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Not to get too political, but I think that the US tends to have the policies it does to prevent the all out collapse of the Middle East. If you think it's a shi
by virmundi 10y ago
Not to get too political, but I think that the US tends to have the policies it does to prevent the all out collapse of the Middle East. If you think it's a shit storm now, just wait until they have nothing.
Few of those states invested in their people and their infrastructure. Instead they created an almost UBI for their population. It's enough to keep them relatively passive. Cheap gas and just enough to get by. All the while they've created a sense of entitlement in their population. Look at how they treat immigrant labor.
Sadly this population didn't take their minimal freedom to pursue the arts or sciences. While there are instances of individuals improving their life, developing skills and preparing for a post-oil world, the bulk of their society just floats. Moving off oil will pull the plug on their basin. Their societies will probably go down the drain.
Watch out for Europe when that happens. These groups will migrate north and west. I don't think you'll see an exodus into Asia. Given their poor skills, Europe will have a hard time incorporating them into general society. In the end they will probably ghetto-ize. Now Europe will be a melting pot of terrorism. Disaffected young males, the primary target of extremist groups, will be sitting, by the millions, in slums in and around major European cities.
TL;DR: Oil, for all of its faults, stabilizes the world. The US military budget keeps that around.
- DennisP 10y agoA while back I read that states which get their funding from natural resources instead of taxes very seldom turn into liberal democracies. I think it was in Zakaria's Future of Freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Freedom So maybe oil hasn't been a net benefit for these countries. In any case, if we stop needing their oil, their capacity for causing trouble will be drastically diminished.
- visarga 10y ago> if we stop needing their oil, their capacity for causing trouble will be drastically diminished I think in a few decades their new need for self reliance could pay dividends. They could be living much better in the long run.
- damptowel 10y agoInteresting hypothesis, has anything been written about it?
- virmundi 10y agoIt's a little dated, but here's a Forbes article that discusses a decline in Western oil consumption (not necessarily from fusion). http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2012/12/03/what-happens-when-america-no-longer-needs-middle-east-oil/#6b4d1ed464fa http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2012/12/03/what-ha...
- mabbo 10y agoThat is, by far, the most chilling and worrying vision of the future I have heard in a long time. I really hope you're mistaken. I'm terrified you aren't.
- badsock 10y agoReally? That's your nightmare scenario? A bunch of immigrants, and some of them will turn to terrorism - a threat that kills less people per year than, say, automobile accidents or medical mistakes. How about climate change? Meteors, supervolcanos? These are all things that have destroyed the majority of either humanity or life on earth at some point in the past. And then there's horrors of war, plagues, earthquakes, and tsunamis, which have the capability of killing double-digit percents of regional populations in short amounts of time. Terrorism has never killed even a tenth of a single percent of any population. Sure, you can worry that terrorists /might/ get nukes or biological weapons. But unstable national governments already have these things. The number of times that the USSR and the USA accidentally almost started a nuclear holocaust via tens of thousands of superbly-engineered ICBMs is vastly more concerning than a bunch of poorly funded, poorly organised idiots that might set off some homebrew weapon. There are vastly more impactful things that /have already proven to exist/ to be worried about and prepared against.
- rwmurrayVT 10y ago>some of them will turn to terrorism - a threat that kills less people per year than, say, automobile accidents or medical mistakes. Yes, some currently turn to terrorism and kill fewer people than automobiles. You're implying that the number of deaths won't grow at all when an entire region of the globe loses it's major cash cow.
- badsock 10y agoThe point I'm making is that it could grow 100 times and it still pales against other risks.
- 10y ago
- gp7 10y agoPlease at least have a cursory glance of the history of any of these countries from around WW1 to the present day instead of just assuming things magically came to be the way they were 6 hours before the first gulf war. States are _not_ abstract entities that just sort of float around existing at geographic locations
- stdbrouw 10y agoAn unsubstantiated theory that just happens to align with your ideology and interests -- how would you describe that if not as "very political"?
- vorotato 10y agoEven with fusion energy we'd still use oil. We do have cars after all.