Just wait until we get the first solar-powered tanks. That will change everything.
But seriously, in some regions and conflicts you can already see where warfare will head as resources become scarcer.
Tanks and armored vehicles, once powerful in battle, are now more vulnerable because modern infantry has stronger weapons. Conflicts in the Middle East show that advanced anti-tank weapons, like RPGs and TOW missiles, can easily target these vehicles.
Drones have changed warfare by offering low-cost air support and surveillance, blurring traditional front lines and making it harder to hide troop movements.
In West Africa, insurgent groups like JNIM have adapted to drone surveillance by using motorcycles for quick, hard-to-track movement, allowing them to outmaneuver traditional armies in places like Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger.
Interesting to see Canada's energy use per person drop below 100,000 kWh for the first time since 1973. The decline isn't noticeable in terms of standard of living, assuming one is not homeless.
Also interesting that Iceland's energy use has dropped since 2018, following a meteoric rise that dwarfs other nations. Living among volcanoes has its benefits...
I've been following you for some time, and I mostly agree with your analysis regarding energy issues.
But to be honest, your pro-Russia bias disturbs me (you probably benefit from them or you belong to their troll mill). I live in the U.S.A., a democratic country (still), and also know what it is like to live in a dictatorship or in other democracies. While it is true that wars usually are not about freedoms or civil rights (I never bought into this), it makes a world of difference if you live in a democratic country like the U.S.A., Great Britain, France, Greece, Germany, Taiwan, Japan... or under a dictatorship regime like in Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Hungary, Turkey, North Korea (at different degrees: North Korea is certainly the worst), etc. This is not trivial at all, believe me, and one day before our elections here in the U.S., the prospect of living in a far-right dictatorship with Trump, as Russia became one with Putin, is scary, to say the least—despite all the flaws of our current system.
If Trump becomes president this time, this will speed up the geopolitical rearrangement of the world around three powerhouses with their own zones of influence; it is not what I wish, but I think it is going to happen, if not this year, then in four. Three hard-line dictatorships then: the end of any hope of freedom for the world (a nightmare for me).
1) The U.S.A., under a religious-oriented fascist rule, will remain for some time (until living conditions on earth really unravel) the major military power. Trump and his likely successor will have priorities: the country's close neighborhood (all of the Americas, the Pacific), and the Middle East with vast reserves of remaining conventional oil in comparison to the rest of the world (as it is also true for Russia).
2) China, where one party never relinquished absolute power through blood and extreme repression, has clear objectives: Taiwan, of course, but also later all its neighbors to its immediate east (Japan, South Korea, the Philippines) and south. China would absolutely invade Siberia if it could, but it can't since Russia is a major nuclear power.
3) Russia (Putin and the one who will follow) really cares about rebuilding the USSR, then the Warsaw Pact alliance, and probably further into a very weakened Europe (directly or through puppet governments) and the access to Russia's southern maritime ways. Neither China nor a Trump-led U.S. will challenge that. Trump made it already clear, and China has other priorities.
Africa will be parcelled out more or less based on these three powers' agreements (for its natural resources, of course). In this world, the only countries that will, maybe, not become vassals or annexed by these three powers will be the few other ones with nuclear power (Great Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan).
Given the climate heating exponential progress (which, I think, you underestimate in your analyses), this new order will change again, maybe even before it can be completed...when the global population is reduced to a number below one billion. Then the survivors will likely see the extreme fragmentation of these super powers.
It's beyond ridiculous to call Hungary a dictatorship. It's equally ridiculous to claim that Russia wants to rebuild the Warsaw Pact. That's paranoia combined with indoctrination by the present-day western propaganda. They have zero reason and zero means to do that.
Hungary is not a democracy anymore with Orban; it is a good example of how a democracy can slide without much notice into an authoritarian and extremely corrupt regime without having a bloodbath. Yet, I would agree, Hungary is not North Korea or China. Observation of facts is not paranoia. Here is, among many others, a more in-depth article about it in the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-conservatives-around-the-world-have-embraced-hungarys-viktor-orban
About Russia, what I write is more prospective than what happened. Unfortunately, Russia which invaded and committed countless atrocities against Ukraine, a legitimate democracy, will win this war of attrition more or less quickly (depending on the election results in the U.S.A. tomorrow). Then, with the benediction of the U.S.A. and a weakening Europe (I agree with "B" on that), knowing the history and even what Putin himself professed many times, do you honestly think he will stop there?
