[Loki]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', 'S')o buildings in this country don't get old or break down if poorly built or maintained?

[Pops]

Back in the heyday of the mall I worked for a small chain of jewelry stores in CA. I did store planning/design, display and advertising eventually. The only real job I ever had, LOL.

Mall culture is really interesting and though I've never been a carney I'd think it is a lot the same. It's all about the image, the front, building excitement and making a sale. Designing jewelry stores was fun, there were lots of very specific things our particular sales organization wanted but I also learned a huge amount about construction, "business", the silver spoon, on and on.

But man, what an airball. I'd spend a million or two on a tenant finish (the "store" within the mall) and it would be torn out and redone every time the lease renewed, maybe 7 years. I probably designed and "built" 20 stores and there is not a thing left of those stores, they are all in a landfill somewhere.

Sometimes when I'm driving in town I wonder just exactly what all those people do for a living. But all I have to do is cast my little brain back to all the effort and money I spent building those stores so kids could go in debt to buy a wedding set on credit and I have my answer: those folks - including me - all do nothing except turn the ones into zeros. We're the great entropy engine.

[AgentR11]

Malls are funny beasts, there are a couple in the Houston area that are abandoned more or less. It just takes the tiniest error in location, and the whole thing become a giant liability. To many teens hanging out, doing nothing... bad. To few teens hanging out, doing nothing... bad. 5 minutes portal to vehicle good, 8 minutes portal to vehicle, epic fail. That sort of thing. Just the layout of the parking lot can kill an entire complex... too clear, cars drive too fast creating liability, too twisty, no one comes into the lot a second time.

So, its not so much that the mall concept is bad, heck, its hardly different from a flee market or farmers market, just scaled up and spiffied; its that it is a very fragile investment; can payout out well, but can easily crash and burn either through bad planning or a change in demographics or traffic flow.

[C8]

I am interested in poster's opinions of what the US will look like in the year 2100. If you could share your views I would appreciate it. To make the answers more thorough and to allow for more of an apples to apples comparison of different folks views, I have included some categories that i hope you will touch on in your answer. Obviously you don't have to follow this format but it would help me see differences in your opinions from one another more clearly.

The categories are as follows followed by examples (feel free to copy and paste):

1. Political system- more or less democratic, another system? what new laws?, etc.

2. Economic system- more or less capitalistic, another system? what will be major industries?

3. Economic stratification- more or less unequal, who is at the top, bottom?, etc.

4. Demographics- population size, major ethnic groups, average age of population, etc.

5. Level of technology, energy, resources- higher than now? lower? for whom?

6. Physical landscape- conditions of forests, parks, air, water, rivers, raw materials, etc.

7. Cultural shifts- is the "American Way" strong? Dying? Replaced by what? languages? women, gay rights, minorities?

Thanks

[ralfy]

That reminds me of the Earth 2100 TV feature:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Earth2100

[C8]

There are some very interesting people on this site- I am opening to different ideas

[Pops]

...static...snow...garble-garble...
Reception on the old Lexan Ball is a little hazy that far out, but I'm gonna say:

The population is around 400 million. Low birth rate and zero immigration would have caused it to fall to around 300M after peaking around 2050 but since declining, aging population is not good and someone needs to cut the grass, some immigration continues, maybe a third of pre-2010 levels.
http://cis.org/projecting-immigrations- ... population

As the global population ages and population growth slows down, the economy cools. Labor markets equalize as globalization sequentially exploits underdeveloped regions and sometime late in the century there are no further opportunities for labor arbitrage. The decline in FFs likewise curtails all but the most profitable regional advantages. Shipping doesn't disappear entirely but January tomatoes do.

The Politics channel is really fuzzy. I hope that as Lincoln said in his first inaugural,
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')e are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

[C8]

Thanks Pops- sound pretty much like what we have today with less oil, transport and middle class. I have often wondered what America would look like without a middle class. I wonder if a certain size of middle class is necessary to stabilize a society or if the USA can work like historical Mexico with hardly any middle class at all. I wonder is any empire has functioned without a middle class.

[Pops]

I think the middle class of the mid-twentieth was the anomaly, C8.

