Rod Dreher

Why Conservatives Are Losing The Marriage Battle

The Quickening

By Rod Dreher • February 22, 2013, 10:47 AM

Here’s a provocative article from The Browser, in PDF form, in which elite analyst Thierry Malleret discerns several basic trends indicating that will make this century a turbulent and unusually unpredictable one for the world. The whole thing is worth reading — it’s definitely Karthbait — but here are a couple of highlights:

We are entering an era of permanent disequilibrium. Our global village is likely to be out of kilter for a long while to come. It will be lurching from one major crisis to the next. My starting point is as follows: With the world becoming ever more susceptible to shocks, the global risk landscape is now dominated by sharp discontinuities. Our world is changing everywhere, radically, very fast and in multiple intersecting ways that lend themselves to constant surprises. There is now no place to hide from the turbulence, the challenges and the uncertainties.

Ageing is indeed the crux of the demographic issue, and bound to be a big problem because it leads to a reduced working-age population just as the percentage of dependent elders explodes. As the population ages, it goes from stimulating the economy to depressing it, because fewer young adults equals fewer people purchasing new homes, new furniture, new cars and the like. Rates of savings and investment also tend to decline. Unless we change our existing social models (by retiring at a much later age, by favouring more female participation, etc.) and our culture (by combining old age and entrepreneurship), an ageing world is destined to be a poorer world. …

When thinking not about tomorrow but the day after tomorrow, the implications are obvious and dramatic. Before jumping on the bandwagon of Asia’s rise, for example, it is important to remember that its demographic outlook is even worse than Europe’s. Asia will face the arrival of an age wave without pensions, without health care and without a family to support the elderly. That is a recipe for major social turmoil.

Summing up these three in 18 OECD countries, the world’s most advanced economies, the ratio of debt to GDP has risen relentlessly from 167% in 1980 to 314% in 2010: an average of more than 5 percentage points of GDP per year over the last three decades.

This trend has now become unsustainable and must be reversed in the most adverse possible circumstances: the debt challenge is compounded by the other global megatrends, particularly ageing, which drives government expenditure up and revenues down, directly worsening the debt situation.

In the three most advanced economies – the US, Europe and Japan – resolving the issue of over-indebtedness through public and private deleveraging will take many years of painful structural reforms that will ultimately entail a complete redeﬁnition of the social contract.

Read the whole thing. We have accepted social norms that are more suited to wealthy societies. That’s going to change. I’m most curious to know what “a complete redefinition of the social contract” might mean. The thread throughout Malleret’s analysis is that all this change will happen at greatly increasing velocity, because that is characteristic of our era. It is literally a “quickening.”

Posted in Decline and Fall. Tagged Thierry Malleret.

43 Responses to The Quickening

Franklin Evans says:

February 22, 2013 at 11:29 am

Rod: I’m most curious to know what “a complete redefinition of the social contract” might mean.

Much depends on the scope and perspective applied to finding the answer. For example, I would suggest that in the 20th century the US experienced two such redefinitions: FDR’s New Deal, and the post-WWII combination of a spike in immigration with the advent of feminism (I’m thinking Rosie the Riveter and her refusal to return to the kitchen when her husband came home from the war). Some might argue that the civil rights movement is a third, though I would tend to lump it in with Rosie.

We have accepted social norms that are more suited to wealthy societies. That’s going to change.

My POV is that the collapse will come if that doesn’t change.

The various incarnations of aristocracy deserve, in my never humble opinion, the label of “cult of entitlement”. I used to apply that more generally, but I believe I was incorrect, and the modern disease we face is a “religion of entitlement.” A cult is small and insular. A religion is intended for the masses.

Its primary tenet: More is always better.

That is my logical objection to seeing an economic decline as a portent of doom, let alone even a necessarily bad thing. Just look at those GDP numbers. If we haven’t crashed into the granite ceiling yet, it is very close right now and getting closer. Which would you (general) rather have: A free-fall descent after being knocked silly on that ceiling, or an attempt to draw back from the ceiling at a less break-neck pace?

I almost never agree with Karth, but in this one basic principle he has it right: a crash is coming. I amend that to a deserved rude-awakening crash is coming. I save my personal despair for the majority of my fellows whose heads are buried in the sand, their fingers are on their volume controls in the upwards direction, and they are increasingly too stupid to recognize when someone is blatantly lying to them.
Cannoneo says:

February 22, 2013 at 11:31 am

“Major social turmoil around the corner” is the only thing that “elite” investor newsletter writers ever say about the world, ever. They are the millenarian preachers of our age.
spite says:

February 22, 2013 at 11:33 am

Regarding the social contract that the article claims needs to be redefined because of ageing, it already has been redefined. Almost all media and academia have already agreed that immigration is the key.
Jeff Martin says:

