The Race for Survival
Rob
Thanks for presenting your skepticism in such an exploring tone. We’re all essentially the blindfolded scientists from that old joke examining the elephant with the same goal: what is this thing?
I group Diamandis with the other 1%ers who are trying to put the cart before the horse so that they can reap Alan Kay’s famous quote for themselves, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it”. To give you an answer, let’s transport the Abundance book back to 250AD at the height of the Roman Empire.
At that time in history, the Roman Empire, built totally on the power of the horse and human muscle, was an empire that spread from the northern tip of Scotland to Saudi Arabia. The technology they had was astounding. To control such a large empire, they had fire-powered signal towers for optical communications to cover thousands of miles in a single night (weather permitting). Their town squares were covered in marble and surrounded by magnificent buildings. They had water-drip air conditioning along the walkways. They had cities three stories tall with running water and sewer. When the Roman legions attacked Germania, they built a bridge across the Rhine River in 10 days that could transport 20,000 soldiers in full march with equipment. (They did this to gain a new supply of wood because the forests around the Mediterranean had been depleted.) Their medical capabilities included surgical tools and techniques that we can see in use today. (Julius Caesar was named, of course, for being born by Cesarean Section.)
Let’s compare that to today, almost 2000 years later. Create a ratio of the opulence, grandeur and everyday household technology of Rome, to their horse driven power source. Then, consider a similar ratio of the current state of the modern world to today’s technology base. I’d easily say we have not even recovered from the previous dark ages. What has electricity, electronics, computers, communications, the internet, transportation, antibiotics, medical imaging, atomic power, carbon fuel, space travel, and endless weapons of war bought world society to? The point? This is not a problem that more technology alone can fix.
What Diamandis and the elite billionaire’s club of entrepreneurs keep leaving out of their equation is the recognition that the quality of life for the 99% is NOT delivered soley by TECHNOLOGY. As I described in Part 6 of my series, until the flaws of democracy are acknowledged and a new system is created, humans will disband into warring factions. The bombs will keep dropping until the cities and infrastructure of the earth are destroyed. How will any technology fix that? If the population isn’t reduced, yet each new person, and all those still without, wants all the accoutrements of modern life that can only be provided by natural resources, the earth, which is already experiencing limits, will not be able to provide them.
Ironically, I do agree with Diamandis’ in one way. If humans can get through the next 30–50 years, AND the population crashes level out with world population around 500M to 1B people, AND the “new democracy” is established, then even the technology of the Roman’s could solve humanity’s problems. So, surely, current technology or even advanced technology could also do it. SO, even though I’m a certified MIT rocket scientist, I will repeat my message: THIS IS NOT A PROBLEM THAT MORE TECHNOLOGY ALONE CAN FIX.
One more point related to your question. I base the timing of my “forecasting” on the Club of Rome, Limits to Growth model. The first model showed, that if the human race did not limit world population to around 2B by 1984, AND drastically reduce all forms of pollution, then massive population reducing die-offs would start around 2060. While developed in 1970, that model has been rerun every 10 years with updated data. The original patterns for world levels of the elements used in the model (population, food, natural resources etc) have remained unchanged with one exception: the time periods have become shorter. At every 10 year increment, it was found that the world response to the changes needed for sustainability was WORSE than the “worse possible case” the model builders could ever imagine society would allow. At each 10 year update, the die-off start became closer. The current runs predict the die-off has already started, which we are seeing, and the world response continues to get worse. I wish I could find a set of conditions to prove this model is wrong. But each new run brings worse news.
