This situation has been brewing for years, and there is even an arguement that it was mainly because of the Clinton administration. Saying that happened out of the blue is rediculous.
I agree.
The challenges of a planet with of gravity and vast size are far different from the challenges of a ship in space, even one large enough for a generational crew. We barely have any technology capable of fabrication of any structure in space, much less one of the size needed for a generational ship.
The technology we do have is very pathetic: Everything is created on Earth, and has to be put together as modules in space. In addition, it's insanely expensive, with no price drops in sight. Only governments can afford to put people in space, with private industry barely being able to reach low Earth orbit. I'll count myself lucky if we see another moon landing or trip to Mars in my lifetime.
. . . and if we have to deal with any environmental diasasters, that's probably gonna push going into space further away, as we will be focused on our own planet rather than researching space construction. Sure, knowing how to help us live may help us in one respect, but it is hardly the same as overcoming all of the challenges we'd face in constructing such a vessel.
Agreed. This isn't something that happened at somebody's whim or want. Nobody got up and decided they'd make our economic system collapse. No, it's been brewing for a long time, and it's more the result of stupidity and overconfidence rather than any sort of plan.
Clinton definitely made it massively worse by forcing Fannie and Freddie to buy bad loans to push his minority housing agenda, but we'd still be running into it without his help. It would be a lot smaller though, maybe half?
Btw, if we do collapse, the rest of the world will follow us with twice the bang for their buck. If the US cuts their consumption of oil in half for instance, the oil states will be burning the shit off on the ocean to try and get the price back up above five bucks a barrel. Russia would collapse over night, they'd probably end up in another revolution since a good number of them are already pissed at the current leadership for anti democratic activities. We also supply a rather significant portion of the worlds food, we produce over twice as much food per population as China does for instance. The other major exports disappearing wont bother people too much, but not being able to import here will collapse what remains of South America, Mexico, the Asians that haven't starved, Europe is already going down the toilet faster than we are.
I have no fear of us losing our super power status due to this economic hiccup, worst case scenario, India and Pakistan have a nuclear war when food gets tight and the radicals take over Islamabad, Russia goes back to being a democracy without an economy, the Arabs starve and force Isreal to kill a hell of a lot more of them than the first time around, the Africans starve and resume killing each other in ernest, a lot of Chinese starve and get their population down to a reasonable level, some south Americans starve because they're too lazy, and things pick back up with a billion people less in the world a decade later.
The current economic meltdown is Washington and Wall Streets fault, Bush, Clinton, Republicans, Democrats... they were ALL complicit in building up the double F bubble. Banks saw a huge opportunity to make tons of cash in selling bad mortgages and noone in either place devoted a single brain cell to the possible situation of housing prices going down and thus the whole scheme collapsing. So now here we are bailing out a bunch of greedy schmucks who bet the farm on the rool of a dice that came up snake eyes...
As for the US losing superpower status over this? Not a chance... The contenders are... the Eurozone, which isn't and will never be a unified country becasue everyone realizes if that happens Europe becomes Greater Belgium and aside from rockin waffles the Belgians are boring. Second we have China, they might be scary aside from the fact that 90% of the wealth is held by 1% of the population and China has a horrible population curve, they are going to grow old before they grow wealthy; or they might all die from the sheer amount of pollution they are putting out. India I think has the best chance of supplanting us but they are a long ways away... Brazil... just not seeing it... they might become the big(ger) guys on the block in South America but world ambitions... not seeing it... Russia is a powerful nation but honestly with the enormous negative growth rate and the fact that Russians don't seem inclined to have kids I think they will start fading bigtime in the next 100 years. Nothings gonna happen in Africa. Japan doesn't seem inclined to go for world politics... And noone else has near the resources or growth rate to challenge us
Hmm, you are not implying only communist societies can come up with an efford such as this because capitalistic sociesties simply lack the potential to do so, are you? That is an interesting point.
After all much of our current space technology was developed during the cold war, with Russia having a head start.
The US only caught interest into a space programm after the Sputnik shock, desperately trying to prove they are indeed capable of the same. Furter it was to showcase missile range power because any power picking up a programm reaching the moon can surely build ICBMs.
"We are a superpower", very much like China is doing at the moment.
Interestingly the US won the race, proving very well capitalist societies CAN do it. The problem is the motivation. Its a shame decent process can only be seen during times of conflict.
Capitalist society thrives on efficency. You use resources to gain more resources and so on. Actually, its a pretty self-run system and decision making has slipped a bit from our grasp. If a situation arises where long therm damage will result with a big payoff, that situation WILL be exploited. If a big player decides against it he will put himself on a disadvantage, and the next will take up the opportunity. The system is seriously flawed in a way it puts a lot of power in the hands of people wich are the least to trust this decision making with. In fact much of our decision making process is computer run, analyzing opportunities and directing the course of action. Are humans in charge at all? Or is it some kind of mechanical process?
