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Musings Report 2024-52 12-28-24 An Unpopular Essay: What's Ahead 2025-2035
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An Unpopular Essay: What's Ahead 2025-2035
My views aren't popular, and as logician Bertrand Russell observed, if they're not popular, then they're unpopular. Hence this is an Unpopular Essay.
The popular view of the next decade is we're entering a "new Roaring 20s" in which new leadership, policies and technologies will deliver Super-Abundance without inconveniencing us in any way. It's in our nature to desire more of all the good things in life and avoid sacrifice and inconvenience, so it's no wonder this view is popular.
The question is whether this expectation is realistic or not, and if there is any possibility that it might not be, then what response we choose now will serve us best going forward?
The easiest choice is of course to alter nothing in our lives, on the expectation that whatever problems arise will be fixed by the authorities or technology.
The harder and therefore unpopular choice is to start altering our lives now in anticipation that the next decade may not be as rosy as commonly projected.
My analysis of the coming decade is based on the following conditions. I use "the system" as short-hand for the socio-political-financial-economic world-system (per Immanuel Wallenstein) as it is currently configured.
1. The system is optimized for infinite growth / expansion. If expansion falters, the system crashes.
2. The system is optimized for infinite substitution of whatever becomes scarce as the means to continue expanding essentially forever.
3. These optimizations only function in a narrow envelope. Should the system stray outside this envelope, it crashes.
4. The fundamental principle of the system is "no limits": there are no limits on human ingenuity, and so there are no limits on technology and growth.
5. There are intrinsically contradictory dynamics in the system.
6. Scale and asymmetry are the core contradictory dynamics. Two ways to summarize this are 1) math and 2) "too big to care."
7. The system's optimizations mis-diagnose problems, so it selects "solutions" that accelerate its own dysfunction / demise.
8. The system lacks the means--the values, subsystems, feedback and institutional structures--to adapt to changing conditions. The solutions offered are based on misconceptions / misdiagnoses of the actual problems, so the problems only become more intractable.
9. As a result, the preferred "solutions" are all forms of play-acting, i.e. the notion that controlling the narrative / framing the "problem" as solvable with existing policy adjustments is actually solving the problem.
10. The system's core mythology is Technological Progress is unlimited and unstoppable and so it will solve all problems by its very nature. We can remain comfortably seated and watch as Technology solves whatever problems arise.
11. This belief blinds us to the fact that technology also generates Anti-Progress. Since accepting Anti-Progress undermines our core faith in Technological Progress, we deny the existence of Anti-Progress. This denial renders us incapable of correctly diagnosing problems and choosing actual solutions rather than play-acting "solutions."
12. Due to these conditions, the system is involuted: no matter what option we choose, nothing changes systemically. Real change is only possible at the micro-level of our own lives.
The core theme I will explore in 2025 is this question: what responses to these conditions will likely serve us best going forward? The popular view holds that remaining passive observers is all that's necessary. The unpopular view holds that this choice of response optimizes dependence and an inescapable narrowing of options.
Changing course before we hit the iceberg is preferable to whatever actions we choose after we've hit the iceberg.
These topics are so big that it would take a book to address them--which is why I wrote my latest book The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century. This is a systemic view from low-Earth orbit.
My focus in 2025 is: what responses can we choose as individuals and households that will serve us best if the popular view fails to manifest?
Today, I want to briefly discuss a few of these topics.
A year ago, I wrote a Musings entitled The Status Quo Has Already Failed, We're Just Not Aware of It Yet, which was based on the book 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline, which transformed my understanding of how the intrinsic limitations of administrative, financial, economic, social, cultural and judicial systems doom a nation or empire to decline and collapse long before the collapse announces itself.
One way to understand this is to see all systems as optimized for specific conditions. When those conditions hold, the system performs well, and so we naturally assume the system is essentially ideal since it's generating such excellent results.
We fail to observe that the system only functions well if the conditions don't change. Once the conditions change, then the system will naturally continue doing whatever has been optimized in the past because it worked so well.
This optimization is systemic, subtle and complex. It includes cultural values, social hierarchies, financial - monetary systems that we think of as natural rather than as social constructs, forms of governance, and so on. The Ming Empire was optimized for a specific set of conditions in ways that were not recognized, as the evolution occurred naturally.
The same can be said of Imperial Rome or the present-day world-system, which arose from one central dynamic, our exploitation of the one-time gift of readily accessible energy-dense hydrocarbons. We're blind to the narrowness of the optimization envelope of the system, and so we falsely attribute the system with grandiose powers to continue on regardless of any changes in the underlying conditions.
One analogy is the way we passengers think about airliners: the aircraft is powerful and flies in all conditions. We aren't aware that the aircraft has been optimized to operate efficiently in a narrow envelope of altitude (generally 30,000 to 40,000 feet) and air speed (500 to 550 miles per hour). At an altitude of 200 feet, it's a much different story.
The system has been optimized for specific conditions: unlimited, affordable energy that can be easily stored and transported long distances; credit that is affordable and expandable, unlimited, affordable natural resources, the availability of new resources should anything become depleted / scarce, and so on.
Outside the envelope optimizing these conditions, the system fails.
