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Earth Science

Society Is Right On Track For a Global Collapse, New Study of Infamous 1970s Report Finds 323

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Live Science: Human society is on track for a collapse in the next two decades if there isn't a serious shift in global priorities, according to a new reassessment of a 1970s report, Vice reported. In that report -- published in the bestselling book "The Limits to Growth" (1972) -- a team of MIT scientists argued that industrial civilization was bound to collapse if corporations and governments continued to pursue continuous economic growth, no matter the costs. The researchers forecasted 12 possible scenarios for the future, most of which predicted a point where natural resources would become so scarce that further economic growth would become impossible, and personal welfare would plummet.

The report's most infamous scenario -- the Business as Usual (BAU) scenario -- predicted that the world's economic growth would peak around the 2040s, then take a sharp downturn, along with the global population, food availability and natural resources. This imminent "collapse" wouldn't be the end of the human race, but rather a societal turning point that would see standards of living drop around the world for decades, the team wrote.

So, what's the outlook for society now, nearly half a century after the MIT researchers shared their prognostications? Gaya Herrington, a sustainability and dynamic system analysis researcher at the consulting firm KPMG, decided to find out. [...] Herrington found that the current state of the world -- measured through 10 different variables, including population, fertility rates, pollution levels, food production and industrial output -- aligned extremely closely with two of the scenarios proposed in 1972, namely the BAU scenario and one called Comprehensive Technology (CT), in which technological advancements help reduce pollution and increase food supplies, even as natural resources run out. While the CT scenario results in less of a shock to the global population and personal welfare, the lack of natural resources still leads to a point where economic growth sharply declines -- in other words, a sudden collapse of industrial society.
"The good news is that it's not too late to avoid both of these scenarios and put society on track for an alternative -- the Stabilized World (SW) scenario," the report notes. "This path begins as the BAU and CT routes do, with population, pollution and economic growth rising in tandem while natural resources decline. The difference comes when humans decide to deliberately limit economic growth on their own, before a lack of resources forces them to."

"The SW scenario assumes that in addition to the technological solutions, global societal priorities change," Herrington wrote. "A change in values and policies translates into, amongst other things, low desired family size, perfect birth control availability, and a deliberate choice to limit industrial output and prioritize health and education services." After this shift of values occurs, industrial growth and global population begin to level out. "Food availability continues to rise to meet the needs of the global population; pollution declines and all but disappears; and the depletion of natural resources begins to level out, too," adds Live Science. "Societal collapse is avoided entirely."
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Society Is Right On Track For a Global Collapse, New Study of Infamous 1970s Report Finds

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  • Doomsaying 101 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @05:09AM (#61615005)

    "Societal collapse is coming, we just got the day wrong last time" is the favourite excuse of doomsayers.

    • Re:Doomsaying 101 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by fazig ( 2909523 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @05:14AM (#61615017)
      To be honest, when taking a look at how stupid vast parts of humanity have been acting through this pandemic out of spite, IF the pandemic does not manage to weed out considerable parts of that stupid, I don't think some kind of notable collapse is that unrealistic within this century.
      • Re:Doomsaying 101 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @05:29AM (#61615047)

        To be honest, when taking a look at how stupid vast parts of humanity have been acting through this pandemic out of spite, IF the pandemic does not manage to weed out considerable parts of that stupid, I don't think some kind of notable collapse is that unrealistic within this century.

        We learned our lesson so much after engaging in one World War, that we engaged in another one.

        100 years ago, the second wave of the Spanish Flu was the most deadly not because the threat had actually subsided, but because humans were tired of dealing with lockdowns and silly masks.

        The 2008 financial crisis was apparently so bad that we did nothing to prevent it from happening again.

        Not sure what in the fuck makes you think we humans get smarter over time, or that another global pandemic would educate. We can't even wise up enough to stop repeating the worst of our history.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          Pretty much everything you just cited seems to point to two remarkable qualities of our species:
          * Our amazingly large capacity for denial
          * Our likewise large capacity to take advantage of peoples' denial for whatever reasons
        • by fazig ( 2909523 )
          What the fuck makes you think that I thought humanity would get smarter?
          I'd tell you to go through my comment history if you want to find out about my stance on things with a higher degree of reliablilty, but I'm fairly sure that you won't, so I'll address it here and you'll have to take my word for it (unless you look into my history).

          I mean sure, some parts are utilizing the possibilities of education, and might be getting what you can call 'smarter', but other parts are getting dumber or at best stay
        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          What relevance does "wisdom" have to survival?