You talk about indoctrination. The fact is that Western social media are banned in Russia, the press totally controlled by the regime, the opposition quelched in blood, but the opposite is not true. The Russian propaganda supporting what its regime wants people in the West to believe is very present in the free countries' social media (like substack).
Rebuilding the Warsaw Pact or the like? The same reason they had to build it in the first place: power and self interest. The greatest perceived danger to Russia and many other dictatorships is the very existence of a democratic world . And, again, they will certainly have the means to do that if the U.S.A becomes an ally in that endeavor, as Trump himself clearly indicated, Europe on the declining slope of deindustralization, without energy sources, and alone in this new world.
I'm afraid that you have no concept of what democracy is. You need to start by examining the actual meaning of this term - rule by the people. That, in fact, is not truly happening anywhere in alleged democratic countries. People have just about no say in the way they're governed and things run. The only time people have any say over anything is when they cast their vote for a candidate preselected in a process over which they have just about no control. Likewise, the way the government functions and decisions are made has nothing to do with democracy.
Your glorification of the US as a democracy is ridiculous. The US system is one of the most undemocratic. The president is not even elected by the people, but by the Electoral College. Give me a break already. Where is "rule by the people" (democracy) in the candidacy of Kamala Harris? She was parachuted as a candidate with people having absolutely no say.
Russian propaganda? Maybe. Frankly I don't give two shits about Russian propaganda. I don't live there. I care about WESTERN propaganda. Where have you been? Everything that goes against the official narrative is banned, cancelled. And yes, alleged Russian propaganda is banned, and people are prosecuted if they get too vocal.
Hungary is just as (un)democratic as any other country. They happen to have elected a guy who has the balls the speak his mind, unlike all the other spineless fucks all over the place. The fact that you don't like it doesn't make it undemocratic. Also, democracy in a country like Hungary is much more direct than, say, in the US.
You're succumbed to the Western propaganda that touts the Atlantic Empire (Natostan) as the free, democratic, blah blah blah part of the world, and demonizes the rest as savages, dictatorships, blah blah blah. That's pure bullshit fed to people to whitewash the western regime and paint the rest black. The fact is that the worst atrocities are committed by us; we're the bad guys - look at all the wars perpetrated by the US and its vassals.
The Warsaw Pact was possible thanks to WWII, Russian victory over Germany, a fair degree of ideological alignment of Eastern European societies with socialism/communism, and their disillusionment with the West's actions prior to the war. None of these conditions exists today, and the idea that Russia wants to reinstate what used to be the Second World is pure phantasmagoria. Russia basically wants what they say that want - they want the West to stay the fuck away from their borders and let them go about their business.
Your thoughts are not entirely off, but leave the democracy bullshit out of them. If you think that the West is the epitome of greater good and the rest, like Russia, pure evil, you're deluded, and you'll never see things as they are.
Anyway, as far as Europe and Russia, it is in Europe's favor to tell the US to go fuck themselves as soon as possible and to rebuild its relationship with Russia in some meaningful way. That's the only thing that makes sense geographically. How power in such an arrangement would be arranged remains to be seen.
Too much to unpack here. "Alleged" Russian propaganda? Who do you think you are fooling here? Russian propaganda, as are Chinese , Turkish, North Korean etc. propagandas, wants to make believe that democratic values are worthless, that democracy itself doesn't work, that corrupt dictatorships are actually all for peace and prosperity for the people. You often find in the same texts (as in yours) the following contradiction: that democracies are not true democracies, that authoritarian regimes are in fact more democratic, and at the same time malign democracy itself. Bullshit. I never painted the USA as a perfect model and I know its many flaws (as I clearly wrote in the first place). But equating democratic systems with tyrannies based on fear and persecution is a fallacy. Normalizing fascism is a very dangerous fallacy. Don't fall into this trap. I hope that the U.S.A. won't.
And by the way, using profanities for your "arguments" doesn't help.
You might want to begin with defining what the alleged 'democratic values' are. Kindly refrain from some generalized horseshit statements. Really wanna see what you come up with. Then compare that to actual reality, whether the alleged 'democratic values' actually exist, or how democracy is practiced. Again, no vague crap.
As to equating the allegedly fallacious democracy with tyranny, where did you get that? And why do you keep painting the societal and political systems in other countries as well as their customs as tyrannical, dictatorial, authoritarian, etc. Such as Hungary, or Slovakia for that matter? You're unhinged.
For you democracy means that people must harbor the same (rather fucked up) opinion as yourself. If they don't, they're fascist, dictatorial, tyrannical, so on.
