New Research Suggests 1972 MIT Study On Future Societal Collapse Is On Schedule

[hanselthecaretaker]

“Given the unappealing prospect of collapse, I was curious to see which scenarios were aligning most closely with empirical data today. After all, the book that featured this world model was a bestseller in the 70s, and by now we’d have several decades of empirical data which would make a comparison meaningful. But to my surprise I could not find recent attempts for this. So I decided to do it myself.”

MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. New Research Shows We’re on Schedule.

A 1972 MIT study predicted that rapid economic growth would lead to societal collapse in the mid 21st century. A new paper shows we’re unfortunately right on schedule.

www.vice.com

Normally I don’t put much stock into Vice articles as they are often cringey, but these kinds of independently conducted research projects add some weight to things. Wonder how we’ll choose to proceed from here.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Well, I figure the conservatives will ignore it, the liberals with waste huge amounts of time trying to get the conservatives to care, and everybody else will muddle through best they can

 

[Agema]

Normally I don’t put much stock into Vice articles as they are often cringey, but these kinds of independently conducted research projects add some weight to things. Wonder how we’ll choose to proceed from here.

I would be extremely cautious about this. In anything of this sort, there will be multiple theories or models all of which will have supporters and studies in defence of. Thus whilst certainly true that additional independent backing strengthens the case, the likelihood of that case occurring also needs to be placed against the likelihood of everything else too: which means that it might still be a very small likelihood.

* * *

Years ago, in some academic meeting, I came across this hypothesis that the economic growth we have got used to might end. The basic idea is that throughout most of history, economic growth was at best marginal on an annual basis: well under 1%. This started to tick up with better communication (e.g. printing press) but was still very modest. And then the industrial revolution, which enabled massive economic growth. Industrialisation, however, has gradually petered out as a major source of growth in the 20th century. The idea was that computers, internet, would lead to a second revolution spurring rapid growth, which we are supposed to be in the middle of. The problem is that this economic growth seems to be incredibly rubbish compared to that facilitated by the industrial revolution, and some say is already petering out: we've already had the best of it.

This then goes back to the idea that basic growth is slow. Without a massive game-changing technology to drive growth, it's going to be very hard to increase productivity and so drive growth. Where our parents (grandparents, if you're substantially younger than I) easily saw 3-5% growth, we see 2-3%, and there's a good chance our children will be back down much closer to 1%. See the attached graph for the USA - although it applies all across the developed world.

And maybe that ~1% is what it normally is: the 200 years since 1800 are just a freakish blip in the history of economic development driven by one (and a half) very specific event, which cannot be sustained or readily replicated. To us it seems like normal, because it's longer than our lives and what we grew up with. But it's an aberration in the bigger picture.

But if we have a society and economy that fundamentally works on the expectation of growth, and that growth cannot be generated, we are most definitely going to hit a massive problem. Firstly that the economy itself will struggle to function: national debts start becoming extremely hard to pay off, pension schemes have to be downgraded to remain solvent, etc. But also that the population need to come to terms that growth isn't there any more. When Trump promised 4%+ growth with his tax cuts, he was promising baby boomers the postwar golden age that they remembered. But the economy just cannot deliver that. And if you have a lot of people expecting wealth which will never come, you have a recipe for a very unhappy populace. If they are additionally burdened by the mis-steps of their forebears who assumed growth higher than could be achieved and left the next generation in the stew, it will be even worse.

But, as above, this low (1%) growth future is just a hypothesis. We'll have to wait and see.

 

[Hawki]

Snip.

Isn't there an argument to be made about slowing growth though? Like, it might not be your field, but chances are you've heard of the idea of degrowth, decoupling/green growth, and steady state economies? Even if MEDCs are operating under growth of 1%, the level of resource use is arguably already at unsustainable levels.

I mean, granted, my 'field' such as it is was ecological, not economical, but I really don't get the need for growth per se. Maybe the arguments of degrowthers are pipe dreams, but clearly we can generate good life outcomes with lower resource use (e.g. compare the US to Europe, even if the latter is still unsustainable).

 

[stroopwafel]

But if we have a society and economy that fundamentally works on the expectation of growth, and that growth cannot be generated, we are most definitely going to hit a massive problem. Firstly that the economy itself will struggle to function: national debts start becoming extremely hard to pay off, pension schemes have to be downgraded to remain solvent, etc. But also that the population need to come to terms that growth isn't there any more. When Trump promised 4%+ growth with his tax cuts, he was promising baby boomers the postwar golden age that they remembered. But the economy just cannot deliver that. And if you have a lot of people expecting wealth which will never come, you have a recipe for a very unhappy populace. If they are additionally burdened by the mis-steps of their forebears who assumed growth higher than could be achieved and left the next generation in the stew, it will be even worse.

