/ world today news/ At the time, the brilliant economist, specialist in economic history Douglas North said that “if the ancient Greek had come in the middle of the 18th century, everything would have been known to him except for firearms, but if he had come in the middle of the 19th century , it would already be a foreign world”. And it is not by chance that he says the 1750s, because from the 1780s this exponential growth began, which ends today.
Since the Neolithic Revolution, the emergence of agriculture (for example, in England from 1300 to 1800), the rate of growth in labor productivity, and in general the rate of economic growth, has been 0.2-04%. Then comes the First Industrial Revolution, 1780-1830, the growth rate is 2%. The Second Industrial Revolution – 1870-1900 – 2.3%. And then comes downgrade. And now experts are predicting 0.4% again for the 20 years, if government services and trade are excluded. And for the period after 2030 – the same 0.2 that were until 1750. That is, the world of the exponent ends forever. And the world of the asymptote begins.
“Between 1913 and 1963, the difference is incredible – in speeds, technologies, the entire technical environment of a person, and also in his image. Between 1963 and 2013, the difference is actually not that big. Both the planes of the likes and the car did not undergo much change. Even the clothing of the people is greatly transformed. In fact, since the late 1980s, the world has turned to hedonism, speculative artificial financial instruments and selfish consumption, as opposed to the previous era, which prioritized knowledge and the competition between knowledge and technology. And even in the technological industry, which today is one of the main locomotives of development, spends no less than 4/5 of its possible potential for consumption, one-time use, deliberate dumbing down at the level of software products and deterioration of the quality of household appliances in strictly compliance with the priorities of the increased current rate of profits”, says Sergey Sigachov.
“This is a different era – the High Modern. When many are confident in the coming brave new world with cities in the Arctic, Antarctica, at the bottom of the ocean and in space, where millions of strong men and gentle women with wonderful children live and work creatively, making the world safe and beautiful and things beautiful and eternal. But already in the 1960s, some American fiction writers painted dystopias, where things began to be disposable, because the workload of the industry with a high level of employment and consumption had to be ensured, and people were absolutely intolerant of each other, so society should not to have none towering over others with their superior qualities because it breeds mass unhealthy envy and social unrest. At the end of the 1960s, classical capitalism with its commercial-industrial system and colonialism ended, the crisis of the socialist system with the USSR began, a rapid transition to a global consumer society began, and the technological base for reversing the expansion and redirecting towards a progressive virtualization of life appeared. for pleasure, not for effective orientation in reality” Oleg Davydov thinks.
The era we were used to and assumed would last forever is over. Eternal progress. This is the era that started at the end of the 19th century and is ending before our eyes. We are the people whose youth comes in the 70s (especially people my age) and think that there is only progress, only upward. And now it turns out that these 200-250 years are a short moment in the cyclical development of the exponent. And it ends. And in general, this is logical. Technical civilization cannot exist for long. By the way, this conclusion was once reached by specialists dealing with a seemingly exotic problem.
In the late 1960s, early 1970s, conferences were constantly held in the Armenian Byurakan, where the connection with extraterrestrial civilizations was discussed. And that’s what the main argument was. Are we alone in the universe or not? The Soviet mathematician and astronomer Shkolovsky proved purely mathematically that we cannot be alone in the universe. And the great Polish fantasist and futurologist Stanislav Lem declared: “Nothing like this! We are alone.” And the question arose. If Shkolovski is right, why doesn’t anyone come to us? And then a conclusion was drawn, which at that time, in the age of progress, seemed strange to many. That technical civilization cannot exist for more than a few centuries. The thing is, at the moment, if you take the whole world, 16% of the energy potential of the planet Earth is used. And apparently more can not, because the energy losses for obtaining energy sources cannot be above the permissible.
There is one such indicator – EROEI – the ratio between received and spent energy, energy profitability. And so the peak in world energy was in the 1960s and 1970s. Now it’s all going downhill. Neither wind nor solar solves the problems. And energy will be more and more expensive. That is, it is obvious that 16-20% is the limit. That is, in other words, humanity is entering that period when it will be necessary to give up many ideas about how the world is structured and what kind of future awaits us.
“Cyberpunk of the 1980s predicted a bleak future for humanity: moral decay under the yoke of hyper-technology. But even the most modest and realistic landscapes of classic cyberpunk remain for us an unfulfilled dream. If progress lived up to our hopes (or fears), we’d have orbital cities, full bio-interface, cybernized implants, and more by now. Where is the free energy supply to the entire globe? Where are the clone armies, or at least the refrigerators full of cloned organs for implantation? Has anyone been rejuvenated from 80 to 30 years or cured of radiation sickness? Why then do so many people believe in unlimited progress?”pita Daniil Bozhin.
Whether this new post-capitalist world will be bio-eco-techno-fascism as Schwab’s masters want is another question. Or it will be something else. Here, in fact, the struggle is now unfolding as to what the world of the asymptote will be. Because the exponent’s world is over.
I think we have entered a period which, barring a catastrophe, will last at least a century. We must prepare to live in such an environment and operate in conditions of very high uncertainty, because this situation will be around for a long time. We are crawling into a state very reminiscent of the world after the collapse of the Roman Empire and the crisis of medieval society of the 14th and 15th centuries. The only task before us is to learn to live in crisis and ride its waves like surfers. This requires will and reason. The will to be able to do it and the mind to know how.
Translation: V. Sergeev
Sign the Peace and Sovereignty Referendum on
Subscribe to our YouTube channel:
and for the channel or in Telegram:
#Prof #Andrey #Fursov #progress #planet
