The Doomsday clock was moved up a minute this week, but there was a new episode of The Kardashians, so few people noticed. In fact Mankind has hit the snooze button so many times on the Doomsday clock that it's actually noon the next day.
This obsession with predicting the end of the world, is a developed world preoccupation. For much of the rest of the planet, they never knew a world worth living in, in the first place...
Malthus was right. We can't feed and sustain seven billion people...
The globalized ponzi scheme merely seemed to work, because those who were tasked with marketing its advantages were all at the top of the pyramid. Developed-world economists had no problems endorsing a globalized pyramid economy that had no possibility of equalizing standards of living. Given that the status quo was to their personal benefit, they joined the bandwagon and became the loudest cheerleaders for propagating a resource intensive system that is inherently unsustainable and unscalable across seven billion people. It doesn't even work for the majority in the developed world anymore, so why would it ever work for the rest of the planet?
But of course, the world population grew in the meantime, as the breadcrumbs falling off the developed world's table, in the form of charity, allowed Third World populations to continue to grow unchecked by natural boundaries. Unfortunately, what's the first thing to go in an economic depression? Charity.
The bottom line is that as long as there's positive growth, Ponzi-style economies hide the fact that they are
inherently unsustainable. It's only when growth stagnates or declines that everyone realizes that there isn't enough to go around anymore.
So while I am not predicting the end of the physical world, it's not hard to believe that the status quo as we know it, is already well past midnight for most on this planet, and getting inexorably closer, for the remainder.
So for those who were busy partying on Dec. 21st for their "Not the End of The World Party", considering that the Mayan calendar is 5,125 years old, it's solar based and hence would be "rounded" to the most relevant solar event i.e. the winter solstice - then mere statistical error would indicate that it's a tad premature to be signalling the all clear.
At minimum, I would trust the Mayans before I trust Wall Street...
