I don’t like what’s happening with the culture as its turning toxic to christians. And at current rates of change will lead to persecution in two generations or so. I don’t like what’s happening with the demographics because the country is being dumbed down in a big way.
However, the economics are a different matter.
The world that we know came into existence when US oil production peaked in 1970 and the period of dam building ended and the desalination went overseas and thorium reactors were abandoned...You see the greatest generation...the generation of our fathers actually understood how to extend out their civilization economically. But I think the change in the immigration laws in 1965, the Viet Nam war and the triumph of the atheists caused a cultural civilization loss of nerve.
so in the end the greatest generation dropped the ball.
However, the world of cheap water and energy will return here in 10 years or so. It will cause a massive explosion of wealth around the world that will include the US middle class. The dollar is on the road to getting much stronger.
On energy, the fracking supply revolution is only the leading edge. What’s behind it is even more significant. This is on the demand side. Low cost natural gas is displacing number 3 & 4 heating oil in big buildings all over the northeast. Testing is underway for natural gas trains. And of course natural gas trucks and buses —especially for local delivery —are displacing gasoline and diesel all over the country. These four areas contribute fully 40% of oil demand. Chop that out of demand and oil prices tumble further down. But even that is not the end of it. Electric cars are going to happen. The big battery factory in Nevada is under construction. Electric cars at 35k will ship in 2018 or there abouts. They will cause an even greater crack heard round the world than the current high end Teslas. By 2025 volumes —not just from Tesla —but also from many other car makers will start to cut into demand for oil in a big way.
The price of oil will crater.
This will cause an explosion in wealth around the world as low oil prices did in the 1990’s.
But even this is not the end to it.
The true 21st century technologies,the ones that collapse the cost of electricity to 1/4-1/10 the current lowest cost coal will start arriving in 2025-30. The most obvious of these are the portable thorium (lftr msr)reactors that will collapse the cost of electricity.
This will lead to another great explosion of wealth.
The last big explosion happens when cheap energy combines with better industrial processes to make desalinated sea water cheap enough for agriculture so that desalinated water can be piped 1000 miles inland from any coast to feed field crops of any variety. This will turn the world’s deserts green and double the size of the habitable planet.
This will in turn create the capital base for space mining and colonization.
Yours is an extremely interesting reply and a fascinating futuristic piece.
I cannot judge from a technological point of view whether your predictions will prove out but certainly we agree that the changes brought about by technology, especially in the energy space but also in the digital world will be profound. I have pointed out the analogies to the sweeping changes imposed on the crofters, the tenant farmers of Ireland, the Luddites by the Industrial Revolution.
Changes of some sort of another are coming and they are coming rapidly the question for conservatives is, how do we accommodate this change in liberty? If conservatives are not in the forefront of protecting liberty, the left will exploit the changes to impose tyranny. The model against which we must work is the global warming fraud which the left uses to reshape society entirely. They will try the same when real technological change comes. They are trying to control the Internet now, for example.
I have more confidence in James Madison understanding the digital revolution and the energy revolution and their implications for liberty than I do every bureaucrat in Washington.
