Let's do a thought exercise. If you had a friend who was temporarily out of work you wouldn't think twice about lending a hand. It's the right thing to do unless you are a sociopath and take delight at others misfortunes - don't laugh, there are many out there. Now let's complicate the story. Let's say your friend lost their job because the factory they worked at went bankrupt and the unemployment in that friends little town went through the roof. (When the full impact of automating service jobs with expert systems - some call it AI - millions will be jobless and very soon). That person still needs a hand, so you probably would help out. But as the days turned to months and the months to years how long would you help out before you might expect that friend to maybe relocate to where there were jobs and life could go on. Or would you say to yourself "I'm gonna support my old friend until I can't anymore?" Perhaps you would vote for a universal standard income and just accept the taxation that reduces your standard of living?
Let us now look at the retracting energy resources around the world. Abundant and cheap energy flowed into country after country. That energy allowed manufacturing to take off, buoyed trade and brought the standard of living up for billions. Prosperity - thy name is oil.
But wait a sec, if you read my posts you'll already know it's a lot more serious. Critical minerals, metals and soil quality are all in diminishing supply. So my friends, we have a multitude of shortages all underpinned by depletion of affordable energy, greed, waste and a belief in fairytales that something will make it all better. The reality is a non-linear jenga tower that will collapse effecting commerce and a concomitant re-alignment of new best friends and a few old ones that won't get their calls returned.
Energy depletion will drive contraction - the opposite of growth - and all those financializations that depend on growth will go negative and the whole system will lock up. We need a new system, see some of my earlier posts..
See where I'm going here? Now let's accept the fact that energy is a finite resource. Yes, you can quibble that solar panels, wind power, nukes and geothermal energy are going to save the day. I will respectfully say, sorry, not so. Everyone of those alternates is completely dependent on fossil fuels from mining the materials, creating more waste, manufacturing the widget, and replacing it when it is worn out with a further draw down of finite energy resources. They are energy additives that eventually wear out and are not sustainable. Ev's don't make any of this better, or greener, neither do more nuke plants and re-shoring manufacturing to places that don't have energy resources is just stupid talk. So is building energy sucking data centers that will eventually compete with societal base needs in exchange for clever data aggregation and the saving of payroll spend by firing the millions that are soon to be in the unemployment line. Those millions will not be too chipper if they can't eat. So this proposition is actually harmful in at least two ways. The economic mayhem is actually a simple shift from the private sector expense to a public funding liability needed to support those millions and secondly a profound dumbing down of society that will stunt real creative invention. But what do I know, I'm just an old engineer with an opinion clacking away at a keyboard trying to share a warning to my fellow citizens of the world. Not gonna work, don't go there!
So as we go forward, less energy feedstocks are available and at an increasing cost. So the first disruption events are noticed in the energy hungry global neighborhoods. The geopolitical partners are at this moment considering what to do about their distressed neighbors. Traditional and mutual strategic policies are being forced into confronting long term survival not short term alliances because this isn't a dip or a transient phenomena - this is the new normal. NO energy - talk to the hand, not a "core" interest lol..
These geopolitical forces are the greatest to arise in a century. The independent advocates and the old alliances are on the table, which will reshuffle as the world tries to find a new necessary orientation to adjust to the new realities. The old security provider has lost its role and has to make decisions, just like the person with the distressed friend who lost a job. To make maters even more confusing this is a clash between traditional power brokers who traditionally get their way by wielding money and the thinkers who are trying to explain to the old school elites that you cannot eat a bar of silver. This re-thinking of the way the world works is in fact a long overdue reality check. It was always this way, but cheap and easy energy allowed the economists to play recklessly and ignore this fundamental limit to growth which invalidates their economic models. Sorry, physics always wins, cue up a new game.
In this new environment colonialism may be a first impulse for many old governments, but it does not solve the energy deficit in the long term. Strategic doctrine is morphing into an energy focused information game and evolving into using that intel to sell defensive postures based on what exactly can this ally provide to anybody else. That isn't to say that those who have always resorted to pillaging as a survival and GROWTH method from doing what their ancient instincts tell them they need to do. But it simply won't work in the long run. This time it's different. Wonder what AI program you would ask as to what alliance your country should be pondering?
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