Hmm interesting comparison between the superpowers, though I’d argue that it was more the political differences that hampered the USSR. And as a note they beat us in every major milestone in the space race, except the moon landing.

But I’m torn between how our system works. On the one hand, I’m sure everyone can imagine how we could work the economy so much better. But then I wonder, given human psychology and dealing with such large groups is it really possible to do better?

As to the environment, I’ll just say the technology was there to stop it, and is here to clean it up, just the political will to force the deployment (and the private company’s desire to not use such expensive measures) are what’s stopping us. Many things are possible, just not economically viable. Also my personal favorite solution to the resource crisis, is less people. Having a global population cap will ensure that we can sustain ourselves and continue to do so. Of course many developed countries do have a shrinking population, many continue growing only because of immigration, so this may not be that far fetched.

I was wondering when your first mention of the Gulf mess would pop up.

I would even argue that if people quit their jobs, technology may increase. Instead of focusing on TPS reports and other minutiae, we could be free to focus on our passions. Like Philip mentioned above, if people were free to work on those things they would likely be more productive in terms of creating things, not just shuffling paper*

*Disclosure – I’m mostly a paper shuffler.

90% of what passes for work is actually busy-work, writing reports, analysing tiny details, being a middle-manager.

Meanwhile the 10% that actually matters mainly happens by people passionate about what they are doing.

And yet… does the passion happen without the cranking? Are those moments of inspiration built on decades of people analysing tiny details? The fantasy of the creative life – of a writer say – is that they write stories in flashes of inspiration. The truth is often more mundane – they crank out page after page of garbage, and keep polishing and revising until it’s good.

I agree with csdx, the only viable solution is to cap or reduce the population numbers, and more importantly, to make people think on a global scale.

From my understanding technology will evolve so fast that education and information will be redundant in the next decades.

Colleges will have a hard time fighting against the collective mind that is the abyss of ever changing net of information.

Clearly the need for work will disappear as the machines will produce everything.

(enough with cornucopia..)

Sorry, but I can’t do these “But what if EVERYONE quit our jobs!” hypotheticals. Too much else would have to be different, making the question a bit silly. Even if it leads to interesting discussions about government structure 🙂 .

@chris – To give a very very general answer. Civilizations fail when the governing system becomes bloated/inefficient with corruption. Any kind of ruling system tends to grow without limit. Meanwhile the world is changing away from it. Eventually it fails. The Western world had the failure of the Roman Empire in ~500. The failure of the church in ~1500. It will probably have the failure of the welfare/nation state in the early 21st century which will be driven by debt (future liabilities or promises that can’t be kept), demographics, and declining resource availability, particularly oil. That is not to say that people won’t survive. Even the failing organizations will survive in some form. They will just be far less relevant than they used to be.

I would tend to agree with Kevin M that technology would increase if people quit their jobs – for the same reason he stated. More free time to investigate and enjoy their passions. Really delving into your passion will bring all sorts of rewards and twists that one does not expect. Free thinking brings out free ideas – breaking the balloon.

I agree with csdx, the only viable solution is to cap or reduce the population numbers, and more importantly, to make people think on a global scale.

From my understanding technology will evolve so fast that education and information will be redundant in the next decades.

Colleges will have a hard time fighting against the collective mind that is the abyss of ever changing net of information.

Clearly the need for work will disappear as the machines will produce everything.

“Is an economy which main goal is to generate waste and cheap junk for the vast majority of its citizens so that part of this money may be skimmed up for weapons and research really the best model going forward?”

It makes you wonder if totalitarianism would be a more efficient model, assuming we get rid of the corruption/powermongering aspects.

In our democratic, capitalist society, the majority of our production goes into consumer goods, which we use to make ourselves feel better about working.

However, if a society were to focus entirely on worthwhile production (ie. military, infrastructure, industrial products), and its citizens were brainwashed to accept life without consumer goods (perhaps replaced by extreme nationalism), would society become incredibly efficient and powerful?

Of course, I wouldn’t want to live in such a society, where I could be murdered for expressing free thought…