February 22, 2013 at 11:52 am

As regards the “redefinition of the social contract”, that means simply that, “to him who already has much, more will be given, and from him who has next to nothing, even that which he has will be taken from him.” The so-called meritocrats of globalized, financialized capitalism will arrogate to themselves an increasing share of the national product, along with more overt domination of our politics, while those not numbered among the Masters of the Universe will suffer socio-economic immobility, declining material well-being, and the loss of what tattered safety nets remain to them. Soi-disant conservative intellectuals will continue to blame those in the latter category for their own plight, proffering the same tired old bootstrappy nonsense, which has been shouted ever more volubly at ordinary Americans over the past four decades, even as Post-Fordist, financialized capitalism has caused their fortunes to stagnate, then decline. As this all transpires, most Americans will either continue to buy into the bootstrappy nonsense, effectively blessing their own chains,or, having seen through the ruse, will confront a political system ever more impervious to reform, captured as it will be by the Masters of the Universe. These latter will be even deafer to the pleas of ordinary people than Germans are to the pleas of Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Irish presently.

Or, more succinctly, as the size of the pie declines, the rich and powerful (or do I repeat myself?), rather than submitting to some shared sacrifice, so that everyone may have at least a little dignity, will claim a larger share, in order to secure their own status in troubled times. This is practically the definition of an elite.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

February 22, 2013 at 11:53 am

I’m most curious to know what “a complete redefinition of the social contract” might mean.

http://a.tgcdn.net/images/products/frontsquare/e9aa_soylent_green_crackers.jpg

It’s people food.
Brooklyn Blue Dog says:

February 22, 2013 at 11:56 am

With our government controlled by liberal Democrats and Tea Party Republicans, rather than the grownups of these parties, it’s clear that we’re doomed.
Turmarion says:

February 22, 2013 at 12:24 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sp-VFBbjpE
Paul Emmons says:

February 22, 2013 at 12:30 pm

IMHO, the prophet was Morris Berman in Twilight of American Culture (2000). He predicted, among other things, the increasing corruption and fatuity of academe and our two unproductive wars in the wake of 9/11. By now a sense of impending doom is fairly commonplace and has even played out in a genre of “dystopian” of “post-apocalyptic” novels.

The response he proposes is “the monastic option”, inspired by the monks who preserved classical manuscripts and other remnants of civilization through the dark ages ensuing after the collapse of Rome. They would eventually be valued again in high medieval and Renaissance societies. In other words, it must be seen as staunch conservatism in the most literal sense.

With such dismal prospects, and given that the population of the world is still increasing as we speak, I feel no more duty to reproduce myself than did those celibates of 1500 years ago. Children already born will need all the help we can give them.
Will in Mississippi says:

February 22, 2013 at 12:31 pm

How does turbulent and rapidly changing differ from past centuries? It’s not a flip question, but a very serious one reflecting my current reading on crises during the early modern period. The 20th century with two catastrophic world wars and the Great Depression–plus upheaval in China and post-colonial Africa–was pretty turbulent and rapidly changing. 16th and 17th centuries fit the same description. Now 18th and 19th century history seems less turbulent and more prosperous, if you subtract the 1780s through 1820. What kind of pattern does the high to late Middle Ages show? My point is to ask which circumstances are the exception and which set the rule. Things may not be so bad, or at least so unusual, as the warnings suggest,

Franklin Evans agrees with Karth on the prospect of a crash, and I can see the evidence for that view. But volatility suggests that rather than crash we might see more a muffled thump as adaption and other circumstances compensate for various failures. I’m not being foolishly optimistic, but rather cautiously skeptical on the basis of a long view.
premodern hybrid says:

February 22, 2013 at 12:42 pm

Franklin Evans,
I agree with your read of the overall trend, as far as I understand it (and I’d welcome your comments if I do not). Basically over the course of the 20th century (and especially in the post WW2 period) we, Americans (but also the Western world in general) thought we were redefining normal upwards. But what really happened was a blip.

This is particularly clear in higher education, which seems to have been sacrificed on the altar of other social needs (medical care for the elderly, perhaps): we thought the post GI bill American public university with its affordable, decent quality education was a new birthright. But it was not; it now seems as if it was a historical accident, a blip, not a new normal at all.

Insofar as an adjustment of our mode of life involves actually dealing with reality (as opposed to living in a fantasy of consumerism) it is a good thing; but good things often involve a whole lot of ongoing suffering as people adjust to them.

For me? I’ve started thinking of rural land, an off-grid home, and other ways of handling the societal downsizing that seems to be under way.
Charles Cosimano says:

February 22, 2013 at 12:45 pm

The crash will be very simple. We will be energy independent. We will have more than enough food. The rest of the world will rot in its own wastes.

That is what is coming.
Adam says:

February 22, 2013 at 1:02 pm

I would be interested in seeing the demographic background, for the US particularly, that backs up the ageism theory. While the birth rate per 1000 certainly trends lower, the actual number of births in succeeding generations should be enough to provide the working age population needed to support the Boomers since the country’s population has grown consistently. And what part of the Federal spending increase constitutes monies spent due to the Great Recession? I wonder sometimes if we create our own political bogeymen purely out of whole cloth.
J says:

February 22, 2013 at 1:17 pm

I’m most curious to know what “a complete redefinition of the social contract” might mean.

