Are Catastrophes Overrated

Others have a more rosy outlook. With the rise of AI we’ve seen speculation about a Singularity powered by green energy and ruled by benevolent supercomputers. Elon Musk might be the most famous and successful of techno-optimists, but there are many others who believe that despite a few dips here and there the arc of progress bends eternally upward.

To better understand this conflict, let’s look to the early days of Techno-Optimism and DOOM.

Harold Loeb noted that the Great Depression was rooted not in scarcity but in glut. Capitalism runs on scarcity. You must have enough product to meet demand but not so much you can’t sell it. But you can only sell to people with money in their pockets. And the more efficient the machines become, the fewer workers are needed.

Before long the machine’s capacity for production outstrips the ability of the market to absorb the products. This overproduction leads to unemployment which leads to a lack of consumers. As a solution, Loeb suggested we replace an economy based on purchasing power with distribution networks that provided goods according to need. He calculated that using 1930’s technology:

In the technocracy, everybody gets a certain number of energy credits each year. Those energy credits can be used for necessities or luxuries, but they expire at the end of each year so there is no temptation to hoard wealth. Individuals choose their professions with assistance from psychologists. The Technocracy ensures their material needs are met in exchange for working a few hours a day. All they needed to do was trust the technocrats. As Loeb notes on p. 75:

While Technocracy may be largely forgotten, its basic tenets form the scaffolding for modern Neoliberalism. Neoliberalism seeks to make its citizens happy (or at least complacent) by keeping them satiated and entertained. It reduces them to data points which it manipulates as needed. It creates an aristocracy of experts and sees demagogues as a problem to be solved. And, like every other political theory, it generally produces very different results in the wild than in a lab.

We’ve seen how Technocracy has influenced our political landscape. Let’s see how it has shaped our fiction.

For many TV viewers in the late 1960s, Star Trek was a vision of the world to come. We were destined to boldly go where no man had gone before, ruled over by a benevolent Federation whose starships maintained law and order throughout the galactic quadrant’s trade routes.

Gene Roddenberry’s 23rd Century had solved many of the problems that plagued 20th century viewers. Japanese, Russian, Negro, and Vulcan crew members worked together in relative harmony. While the Enterprise’s photon torpedos could level cities, its captain and crew typically solved problems using some combination of brains, fisticuffs, and technological wizardry.

Spinoffs and movies expanded the universe, but the basic framework persisted. There was plenty of adventure, conflict, and drama. But it all took place within the confines of an interplanetary United Nations where civilized aliens resolved their differences through diplomacy and debate. There were squabbles and firefights, but the wars were typically offscreen with Federation agents serving as peacemakers.

Capitalism received a roasting that Harold Loeb might envy when the Ferengi arrived on ST:DS9. Israeli actor Armin Shimerman did for Quark what Ron Moody did for Fagin in Oliver. These sinister money-grubbing backstabbers were transformed into lovable figures of fun. Ferengi antics choked scarcity capitalism on its own contradictions. Yet ultimately Quark becomes one of DS9’s most important residents. They might laugh at Quark, but their outpost can’t function without him.

In the original series, the bridge computer was an Alexa pod with delusions of grandeur and robots inevitably led to trouble. ST:TNG introduced Data and ST:Voyager featured a holographic Doctor. There were monsters from outside, like Data’s evil twin Lore, as well as the ever-assimilating cybernetic Borg. But the machine-minds employed by the Federation were unfailingly polite and helpful. Even if they got infected by viruses they could be fixed with a simple reboot.

Alas, like many techno-optimists, the various ST writers frequently saved the day with technological Macguffins. The Federation wins a war with the Klingons thanks to a fast but unstable “spore drive.” Macguffin).And 800 years after the Age of Shatner and Nimoy, the cast of Star Trek: Discovery solved their energy shortage by the serendipitous discovery of a planet-sized lump of dilithium.

It’s not surprising that Star Trek still has a large and loyal fan base, including yrs. truly. The Trek universe offers a vision of hope. It promises that things will get better, but never boring. It envisions a world where we have not conquered the stars so much as brought them under our freedom-loving wing. It’s a world where our better instincts prevailed. But ultimately the Federation remains a society where scarcity is at worst a temporary inconvenience.

Now that we’ve explored new worlds and new civilizations, let’s take a look at the Doomer Bible.

Get 20% off forever

In 1914 OG techno-futurist H.G. Wells predicted the European conflict would be “The War to End War.” It certainly was the war to end something. By 1918 the Ottoman, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and German thrones were empty. That year Oswald Spengler released the first volume of his Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West).

Spengler’s book became a bestseller throughout Germany, as did 1922’s second volume. In the aftermath of the Great War, it was easy to believe that cultures had a life-death cycle. Neither did people who were still living among the chaos and wreckage have trouble buying his premise that Western Civilization was reaching its pull date.

