[p2p-research] the coming age of scarcity industrialism

[Michel Bauwens]

http://www.energybulletin.net/50020

I’ve suggested that the world is in the midst of a transformation between
the kind of society and economy familiar to us over the last century or so,
which I’ve called “abundance industrialism,” and a new kind that may as well
be called “scarcity industrialism.” Where abundance industrialism was
defined by the ready availability of cheap abundant natural resources,
especially but not only fossil fuels, scarcity industrialism will be defined
by the scarcity of such resources. One of the implications of this shift is
that those nations and regions that control significant amounts of important
resources will find those resources becoming a potent source of political
leverage. The same sort of clout OPEC gained from its oil reserves in the
Seventies, and may reclaim in the not too distant future, will become
accessible to countries or cartels of countries with large amounts of any
economically vital resource.

If this is correct, the Chinese are not just using trade barriers to build
their industrial plant at America’s expense; they’re doing that, of course,
but it’s not all they’re doing. They are also taking advantage of the
opportunities opening up as the age of scarcity industrialism dawns. They
may well have recognized that in a world that will increasingly be shaped by
resource scarcities, those who act to secure their own resource bases can
thrive while others falter. It’s a lesson that Russia has already learned –
witness the successful efforts of the Russian government to seize Russia’s
fossil fuel assets from the handful of American- and British-backed
billionaires who walked off with them during the chaos and corruption of the
Yeltsin years – and other nations are beginning to learn it as well.

The dawn of the age of scarcity industrialism thus promises to stand many of
the assumptions of the recent past on their heads. It may not be out of
place, therefore, to discuss some of the ways that societies might, if they
were minded to do so, deal with some of these new realities, and next week’s
post will try to peer ahead into this territory.


-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Research:
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
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