In context, higher taxes and lower profits. The end of the era of easy profiteering and those growing/bloat populations which are easy to bamboozle, goad, and trap economically into buying large houses and oversized cars and other gunk they don’t need.
M_Young says:

February 22, 2013 at 1:37 pm

“Almost all media and academia have already agreed that immigration is the key.”

Maybe the media, but academia hasn’t.

See this abstract
–
Economic theory points out that immigration of even low-skilled immigrants may improve public finances in Western welfare states, and it is sometimes suggested that fiscal sustainability problems in Western countries caused by ageing populations could be solved by increasing immigration. We examine consequences of various immigration scenarios using the large-scale computable general equilibrium model Danish rational economic agents model describing the Danish economy. It turns out that increased immigration will generally worsen the Danish fiscal sustainability problem. Improved economic integration of immigrants and their descendants, however, may alleviate the problems of the public sector considerably. [my emphasis]
—
That is, as things stand, immigration is a net drain, with only a hope that somehow ‘integration’ can help the problem. But we know, and have known for a long time, immigration from “LDC’s” is bad for a receiving population.

See this pdf

—-
The immigration of a group involves transfers to and from the group via taxes, transfers and public consumption which result in net transfers to or from the rest of the population. This paper analyses the effects of immigration on the public sector redistribution in Denmark. This is carried out for four years—1991, 1995, 1996 and 1997—using data from the Danish Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Law model.
The study shows that the transfers to immigrants from non- western countries, i.e. immigrants from countries other than those with the most highly developed economies, are considerable. On the other hand, there is a net transfer from immigrants from western coun- tries. This pattern appears to have been stable during the 1990s. The study indicates the great importance of the poor employment situa- tion for the relatively large fiscal transfers to immigrants from non- western countries.
—
Don Quijote says:

February 22, 2013 at 1:39 pm

Almost all media and academia have already agreed that immigration is the key.

Considering that most countries (other than the Sub-Saharan ones) have a birth rate per woman that is barely above replacement rate, where do you expect this immigration to come from?

The Fertility rate; total (births per woman) in Mexico was last reported at 2.32 in 2010, according to a World Bank report published in 2012.

2.1 is replacement rate…
Thursday says:

February 22, 2013 at 1:40 pm

We are headed for a serious downgrade of the welfare state, across the West, no matter which political parties get elected. It is quite the irony that we may see the left charged with this task.

I wonder though if this means every more strident attacks on social conservatism, so as to distract the left wing base from the fact that left wing parties will be doing some pretty right wing things in the economic sphere.
Gerard says:

February 22, 2013 at 1:54 pm

Franklin Evans says:

I almost never agree with Karth, but in this one basic principle he has it right: a crash is coming. I amend that to a deserved rude-awakening crash is coming. I save my personal despair for the majority of my fellows whose heads are buried in the sand, their fingers are on their volume controls in the upwards direction, and they are increasingly too stupid to recognize when someone is blatantly lying to them.

What kind of scenario do you see playing out? And what can someone, who accepts the inevitability of this going down, do? I’m always looking for middle-end game analysis and advice.
Heather says:

February 22, 2013 at 2:02 pm

Thursday: I wonder though if this means every more strident attacks on social conservatism, so as to distract the left wing base from the fact that left wing parties will be doing some pretty right wing things in the economic sphere.

And military. Not that a large swath of the left-wing base would ever part with their privileges, no matter how much their elites became clearly right-wing. Distractions are more than welcome, in fact, they are a necessary element of the liberal way of life.
M_Young says:

February 22, 2013 at 2:08 pm

As late as the 1920s, something like 20% of the American population was involved in agriculture. Now it is more like 2% . And yet we have more food than ever — probably too much of it. How can 2% support us? Technology and a market to funnel the benefits of that technology to society at large.

While the analogy is imprecise, there is a similarity with the declining numbers of workers to non-workers (be they retirees or the unemployed). The analogy breaks down because there is no mechanism, as yet, for capturing the benefits of increased productivity and putting some of them into the retirement system. Quite the opposite, despite increased productivity and increased profits to capital, wages are stagnant, and so the payroll taxes that finance ‘pay as you go’ pension systems are stagnant. The answer is obvious, all income must be taxed at the payroll tax rate (12.4% now), in addition to regular income tax.

Salaries above the SocSec ‘threshold’ (now about $104,000). Income from interest, capital gains, and rents — all must count so the investor class, and the wealthiest salary and wage earners, are pulling along with the rest of us. This is, of course, against everything good and holy to a Grover Norquist Republican, but it needs to be done.
Pete S says:

February 22, 2013 at 2:29 pm

I bleieve that the shocks described in the article are world wide. Each one may not directly impact the entire planet, but the whole world is susceptible to shocks. That being the case, how will immigration help settle the ageing issue? All that immigration can do is move the problem around, even if it is a solution. Unless we are bringing people in from other planets…
PA15017 says:

February 22, 2013 at 2:37 pm

Thursday:

I wonder though if this means every more strident attacks on social conservatism, so as to distract the left wing base from the fact that left wing parties will be doing some pretty right wing things in the economic sphere.

