Quote:
Originally Posted by REDVAN
Really...? Are our iPhones and iPads just going to vanish into thin air?
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I don't mean technology. I mean disposable income. The leisure to buy lots of stuff, eat out, travel, etc. that we take for granted, but which would astonish many of our grandparents (and most of the people alive in the world today).
It's becoming apparent that the post WW2 boom was not a new normal. It was an anomaly, brought about by several factors - the wars destroying capital and making labour more valuable, most of the world either still pre-industrial or blasted to rubble, a huge demographic boom coming online just in time to take advantage of key new technologies.
Food in a world of 10 billion is going to get expensive. Very expensive. Especially food imported from halfway around the world. Even without factoring the devastation that global warming and it's resultant droughts could inflict, there's only much topsoil and productive land on the planet.
Of course, technology could change all that. We could all be saved by amazing new sources of energy, by wonder materials, by huge breakthroughs in agricultural efficiency and sustainability. Technology could also give us 70 per cent unemployment. Who can say? But I wouldn't count on our run of remarkable prosperity continuing for another 60 years.