          Hint: Evolution only evaluates all life on a single criterion. Ability to survive into the future. And being too wise is a good recipe for getting culled, because you start falling in love with delusions produced by your intellect, rather than be constantly faced with the fact that you're not wise enough to "wisdom through" actual reality.

          Because objectively, humans are nowhere near cognition levels needed to do so. Which is why we survive through cultural adapt

        • Re:Doomsaying 101 (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Junta ( 36770 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @08:57AM (#61615479)

          To be slightly more optimistic...

          While we had a second World War, we have not had a third one. Of course there's fighting all the time, which is horrific, but overall much better. You can sum all of the fatalities since World War II from all the wars and still have a lower number than World War II, despite total population increasing three fold. It seems we have learned our lesson.

          While the same stupid behavior was seen in the Spanish Flu, COVID is in the neighborhood of 10% of the total deaths despite being a worse disease, meaning that our medical science has offset the same bad behaviors of humanity at large.

      • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        How is that meaningfully worse than how humanity has acted throughout its history?

        Actually, scratch that. I have a better question:

        "How in the world did you manage to become someone who can comprehend English and write in it fluently without ever coming in contact with human history?"

        • by fazig ( 2909523 )
          Since you understand history so well, please point out a point in history where humanity wielded as much power over the planet as it does today.

          Yes, we're some kind of ape after all, but our tools are getting more dangerous with the time.
      • To be honest, when taking a look at how stupid vast parts of humanity have been acting through this pandemic out of spite, IF the pandemic does not manage to weed out considerable parts of that stupid, I don't think some kind of notable collapse is that unrealistic within this century.

        Remember: The people of Walmart get the same number of votes as you do... it's democracy!

        (the people at the top just love democracy...)

        • by fazig ( 2909523 )
          There's no Walmarts in my country.
          They tried, but didn't do well, and were eventually consolidated into a different super market chain.

          Nonetheless I'd say that the average person that lives in Germany isn't any more 'enlightened' than the average person living in the US. While many Germans liked to pretend to be very evolved due to their Vergangenheitsbewältigung [wikipedia.org] recent events made it evident that this has mostly been an illusion. Progress has been made on level that doesn't go much deeper than the
      • Why would it? It has 99% percent survival rate for people in good health.
    • Re:Doomsaying 101 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @05:23AM (#61615029)

      "Societal collapse is coming, we just got the day wrong last time" is the favourite excuse of doomsayers.

      And yet, our species will eventually learn the four most expensive words in human history, because we're too stupid to learn otherwise.

      "I told you so."

    • This. According to the original report, we should already be well into a sharp decline. So it was obviously time to revise the prediction. The Club of Rome has a political.agenda.

    • The original projection, from 1972, was 2040, which is still in the future.
    • Propaganda 101 (Score:5, Informative)

      by Snowhare ( 263311 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @07:24AM (#61615265)

      "Create strawmen to knock down since they are easier to attack than the facts."

      Your "summary" isn't remotely what the updated report says. It says, 50 years after the initial prediction, we are still on track for disaster. Only now instead of it being 70+ years in the future from 1972, it is less than 20 years in the future from 2022.

    • Also I think obsession over "the end is nigh" is exactly something that the selfish and short-sighted use to justify their selfishness and short-sightedness, i.e., "there's no point in worrying about 50 years from now because it's all going to blow up in the near future anyway, so we might as well operate as we please until then."

      And "shocker" of course operating in that way leads exactly to the predicted outcome getting only closer so then they use their self-fulfilling prophecy just to justify even more p

  • sounds like ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @05:12AM (#61615011) Homepage
    Communism is the only way. Aka a planned economy within sustainable limits, but you - with your short-sightedness - would just call it communism.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 )

      Communism is the only way. Aka a planned economy within sustainable limits, but you - with your short-sightedness - would just call it communism.

      The Disease of Greed, has plagued mankind for thousands of years. Long before communism came along. Greed has tried to sell 31 different flavors of it, falsely promising the Disease wouldn't infect the "new and improved" flavor.

      It still did. It always does.

      100 million citizens lay dead at the feet of that ideology, so as long as you're cool with mass culls then we'll go with your shortsightedness. Which one of your family members is volunteering for liquidation? You know, sustainable limits and all.

      For

      • Majority of those people who died, starved, if you are referring to the long march. And yet this act started a path towards the fastest growing economy in the world, just so China could be more globally competitive. It's hard to imagine a China where this would of happened if other countries didn't keep trying to make China it's bitch. So the context matters a lot here and ultimately explains why you cannot just lump deaths together based on their governments because we can easily chalk up a similar number

      • Solve for the Disease of Greed. Otherwise we perish, right here on this dying rock, forever addicted to it.