I think that’s a really good, and frightening, point. And maybe that’s another reason not to trust people who tell you not to worry about coming infringements on religious freedom. When the Democrat bully pulpit needs scapegoats during hard economic times, why wouldn’t it try institutions that are: 1) rich, 2) tax-exempt, 3) gender-exclusive, 4) “bigoted”/divisive, and 5) associated with the old guard?
Beyng says:

February 22, 2013 at 2:44 pm

He’s probably right, in general, that this century will bring dramatic political, economic, and cultural upheavals.

But that would also work as a description of the previous century. Indeed, I would be surprised if the 21st tops the 20th in terms of violence and instability. I think we often forget that the alleged peace and prosperity we “all” enjoy have really been a pax Americana phenomenon whose fruits are restricted to a rather tiny portion of the globe.
EngineerScotty says:

February 22, 2013 at 3:48 pm

Nobody’s mentioned global warming yet, and the consequences it might have–either in wrecking the environment in ways quite adverse to humanity, or in imposing (whether we like it or not) major changes in the way humanity does business, in particular to the amount of stored carbon we oxidize for energy?
The Wet One says:

February 22, 2013 at 4:53 pm

I’ve grazed the article. At least there was the briefest mention of resource limits. That’s one of the keys to prognosticating properly on the future economy IMHO. The other one is the impact of humans on the environment which is mentioned as well. More than any other factors, these two will be determinative in what comes. In my view, demographics, and all the related issues (i.e. ageing) matter, but not nearly as much as resource limits and the energy crisis, and environmental impacts of human life.

Of course, what do I know about anything? As with all things, time shall tell.
Lord Karth says:

February 22, 2013 at 6:03 pm

Mr. Dreher quotes one M. Malleret as follows: “In the three most advanced economies – the US, Europe and Japan – resolving the issue of over-indebtedness through public and private deleveraging will take many years of painful structural reforms that will ultimately entail a complete redeﬁnition of the social contract.”

M. Malleret’s analysis is quite interesting, and reflects certain of my own observations on points. Thank you for posting it, Mr. Dreher; it was indeed “Karthbait”.

At the last, I think that there are two fundamental problems that all technologically advanced societies face as the 21st century proceeds: aging and real productivity. Thanks to advances in public health and gerontology, more people are living longer, and living to ages old enough to require serious spending on medical care and pensions.

At the same time, most of those societies–certainly those of the post-Western nations in Europe and North America–have accumulated significant levels of public debt, significant enough to permanently affect long-term economic growth. Most of this debt has not been accumulated for purposes of increasing productivity of real goods and services (as might have been the case had, say, the US or Europe made a serious commitment to grow and expand a Human presence in space), but on largely unearned benefits for the beneficiary classes (retirees and public-employee pensioners).

Three generations of retirees have, since 1933, managed to not only consume resources they themselves set aside, but those of both current working generations (Xers, Millennials) and future generations (post-Milennials). These unfunded liabilities (the “tax gap” postulated by Prof. L. Kotlikoff) will have to be made up in one of three ways: a) increased taxation; b) benefit cuts, and/or c) inflation or devaluing the debts so that they may be more easily paid off.

To make matters worse, the current voting cohorts in the said countries have been conditioned to expect not just benefits maintained, but ever-rising levels of benefits.

Altering the dependency ratio through immigration will not be possible; the current decline in birth rates is world-wide and not likely to be reversed soon. This is because, thanks to reliable contraception, it is possible for women to assume a male-like role. The question of “why can’t a woman be more like a man ?” was answered. In addition, rising levels of affluence and availability of entertainment have simply made it less attractive for women to perform the traditional roles of childbearer/mother.

The Meltdown will begin (in the USA at least) with a rising level of inflation, as governments attempt to reduce their debt levels to manageable levels while simultaneously appearing to preserve “promised” benefit levels to the politically more-active beneficiaries. (We are seeing the beginning of this now.) Historically high levels of taxation, either through formal taxation or through payor-incurred debt such as student loans, will catch working generations from two approaches. A trap of sorts comes into play as the younger members of the working generations will find it increasingly difficult to establish and maintain functional two-parent intact families, due to pre-existing debt burdens. A vicious cycle will come into being, with fewer and fewer children coming into the system to support the burgeoning Pensioner classes.

The inflation will either produce a default on obligations to the elderly, or outright economic disintegration as the division of labor collapses. The first will relieve central governments of the burden of their obligations, albeit at a horrible cost to the Pensioner classes. Attempting to maintain benefits will lead to the second—with a not-inconsiderable risk of civil war between the politically-favored classes (race/age/ethnicity/whatever) and the remaining productive classes.