I'd really like to give you the benefit of the doubt, but when my interlocutor, albeit implicitly, accuses me of being fascist, I have no choice than to tell him to go fuck himself. That's no way to discuss things.
I live in the U.S.A., so yes, my freedoms feel personal to me, and living under a fascist regime would endanger my life. Actually, a full-blown autocracy in the U.S.A. would be a terrible one, devolving into a theocracy applying principles voiced today by Christo-fascist extremists.
Against that, I really don't care if you are yourself a fascist or not. But what appears evident is that your arguments are copy-and-paste of typical Russian government propaganda, and make me wonder who you really are.
About democracy, thousands of books have been written about it; so being "vague" here on social media, where writing more than tree lines is sort of a non-starter, is no more than your "vague." Anyway, I'm going to stop this exchange, being insulted at every turn. The real threats I may be facing here deserve much more of my attention.
I do live in the U.S.A., still a democracy. Unfortunately, democracy eroded in this country (in a large part with D. Trump, but not only) and much needed reforms were not undertaken when they should have been. But an all-out fascist regime described in "Project 2025" drafted by the Heritage Foundation for Donald Trump would bring the country much closer to what Russia or China are today. Sorry, but I care about where I live and my freedoms.
Your perception of reality is not perception of actual reality, but of reality shaped by corrupt media motherfuckers working in the employ of even greater motherfuckers who run the show.
Democracy might work on a 'trust you as far as I can throw you' basis, perhaps better expressed by 'trust you insofar as I can smash your face in if you fuck around'. Within a very small group. Even a small town is already a problem. Democracy - no matter how defined - can never be scaled up to work in such an entity as the US. Or the EU. Or any cuntry for that matter. Impossible.
Also, you might wanna give a thought to the fact that it's been under the so-called democracy that humans have fucked up their natural habitat to the highest degree in history. So, even if democracy somehow worked, would it be a wise idea to let idiots who double mask to stop a virus even though the mask packaging explicitly says that the mask does shit in this regard? Or who allow themselves to be injected with some shit at a train station? Or to take this Trump-Harris shit seriously? Good question, eh? For democracy to work, as oxymoronically contradictory as it is, it would require people not to be the dumbo shitheads they are.
BTW, you speak of your freedoms - can you name some of the freedoms you have (thanks to the 'US democracy')? I wonder. I've lived in the US for a some time, quite a while ago, and found it the least free of all the places where I've stayed. Not only was there a cop lurking around every corner, but people are extremely conventional and ostracize everybody who dares not howl with the wolves ... errr, scratch that ... bleat with the sheeple ...
Turns on CNN: "Today, Orange Hitler won the election so you should be scared now. He's totally going to nuke the other Hitler in Russia, oh wait that doesn't line up with our old story of him being a Russian stooge. Anyway, fuck it. Go get your 14th booster you racist morons - Brought to you by Pfizer"
This is not to say we could not live a modest, but happy life after world dominance by superpowers is over. The world has still ample resources to provide Earth’s nations with a modest living (for a few more decades), but no longer enough to maintain a world spanning empire for any of them2.
Hey Mr B, great article. Whether knowingly or not, you picked up on a point I made about "multipolarity" being essentially a somewhat differently structured version of the current world order, and more a symptom of its terminal crisis than an actual development that leads to an objectively better situation. And I mostly agree with your point.
Anyway, I wanted to ask you about shale reserves in places other than the US (every continent has some shale deposits afaik). Do you foresee serious attempts in the near future to extract them esp when conventional supply starts tangibly declining? And can at least some of them become net energy positive, thus "extending" the collapse out by another decade or two?
I wish I could post the picture of this train travelling across a bleak and empty desert; the caption reads, "The Mauritanian iron ore train, one of the world's longest and heaviest, spans up to 3 km, travels 704 km, and has 200-300 carriages, each weighing up to 84 tons." The locomotives are of course diesel, and the location of the ore body very remote: it makes your point precisely!
Just wait until we get the first solar-powered tanks. That will change everything.
But seriously, in some regions and conflicts you can already see where warfare will head as resources become scarcer.
Tanks and armored vehicles, once powerful in battle, are now more vulnerable because modern infantry has stronger weapons. Conflicts in the Middle East show that advanced anti-tank weapons, like RPGs and TOW missiles, can easily target these vehicles.
Drones have changed warfare by offering low-cost air support and surveillance, blurring traditional front lines and making it harder to hide troop movements.
In West Africa, insurgent groups like JNIM have adapted to drone surveillance by using motorcycles for quick, hard-to-track movement, allowing them to outmaneuver traditional armies in places like Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger.