Yeah, indeed. Another contributing factor is that states have taken on astronomical amounts of debt with the expectation that this can be compensated with future economic growth. But how with an aging population and an earth that has been picked clean? Already there are shortages of everything from housing to computer chips to raw materials. There is so much money already searching for goods and services that aren't there. The central banks always maintained a limit of 2% inflation but they don't even care about that anymore. I guess there is this assumption that as long as we can keep supply going with infinite credit there won't be a problem but eventually credit will become more expensive as the government money supply dries up. What happens then? One company after the other will fall over and speculation bubbles will burst and prices will rise. People will demand higher wages to compensate leading to wage price spiral and massive inflation.

Truly we are living on borrowed time here.

 

[tstorm823]

“If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure 9 will go in the ditch and you have only one to battle with.”

― Calvin Coolidge

Not much sense panicking over everything that might go wrong.

 

[Agema]

Isn't there an argument to be made about slowing growth though? Like, it might not be your field, but chances are you've heard of the idea of degrowth, decoupling/green growth, and steady state economies? Even if MEDCs are operating under growth of 1%, the level of resource use is arguably already at unsustainable levels.

I'm as aware of these as anyone who pays good attention to current affairs. Which is to say, I have some superficial knowledge of them.

I don't think they are going to happen without a paradigm shift. I would defend this by reaching back to history. The great economist John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s believed that the massive expansion in productivity and personal wealth would allow us to lead vastly shorter working lives (like, a 16-hour working week) and free to enjoy leisure and personal development and satisfaction instead. So how did that work out?

Well, to be fair, average working hours have decreased somewhat, but nothing like what he dreamt of. I would put that down to maybe three main factors:
1) International competition and realipolitik. All countries want to stay ahead of the others. A country that decides to let its citizens enjoy leisure ahead of work would quickly become weaker and vulernable in the shark pool of nationalism and global politics.
2) Capitalists. Imagine you're a businessman who gets a thrill for making shitloads of money, which contributes to your ego, influence, power. You take a chunk of what the peons produce. Are you going to accept the proles doing less, so making you less? I don't think so. And you've got a lot money to convince people to your view.
3) Individuals. Individuals too measure themselves against each other or want more, they want that bigger house and that bigger car and that better mobile phone, so they need to earn more, and in cases of scarcity more than the next guy. They might have much more modest ambitions than the capitalist in (2), but there are a lot of them.

And in brief, all those factors 1, 2 & 3 still exist as much now as ever. If the USA is in a global ideological and power conflict with China, can either take their foot off the pedal? Quick answer, no. People want their cars, their four cars per household. Businessmen as are driven by amassing wealth as ever even as they choke their countrymen on fumes and drown their houses under rising seas, just like they used to pack seven-year-old kids into factories to lose limbs to whirling machinery.

Like every other animal on the planet, I think more likely ultimately we will expand to critical failure of sustainability and have to endure the resultant crash. Maybe we'll manage to get it together and hold a plateau - the climate stuff has made me so pessimistic on this score. I think our sense of individualism is potentially a major problem here, because the cats will not suffer being herded. Had we more compassionate, communitarian and even possibly authoritarian societies as dominant paradigms we might have a better chance at enforcing a course correction.

 

[Agema]

Yeah, indeed. Another contributing factor is that states have taken on astronomical amounts of debt with the expectation that this can be compensated with future economic growth. But how with an aging population and an earth that has been picked clean? Already there are shortages of everything from housing to computer chips to raw materials. There is so much money already searching for goods and services that aren't there. The central banks always maintained a limit of 2% inflation but they don't even care about that anymore. I guess there is this assumption that as long as we can keep supply going with infinite credit there won't be a problem but eventually credit will become more expensive as the government money supply dries up. What happens then? One company after the other will fall over and speculation bubbles will burst and prices will rise. People will demand higher wages to compensate leading to wage price spiral and massive inflation.

Truly we are living on borrowed time here.

Global debt is reckoned at nearly $300 trillion. To put this in perspective, the global economy is about $90 trillion, and the total asset value of the world is estimated at $360 trillion.

