How Western Civilisation Could Collapse (BBC)

Xarog

Xarog

Honorary Master
Joined
Feb 13, 2006
Messages
19,038
Reaction score
175
The political economist Benjamin Friedman once compared modern Western society to a stable bicycle whose wheels are kept spinning by economic growth. Should that forward-propelling motion slow or cease, the pillars that define our society – democracy, individual liberties, social tolerance and more – would begin to teeter. Our world would become an increasingly ugly place, one defined by a scramble over limited resources and a rejection of anyone outside of our immediate group. Should we find no way to get the wheels back in motion, we’d eventually face total societal collapse.

Such collapses have occurred many times in human history, and no civilisation, no matter how seemingly great, is immune to the vulnerabilities that may lead a society to its end. Regardless of how well things are going in the present moment, the situation can always change. Putting aside species-ending events like an asteroid strike, nuclear winter or deadly pandemic, history tells us that it’s usually a plethora of factors that contribute to collapse. What are they, and which, if any, have already begun to surface? It should come as no surprise that humanity is currently on an unsustainable and uncertain path – but just how close are we to reaching the point of no return?

While it’s impossible to predict the future with certainty, mathematics, science and history can provide hints about the prospects of Western societies for long-term continuation.

Safa Motesharrei, a systems scientist at the University of Maryland, uses computer models to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that can lead to local or global sustainability or collapse. According to findings that Motesharrei and his colleagues published in 2014, there are two factors that matter: ecological strain and economic stratification. The ecological category is the more widely understood and recognised path to potential doom, especially in terms of depletion of natural resources such as groundwater, soil, fisheries and forests – all of which could be worsened by climate change.
Click to expand...

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse
 
Safa Motesharrei, a systems scientist at the University of Maryland, uses computer models to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that can lead to local or global sustainability or collapse. According to findings that Motesharrei and his colleagues published in 2014, there are two factors that matter: ecological strain and economic stratification.
Click to expand...

Isaac Asimov is smiling in his grave.
 
Our world would become an increasingly ugly place, one defined by a scramble over limited resources and a rejection of anyone outside of our immediate group. Should we find no way to get the wheels back in motion, we’d eventually face total societal collapse.

I wonder if this "expert" realises the cause of the scramble over limited resources is actually triggered by our caring of people who we don't know. Social welfare is the biggest cost of any developed nation's budget.
tragedy_commons.jpeg

In the olden days, when people couldn't look after themselves and had no one who cared about them- they simply died. That is natures way of telling people they are useless. What we have now, is that every useless life matters, and if you don't agree with that, you are sent to prison for tax evasion. The logical consequences of this is that unless you find more ways to increase the carrying capacity (eg solar exploration), or decrease the amount of people (soylent green option), you will run out of resources.
 
konfab said:
In the olden days, when people couldn't look after themselves and had no one who cared about them- they simply died. That is natures way of telling people they are useless. What we have now, is that every useless life matters, and if you don't agree with that, you are sent to prison for tax evasion. The logical consequences of this is that unless you find more ways to increase the carrying capacity (eg solar exploration), or decrease the amount of people (soylent green option), you will run out of resources.
Click to expand...

Yet people (namely republicans and the religious) are actively trying to prevent others from any types of birth control. Force people to have children and then whine about the consequences of those children.
 
Unhappy438 said:
Yet people (namely republicans and the religious) are actively trying to prevent people from any types of birth control. Force people to have children and then whine about the consequences of those children.
Click to expand...

Wait, what?!? republicans and religious people are rapists? how else do they forcefully impregnate these people? ... :whistle:
 
NarrowBandFtw said:
Wait, what?!? republicans and religious people are rapists? how else do they forcefully impregnate these people? ... :whistle:
Click to expand...

Comic sans but im going to reply anyway. People will be people, they are going to have sex that much is fact. Making sure condoms and birth control pills are available to everyone is way way cheaper than having hordes of people on social welfare. If you provide people with no option, then yes you are forcing them.
 
Unhappy438 said:
Comic sans but im going to reply anyway. People will be people, they are going to have sex that much is fact. Making sure condoms and birth control pills are available to everyone is way way cheaper than having hordes of people on social welfare. If you provide people with no option, then yes you are forcing them.
Click to expand...

Plus the fact that many religious systems forbid contraception and abortion. But I guess that's part of what you're saying.

The real root of the problem is, as always, too many people for the system, aka overshoot of carrying capacity on the current scale of the system, which is planetary.
 
Unhappy438 said:
If you provide people with no option, then yes you are forcing them.
Click to expand...
Yet they do have an option: don't get pregnant. Using birth control and/or abortion is a personal choice though, the latter is not for me, but I'm not about to tell others what they get to decide, as long as they take full responsibility and don't come begging at my door to fund ANY of their decisions.