Expect more of that in the future.
Our inability to reason beyond war is a predicament that will ultimately throw us off the planet. It is probably for the best albeit we'll never know.
Interesting to see Canada's energy use per person drop below 100,000 kWh for the first time since 1973. The decline isn't noticeable in terms of standard of living, assuming one is not homeless.
Also interesting that Iceland's energy use has dropped since 2018, following a meteoric rise that dwarfs other nations. Living among volcanoes has its benefits...
I've been following you for some time, and I mostly agree with your analysis regarding energy issues.
But to be honest, your pro-Russia bias disturbs me (you probably benefit from them or you belong to their troll mill). I live in the U.S.A., a democratic country (still), and also know what it is like to live in a dictatorship or in other democracies. While it is true that wars usually are not about freedoms or civil rights (I never bought into this), it makes a world of difference if you live in a democratic country like the U.S.A., Great Britain, France, Greece, Germany, Taiwan, Japan... or under a dictatorship regime like in Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Hungary, Turkey, North Korea (at different degrees: North Korea is certainly the worst), etc. This is not trivial at all, believe me, and one day before our elections here in the U.S., the prospect of living in a far-right dictatorship with Trump, as Russia became one with Putin, is scary, to say the least—despite all the flaws of our current system.
If Trump becomes president this time, this will speed up the geopolitical rearrangement of the world around three powerhouses with their own zones of influence; it is not what I wish, but I think it is going to happen, if not this year, then in four. Three hard-line dictatorships then: the end of any hope of freedom for the world (a nightmare for me).
1) The U.S.A., under a religious-oriented fascist rule, will remain for some time (until living conditions on earth really unravel) the major military power. Trump and his likely successor will have priorities: the country's close neighborhood (all of the Americas, the Pacific), and the Middle East with vast reserves of remaining conventional oil in comparison to the rest of the world (as it is also true for Russia).
2) China, where one party never relinquished absolute power through blood and extreme repression, has clear objectives: Taiwan, of course, but also later all its neighbors to its immediate east (Japan, South Korea, the Philippines) and south. China would absolutely invade Siberia if it could, but it can't since Russia is a major nuclear power.
3) Russia (Putin and the one who will follow) really cares about rebuilding the USSR, then the Warsaw Pact alliance, and probably further into a very weakened Europe (directly or through puppet governments) and the access to Russia's southern maritime ways. Neither China nor a Trump-led U.S. will challenge that. Trump made it already clear, and China has other priorities.
Africa will be parcelled out more or less based on these three powers' agreements (for its natural resources, of course). In this world, the only countries that will, maybe, not become vassals or annexed by these three powers will be the few other ones with nuclear power (Great Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan).
Given the climate heating exponential progress (which, I think, you underestimate in your analyses), this new order will change again, maybe even before it can be completed...when the global population is reduced to a number below one billion. Then the survivors will likely see the extreme fragmentation of these super powers.
It's beyond ridiculous to call Hungary a dictatorship. It's equally ridiculous to claim that Russia wants to rebuild the Warsaw Pact. That's paranoia combined with indoctrination by the present-day western propaganda. They have zero reason and zero means to do that.
The rest is debatable.
Hungary is not a democracy anymore with Orban; it is a good example of how a democracy can slide without much notice into an authoritarian and extremely corrupt regime without having a bloodbath. Yet, I would agree, Hungary is not North Korea or China. Observation of facts is not paranoia. Here is, among many others, a more in-depth article about it in the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-conservatives-around-the-world-have-embraced-hungarys-viktor-orban
About Russia, what I write is more prospective than what happened. Unfortunately, Russia which invaded and committed countless atrocities against Ukraine, a legitimate democracy, will win this war of attrition more or less quickly (depending on the election results in the U.S.A. tomorrow). Then, with the benediction of the U.S.A. and a weakening Europe (I agree with "B" on that), knowing the history and even what Putin himself professed many times, do you honestly think he will stop there?
You talk about indoctrination. The fact is that Western social media are banned in Russia, the press totally controlled by the regime, the opposition quelched in blood, but the opposite is not true. The Russian propaganda supporting what its regime wants people in the West to believe is very present in the free countries' social media (like substack).
Rebuilding the Warsaw Pact or the like? The same reason they had to build it in the first place: power and self interest. The greatest perceived danger to Russia and many other dictatorships is the very existence of a democratic world . And, again, they will certainly have the means to do that if the U.S.A becomes an ally in that endeavor, as Trump himself clearly indicated, Europe on the declining slope of deindustralization, without energy sources, and alone in this new world.
