Taking Down America

At the moment, within the United States, it is the political right that is the loudest purveyors of a coming doom and gloom.  However, there are actually quite a few voices on the left.  Coming from TomDispatch: Taking Down America

A soft landing for America 40 years from now?  Don’t bet on it.  The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines.  If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting.

Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.

Alfred W. McCoy offers for scenerios:

• Economic Decline: Scenario 2020
• Oil Shock: Scenario 2025
• Military Misadventure: Scenario 2014
• World War III: Scenario 2025

Some of these are, within prepper parlance, slow and some of them are fast collapse.  None of the scenarios seem to offer much guidance other than an idea that a limited retreat now is better than a cataclysmic one later.

I do not have any huge problems with the scenarios.  The idea that our problems started with Bush W. is in my opinion more polemic than substantive.  Also, the assumption that the United States is the only large country on a collision course with disaster strikes me as having a rather blinkered view of reality.  How China is supposed to maintain its growth with a population 4 times larger than the United States, and not suffer major problems from an oil disruption is also a bit mysterious.

R/P Values

I have been reading Laurence C. Smith's The World in 2050:  Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future.

He comments on the R/P value of many natural resources important to our current world economy.  The R?P value is the reserve to production ratio.  It is how long, in annual terms, we will use up our current reserves at our current production rate.  He notes that the price of the commodity does not seem to reflect in any way its R/P value.

Coal 133 years
Oil 42 years
Copper 35 years
Zinc 24 years
Lead 22 years
Nickel 21 years
Tin 24 years
Silver 14 years
Gold 17 years
Indium 8 years

While we are certainly not "stuck" with our current reserve levels, it is also important to note that the projected future growth is expected to come from developing countries  who currently have the currently the lowest per capita usage.  The world currently uses 85 million barrels of oil today, even taking into account the current recession,   by 2030 this is projected to reach 106 million barrels.  Other resources in varying proportions will follow suite.

Resources Depletion and Demographics

A very common concern going forward is resource depletion .  However there is another ongoing concern that will act in synergy with this problem, and at other points will work against it.

That problem is global demographic shifts.  As Europe and Japan grow older, the “developing” world is relatively young and continuing to grow.  Even China, with its one child policy, is so young that its population will probably continue to grow for another 20 years.  It is estimated that that will add another 160 million people over the next 20 years (roughly half the US population today) and the much more quickly growing India would gain 170 million people within that time frame.

To continue the discussion I will quote Jack Goldstone in   Flash Points and Tipping Points: Security Implications of Global Changes

[F]our major trends that are likely to pose significant security challenges to Europe, Japan, and

most other developed nations in the next two decades:

1.    Disproportionate population growth in large and Muslim countries;

2.    Shrinking population in the European Union and European former Soviet countries;

3.    Sharply opposing age shifts between aging developed countries and youthful developing countries; and

4.    Increased immigration from developing to developed countries.

The security and conflict problems caused by population growth are not mainly due to shortages of resources. Rather, population distortions— in which populations grow too young, or too fast, or too urbanized—make it difficult for prevailing economic and administrative institutions to maintain stable socialization and labor force absorption (Goldstone, 2002; Cincotta et al., 2003; Leahy et al., 2007).

This slowdown in population growth has major implications for overall economic growth (Eberstadt, 2001). The economies of aging nations will not be stimulated by growing numbers of consumers and demand for housing. The capital growth generated by larger generations of young people approaching their peak earning years and saving for retirement will cease as well. Even if the growth of Europe’s income per capita remained constant, its overall economic growth rate would be cut in half as the population declines over the next 30-50 years.

An overall growth rate this small allows few margins for accumulation to invest for the future. As Benjamin Friedman (2005) has argued, substantial growth rates allow more groups to share to some degree in growth, and provide social resources for a variety of services and investments. Overall growth rates below 2 percent per year, by contrast, allow for little redistribution or investment, and tend to heighten social conflicts over such issues as pensions, migration, and labor/employer relations— situations we might see as the global economic downturn progresses.

The declining advanced economic countries are going to have very low growth already because of declining demand (population), but a decline in population is how countries, empires, etc. got broke out of the Malthusian squeeze prior to the industrial revolution.  Even if the size of the pie stayed the same, their was less people to share it.  So the slices got bigger.

But the developing countries are going to be in an extreme bind,  their increasing population would normally increase demand and drive production.  But the energy/resource costs will be increasing.  This is very much a Malthusian scenario in its negative phase.  Countries, empires, etc. prior to the industrial revolution would see people at the individual level get poorer.  Unfortunately, simply because there was less money per person, did not mean there was less money overall.  The surplus was very likely to be fought over by the elites, and in very early empires (Rome) it was often a driving force for expansion.  You made the pie bigger by taking away the surplus from some other group of elites.


The threat of nuclear warfare will probably limit some scenarios.  But access to resources/energy is going to become even more important.  The New York Times had a recent article stating that our military was upset that the Chinese military saw us in adversarial terms: not potentially cooperative.  Do you think the Chinese military is possibly looking a little more clearly into the future?