So the real issue is that most people simply do not take the efford seriously. They are absolutely capable of an efford but only use it for showcasing missile power or mass manipulation purposes - or a morale factor, if you prefer that expression. Something with short time revenues.
People in general seem not to be interested into the future. Thats odd. I personally do not belive a race that deprived of survival instinct has any chance of a continued existance.
Still as the catastropical evidences of their failiure is slowly piling up there is undeniably some learning effect going on. I wonder if people will one day make the leap of awareness to realize that the people they currently curse for being responsible for the desasters of our time had exactly the same attitude they feature currently, driving furter future generations into deeper problems. Relizing that there is really not difference between "them" and "us", and a change of attitude is neccesary.
We need quite a bit more idealistic values in our current society models. The sad fact is that we currently abandon them. Of course we pay in blood for it at some point.
Case in point "this is of no concern to us" is a critical faliure wich the evolutionary process is sorting out currently. Either we let it go or we will be sorted out. There is not only an evolution of body, also there is an evolution of the mind.
Will humanity be able to make the leap?
I'm sorry, how in the world did I imply anything about comminusm, capitalism or any other economic system?
This has nothing to do with economic systems and everything to do with how fast we can move resources into space. We simply can't do it very fast at the moment, period.
Our ability to think rather than merely do things by "survival instinct" is what makes us far more likely to survive than any animal on the face of the earth. Instinct can only go so far, and does a very poor job at handling new, unfamiliar situations. We do not need a survival instinct; we need a survival intellect.
The current issues do not require drastic measures such as moving to space. A couple degrees of temperature changes may mean we move further north, but do not mean we need to evacuate the planet. We have survived far greater challenges than this in the past.
The issues that will need such drastic measures such as evacuation into space won't happen for millions of years, so we have plenty of time to build up the technologies required. At the current time, we simply do not have the technology, even if we wanted to.
The point was "its insanely expensive", wich means under capitalisitc society systems it has a not a very good chance to be ever considered because society is geared twoards "making economic decisions", and it leads to a certain trend, leaving only those people in charge. Economic decisions are NOT always the right decision. As i already outlined the US space program came only into existance because of the Russian space program. For flexing muscles. Not really taken seriously as scientific efford. It was more a morale issue. Clearly important, but after the goal was achived the entire development cheased more or less (manned spaceflight). They did NOT continue to explore neighbouring planets, even if the technology is absolutely at the level. The Russian program was started without outside motivation. They developed this on their own. Clearly it was used during the cold war for espionage and flexing muscles also, but it was not intended to do that in the first place. The cold war applications (Sputnik) were merely a byproduct of that efford. Of course a not unwelcome byproduct. A very un-economic developement and at the very beginning a purely scientific efford. What happened to the planned manned Mars mission of the US? Without a reason there is no progress here.
I agree that this were never your words, i just made an interpretation and draw the apropriate conclusions, going a step further. I am sorry if this upset you.
The ability to think is no replacement for survival instinct. Both have to go hand in hand. If one disregards the survival of the entire race as "unimportant because its not going to happen soon" i spot a certain lack in survival instinct. Also the ability "to think" saves us not from foolish decisions if a certain degree of financial profit is involved (and honestly, when exploiting resources where isn't it?), so that leads to a kind of "intelligence override function" and that is hardly adding to our ability to think. Quite the contrary, it adds to a situation where all technology of a thinking race gets recklessly employed for personal gain. So case in point, forgive me for saying so, on a global level as a whole humanity is not capable of "survival intellect" in my opinion. Because they do not participate in those decisions. They rather employ a mathematical approach for investment/gain, and thats a very poor basis for troughly thought decisions. Every bacteria colony acts like that. We completely abandoned it. We don't HAVE to act like that but we DO.
Colonizing new worlds and creating new habitats is a long therm process and needs long therm planing and efford. The current issue of our sun having a limited amount of fuel requires absolutely an exodus from the solar system (and to be honest you can not evacuate an entire planet). Also it may be a big surprise we already have most of the required technology. The main problem of creating a long time stable encapsuled enviroment is not as challenging as as pincering holes into space-time and quite possible. Fully aware of that its rather coldblooded to ignore its necessity until those times come where we are threatened in extinction, instead of accepting the callenge of creating new colonies (wich every non-sentint lifeform would do without a second of delay) making humanity less susceptable to planetary desasters (wich we set already into motion). Humanity is not going forth and prospering, its sitting there and waiting for extinction. This is a very illogical course of action.