Consider this chart of total credit/debt in the U.S., public and private. The tiny wobble in 2008 triggered by a relatively modest sum (in comparison to the enormous size of the global financial system) of subprime mortgages defaulting (financial instruments that were essentially designed to fail) nearly crashed the global financial system.
Only the Federal Reserve's $16 trillion bailout / backstop--larger than the entire U.S. GDP of $14.7 trillion--saved the system from collapse. (By some measures, the total size of the Fed's guarantees and backstops exceeded an incomprehensibly large $32 trillion.)
That the Fed was able to conjure a "save" by deploying financial bailouts on an unprecedented scale was glossed over by the relief that the system "worked."
That the system was pushed to extremes that have created new systemic extremes 15 years later is glossed over. In many ways, the system-wobble in 2008 has yet to fully play out because the system has only "saved" the financial sector by pushing the system far out of equilibrium / its optimization envelope.
This is an example of the problem of scale: numbers are numbing, so we ignore the scale of things. So it took $32 trillion to stave off collapse, who cares, it worked. That this "save" might be connected to the extraordinary event of the past month--for the first time, the Fed slashed interest rates by 100 basis points (i.e. 1%) and Treasury bond yields rose by 1%--is ignored.
In other words, the pilots are losing control of the aircraft but we don't yet notice it.
The aircraft is still flying far outside its optimization zone, but the ride is smooth so we think all is well. But all sorts of other conditions--fuel consumption, etc.--are warning of unavoidable trouble ahead.
The system "saved" the financial sector from its own excesses but only by absorbing all the systemic risk into the entire system. The risk didn't dissipate, it was simply transferred to the system as a whole, at the cost of higher risks, increasing the potential for a global system crash.
That all this is beneath the surface enables authorities to present play-acting (narrative control) as "solutions."
Scale also crops up in other play-acting "solutions." The world consumes about 100 million barrels of oil every day. So when a 2 billion barrel oil-field discovery is announced with much fanfare, left out of the hoopla are the facts that the discovery is offshore in deep water and will take two decades to exploit, and the total amount of oil extracted over the 20 years amounts to a mere 20 days of global consumption.
Also left unmentioned is the fact that new discoveries are a fraction of current consumption.
Another example is the recent cheering about fusion nuclear power. The claim that an experimental fusion device generated "more energy than it consumed" wowed the world, but left out were doubts about the validity of this claim as the fusion event was less than a millionth of a second in duration. That controlling events at 100 million degrees F is inherently problematic--an incomprehensibly large number--is glossed over: human ingenuity has no limits, ergo technology has no limits.
These are not actual solutions, they're play-acting "solutions."
The Ming Empire's system diagnosed the problems the Empire faced incorrectly because the system was incapable of doing anything outside its optimization zone once conditions changed. The same holds true for the present world-system: current solutions will fix all problems, even as conditions change, even though these changes are outside the system's recognition.
We have to diagnose the problems correctly ourselves, and change course accordingly. The system is incapable of doing so, and misconceptions / misdiagnoses are presented as "solutions" that can do no more than accelerate dysfunction.
Highlights of the Blog
What If Solutions That Worked in the Past No Longer Fix What's Broken? 12/26/24
A Christmas Gift from Marcus Aurelius 12/23/24
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
A faint (and rare) double rainbow made a brief appearance near sunset.
What's on the Book Shelf
The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis
by Richard Vague
From Left Field
NOTE TO NEW READERS: This list is not comprised of articles I agree with or that I judge to be correct or of the highest quality. It is representative of the content I find interesting as reflections of the current zeitgeist. The list is intended to be perused with an open, critical, occasionally amused mind.
Many links are behind paywalls. Most paywalled sites allow a few free articles per month if you register. It's the New Normal.
Ev Williams Was Lonely. He Doesn’t Want You to Be. (via Cheryl A.) -- tech solution to loneliness: a new app...
The Gilded Age of Medicine Is Here: Health insurers and hospitals increasingly treat patients less as humans in need of care than consumers who generate profit.
"2024 was arguably the year that the mortal dangers of corporate medicine finally became undeniable and inescapable." "In recent years, health-care corporations have embraced an approach that can only be described as gamification."
The Secret of the Unicorn Tapestries By Danielle Oteri (via Christopher M.Q.)
New device produces critical fertilizer ingredient from thin air, cutting carbon emissions (via Tom D.) -- no mention of cost, maintenance or storage....
What is Food Design? -- using human emotional needs to generate addictive products...
We Are Headed Towards a System of National Capitalism (via Cheryl A.)
The world economy needs to simplify -- Gail Tverberg, excellent charts....
How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge
Anxiety, Stress, and Low White Blood Cell Count: The Intricate Link and Its Impact on Your Immune System
Cannes Film Review: 'Adam'-- Moroccan film...
Don't let hackers fool you with a 'scam-yourself' attack: Use these tips to avoid scams
How to buy Treasury bonds, bills and notes via TreasuryDirect.gov (Adam Taggart, video)
"We cannot ultimately specify the grounds (either metaphysical or logical or empirical) upon which we hold that our knowledge is true. Being committed to such grounds, dwelling in them, we are projecting ourselves to what we believe to be true from or through these grounds. We cannot therefore see what they are. We cannot look at them because we are looking with them." Michael Polanyi
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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