The Next 10 Years: A Deep Sense of Foreboding

[pbrower2a]

(12-04-2016, 10:51 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(12-02-2016, 06:43 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Here's an experiment everyone can do at home. Google "the next ten years."

The most interesting outcome of the experiment is what the search does not return. There are very few pessimistic reports or other writings when this search is done. Instead, there will be the mother of all AI booms. robots will diagnose your illnesses (ah, what a boon for medical care cost cutting), cancer will be cured, everyone will join Thomas L. Friedman's "plugged in world" and become a member of "the electronic herd," all the cars, small trucks, SUVs and semis will self drive making the roads safer than the rails or even safer than flying, there will be a zillion new millionaires made from the private space industry, and so on. Nary a prognostication of disaster.

You know what they say when the herd are all "jumping into the market" so to speak. In this case, the market is optimism and linear thinking. Meanwhile, all the blind pilots, flying through the clouds of harsh reality, are en route to the inevitable sudden mid air collision with destiny.

I thoroughly agree. 

I think there is an optimistic scenario, but it 1) has nothing to do with all these silly gismos and 2) depends on us waking up from our current political nightmare, which is anything but certain at this point.

Still, from the cosmic perspective, I'll probably stick to my prediction of a huge Democratic congressional victory in 2022 and a Democratic president elected in 2024-- with very heavy consequences; both for reform, revolution and bloody resistance to same, with the outcome decided pretty quickly by 2028. Secessions are also quite possible in these years; the cyclic return of the Civil War.

And internationally, the irresponsibility of a Trump administration will only lead to war, but probably down the road a few years, and with American involvement coming down in those same 4 years after 2024. It will be quite a climax to this 4T.

That's what it looks like to me now, just reading the signs; but it depends on how things go, of course.

If Middle America continues on its downward spiral into irretrievable prejudice and ignorance, then it has the power to sink America permanently into banana republic status. This means that the scenario Brower mentions of attack on the USA by foreign powers against a fascistic America on the loose worldwide, is quite likely. It will be the exact reverse of Trump's promise, and perhaps the end of the United States of America.

I know Mr. X that you also predict nuclear holocaust, but I will not go that far.

America may be going stupid, but the rest of the world may not be.

There is absolutely no technological miracle that will get America out of its political and economic mess. We got the Internet, and it may have done more to destroy jobs than create them. Cutting costs can make things more affordable, but if people can't buy what remains available at lower prices, the cost-savings are moot. The Internet may have made information more easily accessible, but it has also made disinformation more available. Now consider 3D printing which will make it possible to make almost any small object from an automobile part to a fishing lure. This could kill much of the retail business and small-scale manufacturing... and the jobs.

One man's cost is another man's living. One man's profit may go far beyond a living. The small businessman's profit was his living. So what do we get? An economic order that creates unbelievable wealth for a few yet relegates the masses to the living standards of either early capitalism or the agrarian age? Anyone  with an appreciable mind knows of the ideology that flourished before the consumer-driven economy of modern capitalism: Marxism.

Back to the Internet. It is a wonderful way in which to disseminate knowledge and give people outside of academia the means of sharing in the delights of the intellectual life. It is also a tool of spreading disinformation. People found their way to the Infernal State through the Internet. The Trump victory and what looks like the consolidation of a single-Party system in America would have been impossible without the capacity of the Internet to pass right-wing memes with no filter of criticism. Even something so horrid as Holocaust denial can flourish on the Web. People who recognize Donald Trump as a vicious and untrustworthy demagogue  had to deal with the perceived menace on a more primitive one-to-one method. We lost.

I expect living standards to crater in America. I expect the Trump Administration and its Congressional stooges (already controlled by corporate lobbyists for two years) to use the power of the government to enrich economic elites at the expense of everyone else. Any big infrastructure projects will be full of graft and could well be financed in part by practically giving away what is desirable in the private sector to monopolistic profiteers.

The gross incompetence and corruption of the Trump administration will not bring it down. A bungled war or an economic collapse will not have the vote of no confidence as a means of forcing a new election.  Back in 1787 Americans rejected a parliament because of their experiences with the British parliament of the time. The Canadians chose to imitate the British parliament because it by then worked well after some significant reforms (like weeding out the 'rotten boroughs'.

Donald Trump thinks like more like the despotic kings who unleashed war as a response to a personal slight than like a constitutional-era politician. I can see great dangers in such. So have a government change that the President dislikes, and out Fuhrer might declare a war in a rage. The elites will see only the profits of war production; the common man will be drafted to wage war and come back in body bags.

At the end of this Crisis we will need -- no matter what the final military and economic situation -- a major restructuring of the political system. We may need a new Constitution to shore up a democratic system that had seems that ruthless people have driven heavy equipment through. We will need to make great changes in the educational system so that it gives people the civil courage to reject bigotry and that it teaches people the habit of seeking out unvarnished truth. It is worth remembering that the well-educated people of identifiable minorities in America voted strongly against Donald Trump.*

To put things into perspective, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". Any assault on conventional wisdom must have solid evidence contradicting what the old paradigms were. Wise people have criteria for deciding that new propositions of reality are valid or are cranky nonsense. Evolution and relativity violated conventional wisdom in their day, and now only cranks and fools reject evolution and relativity. Darwin and Einstein could bring Humanity only so far in their understanding of the universe; further advances are sophisticated refinements in knowledge. 

We will need to shore up education. "Back to the liberal arts in undergraduate education" implies that the potential leaders need some expansion in more things than intellectual prowess -- like finding objects of loyalty other than consumerism, pop culture, sex, bureaucratic power, and connections to the Great and Powerful. We need to ensure at least another year or two of formal education as the norm, part of that education including economics. psychology, and philosophy. That's part of the trend back toward liberal education. We need to establish a populace less gullible and more rational. Were there easy solutions to tough problems, then those solutions would have long been in place. People need to be able to sort truth from attractive falsehoods.

* I have a conjecture on why this was so. Confidence artists as a rule work best upon people of similar culture. There usually is some initial distrust between people with differences, but most of us can judge how trustworthy people with an obvious difference, like ethnicity or religion, can start deciding that someone is basically honest and reliable. All that one needs do is a little conversation. Honest people are consistent in what they say; dishonest people start saying things that contradict.

 Confidence artists are able to exploit shared similarities of interest and life as a way of breaking the ice. It's telling that one of the biggest SEC offices for dealing with securities fraud is in Salt Lake City... because the con artists there are largely Mormons who can put their intended victims at ease by talking about the shared culture of Mormonism (creating an illusion of credibility) before conning someone into a pump-and-dump fraud. Bernie Madoff's victim list is largely Jewish. Prosperity-cult churches divide heavily on lines of ethnicity. Donald Trump could not pull his con on well-educated people unless they were white and nominally Christian, but could really pull the con on under-educated white people who admire Big Business but know little about Big Business, find glitz impressive instead of empty, and like being told that they too can be like kings. Poor blacks and Hispanics could never fall for such stuff.

Donald Trump told people what they wanted to hear, and that gave him adequate credibility to people unwilling to check the validity of his statements. People not of his culture would never let him get away with it.