Usa usa usa!!!!!!
I'm afraid that you have no concept of what democracy is. You need to start by examining the actual meaning of this term - rule by the people. That, in fact, is not truly happening anywhere in alleged democratic countries. People have just about no say in the way they're governed and things run. The only time people have any say over anything is when they cast their vote for a candidate preselected in a process over which they have just about no control. Likewise, the way the government functions and decisions are made has nothing to do with democracy.
Your glorification of the US as a democracy is ridiculous. The US system is one of the most undemocratic. The president is not even elected by the people, but by the Electoral College. Give me a break already. Where is "rule by the people" (democracy) in the candidacy of Kamala Harris? She was parachuted as a candidate with people having absolutely no say.
Russian propaganda? Maybe. Frankly I don't give two shits about Russian propaganda. I don't live there. I care about WESTERN propaganda. Where have you been? Everything that goes against the official narrative is banned, cancelled. And yes, alleged Russian propaganda is banned, and people are prosecuted if they get too vocal.
Hungary is just as (un)democratic as any other country. They happen to have elected a guy who has the balls the speak his mind, unlike all the other spineless fucks all over the place. The fact that you don't like it doesn't make it undemocratic. Also, democracy in a country like Hungary is much more direct than, say, in the US.
You're succumbed to the Western propaganda that touts the Atlantic Empire (Natostan) as the free, democratic, blah blah blah part of the world, and demonizes the rest as savages, dictatorships, blah blah blah. That's pure bullshit fed to people to whitewash the western regime and paint the rest black. The fact is that the worst atrocities are committed by us; we're the bad guys - look at all the wars perpetrated by the US and its vassals.
The Warsaw Pact was possible thanks to WWII, Russian victory over Germany, a fair degree of ideological alignment of Eastern European societies with socialism/communism, and their disillusionment with the West's actions prior to the war. None of these conditions exists today, and the idea that Russia wants to reinstate what used to be the Second World is pure phantasmagoria. Russia basically wants what they say that want - they want the West to stay the fuck away from their borders and let them go about their business.
Your thoughts are not entirely off, but leave the democracy bullshit out of them. If you think that the West is the epitome of greater good and the rest, like Russia, pure evil, you're deluded, and you'll never see things as they are.
Anyway, as far as Europe and Russia, it is in Europe's favor to tell the US to go fuck themselves as soon as possible and to rebuild its relationship with Russia in some meaningful way. That's the only thing that makes sense geographically. How power in such an arrangement would be arranged remains to be seen.
Too much to unpack here. "Alleged" Russian propaganda? Who do you think you are fooling here? Russian propaganda, as are Chinese , Turkish, North Korean etc. propagandas, wants to make believe that democratic values are worthless, that democracy itself doesn't work, that corrupt dictatorships are actually all for peace and prosperity for the people. You often find in the same texts (as in yours) the following contradiction: that democracies are not true democracies, that authoritarian regimes are in fact more democratic, and at the same time malign democracy itself. Bullshit. I never painted the USA as a perfect model and I know its many flaws (as I clearly wrote in the first place). But equating democratic systems with tyrannies based on fear and persecution is a fallacy. Normalizing fascism is a very dangerous fallacy. Don't fall into this trap. I hope that the U.S.A. won't.
And by the way, using profanities for your "arguments" doesn't help.
You might want to begin with defining what the alleged 'democratic values' are. Kindly refrain from some generalized horseshit statements. Really wanna see what you come up with. Then compare that to actual reality, whether the alleged 'democratic values' actually exist, or how democracy is practiced. Again, no vague crap.
There is an excellent book on democracy, a deep analysis, you might wanna read it first (https://www.amazon.co.uk/d%C3%A9mocratie-survie-lHomme-Urmie-Ray/dp/2813001139).
As to equating the allegedly fallacious democracy with tyranny, where did you get that? And why do you keep painting the societal and political systems in other countries as well as their customs as tyrannical, dictatorial, authoritarian, etc. Such as Hungary, or Slovakia for that matter? You're unhinged.
For you democracy means that people must harbor the same (rather fucked up) opinion as yourself. If they don't, they're fascist, dictatorial, tyrannical, so on.
I'd really like to give you the benefit of the doubt, but when my interlocutor, albeit implicitly, accuses me of being fascist, I have no choice than to tell him to go fuck himself. That's no way to discuss things.