        I've got an ideology for you: https://cryptome.org/ap.htm [cryptome.org]

        FWIW: I'm 100% in favor of it.

    • Re:sounds like ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @05:48AM (#61615077) Journal
      Communism is one of those things that can look great on paper, but never works in reality. Why? Human greed and lust for power. Any system of government or system of society for that matter that has any sort of hierarchical structure to it sooner or later falls prey to someone with power getting corrupted by it.
      The United States system of government tries to prevent that by making our elected representatives accountable to their constituents, but even then over time it's become incrementally corrupted to the point that so many people in these United States feel that their votes don't mean anything and that the so-called 'powers that be' will just do whatever they want regardless of what The People want.
      If you want a system of society or government that prevents all that corruption then come up with something that is so completely and fundamentally decentralized that no one person or no group of people have any real power, yet you can effectively govern 350,000,000 citizens in a nation with a GDP of 21 trillion dollars and that is a world military power.
      • Communism requires a different kind of human to work.

        One that prefers working to earning money.

        • That is why it failed in the Soviet Union. Too many Soviets pretended to work, and so the Soviet Union pretended to pay them by giving them low value currency. What gives currency its value is the amount of work people are willing to perform in exchange for it, which depends on its purchasing power, which depends on the quantity of money in circulation.
      • Communism isn't dead bruh. China is communist, they just pretended to be capitalist until they were strong enough industrially and politically to resist global capitalist subversion. It's exhausting to hear American exceptionalists go on about how "communism just can't work. So we should destroy communism wherever we find it."

        If you were intellectually honest, you'd mention things like how the US and UK killed 20% of the Korean population in an effort to prevent communism. They have destabilized all of c
    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      A planned and highly regimented society seems like the logical outcome of a large and dense population. You need the regimentation, rules and organization just to keep a lid on everything. The bigger and more complex the system, the more likely it breaks if its not closely managed.

      "Communism" as we've known it is one way to do it, but I think the trend is toward systems like that even when they are not called that or give any respect at all to the Marxist philosophy which inspired communism in our recent

      • The opposite is true. Free unregulated markets is what leads to wealth creation. Societal collapse will happen due to crony capitalism, socialism, communism, big government, and the welfare state, not capitalism.
        • I'm not arguing for communism, I'm arguing that highly dense civilizations inevitably produce highly regulated civilizations.

          I'm not even arguing they work *well* but that the alternatives wind up being seen as worse for various reasons, mostly because they are seen as being a major risk for destabilization and collapse.

        • What version of Capitalism is not Crony Capitalism? Crony Capitalism is a scapegoat for capitalist when capitalism inevitably sucks, but in reality Crony Capitalism is just ordinary Capitalism. Somehow you'll always find whatever cronies are talking about crony capitalism won't include themselves as part of the problem.
    • Not at all. Collapse is perfectly healthy and will restore equilibrium. It will just suck for the many generations that have to live through it.
  • That's the rub (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @05:14AM (#61615013)

    humans decide to deliberately limit economic growth on their own, before a lack of resources forces them to.

    That of course has never happened and will not happen.

    Human being as individuals are intelligent and can foresee the catastrophe about to happen. Humanity as a whole is hopelessly short-sighted and in perpetual state of falling-man delusion: as long as the windows keep passing by, it's fine, even if the ground is coming up fast.

  • by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @05:16AM (#61615019) Homepage

    There is a way to continue to grow, that is in the focus of the shift away from more of, to better quality, better durability, better reliability. You can put additional investment into achieving a higher quality society. The amount of investment to recycle all waste, zero waste cities through the mining and refining of all waste product, need the energy though and mechanised and automated recycling is a great place to put surplus renewable energy.

    You can slow population growth, really easily, simply supply cheap intoxicants with birth control added, or highly taxed intoxicants without birth control (all of them, so alchohol, pot, opioids, cocaine, so what, death by misadventure is a human right). Add in a high penalty for birthing a drug addicted child, you pay the price for their suffering in the years after birth, with a custodial sentence of equal duration, 18 years, mean as but hey, want a lower better population it comes at a price (zero cruelty involved, just adults given adult choices). You of course subsidise quality reproduction (an indication, they are not addicted to unhealthy substances a sign of reliable parentage). Carrot and stick approach to birth control. If you do not think the population will drop give a few decades, instead of going up, you bet nuts and robots and war drones obviate the need of a larger population.

