Chalmers Johnson, Jared Diamond, Strauss-Howe, George Carlin, Mike Judge, ...
Some want a self-fulfilling prophecy, some talk about doom to sell their wares, others are subject matter experts in leading indicator critical fields, still others read a whole lot of history, further more remember semi-objective differences between different time periods, some profit from the status quo even/especially if it's unsustainable, and finally others require the status quo to survive (suffering from the Upton Sinclair "effect") and so suffer from cognitive dissonance keeping them from believing anything different is even possible.
"Collapse" is also a binary, focal apocalyptic memetic contagion that doesn't model reality that ebbs and flows, advances and retreats, suddenly and gradually, and mostly discontinuously. While "collapse" can appear to have happened with perfect hindsight over a long time span, it wasn't fate or essential.. but it happened. The "collapse" of the Roman Republic^H^H^HEmpire took centuries; although Rome's "billionaire" Marcus Licinius Crassus helped do away with social programs and destroy democracy.
Civilizational doom isn't a foregone conclusion unless people really want it, allow it, or cannot organize political power in time to intervene successfully. Although our species' growth inflection "point" roughly changed around 1962, technology has irregularly but overall generally increased productivity especially food production.
Instead of allowing toddlers to play with fire, across the globe we need to maximize stability with competent public administration leadership to work on real problems:
- Redistribute excessively concentrated treasure and significantly increase corporate tax rates
- Prevent corrupt relationships between wealth and government
- Invest in the future: people, children, community, (reasonable) commerce, infrastructure, art, education, preservation, sensible regulations like using the precautionary principle
- Peaceful but cautiously defensively-prepared international relations
- Address existential threats like the climate change emergency
Just a tiny fraction of greedy, careless people appear to be standing in the way of our survival and thriving; the other half of it is convincing enough people that a problem is happening.
24
7