I live in the U.S.A., so yes, my freedoms feel personal to me, and living under a fascist regime would endanger my life. Actually, a full-blown autocracy in the U.S.A. would be a terrible one, devolving into a theocracy applying principles voiced today by Christo-fascist extremists.
Against that, I really don't care if you are yourself a fascist or not. But what appears evident is that your arguments are copy-and-paste of typical Russian government propaganda, and make me wonder who you really are.
About democracy, thousands of books have been written about it; so being "vague" here on social media, where writing more than tree lines is sort of a non-starter, is no more than your "vague." Anyway, I'm going to stop this exchange, being insulted at every turn. The real threats I may be facing here deserve much more of my attention.
Usa a democracy??? Hahaha hahaha. By 2024 that's a sad joke. Keep living in lah lah land.
I do live in the U.S.A., still a democracy. Unfortunately, democracy eroded in this country (in a large part with D. Trump, but not only) and much needed reforms were not undertaken when they should have been. But an all-out fascist regime described in "Project 2025" drafted by the Heritage Foundation for Donald Trump would bring the country much closer to what Russia or China are today. Sorry, but I care about where I live and my freedoms.
Hope and change ....Maga...you been played
Your perception of reality is not perception of actual reality, but of reality shaped by corrupt media motherfuckers working in the employ of even greater motherfuckers who run the show.
Democracy might work on a 'trust you as far as I can throw you' basis, perhaps better expressed by 'trust you insofar as I can smash your face in if you fuck around'. Within a very small group. Even a small town is already a problem. Democracy - no matter how defined - can never be scaled up to work in such an entity as the US. Or the EU. Or any cuntry for that matter. Impossible.
Also, you might wanna give a thought to the fact that it's been under the so-called democracy that humans have fucked up their natural habitat to the highest degree in history. So, even if democracy somehow worked, would it be a wise idea to let idiots who double mask to stop a virus even though the mask packaging explicitly says that the mask does shit in this regard? Or who allow themselves to be injected with some shit at a train station? Or to take this Trump-Harris shit seriously? Good question, eh? For democracy to work, as oxymoronically contradictory as it is, it would require people not to be the dumbo shitheads they are.
BTW, you speak of your freedoms - can you name some of the freedoms you have (thanks to the 'US democracy')? I wonder. I've lived in the US for a some time, quite a while ago, and found it the least free of all the places where I've stayed. Not only was there a cop lurking around every corner, but people are extremely conventional and ostracize everybody who dares not howl with the wolves ... errr, scratch that ... bleat with the sheeple ...
Adam: "I live in a democracy! derp...."
Turns on CNN: "Today, Orange Hitler won the election so you should be scared now. He's totally going to nuke the other Hitler in Russia, oh wait that doesn't line up with our old story of him being a Russian stooge. Anyway, fuck it. Go get your 14th booster you racist morons - Brought to you by Pfizer"
Any sense at all?
The usa is not a democracy
Thank you, fine article.
I'd remove the last sentences...that assertion is wrong and it ruins a great article
Can you summarize the assertion and explain why it wrong.
That cannot happen because when civilization collapses everyone dies .. more on that here https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping
Makes sense after reading the article to not leave everyone in deep despair .. toss a bit of hopium out there to make them feel better
In your view, what assertion is the author making?
What can’t happen?
The author says a lot, I’m curious to know how you interpret it.
This is not to say we could not live a modest, but happy life after world dominance by superpowers is over. The world has still ample resources to provide Earth’s nations with a modest living (for a few more decades), but no longer enough to maintain a world spanning empire for any of them2.
I will use this in my blog post today, Guy Fawkes Day, US Election Day.
What plays will be run today?
;-o
Hey Mr B, great article. Whether knowingly or not, you picked up on a point I made about "multipolarity" being essentially a somewhat differently structured version of the current world order, and more a symptom of its terminal crisis than an actual development that leads to an objectively better situation. And I mostly agree with your point.
Anyway, I wanted to ask you about shale reserves in places other than the US (every continent has some shale deposits afaik). Do you foresee serious attempts in the near future to extract them esp when conventional supply starts tangibly declining? And can at least some of them become net energy positive, thus "extending" the collapse out by another decade or two?
You a gamer??
I wish I could post the picture of this train travelling across a bleak and empty desert; the caption reads, "The Mauritanian iron ore train, one of the world's longest and heaviest, spans up to 3 km, travels 704 km, and has 200-300 carriages, each weighing up to 84 tons." The locomotives are of course diesel, and the location of the ore body very remote: it makes your point precisely!