Some of these are themes BIRCHES has promoted as well. I agree with Jim that much of the means of production are likely to go much more local, and we're going to see more consumption of locally and family produced foods. Beyond that comment, I'll resist stepping on this contribution, and just set down his list to let people react to. (Please do)
In ten years ---
* common, non-rich people will not drive cars, at least not very often.
* more of us will be growing more of our own food. This will be a necessity, not a hobby.
* air-travel will be, for most of us, a thing of the past. When we take long trips, which will be rare, it will be on a train or a boat.
* In ten years, if not sooner, the idea of the stock market as a reliable source of wealth will be thoroughly debunked. The 25 years of hyper-growth we've recently witnessed will come to be seen as an anomaly rather than business-as-usual.
* barter will be a popular way to transact business. Cash, checks, and credit cards will not be as universally honored as they are now.
* with our manufacturing base all but dead and our ability to import hampered, we will enjoy a reuse/repair/recycle economy rather than a consumer economy.
* we will have to come to terms with mortality in the medical system. We won't be able to allocate limited resources to the prolonging of the lives of really sick people.
* the world will be a smaller place, and many of us will come to identify ourselves with our family, local community, or city more than we identify with a broader region or nationality. Sort of a post-modern tribalism.
* small, rural towns located along railroads or rivers will be re-populated. The family farm will experience a rebirth.
* the federal government will have lost control over parts of the country. State governments will be much smaller than they are now. Local governance will become the way we keep order and provide basic services.- Jim Thill
4 comments:
Jeez, that guy sounds like a nut.
Here is a perspective on Black Friday and consumer culture by another blogger I really like, Sharon Astyk at Casaubon's Book;
"The economy is a game of music chairs, and the chairs are disappearing. When the music stops for each of us, and our chair is gone, for a time we will rely primarily on the resources we’ve built up now. Those of us left holding the big screen tvs and the designer handbags will have them - or whatever their resale value is. And those who have ties - biological or chosen - will have those. The truth is that our consumer culture needs us to be isolated, fragmented, alone, empty - or advertising wouldn’t work, the nonsensical reasoning that we have to have this year’s big thing wouldn’t work. The primary project of consumer culture is to drive us apart, to make sure we do not share, we do not combine resources, or even consult on how ridiculous the things we are being told are. And it has worked magnificently.
The music is hectic, the chairs are disappearing, we’re going faster and faster. And pretty soon it stops. What will you have when it just…STOPS?"
AMEN
I think that the U.S. military will be less involved in foreign operations. To push forward Jim's idea of more localized living, I see our military coming to be based more and more on the national guards, and being more for defense than for interference. Military costs will be lower and social costs will be higher. I see the federal government as being just as big as it is, but performing more social duties like health, communications and energy functions.
Capitalism is dead. Some people can't go on stealing from the many like that. It will be stops now for good.
Post a Comment