    Add in some marine aquaculture, with desalination and wind farms, to deal with the current problem and you are done. Societies that fail to make the shift are contained along with their population, using force as necessary. No sane country wants to go that route so it will be at a minimum.

    Then of course the is the great beyond, the old homestedd my be a bit mucky, but if is doesn't stay as fractured and messy as it is, why would humans come back to visit, in the centuries ahead. Don't deny them a interesting home, of many countries and cultures to come back to, only for holidays of course, eww, who would want to live here ;D.

    • by Misagon ( 1135 )

      Add in a high penalty for birthing a drug addicted child, you pay the price for their suffering in the years after birth

      You are incorrect. It would be the child that would pay the most for its parent's drug addiction.
      And in a society with more drugs, it is society at large that would pay for the additional drug-addicted people - leading to more chaos, and less chance of actually keeping society organised and on track.

      And then there are lots of people who don't want to get intoxicated at all, that would not

    • Companies that produce 'better quality, better durability, better reliability' have both their profits drop into the toilet, and go bankrupt from little to no repeat business. That's why they don't do that now. They could produce goods as you say right now, we have the capability, but there is no motivation to do so.
      Forcing birth control on people is about as dystopian as it gets and if you tried it you'd get dragged out into the streets and torn to pieces.
      Pretty much your ideas are about as tone-deaf as
      • TCO for high quality goods can be lower, and so high quality versions sell and there are many companies doing well from that model. If the concern is overall cost to the planet, then building into the price a measure of externalities would mean that price signals would favour the higher quality models more. This is what the EU is phasing in to some extent.
  • by zephvark ( 1812804 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @05:19AM (#61615023)

    Ah yes, I remember when the world became overpopulated and ran out of resources in 1980, and all we had to eat was Soylent Green. Petroleum had long since run out, so we had to warm ourselves by burning books. Libraries were such a treasured resource!

    Things have only gone downhill since then, I'm afraid. The children are growing up monkeys.

  • by bistromath007 ( 1253428 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @05:36AM (#61615055)

    So, in other words, we're going mask off. To "save the world," we have to let the billionaires reduce our population growth through hormone contamination and anti-sexual propaganda, and we have to accept a standard of living that probably won't include literacy.

    No, I think I'd rather not. It can be better than that, for everyone, or it can burn.

  • I thought doom & gloom soothsaying is for the average mainstream media-consuming simpleton. Just because the "study" mentions the big word "technology" doesn't actually make it serious, you know.
    • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      It's news for people that understand that you can't forever use up finite resources at any ever increasing rate and that because the rate of resource usage is ever increasing then the resources will run out sooner rather than later. And we depend on those resources for our modern lifestyle.

      Do you disagree? Are you one of the odd people that for some reason think that resources are effectively not finite and that we can just keep using more and more of specific minerals endlessly?

  • by twisteddk ( 201366 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @06:03AM (#61615113)

    Noone seems, in this scenario, to have considered the fact that the report could be WRONG. While certain factors surely can be predicted, certainly not all can. And while averages might be enough to steer things one way or another, the ability to steer things at all, still calls for unification of governmental society. I do NOT see that happning in my lifetime.

    So, the reports most bleak results basically describes natural market mechanisms. However, still many factors are not included, or is heavily underestimated. One being innovation. While we can predict that predatory use of resources means resources gets used up, then we cant predict what innovations are driven forth, due to the lack of those resources. If fish go extinct in the seas, fishermen dont die, they find something else to do. When the ozone layer got depleted, the world came together to ban CFC gasses, things like this CAN happen again, if the alternative is bleak enough. Humans do not go to a corner to die silently.

    Sure, some people might be willing to go "minimalist", but the general hoarding of wealth, shows that these people are not enough to drive a movement towards this goal, that is sufficient to "save the world". So the hoarders are our best bet to make relevant changes, they will have to find new products to sell, products that conforms to the requirements of society. They have to be innovative enough to drive further growth. Either by substituting products, adding new products, or finding additional resources to exploit to meet growing demands.
    Why would three of the richest men in the world be building their own space agencies ? For the betterment of mankind ? For the love of pure science ? Or because the end case might be good for their net profits ?

  • by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @06:16AM (#61615129)
    Reading the linked summary, the essence of the message appears to be that in order to either prevent or significantly delay the collapse, the entire planet needs to rethink fundamental societal policies - relating to family size, consumption, environmental impact and so on.