This is not good, but maybe not that bad either. If we imagine that a traditional 25-year mortgage in the UK was accessible to someone at three or four times the value of their annual earnings, and the vast majority of millions of British households got through okay, then global debt is in that sense pretty manageable. Although, of course, with caveats about where that debt is distributed. As we found out in 2008, it only takes a major failure in a tiny, single digit percentage of that total global debt to bring the two largest economic blocks, around half the global economy, to utter chaos.

 

[Aberdine Bumbledorf]

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

Like every other animal on the planet, I think more likely ultimately we will expand to critical failure of sustainability and have to endure the resultant crash. Maybe we'll manage to get it together and hold a plateau - the climate stuff has made me so pessimistic on this score.

You're definitely not alone on that front.

 

[Gordon_4]

“If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure 9 will go in the ditch and you have only one to battle with.”

― Calvin Coolidge

Not much sense panicking over everything that might go wrong.

Either that or the nine are waiting in the ditch to jump up and ambush you while you’re dealing with the one visible problem.

Calvin might be right on a micro level, but at the macro level that kind of thinking is myopic and dangerous.

 

[Seanchaidh]

“If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure 9 will go in the ditch and you have only one to battle with.”

― Calvin Coolidge

Not much sense panicking over everything that might go wrong.

Calvin Coolidge was the president from 1923 to 1929. Successors Hoover and FDR famously had only one real problem to deal with.

 

[tstorm823]

Calvin Coolidge was the president from 1923 to 1929. Successors Hoover and FDR famously had only one real problem to deal with.

Hoover's one problem to deal with was Woodrow Wilson's Federal Reserve doing entirely backwards monetary policy.

FDR had a lot more that one problem to deal with, like the Nazis who rose to power from the international failures of Woodrow Wilson, and who were inspired by American racists like Woodrow Wilson.

 

[Agema]

Hoover's one problem to deal with was Woodrow Wilson's Federal Reserve doing entirely backwards monetary policy.

FDR had a lot more that one problem to deal with, like the Nazis who rose to power from the international failures of Woodrow Wilson, and who were inspired by American racists like Woodrow Wilson.

Only in Tstormworld, where there isn't a single Republican failure that isn't actually a mistake by the Democrats.

 

[tstorm823]

Only in Tstormworld, where there isn't a single Republican failure that isn't actually a mistake by the Democrats.

That's not true. Hoover did a real crappy job dealing with the one problem left him by Wilson, and I'm not going to defend Hoover for that. Blaming Coolidge is just what the super big-brain lefties do to try and hurt the reputation of a genuinely good Republican President.

 

[Agema]

That's not true. Hoover did a real crappy job dealing with the one problem left him by Wilson, and I'm not going to defend Hoover for that. Blaming Coolidge is just what the super big-brain lefties do to try and hurt the reputation of a genuinely good Republican President.

At base, Coolidge's performance is that of placeholder: someone who basically let everything tick over mostly on its own.

Per se, that's fine and can be what a good president does. But when things happen like the wheels come off the economy almost the minute they're out office or that lingering problems are not dealt with, it demands we start asking some hard questions about whether they weren't a little bit too hands off.

 

[MrCalavera]

“If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure 9 will go in the ditch and you have only one to battle with.”

― Calvin Coolidge

Not much sense panicking over everything that might go wrong.

I'm not gonna judge Coolidge on this single quote alone, but it does make him sound like a naïve dumbass.

 

[Agema]

I'm not gonna judge Coolidge on this single quote aline, but it does make him sound like a naïve dumbass.

I can just imagine the captain of the Titanic now:

"Sir, ten icebergs ahead!"
"Don't worry lad, nine of them will miss"

 

[tstorm823]

I can just imagine the captain of the Titanic now:

"Sir, ten icebergs ahead!"
"Don't worry lad, nine of them will miss"

I mean, the issue with the Titanic was that they didn't see the iceberg, and they famously caused more damage by trying to miss at the last second... not the best analogy for your point.

 

[Kwak]

I mean, the issue with the Titanic was that they didn't see the iceberg, and they famously caused more damage by trying to miss at the last second... not the best analogy for your point.

It's a ship famously sunk by an iceberg - the analogy works fine.

 

[Agema]

I mean, the issue with the Titanic was that they didn't see the iceberg, and they famously caused more damage by trying to miss at the last second... not the best analogy for your point.

I believe that's what called overthinking something.