It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Enron: So, Who is About to Go Broke?

[anarch]

16. the entirety of western civilization?

honestly it's kind of feeling to me like the beginning of the end of our whole way of life; it's like the start of the fall of Rome.

Our current economic model, and the wasteful/destructive lifestyle that it more or less encourages, is unsustainable in the long run...I'd think things would change one way or another over the next thousand years or so; the degenerate oligarchy's current tactics seem focused entirely on short-term profits and maintaining their tenuous grasp on power, in spite of overwhelming evidence of an impending (or perhaps ongoing) climate catastrophe, and in spite of the political will of the younger generations.

Add in technological advances such as automated production of goods, and continuing advances in the development of artificial intelligence, all of which would in a perfect world make everyone's lives easier by reducing the amount of human labor required to produce and distribute the necessities of life to everyone...well, there's no way the wasteful system we have now can go on for that much longer.

I think we're close to being at the point of crisis. We could, as a society, work together to find a new way of living that embraces the beneficial aspects of technology and mitigates the damage caused by human excesses--or we could collapse into chaos, every person for themselves, just fighting to survive amongst the ruins. Either way, something's got to give, and probably sooner than otherwise with "conservative" policies in place.