    The problem we are going to have to overcome first is the history of the last ~70 years.

    This recent history has shown that the combination of productivity gains, automation, innovation and improvements in lifespan and health have all combined to become massive wealth creators. Nations have used their relative wealth to project soft power - so for example the United States gives billions of dollars to foreign nations and in return have been able to build and sustain an economic and political hegemony that has endured these last 70 years.

    Now look at the more recent past - say the last decade at most. For most of the last 4 years, the US has been inward-looking. We have insulted or otherwise hacked off former allies. We have been caught spying on their leaders in embarrassing ways. We have ignored threats to stability and allowed aggressors to invade neighbours [such as Russia invading Ukraine]. We continue to turn blind eyes when other idealogical adversaries steal our intellectual wealth and then use it to massively grow and accelerate their own economy [as has happened with China].

    The massive economic momentum of the last 70 years, led by the US, is stuttering - or at least others are catching up - and fast. The US continues to believe that control of wealth is the secret to ultimate global dominance and influence. China, meanwhile, builds schools and hospitals in return for mineral rights. China builds roads and railways and extends the "One Belt, One Road" initiative. Today, that transport scheme might look pointless... but unless the world develops environmentally sustainable mass airborne transit, road and high-speed rail are our planet's future.

    And what happens when we try to do something on a relatively tiny scale with infrastructure plans? Politicians who gave away trillions in tax cuts just a few years ago suddenly want us to believe they are being fiscally responsible by holding us back from the global race to stay competitive.

    The big dilemma we face as a species is that the overall need to "cut back" is implicitly tied to diminishing economic power and global influence. So nations are going to mouth platitudes and do little - a bit like the way that instead of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, they "buy credits" from un-developed nations. Do we think the planet cares for such sleight-of-hand?

    As the Native Cree tried to teach us such a long time ago [and we piously ignored them]: "Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish has been caught and the last stream has been poisoned will we realize that we cannot eat money."
  • The difference comes when humans decide to deliberately limit economic growth on their own, before a lack of resources forces them to."

    Well then we're going to hit the wall hard then because rich people are not interested in not getting richer. And if the people in developing countries are to reach a western lifestyle then in theory westerners would have to get poorer.

    2040 sounds about right, the question is can we keep maintaining infrastructure and food production with reduced resources due to us suckin

  • ...it's about time.

    I mean really, not only is our way of life absolutely not feasible, weÅe also completely fraying around the edges and the seams of society are coming apart.

    We've gotten so used to social media style drive-by outrage postings, that we're getting more and more incapable of having an actual discussion, let alone a respectful disagreement. Corona is a superb example of this.

    I for one am not going to cry after this society... I just hope what comes after isn't way worse and the transition

  • by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @06:30AM (#61615147) Homepage Journal
    I think that even if it wasnâ(TM)t FAKE NEWS, itâ(TM)s GOOD NEWS that the collapse is coming, because surely that will be when I am raptured into heaven as the rest of humanity dies by plague, famine and war before facing their judgment and being cast down into hell forever as foretold by god himself in the Bible This is why we need to rise up against any of those evil satan worshipping liberals who would fight climate change and income inequality or stand for human rights, education and decency
    • I am 99% certain it is satire. Can't be 100% certain these days. Sad!
  • by beepsky ( 6008348 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @06:40AM (#61615171)
    The idea that GDPs and populations need to always increase for people to live a good life is a total globalist myth.
    Japan is doing fine with a shrinking population and stagnant GDP.
    • That's Japan. Unless Biden's infrastructure plan involves free lady sex robots, I don't see this working in USA.
    • They actually both serve the same goal, making it possible for people who make money by owning things rather than working to continue to do so. GDP growth means continuous endless stock price increases, and population growth has historically been the main driving force behind GDP growth. Workers can get by economically without these and would overall be better off.

  • ...get tired of telling us the sky is falling?

  • ... decide to deliberately limit economic growth ...

    Government depends on there being more people making the tax-base bigger and there is no reward for a corporation limiting its profits. We can't have limited growth because everything is built to do the opposite.

    ... low desired family size, perfect birth control availability ...

