There won't be a great difference between the poor of England (and
many countries in Europe) and America. They're already dispersed in
towns and cities and won't be pouring off the land and into the hovel
regions of the new super-metropolises. Happiness is relative. The
former will be a great deal unhappier because they'll be comparing
their lot with what they used to have (and what was promised them in
the future by politicians at election times). In contrast, the
recently-rural hovel poor of the super-metropolises, so long as they
have just enough food and TV, will feel a sense of release from the
constraints of their previous cultures, the womenfolk particularly.
The big difference between America and the European countries is that
there is still an element of the frontier spirit in you. Apart from
your 20-class (much the same as ours), you are relatively naive in
sensing the future. Our birthrates have been dropping for two
generations now, and steeply so for the past generation. Your family
sizes (except for the Mormons!) have only recently started dipping
below replacement level. As for your Ainu, I know next to nothing
about them. I can't remember when I read anything about them in the
thousands of current articles and news stories I have read on the
Internet over the past several years except that some seem to be
connected with running casinos on reservations. That last sentence
was not -- repeat not -- intended to be offensive. It's just that my
erudition certainly lets me down in the American First Nation
department. I only know about indigenous Americans in the same
general historical sense as many other native peoples in the world
when invaded by imperialist powers.
As for Canadians, well . . . I'd better keep quiet about them on
this list or I might have my head chopped off. As for Australians,
and with an Australian son and three Australian grandchildren, I can
write more freely. I don't think they'll have a great future because
Australia's economy is almost completely dependent on the export of
abundant resources and there's been little incentive to develop much
else -- economically, scientifically or culturally. Their outstanding
talent has been migrating to the UK for decades (and presumably to
America, too) for a more interesting life.
Keith
At 09:51 15/07/2012, REH wrote:
Sort of like England to Ireland during the potato
famine? Growing up in an English speaking layered society has
obviously different from an English speaking society that has
replaced each generation with a new generation of dissatisfied
immigrants from England and the rest of the world. We are more
generally dissatisfied and more than a little malcontent. Your
Utopia with its happy lower class bears little resemblance to our
here and the upper classes who believe that lower classdom is a
moral failure makes a stable welfare state impossible. There's too
much harassment. We have peace because we have police. As the
police are being defunded, we will have less peace. But it is
still interesting to me just how different the two English speaking
societies are from one another. And then there is Canada and
Australia. And then there is us. The Ainu of the English
world. I must compliment you Keith on your erudition. I always
something from your reading.
REH
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson
Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 3:49 AM
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION
Subject: [Futurework] Almost Utopia
To be realistic we will never have an energy shortage again. Because
great slabs of compressed ocean mud have been repeatedly pushed
under the 'floating' continental rock for billions of years then
fracked methane will always be available for any realistically
conceivable world population for any realistically conceivable
future. There'll be few relatively small regions of the earth's
crust where one or more deep strata of shale gas will not lie
immediately underneath.
Shale gas will be used for at least 1,000 years because, in the
meantime -- and particularly within the next 100 years -- by far the
most of the present excess world rural population will have ended up
in the shanty suburbs of the presently fast-growing
super-metropolises. There, if the present experience in Brazil,
China, India, Indonesia and other countries is any guide at all,
birth rates will decline to less than replacement. If the world-wide
research surveys of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology are any further guide then, if
the hovel-dwellers are offered sufficient free or state-subsidized
electricity to drive a TV and to receive, or the chance to earn,
enough to maintain a minimum carbohydrate diet then they'll be
content. Those newly-discovered mirror neurons of the brain, which
so powerfully help us to self-identify with the rich and the heroes
we read in novels or see on the TV screen, will do the trick for the
vast majority.
Some of the hovel children, by virtue of a decent set of genes,
exceptional parents and more than the normal ration of luck at
different junctures, will be able to escape and the join the
minority who live in the more prosperous parts of the
super-metropolises. In this way they'll be similar to the small
proportion of state-educated children in the advanced countries of
the West who are nevertheless able to get into the elite
universities from which they will almost automatically enter what I
call the 20-class.
Because of the lack of consumer goods with uniquely new
characteristics (now about 40 years on in the West), we are fast
proceeding to a steady-state economy (much to the befuddlement of
our politicians and their growing consternation) in which profits
(necessary for further investment) will come from innovations that
will continue to increase the efficiency of our production systems
and infrastructures, not from status enhancing googaws (which,
increasingly, will not require people to make them).
If the above sounds a bit Utopian, so it is. Quite besides a
currency catastrophe which cannot be far off now due to the
increasingly fragile Eurozone, millions of fracking wells in Europe,
China and elsewhere will be joining the many thousands which are
presently busy in America and supplying cheap methane. What is going
to be the reaction of Russia and the Middle East countries which
presently supply us with the bulk of our oil and gas? Their
economies, almost totally deficient in small and middle industries,
are completely dependent on their olefinic exports. Those countries
will be creating a lot of trouble, we can be pretty sure.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
<http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/>http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