Back on topic though, the OP is not about partisan / factional / religious issues. The world is guaranteed to run out of enough resources to sustain life for this many people eventually, what happens then?
 
Civilizations are always rising and falling. Thousands of years of history have proven that. We are at a juncture point in history though where a lot is changing. Power balance of the world that has been relatively stable for a relatively long time is shifting to the east.

Ideologically and governmentally its also starting to shift. 15 years ago the typical person living in "western civilization" could not imagine a world where the democratic system would fail yet already we are seeing a world where the middle class is wondering if democracy is actually the best idea especially if you compare the USA and say Greece to a place like China where they run free market communism.

I guess the alternative to collapse is equilibrium and I suspect if anyone gets that right it will be the Nordic block. Places where birth rate hits a stable point and the society figures out to live off what they can produce themselves without taking another nations resources (or at least giving equivalent value back). A society that does not "grow" as per the OP article but is happy, wealthy, stable, and independent. In a way the Northern European countries are close to this but are now grappling with a primary threat to that way of life in the form of the immigration question. How much do you allow if any and what do you do if the immigrants do not want to adapt to your culture and to boot have a higher birth rate than your native population?

Fun times for the world.
 
NarrowBandFtw said:
Yet they do have an option: don't get pregnant. Using birth control and/or abortion is a personal choice though, the latter is not for me, but I'm not about to tell others what they get to decide, as long as they take full responsibility and don't come begging at my door to fund ANY of their decisions.

Back on topic though, the OP is not about partisan / factional / religious issues. The world is guaranteed to run out of enough resources to sustain life for this many people eventually, what happens then?
Click to expand...

We start tearing each others' throats out. Although I believe that's already begun.
 
Cius said:
I guess the alternative to collapse is equilibrium and I suspect if anyone gets that right it will be the Nordic block. Places where birth rate hits a stable point and the society figures out to live off what they can produce themselves without taking another nations resources (or at least giving equivalent value back). A society that does not "grow" as per the OP article but is happy, wealthy, stable, and independent. In a way the Northern European countries are close to this but are now grappling with a primary threat to that way of life in the form of the immigration question. How much do you allow if any and what do you do if the immigrants do not want to adapt to your culture and to boot have a higher birth rate than your native population?
Click to expand...
Equilibrium is not ideal, even if the experience is ideal. Advancement and adaptation can only come from chaos.
 
Screw birth control and condoms, when you apply for a social grant for child care, they should only 'grant' it after the woman gets a hysterectomy from an approved clinic. There is roughly 31% of the population on welfare, they are literally screwing themselves (and us taxpayers) out of a brighter future. Instead of rewarding the impoverished people to multiply and get themselves into deeper financial sht, rather lighten the burden on the people who are already here and increase the senior citizens pension and SPCA funding.
 
hoenner69 said:
Screw birth control and condoms, when you apply for a social grant for child care, they should only 'grant' it after the woman gets a hysterectomy from an approved clinic. There is roughly 31% of the population on welfare, they are literally screwing themselves (and us taxpayers) out of a brighter future. Instead of rewarding the impoverished people to multiply and get themselves into deeper financial sht, rather lighten the burden on the people who are already here and increase the senior citizens pension and SPCA funding.
Click to expand...

Would be more cost effective to sterilize 99% of the men.
 
Aquila ka Hecate said:
Would be more cost effective to sterilize 99% of the men.
Click to expand...

Even better, reversible vasectomy rather than sterilization. If you get a stable job and decide you are ready for that huge financial burden they call children, you can reverse it and have kids.
 
konfab said:
Our world would become an increasingly ugly place, one defined by a scramble over limited resources and a rejection of anyone outside of our immediate group. Should we find no way to get the wheels back in motion, we’d eventually face total societal collapse.

I wonder if this "expert" realises the cause of the scramble over limited resources is actually triggered by our caring of people who we don't know. Social welfare is the biggest cost of any developed nation's budget.
View attachment 431476

In the olden days, when people couldn't look after themselves and had no one who cared about them- they simply died. That is natures way of telling people they are useless. What we have now, is that every useless life matters, and if you don't agree with that, you are sent to prison for tax evasion. The logical consequences of this is that unless you find more ways to increase the carrying capacity (eg solar exploration), or decrease the amount of people (soylent green option), you will run out of resources.
Click to expand...
Well, don't worry. Thanks to advances in technology, the entire economy is about to hit a point where nobody can afford to get a job making the useless crud everybody buys to keep world consumption going.

So the very notion of trying to build prosperity through consumption is about to enter the pages of history. Hopefully humanity will survive to write its epitaph.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X