[Ergosphere]

Hi all, new member here

I was reading this rather startling thread on revleft :

More specifically, how many people could the earth support while still giving everyone a "good life?"

-a "good life" is one in which a person can meet their physical and psychological needs. This can be measured as the physical and mental health of a person. Physical health can be measured by things like adequate nutrition, life expectancy, access to medicine, etc. Mental health correlates with happiness, so overall mental health can be measured by self-reported happiness levels.

-mental health is measured by reported happiness levels. By looking at these levels over time, we can determine an "optimal level of resource consumption" to attain maximum happiness. The optimum level would be that level which is the lowest level required to attain the maximum level of happiness.

-Peak happiness was achieved in the late 1950s in America - happiness peaked around 1957, declined somewhat, and has remained pretty steady ever since. When happiness peaked in America, per-capita income was roughly 1/3rd of what it is today (adjusted for inflation). So, we could attain the same or higher happiness with an income 1/3rd of the current average. Source: http://citizenactionmonitor.files.wo...ess-chart2.jpg

-Similar studies were conducted in Britain and Japan with similar results, suggesting this pattern is not specific to a particular culture

-Mexico has reported happiness levels 4 times higher than the United States but is much poorer

-using the above information we can get a general idea of what is physically required to give everyone a "good life."

-using ecological footprint we can determine the footprint required to give a person a "good life," and so we can determine the maximum number of people that can be supported if everyone has a good life.

-The following is meant to be an approximation of the minimum that would be required to give a person a good life, using the above information.

-dwellings would be in apartments no larger than 500 square feet per person (a family of four would have 2000 square feet alloted to them). Detached single family homes would be very rare. 500 square feet is small by American standards but large by the standards of most of the rest of the world (most of which has higher happiness levels than America).

-meat only consumed 3-4 times per week (enough to ensure adequate protein intake).

-less than 50% of food produced more than 200 miles from where it is consumed. This is to minimize the fuel used in transporting food.

-no travel by car or motorcycle. walking and cycling would become the dominant forms of transportation. See below for an explanation of why alternative fuels will not be capable of maintaining car culture.

-travel by airplane is very rare

-50+ miles travelled by public transportation, weekly

-much less trash generated; all packaging is recyclable and recycling is extensive

-to support the above lifestyle, it would take approximately 20 acres of land per person

-To check this, you can go to http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/i...e/calculators/ and plug in the numbers yourself.

-worldwide, there exists ~4.5 acres per person of productive land.

-it would take ~5 times the amount of land that exists on earth to support everyone with the above lifestyle

-there are more than 7 billion people on the planet. Divide this by 5 (amount of land required per person), and this yields 1.4 billion.

-fewer than 1.4 billion people could be supported sustainably with the above lifestyle.

-fossil fuel use must be replaced with sustainable renewable energy sources. It is important to remember that these alternative sources are "alternative;" they are not replacements for oil. For one thing, electricity cannot readily be substituted for liquid fuels without converting vehicles to run on batteries, a costly project in itself.

-For another, how are we going to generate the massive amounts of energy required to power every single car in America in addition to our other needs? It isn't going to happen because the EROEI of alternatives is lower than that of oil. This means we will have less "surplus energy" to dedicate to unessential things like cars.

-To elaborate, wind and solar energy simply do not provide the same "bang for the buck" that we get from crude oil. In the early bonanza days of oil, back when the United States was the world's leading producer of oil, you got something like 100 units of energy returned for every 1 unit of energy invested into the process.

-This is called EROEI, energy returned on energy invested, for short. Today, we get a much lower return on oil because we have to expend a great deal of energy to ship the oil halfway across the world - from the middle east. This doesn't even include the costs of protecting that oil supply with a massive military presence.

-The reason we get our oil from the Middle East is because domestic oil production peaked in 1970 (United States), as Shell Geologist M King Hubbert predicted it would in the 1950s. At the time, Hubbert was ignored by his colleagues. Another important contribution Hubbert made was recognizing that the earth's endowment of fossil fuels is finite. This was also ignored.

-Hubbert predicted that world oil production would peak shortly after the year 2000. All indications are that world oil production peaked 2006; it has not gone up since then despite massive and ever-increasing investments. Simply put, we are spending more energy to find less energy. We are on the downslope.

-Today, the EROEI of crude oil from the middle east is more than 30:1

-Wind power is 25:1 under optimal conditions, but it suffers from intermittency problems and is totally site-dependent.