The trick will be to manage the problem while maintaining civil order and avoiding outright regime collapse. Given the increasing emphasis on “group/classification rights” in our society and the increasing bias in our political system against productivity, I don’t think it very likely that regime collapse can be avoided. It may well be accompanied, in the worst case, by the collapse of the high-tech economic system that the regime relies on and exploits. Such a collapse would be a species-wide disaster, and very difficult to recover from.

Every era has been one of instability, turmoil and war. This “modern” age of ours is different in that: a) destructive technology is much more widespread; b) our population is dependent on a relatively-easily disrupted high technology base, and c) a large and increasing portion of said population does not have an ethic of hardihood, ability to bear hardship and/or delay gratification. It is in thesecircumstances that our difficulties, in no small part, lie.

Thank you, Mr. Dreher, for thinking of me in posting M. Malloret’s piece. And thanks to the rest of you for taking the time to read this (admittedly very long) piece. You are appreciated.

Your servant,

Lord Karth
JonF says:

February 22, 2013 at 7:52 pm

Gloom-and-doomers: we are not looking at collapse– well, not in any time frame meaningful to us right now, and with the usual small print about no nuclear wars, asteroid impacts etc.

What we are looking at is the evolution of a soft presidential dictatorship– one that will preserve certain ostensible freedoms (religion, speech, even gun rights), but in which the president will rule as an autocrat through institutions that mask much of the raw power. We are already well down that road, and as Congress becomes increasingly powerless due to partisan gridlock, small minds, big egos, etc, the president, and to a lesser extent the courts (appointed by the president) gradually assumes more power.
Travis says:

February 22, 2013 at 8:39 pm

JonF, what you speak of is, in my estimation, a real concern. I am hugely troubled by Obama’s policies on drone warfare, secret prisons, assassinations and the ever-growing “homeland security” apparatus. It is a disgrace that both parties seem content to acquiesce to this new reality.

The Republican Party doesn’t trust the EPA to regulate carbon emissions, but trusts the CIA to assassinate American citizens without trial. The Democratic Party doesn’t think states should be able to prohibit abortion, but thinks the feds should have surveillance drones everywhere.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

February 22, 2013 at 9:56 pm

Heather, are you opposed to doing some pretty right wing things with the economy?

We may have a basis for an alliance.
Lord Karth says:

February 23, 2013 at 1:08 am

JonF writes: “What we are looking at is the evolution of a soft presidential dictatorship– one that will preserve certain ostensible freedoms (religion, speech, even gun rights), but in which the president will rule as an autocrat through institutions that mask much of the raw power.”

To quote the immortal Edward W. Nimziki, “That’s not entirely….accurate.” The Chief Executive may rule as an autocrat, but only in those areas that he can or will control.” This control will be limited by the sheer size of the central government bureaucracy; it is simply impossible to anticipate all the ways in which a Presidential decree can be interpreted by the rank-and-file.

In addition, let us remember that a President has to select dozens, if not hundreds of nominally decision-making agency heads. Already the job is too big for one man, and it is even becoming too big for a bloated White House staff, and thus too susceptible to phenomena like “regulatory capture”.

Finally, we should recall that both the President and Congress have deliberately chosen not to control large parts of the central-government budget. As in “entitlements”. This is partially out of fear of popular reaction to anything perceivable as cuts (or even slowdowns in the rate of increase), but also partially out of the amenability to control on the part of the Beneficiary/Pensioner class to continued dependency on the State for subsistence. It’s very easy to turn out your supporters when so many of them rely on something you control for their livings and/or medical care.

The intermediate result of all this, I suspect, will be increasing sclerosis in the face of a rapidly-deteriorating fiscal and economic situation (we already see this in the recent controversies over the “fiscal cliff” and the “sequester”), with “politics” becoming little more than a series of personal faction-fights over who gets to assume a nominal control over a visibly sinking “ship”.

The long-term result, of course, is a Meltdown. When, in this case, the central government loses its ability to provide benefits, it will lose its legitimacy. What happens after that will be…..interesting. As in riots, sabotage, terrorism and endless political Kabuki theater. Truly this will provide “Hours and Hours of Solid Entertainment Value.”

And the Countdown…….continues.

Your servant,

Lord Karth
geronimo says:

February 23, 2013 at 7:08 am

JonF: what you describe is a Ceasar, the ‘president’ will rule like Augustus Ceasar, via accumulation of powers, while still being limited, in theory, by the representatives. In fact, both houses will be stuffed with Ceasar’s goons, rubberstamping everything. That trend is global in the western world: in Europe we have the EU technocracy, in Latin America, Chavism and Lulism are basically Ceasarism.

