[p2p-research] the coming age of scarcity industrialism

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Michel Bauwens wrote (quoting):
> 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.

Look in a forest. For thousands of years one can see trees growing from just 
sunlight, air, water, and soil. Why can our technology not be adapted to do 
the same? Even *without* biotech?

Seriously, with various adjustments, the USA spends literally about a 
trillion dollars a year on "defense".
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States

How much would it cost to do the R&D and deployment on better industrial 
systems even in the worst case?

The USA just magicked trillions of dollars to bailout some rich people's 
bets in a last round of a pyramid scheme out of fear that "the banking 
system would seize up". Why can the USA not magic a few trillion for me, 
Bryan, and millions of other people interested in these issues to just fix 
this for everyone, if there is a real fear the industrial system will seize 
up? Isn't everyone eating and having shelter, transportation, and toys at 
least as important as the bank balances of financially obese people?

Even for helium, our worst case constrained resource that practically no one 
talks about (except some physicists), you can chill it out of the air at 
100X the cost (maybe less with innovations) or you can use other cooling 
techniques and other welding techniques that don't require helium, plus 
there are better and better ways to conserve helium being developed.

But, we've had this discussion before. :-) IMHO, the human imagination is 
the ultimate resource, and powered by the internet, the human imagination is 
stronger than ever: :-)
   http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
So, we are not running out of the resource that matters most, IMHO. Now, if 
we only had a trillion more people alive to help with all this. :-)

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/