-Solar (photovaltaic) is around 10:1, but also suffers intermittency

-soy biofuels and grain ethanol have pathetically low EROEI, sometimes lower than 1:1. In other words, they can consume more energy than they produce.

-Source for EROEI numbers: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6854#more

-Upgrades to the electrical grid are needed to make renewable energy work without intermittency. A connected "smart grid" is essential for renewable energy to work. This is a massive project on scale with the interstate highway system. It is doubtful that "the market" can acheive this. The interstate highway system wasn't achieved by the market. It took strong central planning by the national gov't. Projects of this scale require central planning, and that requires the national gov't.

-Wind and solar cannot replace oil because they do not have the same EROEI. The lifestyles we have built around the availability of cheap oil are simply unsustainable. This means an end to car culture and consumerism.

-Nuclear power is not a sustainable solution because the nuclear fuel is finite. A feasible breeder reactor has yet to be built or designed. Those breeder reactors which have been built have all been dismantled for cost or safety problems. The engineers of the 1950s who were betting on this technology as the silver bullet to solve our energy problems would probably be horrified at the utter failure of this technology.

-Nuclear fusion is a fantasy that will never be realized. The quest for fusion energy is the modern-day equivalent of the alchemist turning lead into gold. We have been pouring billions into fusion reserach since the 1950s, and every year the scientists tell us that fusion energy "is still 50 years away." 50 years from now, fusion will still be "50 years away."

-passenger rail will have to be greatly expanded in the United States since travel by car will no longer be feasible. A state of emergency should be declared in order to get the necessary projects built, like Eisenhower did with the interstate highway system

-an end to consumerism also means an end to capitalism; capitalism cannot exist without growth. This means something else (socialism) will have to replace capitalism.

It made me think that while a North American technate might be able to implement a high standard of living (the estimates I've read hover around an equivalent lower upper-class/upper middle-class salary), would other continental technates live in squalor because of their smaller resource base? Do we really need to lower Earth's population to less than 2 billion for everyone on Earth to have a high standard of living?

[mikema63]

Only ten percent of happiness is determined by wealth or social status, social ties like family and friends are more important in the part of happiness which isn't genetic.

Our cultural expectations about what will make us happy is simply wrong.

[mikema63]

Their averages, multiple studies have been done on wide scales that use the same measure of happiness, which is subjective but does allow you to measure differences relatively, there are severeal that control for social status and wealth finding only minimal correlation and no further improvements past 30,000 USD.

Others use the number of social connections, friends and family that people are in regular friendly contact with, and find much more correlation there.

Twin studies show about 50% is genetic.

Others actually preform experiments involving meditation, counting your blessings daily, performing random acts of kindness, and giving to charity have positive correlations to happiness as well.

Your brain adjusts to new levels of wealth and success, past a temporary spike you will always fall down to a normal level based on other factors, this also works for the reverse situation where an incredibly bad thing happens and you move back up to a normal happiness point.

After a year lottery winners and the crippled from accidents move to about the same average happiness.

[Ergosphere]

Other nations would not suffer simply because North America adopted Technocracy. In fact, they would be much better off for two reasons: 1) there would no longer be the interference and exploitation that NA currently conducts on many of these nations, and 2) we would be able to provide them with all kinds of real aid, like technical help, specialists, even resources that we have to spare, with no strings attached (except maybe some things like not participating in wars of aggression or human rights violations). And so they would not be considered to be living in any kind of "squalor", at least any more than they are already.

That's good to know. I had the impression that the sudden lack of trade with other countries would cause a devastating effect to their economies.

Does it concern you at all that other countries might look at us in envy if/when a technate is created in North America? After all, we're talking about creating a system of abundance that would exist in a world where the other 99% of the population are living in a system of scarcity.

This missive seems to rely pretty heavily on "self-reported happiness" levels. The problem with those is that happiness is directly related to expectations. People in a wealthier nation may be less happy than those in a less wealthy nation simply because they have higher expectations of what would make them happy. Managing those expectations would be very difficult, and I would say near impossible if your goal was to lower the physical standard of living of people in wealthier nations. Sure, there are many other factors that would be relatively independent of expectations, like level of freedom for example, but it remains an important one that I think this article fails to take into account as it proscribes a single lifestyle to fit us all. Technocracy's research has shown that people will always want more in terms of standard of living, greater choice in food and leisure, more ability to travel, to communicate, to socialize, to explore and create, to achieve... and that this trend is irreversible, it's what we call "progress". Try taking that away, and you'll have riots.

