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I think at least this first part reads like an explanation of the events of the last two centuries and based on my very light arm-chair historians knowledge I f
by fsloth 11y ago
I think at least this first part reads like an explanation of the events of the last two centuries and based on my very light arm-chair historians knowledge I failed to see any obvious lapses in their analysis.
Like any analysis, though, it should be read as interesting postulation based on known facts, rather than a complete explanatory model in itself.
I fail to see how cheap solar or new life forms would provide more arable land. Sure, we can invent - I don't know - an edible nutritious city kudzu that grows everywhere and provides nutrition for everyone but until that happens I think the american farmlands do provide a considerable asset like the article stated.
I see no obvious reason why at least a partial singularity nirvana could not come to being but until it does - no one really has a clue what it would look like and analyses like these must stick to understood reality and politics.
- vonnik 11y agoWe can engineer yeast to produce almost any molecule. We can synthesize meat. We can do that with nearly free electricity from solar, among other ingredients. These things are happening now. Arable land is an archaic fetish, like much of Stratfor's thinking. Calling events inevitable in hindsight has zero value. Predicting the inevitability of a future event, and then seeing that prediction confirmed, has immense value. Stratfor's predictions, however, are much weaker than their analysis of the past.
- fsloth 11y agoWhat are the theoretical economics of yeast based or synthetic food based nutrition on a global scale? The chemicals need to come from somewhere. The synthesis equipment needs to come from somwhere. As I understand it growing things in dirt is pretty efficient? Where is the cut-off point when test tube grown food is economically more viable than dirt based alimenation? I am not saying these things wont happen. But we are not there yet. How soon? It took a few hundreds of years of tweaking for steam engines to actually make an economic difference. It took a hundred years for the offspring of babbages difference engine to become the instruments of the cultural and economic transformation they are today. Today, we are locked to dirt. In five years, most food is dirt based. Probably still a decade or two from now. Most analysts predicitions turn out to be pretty bad - but it's their 'editorial view' of current events that I find most educating if done well.