails before the collapse. Or it doesn't, in which case there's zero chance of completion).

Alternatively we could prepare for failure. The only way to do that is to make sure we have 150 new nuclear power plants built all around the country in the next 10-15 years though. That should be Obama's Manhattan project. Again, there's two outcomes : either we find something better and it's wasted money (that would be great !) or it saves our collective asses, and gives us another 100 years to come up with something better.

If the US army/govt does find a new energy source, it's likely to be a nuclear one (the only real solution to our needs), and our energy problems are over until our grandchildren die.

Re: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

#34

Post by Tloewald »

FD3SA wrote: post #15

Beautifully written and optimistic, but I would like to advise caution. There is only one currency in existence: Power. Historically, power has been proportional to a willing population. Technology allows power to be decoupled from population, allowing a very tiny minority to exert massive global power. This is the real danger, whether it takes the form of government, corporation, elites or cults. As power asymmetry…

Optimistic?

If ever there were an example of "appeal to an irrelevant authority" as a mode of argument, this overlong and histrionic essay would be it. Does it really matter what Moby Dick is about? Arguments should stand on reasoning and evidence, not pretentious allusions.

And then, of course, we get to fascism.

The sad thing is, I pretty much agree with the writer's sentiments, but this essay isn't going to convince anyone of anything.

Re: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

#35

Post by invalidOrTaken »

harshreality wrote: post #25
MarkPNeyer wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i dig this. the author laments the hubris and arrogance present in all societies, as if these exaggerations were bugs, and not features. the arrogance of the leaders and the peddling of hope are there because we are all afraid, and nobody wants to admit it. he talks about the chasm of human reality and how you get burned if you get closed to it, and i agree - it makes sense. i came out burned. i was mad at the world…

The ecological situation can be improved (damage slowed) by putting resources into it, or encouraging a shift in resource use through laws. Encouraging the onward march mindlessly is not helpful. There has to be some self-reflection and reevaluation of current strategies on how to get to the next technological age, if we are to get there without: nuclear holocaust; human-made plague; trashing our planet so badly we c…

One barrier is that there are collective action problems all over the friggin' place. If it's profitable to pollute, and Company A does while Company B does not, Company A will prevail.

Okay, well, this is what we have governments for. Polluting is outlawed, and both companies are prevented from defecting.

But there's more than one country in the world. And clean industry is expensive. So if country A pollutes, and country B doesn't...

My point is that it's not enough to just "decide" to tone it down, because societies that don't (although they carry the seeds of their own destruction) will dominate ones that do.

Re: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

#36

Post by spinchange »

Tycho wrote: post #8

The Federal Reserve purchases $85 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds—much of it worthless subprime mortgages—each month.

I stopped reading at this point. Beside the fact that a U.S. Treasury bond is not a mortgage backed security, subprime mortgages have not been originated in several years. A discussion about central banking or U.S. monetary policy would be one thing, but this is factually incorrect.

Re: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

#37

Post by spiderPig »

squirejons wrote: post #21
spiderPig wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the detailed comment. But could you go into a bit more detail about how the elite actually benefit from factions within a large nation? Like with an example taking today's elite into account.

well, this strategy was all laid out by the designer of the american constitution over 200 years ago in the federalist papers (the ones written by madison) and his notes on the constitutional convention. Madison wrote that the primary purpose of the structure of the american govt under his constitution was to preserve wealth inequality. Madison wrote that the way to do this was to prevent the majority from uniting an…

Ah, I see your point. Basically, fragment the power of the existing population as much as possible by increasing heterogeneity within it. Seems like the only solution against this is an eventual educated population that despite it's cultural and racial diversity, will come to a common consensus.

Re: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

#38

Post by prewett »

Tycho wrote: post #8

The Federal Reserve purchases $85 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds—much of it worthless subprime mortgages—each month.

This is incorrect just on the face of it. US Treasury bonds are simply government bonds, just like corporate or municipal bonds. They are NOT subprime mortgages. They are NOT mortgages. They are NOT worthless (unless you think the US will default on its bonds).

I couldn't make it past the first page of this article...

Re: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

#39

Post by einhverfr »

waps wrote: post #33
einhverfr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This of course raises the question of what is to be done; the answer is: live within your means, be responsible, know your neighbors, and don't be a weird conspiracy theorist. I personally think that collapse is coming. If I had to guess I would say 20-30 years out but to be honest, that's a guess. It could be ten years and it could be a hundred. I don't think the system can reform itself. The fundamental question…

Ah come on. I'd say there's at least a 50% chance that the US military and the Department of Energy find a workable new energy source in that timeframe (I have -very- little faith in the European academics who have locked themselves down on ITER and are at this point actively sabotaging other attempts. This is beyond stupid as ITER's timeframe is known and is too little, to late. The project should be cancelled, as t…

You still have two fundamental problems that can't be solved just by inventing new energy sources.

The first is smelting and materials. You can recycle steel with just electricity (that's a lossy process) but you can't produce it without burning coal. The same goes for copper and most other metals (aluminum is the only exception to my knowledge). If one wants to support exponentially increasing material consumption, that means, supporting exponentially increasing fossil fuel consumption at this point, since we are already way beyond what we can support there by using biomass for reduction smelting.

The second problem is that no matter what you do, if you push for ever-increasing consumption this will have massive environmental costs. We saw what happened at Fukushima and frankly I think the real lesson there is that natural disasters will always have a significant chance to overwhelm human engineering. It's easy to say "well, if they had the newer designs" but I am not aware of any real experience there seeing more recent designs of nuclear power plants go through a massive earthquake and tsunami. At best we can say "well, if we didn't miss something..." but reality is always more complex than our models. So I don't see nuclear as the answer.

The only real way to prepare for failure is to reduce consumption, and if you listen to the macro-economists, that would cause failure.

For exponentially increasing consumption of energy, even without greenhouse gas emissions you have the problem of the second law of thermodynamics, which leads to a warming planet even with a constant atmosphere. Our path is not sustainable and no amount of technological intervention will make it so. The only breakthrough that could possibly matter in that regard would be the development of perpetual motion machines.

Re: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

#40

Post by squirejons »

spiderPig wrote: post #37
squirejons wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, this strategy was all laid out by the designer of the american constitution over 200 years ago in the federalist papers (the ones written by madison) and his notes on the constitutional convention. Madison wrote that the primary purpose of the structure of the american govt under his constitution was to preserve wealth inequality. Madison wrote that the way to do this was to prevent the majority from uniting an…

Ah, I see your point. Basically, fragment the power of the existing population as much as possible by increasing heterogeneity within it. Seems like the only solution against this is an eventual educated population that despite it's cultural and racial diversity, will come to a common consensus.

I agree--expose The Narrative via grassroots exposition on the web, and sooner or later the truth will spread. Slowly, but it will spread. Many europeans already know this.
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