But yeah, that outlook isn't really a lot different than my current lifestyle. But then I don't earn much, don't go much, don't buy much relative to most Americans. I think we have a good chance to build a bunch of RE using our current momentum and at some point between FF peak and FFs running out entirely, we'll have a chance to relocalize. I think/hope mostly we'll just have a lot less stuff and be more focused on our smaller horizons rather than some other options.

Obviously that is an optimistic outlook, but since I am realistic enough to know that I can't actually know what will happen, it it is as good as any.

[Keith_McClary]

The Rise of Partisanship and Super-Cooperators in the U.S. House of Representatives
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'p')artisanship or non-cooperation in the U.S. Congress has been increasing exponentially for over 60 years with no sign of abating or reversing.

[Newfie]

Recently I've been chewing on a book about peak empire. It looks at four empties, Spanish, Dutch, English, and American, and compares similarities in wealth patterns. While the book makes some good points, a good editor would have cut it 2/3 and made it much more powerful.

The basic thesis is that a empire stars with some healthy growth in fundamentals. There is some basis in reality for the rise, SA gold, shipping, industrial revolution.

As the empire matures the folks that drove the rise invest their fortunes in financial instruments. The capital becomes locked up in the banking and investment industry and is not released to further additional physical improvements. These soft investments become more and more abstract, more of a betting game, a sort of self Ponzi. When the end comes, which is not always suddenly, this financial wealth simply ceases to exist, if it ever did to begin with. Stocks and bonds loose value and the wealthy elite loose their financial power.

The symptoms of this include a rise in globalization/off shore investments, increasing wealth disparity at home, reduction in the at home employment rate, etc. The book was written circa 2004, and before the 2008 crash. It makes one think how can we have sustained this current peak through what should have been a strong corrective turn.

My personal interpretation of the current situation is that, unlike past empires, the current level of globalization is so wide spread that there is no new entity to pick up where we leave off. China and India, natural heirs, are already fairly mature economies that rely upon the existing consumptive trade for their own existence. The USA empire has morphed into a trans-national empire of global financial institutions. In the past the collapse of one empire allowed the emergence of a new one. Not this time, we now have an empire of the whole. It is only afloat because of extreme financial measures starting back in 2008.

Worse musings are only valuable to help one ponder the future and find a way through. Is it true that the existing financial system is unstable? If so will it collapse? When? How? Are there safe investments? If the current financial instruments are at risk, what are alternative ways to hold onto your wealth? What does a guy do with a 401k, take the money out paying the tax premium and buy land?

I thought I'd throw this out as a conversation starter.

[Plantagenet]

This is a great topic.

IMHO the US Empire hit its peak in the 1950s, when the US was the world's leading oil producer as well as the leading military, economic and political power. Europe and Japan and China were still digging out of the rubble of the second world war and working people in those countries were struggling to rebuild their countries. In contrast, US consumers were the richest on earth, and US factory workers drove giant US made cars to brand new split level homes being built in new US suburbs surrounding still mostly nice and very livable US cities.

In the 1950s the US set up a system of military alliances (NATO, SEATO)to cement US power around the globe, and the US also set up international institutions like the UN to allow the US to direct world affairs as it saw fit. The US also set up ca. 800 military bases around the world in the 1950s.

The US was unquestionably numero uno in the 1950s. Then we stumbled into assassinations, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, Race Riots, political crisis, impeachment, Iraq, Afghanistan, great recession, Libya, Iraq again with a bonus war in Syria, wage stagnation, the return of race riots, etc. etc. Its been mostly a downhill slide since 1959, and now, to finish it all off, we elected a TV reality show host named Donald Trump as President.

As far as I'm concerned the US hit peak Empire 60 years ago.

[Ibon]

The fact that it is global this time does somewhat disrupt the normal rise and fall and replacement pattern.
The alliances of the elite and wealthy are more transnational than national. I think this explains the growing trend of nationalism among citizens that is not always shared by their governments who remain fixed on trade alliances and facilitating transnational agreements for multi national corporations. Meanwhile this huge flattening of wages continues to unfold around the world.

Think of it this way. We always speak on a national level about the great disparity of wealth that is increasing all the time. But if you look at it from the point of view of your average citizen worker around the world and you lump a Chinese, Indian, American and Latin American worker together as one global entity than you see that there is not greater disparity of wealth but rather less disparity, a great flattening of wage levels. From a national level growing disparity, but in aggregate the global middle class as a group are flattening with less disparity.