I am not suggesting that a capitalistic society is the wrong way to do it. However i am insisting that more has to be included into long term planning than considering only material wealth as being the one important factor. The current "issues" do not require abandoning the planet because its a soft slap of the universe giving us a hint to the right direction. Ignoring it will result in more problems till they become fatal at one point. Its up to humanity as a whole to realize it - or clear the stage for the next efford of the universe.
We do not really have a choice here.
Eventually every "Empire" falls. The Roman Empire has endured for almost 1 000 years but it self destructed at the end. It let place to other nations and its heritage is still alive in western countries today. Courts, Lawyers, Roman right, Senate, Professional army, Roads are just few to name them.
However we are in 21st century today, the age of communication and it is quite unlikely that we will see collapsing of great countries such as the USA or China or even Russia. What risks to happen to the USA is the lost of influence over other smaller countries. The world has seen the USA on its knees and wounded on the Septemeber 11th and it is all they needed to see. The terroists have achieved their goals. They showed to others that the USA isn't untouchable as we all used to think.
The awnser of the USA was the war (justified or not it is irrevelant) which sealed its fate as a major diplomatic asset in diplomatic realtions around the world. It made her lost its credibility. Don't you ever ask your self why Venezuela and Bolivia are escaping the US influence and why they are heading their way ?
Looking from that point of view the USA is in declin process eventhough they remain the first military power in the world but even that is to be chalanged. Some from within the USA are asking for isolation but those people don't understant that the USA is more dependent on the rest of the world that the rest of the world is dependent on the USA.
But rest assured the world will not dissapear because the USA influence has vanished. There was before the USA and it will be after the USA.
It is just a shame that the USA didn't know how to use its influence for changing things for better but instead it preferd the staus quo.
Military technology = superpower
Economy ≠ superpower
-That's why even with the economic conditions right now in America which is dire, it dosn't mean it will not remain the superpower. Also, the question is if it will always remain the superpower which is actually impossible for it to happen. Look at the Roman empire which was in power for centuries. So, the same with USA, it will be centuries and even more if something dramatic happens but it's a big IF? It's certainly not going to happen in our lifetime.
Yeah but Romans had one thing that teh USA doesn't. Paxa Romana. Live and let live. When you hear the vice-president candidate from republican party that the "god" him self ordered the USA to "bring" democracy to Iraq well you someohow can't take them serious. I mean comme on she has a special phone line with heavens or what ?
Well the Romans may have Said live and let live but they certainly werent letting any of the places they conquered to live and let live. They were moer imperialistic then we are (by we I mean the US)
But yes America will decline. Military equaled the superpower last millenia this millenia econimic power will trump military power. Furthermore if you dont have a strong economy you cant fund a strong Military. We've already begun our decline in so many ways. Healthcare, Education, Living standards.
I woulnt count America out for the count tho. If our history has shown us anything its that this country is very ressilient and able to hurdle great challenges and bounce back from them.
Theres alot that needs to be done tho and fixing the economy and energy independance are front and center.
We (The U.S.) are in the mist of what could be our decline. One thing our country cannot do without for a long strech is good leadership. We have not had good leadership for the last eitht years and and with the currrent choices for election we will likly suffer another four or more without any good leadership. I cannot think of another time when we went twelve years without good leadership, and during times of upheavel no less.
We did survive the last time we were in a major mess, in fact we came out stronger, so I do not count us out... I just worry what might happen should we decline, even if only for a short time.
In a sense empires, nations always die and begin anew, yet as a "xtreme version of I love America" kind of guy, i lke to think that America will live forever. this is not possibly True, but the essence of freedom and a "old glory" (US flag) is what makes the US different from many.
Though in truth, I think it the real sense the US will die off, but always something new will start, that will be influenced by the US. Take the Roman empire, its history and influnced shaped Europe, the greek literature still lives on as still intrigues us. Even the senate type system that was from the romans, before the evtual rise of the empire, it existed. In a way Roman civilization is still the super power, and i think it the same for the US.
In the mean time before the fall of anything the US is still the super power, because with so much US culture spread across the world, (think of SOSE culutre) the more you have the more powerful and stonger influence you have on other nations and its people.
Note: This may seem Unnecessary I am Chinese born in the US, live in the Philippines, and I like the US, and i do not preferably like China as a superpower. The country in my view lack values and limits on selfishness (at this point in time), such as China Menaline milk scare that puts poison in everyday milk products, (careful what you drink or eat it maybe poison). Though the US had problems with vaules and racism in the pass, they learned to overcome them and accept everyone eventaully.
I agree with Space pony, leadership is also a deciding factor, thats why the US democarcy system sort of works, if someone sucks they don't get vote back in, and new leadership comes, if they also suck, well, we'll have to try again, unitll it works, or it doesn't
Sorry for double post, I'm new at this blog/forum thing and thought I like SoaSE, i like to join in the discussion
Edit: "blog" and "forum" (you ge the idea)