Contrary to what many economists will claim, we’re going to move into a resource constrained era. This is a combination of climate change, environmental collapse and civilization decline.
Simply put, per capita, there’s going to be less stuff. As Gibson’s line runs, the future will be unevenly distributed. This will hit some places harder and sooner. Germany and Europe are in decline already. China is actually increasing production and availability of most products. The US is in decline, but actively cannibalizing its allies, especially Europe, but also Taiwan, so the stuff shortage will be slower and there may be short to medium term increase.
This is exacerbated in most countries by the insistence of elites that they need to grow their wealth and income in both absolute and relative terms. They must have more, and they must increase the percentage of their society’s wealth and income. So even as there is less to go around, they must have more. When they try to deal with problems like climate change they institute policies like older retirement ages, reduced pensions, lower welfare payments, cuts and privatization of healthcare and regressive carbon taxes. They don’t get rid of, say, mega-yachts and private jets, or tax the rich more and distribute to those in need.
This isn’t just a matter of greed. Capitalist elites are in a Red Queen’s race. If they fall behind other elites, those elites will buy them out (often whether they want to be bought out or not), and they will fall out of the true elite, those who control profit-making enterprises. They may still be wealthy, but they will lose their power and cease to be players.
So we’re caught in a situation where per-capita resources will go down even as elites take a higher share.
I’m sure you can understand what this means to you and those you know. Maneuvering around this means either being extremely valuable to elites, and irreplaceable, or finding ways to insulate yourself from their demands, which is difficult, since they have most of what you need and control the legal system and the violent enforcement mechanisms.
There will be a backlash. How successful it will be remains to be seen, but there is a point where people realize that risking their lives or even losing them is a better bet than remaining with the status quo. Food and water riots, “terrorism” and perhaps Mangioning elites will become a trend.
Plan for this, because it’s already started. You see it already in the vast numbers of homeless, the endless healthcare rationing, and the constant push to privatize and thus profitize ever bit of government which might make a profit if its put in hands which can squeeze.
If your having a good lifestyle doesn’t make some member of the elite richer than squeezing you into homelessness or denying you care, then you’re in the line to go on the butcher’s block.
LEW PROUDFOOT
Gibson line? I am unfamiliar with that. Google gives me guitars and a Mel Gibson movie.
Gar Fisher
Mangioning?
EGrise
Do you ever think, “I can’t believe I’m writing this?”
I used to think, “Surely it won’t come to this,” but as I got older and learned more about our rulers…
Ian Welsh
William Gibson, “the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”
mago
Mangioning is turning a name and noun into a verb.
Gonna Mangione you down, turn you round, shoot you down. . .
shagggz
@Gar Fisher,
Following in the footsteps of Luigi Mangioni.
marku52
I prefer “the Claims Adjuster”.
“Andresson, well he got Adjusted…..”
Dan H
Our frog pot has begun to boil. As an Amazon borg all I can say is I welcome the end. The illegal capture of everything is everywhere and no-one cares. I welcome the crash. Gen Z is about to eat the old and its deserved.
LEW PROUDFOOT
Gibson line – should have thought of that! Thanks!
different clue
@Dan H,
After Gen Z eat the old and there are no more old left to eat, what will Gen Z eat then?
different clue
I see the coming Age of Dieoffs as being more a matter of majority mankind being pushed through a series of Darwin Filters so that large numbers of people are selected for dieoff by each filter. I don’t think the elites are going to select out very many people by name for targetted killing at the butcher’s block. I think the elites are going for “meeting their dieoff numbers” without caring about which people-by-name do the dying-off, so long as the elites feel their “dieoff numbers” are being met. The plan is to keep Mass Mankind on its Long Death March through the Valley of Selection. The only way to prevent that would be to round up and exterminate all the relevant elites in some kind of successful mass uprising rebellion.
Short of that, individuals or groups who hope to survive can only try to imagine what all the Darwin Filters, Darwin Trap Doors, Darwin Tar Pits, Darwin Mine Fields, etc. might be, and how to pass through them , sneak around them, evade them, etc. Not everyone will, despite their best efforts. But those who understand their future in this way may have a better chance of surviving than those who “just can’t believe it” and don’t even try.
As to the future being already here but just not evenly distributed, I think there may be several possible parallel futures already here and each of them being separately unevenly distributed. And each has a different-sized portal or off-ramp leading to it.
Here is an example of a possible parallel future already existing here and there . . .
Some “regenerative ranchers” are discovering how to increase rainfall in their own little parts of today’s man-made deserts. Here is a little article about a couple of them, titled ” Regenerative Rainmaking”. Here is the link.
https://greencover.com/regenerative-rainmaking/
Here is a whole lotta buncha images each with its own clickable url-link to various people working in the field of semi-arid pasture-and-range ecosystem restoration and its effect on evaporation, condensation, precipitation ( and the effect of that on atmospheric heat modulation).
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrFQM0rq2hnKQIAM_ZXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny?mkr=7&p=Regenerative+Rainmaking+-+Understanding+Ag&fr=sfp&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bing.com%2Fimages%2Fsearch%3Fview%3DdetailV2%26ccid%3DNW7v0Okw%26id%3D9CBA354CCFB4AD3CEF3A522D26B32180F3AE5F2E%26thid%3DOIP.NW7v0OkwLK0RLMFvQDsHQQHaEn%26mediaurl%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Funderstandingag.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2021%2F10%2FRainMaker_Meme1.jpg%26q%3Dregenerative%2520rainmaking%26ck%3D8C4AA0E5A4C1D9CE76F8303667E2CE06%26idpp%3Drc%26idpview%3Dsingleimage%26form%3Drc2idp&name=regenerative+rainmaking1&turl=https%3A%2F%2Fsp.yimg.com%2Fib%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.NW7v0OkwLK0RLMFvQDsHQQHaEn%26pid%3DApi%26w%3D148%26h%3D148%26c%3D7%26rs%3D1&tt=regenerative+rainmaking1&sigit=0COXBFCHRWWC&sigi=K172OdpqbwXa&sign=mfOKEiYP1Y2v&sigt=mfOKEiYP1Y2v
( As I read these things, I note that the greater frequency of rainfall caused by these methods is being understood as ” more incoming water”. I myself wonder whether it might not be “more water” but might rather be “the same water” more often . . . rising and falling, rising and falling, rising and falling more often),
Here is another article about a suburban and peri-urban movement to do something analogous in denser-populated less-land-involved settings.
https://www.soilspongecollective.org/
The parallel futures being worked on by these groups and persons will not cause any more minerals and other such non-renewable resources to exist, but it could cause more renewable resources such as food, usable water circle-moving through the water cycle faster and more, etc. to exist. Can the eco-regreeners spread this kind of regreening faster than the Long Death March Elites can prevent it from spreading and being applied? I don’t know.
The Long Death March Engineers also try to foster in the majority mass mind the concept that that there is no conceivable alternative to accepting that the Long Death March is just Nature’s Way. Part of how the Long Death March Engineers do that is by heightening and amplifying and platforming dystopian visions of mass death and extinction through dystopian novels and movies and etc. Dystopian Doomer Gloomism is marketed as being hip, groovy and cool.
If masterful writers, moviemakers, etc. were to imagine possible parallel futures such as those mentioned ( and linked to) above, and write imaginatively-compelling and brain-gripping novels, movies, etc. in a genre which might well be called Eco Punk or Greenpunk or some such if enough people were to successfully do it; would enough inspired readers and movie watchers begin trying to find side-trails of escape from the Valley of Selection into those parallel Ecopunk Greenpunk futures?