There is less disparity than ever before as well among the top 1% globally. The top Chinese, Mexican, Indian 1% are right up there these days with the American 1%.

Geographically there is no common unity among the global poor and lower middle class. They are all wage slaves but divided by geography and nation states and religion and languages. This division restricts any form of protest from the underclass to the national level. Government, concerned more with transnational alliances are more than happy to use immigrants and terrorists as scapegoats and foment racial tensions to keep the global underclass divided using nationalism.

There is still a long way to go to flatten everything out. The most fat undoubtedly is still with your average US consumer whose per capita of consumption of resources is still very high. The problem is that he or she is still the model the Chinese and Indians are trying to imitate. The developing countries now have more economic power combined with a highly motivated citizenry who wants their first taste of wealth. They are smart, ambitious, motivated, willing to work long hours and are competing among themselves as a sub group.

[onlooker]

I do not believe it is helpful to look at past cycles and patterns in regards this topic. We are in a uniquely different set of circumstances. Part of it is how much most humans have strayed from subsistence existence. So many of us have been incorporated into modernity and Globalization. Second, is the degradation of the environmental web and how terrifying its unraveling seems poised to be due mostly to human influence. Third, is the type of weapons now in existence which can render pretty much the planet uninhabitable if these weapons of mass destruction are employed. So, while in the past Empires fell due to various vulnerabilities similar to what exist now, now the entire planet is poised to seriously collapse and malfunction. This is due not just too environmental or economic reasons but to the chaotic circumstances of so many people living at one time, this itself has introduced further instability into human affairs. So, all in all, our economic vulnerabilies and the precariousness of our environmental situation pose dangers unlike few societies have ever faced and these dangers threaten every single human on Earth.

[asg70]

All this connecting of dots people do between the west and Rome is really more of a function of some people being acutely anti-establishment and wanting the existing order to collapse down into some nostalgic pastoral existence. You know, the good days when the world was made by hand, before those dagnabbit cars and suburbs! And that's all well and good if what we were facing wasn't a global mass-extinction event. You aren't going to have your idyllic little house on the prairie in a world of runaway global warming colliding with 8+ billion people. It will be Cormac McCarthy at best.

[Newfie]

Ah, but the collapse dosent have to happen overnight. And we can be comfortable, at least for a while, maybe a lifetime, before things get seriously bad. And my lifetime is getting short!

[asg70]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'A')h, but the collapse dosent have to happen overnight. And we can be comfortable, at least for a while, maybe a lifetime, before things get seriously bad. And my lifetime is getting short!

[Newfie]

According to the author, the past collapses have been precipitated by war. In the war the old empire out spends their resources and the née pier makes a ton of money in the process.

I don't know that this will happen this time, I can't see a really big war, all the players have too much invested in the status quo.

IMHO the time will come when the financial shenanigans will become too ludacris for anyone to believe in. The trust between states, traders will be broken. Then trade will freeze up. This is what Bush and Obama described during the 2008 panic. It took the Fed taking extraordinary actions to reassure the market. But have we really fixed anything? Or just papered over the problem for the short term?

My thought is that while the USA will take a hit other parts of the world will fare worse, so relatively, we will be OK. The USA and Canada has large food and water exports and is among the very few calorie exporters in the world. We would have to relearn how to build things and reconstruct our industry, but that is doable. Food importing nations would be in rougher shape.

I know China has some land holdings in the USA. Would we allow them to continue to raise and export food to China? Would we nationalize these farms? These kind of arrangements exist for many countries. Russia has made long term leases on farm land in Siberia. Will they honor those leases?

The USA can probably contribute to stability for some period of time. How long is a good question.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('asg70', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'A')h, but the collapse dosent have to happen overnight. And we can be comfortable, at least for a while, maybe a lifetime, before things get seriously bad. And my lifetime is getting short!

[Newfie]

Tanada,

I like your approach, but I'm confused. If the tipping point is around 520 and our current CO2e range is as high as 530 doesn't that make the shift possible shortly? On the outside of the range but still there?