About collapses, black swams, etc.: the true risk is still nuclear war: if America goes down and collapses, like a Weimar Germany at best or a Mongolian Khanate at worst (as L. Karth belives) the nukes will be used to supress the rebels and to reassert american dominion over the world. Soon America will have first strike capabilities against Russia, as it has against China and EU. It will be this nuclear tyranny that will replace the ‘Dollar Tribute’: the current imperial tribute (America being able to export inflation to the ROTW)
elvisd says:

February 23, 2013 at 9:45 am

“In the three most advanced economies – the US, Europe and Japan – resolving the issue of over-indebtedness through public and private deleveraging will take many years of painful structural reforms that will ultimately entail a complete redeﬁnition of the social contract.”

What is different between Japan and the other two is that the latter have large, growing socio-ethno groups who do not subscribe to the original social contract in the first place. Indeed, the US is even more extreme than Europe in that it imports millions who are essentially TOLD to not take share in the contract, but to “take their share”. Nowhere is this more evident than the absurd pseudo-racial category call “Latino”. I’ll spare everyone the long exposition on this, as I and others have beaten it to death on Sailer’s posts.
The point that I’m making is that our government literally has written a new social contract, and codified it into every corner of its reach, far far beyond the reasonable anti-discrimination laws. Seriously, how many people take even a moment to ponder a country that literally invents racial categories (i.e. a Guatemalan Mayan whose people just got through with a race war against the Hispanic elite becomes a “Latino” here; an Argentinean of German descent can be a “Latino”, etc. and can receive all kinds of goodies for somehow getting thrown under a “disparate impact” umbrella).
Heather says:

February 23, 2013 at 12:43 pm

Siarlys Jenkins says: Heather, are you opposed to doing some pretty right wing things with the economy? We may have a basis for an alliance.
=============
Siarlys, the topic is not my forte. I have little to say except to shudder with so many truly horrible future developments on a global scale. The worse of the financial-military complex is profoundly destructive. How to reign them in? Now there’s a good puzzle.

As an aside, just the other day I learned that Vietnam has about 100 million people. 100 million people! (Yes, it was news to me – what I learned about geography has been forgotten long ago, I only hope that we still have basically the same continents I learned . I would have guessed half that population. One tiny little country, what, almost a third of the US, overflowing with critical problems. That’s a lot of the future.

I only feel I can make one comment here and it’s about retirement. This mentality that experienced, able people should be entitled to spend 20-25 years doing nothing because they have reached a certain age, as if they were entitled to be in a senior amusement park for two decades, it’s immoral. It is absolutely immoral. A lot of retired people do work or some work, and I consider volunteer work very *real* work.

But when we have a world falling apart with problems, that millions of people with this retired privilege should simply decide to live in the most egotistical way possible, I find it unacceptable. Along with healthcare issues, this almost infinite retirement period is a serious problem with ageism.
Lord Karth says:

February 23, 2013 at 2:15 pm

Geronimo writes: “if America goes down and collapses, like a Weimar Germany at best or a Mongolian Khanate at worst (as L. Karth belives) the nukes will be used to supress the rebels and to reassert american dominion over the world”

After the current regime collapses, a Khanate may be a relatively positive outcome. At least the Mongolian Khans were able to maintain some sort of civil order ! More likely we’ll get either a S.M. Stirling “Dies the Fire” scenario, or something along the lines of “Mad Max”.

The most likely outcome would be widespread small-group actions of terrorism and sabotage; if one or more of those groups brings WMD into the picture (VERY likely, IMO), the high-tech infrastructure, particularly with respect to mechanized farming and food distribution, could well collapse. If that happens, mass starvation and thirst takes place—and then we’ll be lucky beyond belief to get “The Road Warrior”.

And no, I don’t like the prospect any more than you do.

Your servant,

Lord Karth
Bobby says:

February 23, 2013 at 4:30 pm

The changing social contract will likelt result in a world with a greater insulation of elites. I live directly across the river from DC. Even though I have a car, I go outside of the Beltway only 2-3 times a year, excluding air travel and riding my bike along the Mt. Vernon Trail. This is the same for almost everyone I know. Winchester may as wel be in Nevada. And Roanoke may as well be in China.
Paul Emmons says:

February 23, 2013 at 4:46 pm

Lord Karth writes:

>most of those societies–certainly those of the post-Western nations in Europe and North America–have accumulated significant levels of public debt, significant enough to permanently affect long-term economic growth.

Public debt is dwarfed by private debt. Is there any difference between the two in their threat to long-term economic growth? China is often the creditor in either case.

> Most of this debt has not been accumulated for purposes of increasing productivity of real goods and services (as might have been the case had, say, the US or Europe made a serious commitment to grow and expand a Human presence in space)…

That would be a boondoggle if ever I saw one. What benefit can possibly justify the expense under anything like current technology? Let’s try a trivial project first: a network of high-speed rail in the U.S., such as first-world countries have.

Heather writes:

>But when we have a world falling apart with problems, that millions of people with this retired privilege should simply decide to live in the most egotistical way possible, I find it unacceptable.

