← Back to context

Comment by parineum

17 hours ago

> Or the public could accept a reduction in their standard of living, but that’s likely not happening without a civil war.

I suspect what we'll actually do is what we always do. Innovate our way into a higher standard of living while simultaneously elevating the poorest people out of poverty and finding novel ways to feed, clothe and house our population.

It's funny how persistent malthusians are in the face of evidence to the contrary.

4 comments

parineum

Reply
iamnothere  16 hours ago

We’ll see what that looks like in the face of demographic decline and increasingly expensive oil.

It’s possible that some kind of technological miracle rescues us, but it seems more likely to me that we follow the pattern of catabolic collapse seen in the Bronze Age, Easter Island, and Europe in the Dark Ages. Civilization may rebound, sure, but humans have a history of overextension followed by decline (as do all animals).

  • autoexec  15 hours ago

    A very small number of people are taking (and often wasting) the majority of the worlds wealth and resources and harming everyone else in the process. We could probably stave off that decline for a lot longer if we did something about the leeches accelerating our collapse.