So all in all, I don't understand the point of the article from a Technocratic perspective. Technocracy claims that we can have more than we do now if we adopt it, indeed more than we ever could under any Price System. Yes, it will take some time before we will be able to support everyone in the world with one, but it's only a matter of time, provided we get at least one going as soon as possible, before it's too late to do so.

I believe the point the author was trying to make is that the Earth does not have enough resources (measured by the amount of productive land, energy, etc.) to sustain the current world population with a high standard of living. Using a very modest set of assumptions as to what constitutes a decent standard of living, he calculated that Earth could only sustain ~1.4 billion with those standards. Unless I'm misunderstanding, this means that not every continent with a technate would have a standard of living comparable to a North American technate, which have been projected to be very high. His solution to this seems to be implementing measures to lower the Earth's population (through education, one-child policy, etc).

If there's something I'm missing about this, feel free to correct me.

[TechnocracyTNAT]

"Dividing the natural resources on this North American Continent with the rest of the world is the last desperate effort of corporate enterprise. North America has 50% of all the world's goods with only 19% of all the world's area and with only 9% of all the world's population. To attempt to divide our natural resources with the rest of the world would not raise their standard of living appreciably, but would lower the American standard of living equal to theirs.

The division of America's abundance with the rest of the world will not solve the problems of the world and would sabotage FOREVER America's great destiny of abundance, leisure, and freedom."

- The Northwest Technocrat, October 1942

"Fascism, after having gutted the subcontinent of Europe for 1,500 years, wants to set up house in North America. It wants to attach itself to the technological culture of this Continent. It wants to cancel out the gains made by Science and Technology in the last two hundred years. It wants to divide up America's abundance with the world that its operations has laid low.

It wants to equalize scarcity everywhere and thus stabilize the status quo on a lower level of living standards."

https://archive.org/details/GreatLakesT ... August1947

"Biologist Wilton Ivie, in THE ECOLOGY OF MAN, writing for "The Technocrat" magazine Vol. 16, No. 12. in December 1948 and re-issued as a pamphlet in July 1969 wrote, "it is possible for man to remain the dominant species on earth and at the same time enjoy a high standard of living for MANY CENTURIES TO COME." On the front cover of the pamphlet was the qualifier "North America can no longer be occupied by a high energy civilization operated on a haphazard, planless basis. We must plan for survival! " Regarding energy he wrote "We cannot plan to operate for long on fossil fuel as our major energy source. Instead, we must adopt a system of energy use which will obtain a maximum amount of energy from renewable sources and a minimum amount from nonrenewable sources. -- The Price System (the World's money systems) on the other hand refuses to face the problem, but seeks to deplete our limited fossil fuels at the maximum rate that will yield a 'fair return' in the way of profits." "

"In many of his writings, Howard Scott, founder of Technocracy stressed the importance of energy use per person. In his 1933 paper, SCIENCE VS CHAOS Scott wrote. "The history of the human race may well be stated in terms of the ability of man to consume ever-increasing amounts of extraneous (non-human) energy. The limitation and stabilization of that rate of increase is the scientific problem of the not far distant future."

In personal communications with Prof. Ken Watt of UCDavis, Watt stressed the importance of energy use per person. He also said that he and about 100 other scholars "believe that energy and numbers of births will be the two key variables in determining the character of the future. We now feel the planet and humanity can only coexist as a living system for a long time if the human population gets down to 1/70 to 4/70 of the present level. It is difficult to see how to do that without violence..." 1/70 of the present global population is approximately 100 to 300 million people. That's for the whole planet!"

http://dieoff.org/page158.htm

"Population problem? Well, there is this chemical that you introduce into the city's drinking water supply to the miniscule extent of 0.0004 of 1 percent. It is odorless, tasteless, has no side effects, and allows for normal ovulation. All it does is alter the pH factor in the womb where the fetus is dissolved in any mammal — human, cat, dog, cow (so long as they are drinking the water daily), and you automatically solve the population problem for as long as it is necessary to hold down population increase. During this period, if any couple just has to have a child, all you have to do is drink bottled water for a while. Just that simple. Incidentally, two of the five or six scientists who developed this are Technocrats. The formula in city water is effective even after conception but better for prevention. A Technocrat, 40 years old, wanted a natural abortion — 5-1/2 months pregnant — and the formula in her drinking water accomplished it. On a city-wide scale, when the formula is withdrawn (no longer used) from the water supply, 28 days after resuming regular water, women could be potentially fertile again for babies."

- ENERGY, SCIENCE, AND ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY
archive.org/details/TheWordsAndWisdomOfHowardScott