I’d agree with you if we had full employment. But what we have is severe unemployment, with young and old alike unable to find work. If overpaid retirees are the problem, why don’t we have a shortage of twenty-somethings to work overtime taking care of their grandparents?
Siarlys Jenkins says:

February 23, 2013 at 5:16 pm

I only hope that we still have basically the same continents I learned

Although Pluto has been officially demoted from planet to planetoid, because some conclave decided it was important to Make A Decision About That, to my knowledge nobody has demoted any continent to some other status, not even Antarctica. As I recall, Australia’s status was never officially defined, i.e, island or continent, and it hasn’t been clarified either.

This mentality that experienced, able people should be entitled to spend 20-25 years doing nothing because they have reached a certain age, as if they were entitled to be in a senior amusement park for two decades, it’s immoral.

I’m not sure whether its immoral, but its infeasible. There is some period of life when people are no longer capable of doing the jobs that sustained their paychecks, and I have no argument with the idea that such people should have a comfortable retirement after decades of labor. Also, I have no problem with diverting increased percentages of actual revenues from plutocrats and oligarchs to the workers of the world.

But, we cannot retire earlier, live longer, and anticipate that the money will magically be there to fund the style we would like to become accustomed to. I hope to keep working until I’m 70, and find something useful to do after that, without relying on an employer to pay me. Since my parents probably won’t last until 90, I’m not counting on doing so either.
stef says:

February 23, 2013 at 7:38 pm

The later you push the retirement age, the more unemployment you create among young people.

You can’t have it both ways. A post-agrarian, post-industrialist society has only one way to go, and that’s down in the birth-rate department.

Yes, there will be a hump over the next fifty years, as we transit from agricultural-society level birth-rates to post-industrial ones. But if the population stabilizes at a level of half or even a quarter of what it is, the world will be quite able to handle it.

Long story short – forget about the endless growth model. It no longer works; it’s like fighting the last generation’s war.

Agrarianism is dead. We are all eating petroleum and natural gas now. And our birth-rates will go down accordingly. Why is this even seen as a problem?
Deb says:

February 23, 2013 at 8:37 pm

“This mentality that experienced, able people should be entitled to spend 20-25 years doing nothing because they have reached a certain age, as if they were entitled to be in a senior amusement park for two decades, it’s immoral.”

My husband may not be able to work in 5-10 years due to Parkinson’s Disease, despite the good medications available (at a significant cost). He is only 51. My co-worker’s husband is a restaurant manager. He has spent countless hours on his feet. My co-worker says that the long hours are taking their toll on him. He tried finding other positions outside restaurant work, but the prospective employers have turned him down because he only knows restaurant work and only has a high school diploma and he is in his 40s.

There are numerous other people working in physically demanding occupations. When they reach retirement age (if they reach retirement age), they may not be able to physically work anymore and they may not have the education to find a less-demanding occupation.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

February 23, 2013 at 10:17 pm

Having agreed that, in general, we can’t sustain 25 year retirements, I should acknowledge that, as others have poignantly reminded us, different occupations put different strains on people. Not only are some going to be physically incapable of work at an earlier age, but those who take a lot more wear and tear are likely not to live as long, or not to live as long in condition to enjoy any retirement. Therefore, some people MUST retire earlier, and some people should be enabled to do so. Coal miners need their social security sooner than stock brokers.
J says:

February 23, 2013 at 11:15 pm

This mentality that experienced, able people should be entitled to spend 20-25 years doing nothing because they have reached a certain age, as if they were entitled to be in a senior amusement park for two decades, it’s immoral.

Frankly, a lot of them don’t want to be there. Many feel they’ve been too long at the fair. But there’s a lot of social pressure not to leave.

I suspect that social pressure will drop substantially over the next generation or two, though never to zero.

We live in an age in which choosing to check out when the time feels definitely come is considered dramatic. Whereas going under after months of dismal pain and difficult decisions and operations and poor prognoses and lots of emotional exercise of relatives is considered unexceptional. Maybe it should be the other way around.
Heather says:

February 24, 2013 at 2:10 am

>But when we have a world falling apart with problems, that millions of people with this retired privilege should simply decide to live in the most egotistical way possible, I find it unacceptable.

Lord Karth said: I’d agree with you if we had full employment. But what we have is severe unemployment, with young and old alike unable to find work. If overpaid retirees are the problem, why don’t we have a shortage of twenty-somethings to work overtime taking care of their grandparents?

I think a lot of people didn’t understand the most important part of my comment.

My view is that if you don’t have to work and still can live as retired, you are in a position to do so-called volunteer work, consulting work, etc. You work, but you don’t get much or any pay for it. And, depending on the work, you create jobs actually. I wasn’t talking exclusively of employment or paid work.

My point is you contribute to the world and not just think of yourself 24/7 for 25 years. That’s the model that we have today that is promoted as good. It is not good at all – it’s doing nothing productive or that contributes to society for basically half or a third of their adult lives.

