CJ Campbell's atlas has been on my bookshelf for a few years now. It is a stark reminder that there are no huge energy reserves "yet to be discovered". It also plainly shows the reader that there is no magical country that you might fix colonial ambitions on because it's the next big energy sink you feel that century old need to conquer, bust up and exploit. Nope, all been found, all depleting, some a lot further along than others. So if you can grasp that energy is the economy not the bank, you may be able to grasp all those plans for continued growth don't happen without limitless cheap energy.
Well worth acquiring or a trip to your library to have a good read. Whomever controls the world's BTU's owns the whole enchilada... Lots of reserves out there, but coal seams 2 feet deep and a mile underground will never be mined but always counted in the "reserve" column. Neither will gas or oil deposits that require more energy to get out of the ground than they can return. So clever actors tell the story different ways - you have a big brain - you can figure it out for yoursel! Then there are geological events like earthquakes, vulcanism and plate movements that can greatly alter the performance of a reserve.
The past 200 years have truly been an anomaly in global history - sadly most of the planets current inhabitants know no other way of life than the exceptional one most of us are experiencing at the moment. Entire systems of governance, financial machinations and "investment vehicles" are devoid of this finite and diminishing energy based reality as well. It seems humans are just not good at history, and really good at delusional thinking, easily duped and manipulated. They aren't good at non-linearity either, but I digress.
So here is a thought piece. Before the industrial age, where mankind slowly learned how to capitalize on cheap oil and coal to mechanize lifes arduous chores we had a small government footprint and villages of small size in rural places - these were the natural state of our global cultures and will be again. That structure was no accident, It was the evolution of how we came to organize life in the absence of that cheap energy. Populations were constrained by how much land could be plowed by oxen and planted by your father and harvested by the family. If the land didn't support crops nobody lived there.
Consider we are in one generation or two, right back in that type of world - only with ideas that data centers and jet airplanes are going to be part of that. Nope. Energetic expenditures that compete with the human condition will go away, surveillance state or not. Just ask Machiavelli. Money and the power or privilege that is giving today's decision makers leverage won't work because in the future real food you can eat and real heat that can keep you warm are all that matters. The make believe world will fall away and those who enjoy it's machinations will too.
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| Yours truly |
Niccolò Machiavelli believed people were easily manipulated because he viewed human nature as inherently selfish, fickle, and driven by appearances rather than reality. In The Prince, he famously noted that the masses are easily swayed by a leader who masters the art of deception and projects strength. At least when nobody is really hungry.
People are quick to pledge loyalty when times are good but will turn on a leader the moment trouble arises. He believed that because subjects are self-interested, their allegiance can be bought or managed through calculated rewards and carefully applied fear - again no body is REALLY hungry. He argued that because "men in general judge more by their eyes than by their hands," a ruler does not actually need to possess good qualities, but must merely appear to have them... that veneer has its limits though.
So if we extrapolate this old wisdom to the the current global community and the power brokers who like to dominate and make their fortunes that way - take heed, the outcomes will be the same irregardless of modern high tech software, camera fueled AI and the plethora of digital control dreams being sold as the solution to whatever ails ya. People haven't changed but delusional thinking is as popular as ever at all stratas of society.
LOL... maybe "AI" is good for something, I rather like my statue. Backwards looking LLM's are not too accurate at divining a future not yet written. Caveat Emptor.
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