by MonteQuest » Wed 11 Jul 2007, 00:58:56
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TheOtherSide', ' ')What are you doubting? That PO won't cause a depression? That a depression doesn't cause unemployment? That an unemployed person wouldn't spend as much energy as an employed one? That a bankrupt business won't use as much (or at all) energy as an operating one?
If you think that, then I suggest you read a bit more of what I have written.
What I doubt is that this depression will somehow allow industrial civilization to keep on rolling, as you seem to assume.
Most of the industrialized world is not fresh from peasantry and the fields like China.
If the machine ever stops running, it's over.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ithin a period of time which is very short compared with the total span of human history, supplies of fossil fuels will almost certainly be exhausted. This loss will make man completely dependent upon waterpower, atomic energy, and solar energy for driving his machines.
There are no fundamental physical laws which prevent such a transition, and it is quite possible that society will be able to make the change smoothly.
But it is a transition that will happen only once during the lifetime of the human species...if machine civilization should, because of some catastrophe, stop functioning, it will probably never again come into existence.” Harrison Brown -1954