Deb said: There are numerous other people working in physically demanding occupations. When they reach retirement age (if they reach retirement age), they may not be able to physically work anymore and they may not have the education to find a less-demanding occupation.

And there are millions and millions who aren’t like that. That’s why I wrote “able.”

Moreover, if you can live without working, you can train yourself in so many ways. You have all the time in the world. And most people can get access to the Internet and to various forms of organized training.

But obviously watching television and playing cards all day is the only acceptable alternative for 25 years, if we are to believe the people who think they are entitled to thinking only of themselves. I live in my privileged bubble and that’s all I care about – the world can go to the haystack.

Take this example of a person who retires at 50 to do nothing, and dies at 85, they spent more time uselessly in front of the TV than actually working and doing something good. It’s ridiculous, but that’s what having just a little bit of privilege does to people.
JonF says:

February 24, 2013 at 6:56 am

You know, it’s not like there’s some terrible shortage of labor out there due to there being too many retirees. Even in Japan that’s not the case. If someday that does happen we will know it: wages will go up and the unemployment rate will be ridiculously low.
The “problem” really is self-correcting. Too few workers will mean the workers we have are better paid, so that on the one hand payroll tax revenues will be higher and on the other people will retire later (since they can make better money by continuing to work) or come out of retirement to work part-time as many IT professionals did during the late 90s. Yes, that a very high level view, obscuring a lot of individual exceptions. But until unemployment sinks below 5% and employers start griping about wage inflation it’s a little hard for me to believe there are too few workers.
Don Quijote says:

February 25, 2013 at 7:33 am

Here is some good news for you gloom-and-doomers:

Can computers save health care? IU research shows lower costs, better outcomes

Using an artificial intelligence framework combining Markov Decision Processes and Dynamic Decision Networks, IU School of Informatics and Computing researchers Casey Bennett and Kris Hauser show how simulation modeling that understands and predicts the outcomes of treatment could reduce health care costs by over 50 percent while also improving patient outcomes by nearly 50 percent.
…
Using 500 randomly selected patients from that group for simulations, the two compared actual doctor performance and patient outcomes against sequential decision-making models, all using real patient data. They found great disparity in the cost per unit of outcome change when the artificial intelligence model’s cost of $189 was compared to the treatment-as-usual cost of $497.

“This was at the same time that the AI approach obtained a 30 to 35 percent increase in patient outcomes,” Bennett said. “And we determined that tweaking certain model parameters could enhance the outcome advantage to about 50 percent more improvement at about half the cost.”

There ‘s your future: AI systems that will do the job of a doctor better than the doctor could after 8 years of advanced schooling and years of residency and practice…

Germans developing weed control using laser armed drones.

German scientists are seriously developing a laser based system of weed control in order to be more “environmentally friendly” than using chemical poisons. What could go wrong ? Laser armed Robots and drones for farming and weed control and they will have artificial intelligence algorithms and high resolution cameras for recognizing plants. They would have the goal of having this on a large scale for better “organic farming”. The laser system is currently being tested in a greenhouse.

Drones or small robotic planes would fly over the fields. These could also fight weeds near protected waters, where herbicides are not allowed to be used. According to researcher Christian Marx, the German railway service has expressed interest in the project as well. “30 percent of the railway tracks are in water protection areas where you can’t use herbicides anyway.”

Transportation Update: The Age of Self-Driving Vehicles is Upon Us

Currently Ford has developed a modified WiFi and GPS system that broadcasts a signal 10 times per second showing a vehicle’s position and speed in relation to other vehicles around it. If a collision is imminent the system sets off an alarm. Another technology, DSRC, short for dedicated short range communication, can be used to manage traffic flow through intersections so that all vehicles on approach can cross without crashing into each other.
…
Scania, the Swedish truck manufacturer, has been developing a wireless network system for inter-vehicle communication to allow trucks to convoy with a lead truck closely followed by as many as six or seven others. The system uses GPS to do routing, obtains real-time information on road conditions ahead, communicates with traffic lights to minimize braking, comes with adaptive cruise control, and through platooning reduces fuel consumption for those trucks following the leader. The vehicles maintain a 25 meter (about 82 feet) distance between them but the goal is to get them even closer to decrease drag and lower fuel consumption by as much as 20%.
…
Lockheed Martin has been developing a similar system for the American Army. Called CAST, short for Convoy Active Safety Technology, the system attaches to a truck to enable it to drive itself to a programmed destination while keeping in formation with other convoy partners. The system is designed to allow any vehicle in the convoy to assume the lead position should that vehicle be disabled. CAST has more than 12,000 hours of unmanned road testing driving distances of 56 kilometers (35 miles) during daylight and 24 kilometers (15 miles) at night.

Say bye bye to three or four million jobs driving trucks, buses, taxis, etc…

That’s the future, it’s going to displace a lot of people and make their skills redundant, how we deal with that as a society will tell us who we are…

Having watched US politics for the last forty years, it’s not going to be pretty…