    This is the beauty of Brave New World (A. Huxley), a story about culture-clash: Pregnancy is not needed so society isn't divided into making-babies and paying-for-it cohorts. Marriage and (female) celibacy are no longer a social need. Even better, the government controls child-development: It g

  • by SysEngineer ( 4726931 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @06:46AM (#61615191)
    https://insightmaker.com/insig... [insightmaker.com]
    There will be a collapse, the 30 years update shows we are better at conservation, but population is spiking.
  • Counter point. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @06:48AM (#61615199) Journal
    Around 1970s, the big talk among this crowd was, we are going to run out of resources, we need to change the culture to avoid worshiping economic growth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] by Schumacher. Mostly centered around the prediction we will be running out of oil in 2010 or food production would peak around 2000, and population will somehow continue to grow at the same pace.

    But we know that human beings are following culture and are defying evolutionary instinct to have more children. Evolution can be imagined to be an intelligent entity that shapes our behavior. It wants species to thrive and produce off spring so that the next generation is created to continue the chain. It works by making sex very pleasurable and bundled reproduction with sexual urges. So all species enjoy sex and accept pregnancy as a sort of not-so-desirable by product. Once contraception is available and human beings are able to disconnect sex from reproduction, the dynamics changes.

    Every country where contraception is available the birth rate plummets among the educated and the affluent. Even Iran, as soon as contraception was made legal, birth rate plummeted. China is struggling to raise birth rates now. It relaxed one-child policy and allowed second child. Recently it relaxed again and allowed the third child. Its on track to remove all restrictions. Still birth rate is falling in China.

    Birth rates are above 2.1 per woman only on less developed parts of the world, and education and contraception will bring down the population dramatically.

    Of course I am assuming China will not go all the way and ban contraception or demand each woman to produce 2 children.

  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Saturday July 24, 2021 @06:52AM (#61615215)

    Right now the first world is pretty much living in a post-scarcity economy, if you don't count our abysmal eco-balance. Which we actually don't, which in turn is the actual core problem of the eco-disaster we're facing right now. ...

    Anyway, in a post-scarciy economy that runs reasonably well you have "money-rot", meaning money also and finally becomes a good that grows stale if you just stock it. This is why negative interest actually is a good thing in such an economy and if we handle things well and don't crash the economy we could slowly ramp up negative interest even further and it actually would do good, encouraging potentially parasitic "super-rich" people to invest, even if they're not as smart as Elon Musk who as quite a few others concluded that he doesn't want to just become the richest guy in the graveyard.

  • "My fellow Americans, we are screwed, blued, and tattooed." - Jimmy Carter (Dan Ackroyd)
  • The entire "Limits to Growth" program was a scary fantasy of idiots who couldn't imagine change. I read it back in the early '70's, and it was obviously garbage then, and it's even more obviously garbage now.

  • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @09:15AM (#61615539)

    The infamous Limits To Growth report was a product of the Seventies doomsday mentality. Small wonder that the same people who were wrong about the end of the world in those days are still predicting it today. All they're doing is preending that their predictions were not for immiment doom then, but for immimemnt doom now.

    That was a time when China and India were known mostly for starving to death and we were supposed to be about to run out of vital resources. Everyone, left or right, knew that war with the all-powerful Soviet Union was imminent.

    Not only did Limits To Growth underestimate the ability of open markets to find new resources as we needed them, but it underestimated the ability of other MIT researchers to invent our way out of destruction.

  • by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @09:32AM (#61615601)

    A whole lot of prognostications from the 70s were found to be wrong. This one is no different. There was a general malaise in the 60s and 70s and it shows in a lot written during that era. It took the 80s for us to realize that we can do anything. Unfortunately, a small but incessantly vocal minority insists on perpetuating that malaise. For those with power, it helps keep them in power with the constant mirage of fixing it... as long as you keep voting for them. For those without power, it's confirmation bias and constantly complaining about it gives their life meaning otherwise they'd have to find something useful and productive to do.

    • by smugfunt ( 8972 )

      The whole point of this study is that this particular prognostication (The Limits to Growth model) is found to be right so far, with 50 years of data to compare. This is not good news.

      The 80s showed us we can do anything? That kind of delusion is going to be the end of us.

  • by ElizabethGreene ( 1185405 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @09:33AM (#61615603)

    Would the people that don't want the same or better standard of living for their children please stand up?

    No, you folks not having children sit back down. You don't count. You have chosen for your genes to be eliminated.

  • by Retired ICS ( 6159680 ) on Saturday July 24, 2021 @04:40PM (#61616767)

    A Global Collapse is a good thing.

    Unfortunately the so-called COVID-19 plandemic wasn't up to the tast so now onto the next contender.

  • by ishmaelflood ( 643277 ) on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:22AM (#61617699)

    https://dash.harvard.edu/bitst... [harvard.edu]

    A lot of wiggle room in interpretation there.

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