While many groups form tribes and societies, only a few reach the critical point where they become cultures. The Magian cultures of Arabia and the Near East saw the world as cavern in which the forces of Light and Darkness did battle. The Apollonian cultures of Greece and Rome sought order and harmony for well-defined, self-contained individuals living within a clearly structured world.

Spengler described Western culture as Faustian. Like Faust, the West travels toward the infinite and seeks to eff the ineffable. The Faustian Era’s first stirrings appear with Gothic cathedrals reaching toward heaven’s dome. It reaches its apex with Copernicus, who welcomes the immeasurable vastness of space.

For Spengler the Faustian culture was the most tragic. No matter how far it travels, no matter how great its accomplishments, its inner restlessness can never be satisfied. Ultimately it must be swallowed by the infinity it chases. Like every civilization that has risen before it and all that will rise after it, our Faustian culture must die.

Spengler felt that World War I was a turning point for Faustian Civilization and that we were now entering our decline phase. A civilization’s death throes can take a while. Ptolemaic Egypt’s last Pharaoh, Cleopatra, died over 3,000 years after Narmer founded the First Dynasty. But Spengler felt that our greatest achievements were behind us and that after our apex we could expect a long decline into irrelevance.

Techno-Optimists would note here that Spengler’s DOOMful predictions failed to come true. Our Second World War and subsequent Cold War, for all their shortcomings, led to enormous technological advances. Between his 1932 book and his 1974 death, Harold Loeb saw the atom bomb, supersonic flight, the polio vaccine, Sputnik, and the moon landing. Those born in 1974 saw their world brought together by cellular technology and the World Wide Web.

Today we stand at the dawn of Artificial Intelligence. Whether we view it as Singularity or SKYNET, AI certainly has been a game-changer these past few years. It has played an important role in Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas and will likely do so in upcoming conflicts with Hezbollah and Iran. AI makes it easy to create resumes and write websites. (Full disclosure: I used ChatGPT 4o in the research and writing of this article).

Given all that, I can understand why Techno-Optimists are skeptical when they hear us proclaim that the DOOM cometh. But where Techno-Optimists consider the possibilities, DOOMers take a hard look at the infrastructure.

As empires grow, their supply lines become increasingly fragile. During the Global American Empire’s hegemony from 1991 onward, we created a globe-spanning trade network. Those routes were watched over by US military bases around the world, and anybody who threatened the Pax Americana was dealt with swiftly and ruthlessly.

Today that American Peace faces conflicts on multiple fronts. American troops have been evicted from Niger and appear to be planning a pullout in Iraq. American defense contractors have taken the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition to heart and filled our materiel coffers with expensive duds like littoral combat ships and the F-35.

America relies on massive imports subsidized by an artificially strong petrodollar. That petrodollar greases those trade routes and has provided American society with an imperial wealth pump. We import the computers, smartphones, and semiconductors that keep our Web interconnected and our technology functioning. And we — and our vassals — rely on readily available petroleum and natural gas.

A few weeks after the October 7 attacks, the World Bank warned a potential spike in oil prices should the conflict escalate. According to their analysts:

Should we be foolish enough to engage in a conventional war, we will not get the economic turbo-boost many Neocons expect. Our sclerotic ruling class is repeating World War II. The factories of the Great Depression were able to kickstart their factories by finding an output for their production. Today most of those factories have long been abandoned or torn down for shopping malls and housing developments.

Rebuilding the infrastructure of the late 1950s would cost trillions and take decades. We have neither. And as the world returns to multipolarity, the petrodollar will lose its luster and our wealth pump will run out of steam. Things that were once cheap will become considerably more expensive. And, depending on how we respond to China’s inevitable blockade of Taiwan, many things might not be available at all.

I do not anticipate extended nuclear exchanges that kill billions, nor an America that has degenerated into Mad Max territory. I accept that both are a possibility, but I think there are far more likely endings, certainly endings that are easier to prep for. I’ve modeled the American Empire’s fall on the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and acknowledge that things might go better or worse.

Between 1991 and 1997 the Russian economy shrunk over 50%. Social safety nets and pensions vanished with the Soviet Union. Russia saw an enormous increase in suicides, overdoses, and death by alcoholism Gangsters “privatized” many former government services and became oligarchs. In 1999 Vladimir Putin was appointed Prime Minister. He rules Russia still.

The IMF estimates that in 2024 America’s per capita income was $85,327. If we were to see the same 50% fall that post-Soviet Russia experienced, that would put us at a $38,380 per capita income in 2034 — higher than current-day Serbia and Costa Rica, but lower than Uruguay, Montenegro, and Chile. America’s poor already suffer disproportionately from “deaths of despair.” There’s no reason to suppose that those tolls are going anywhere but up.

As DOOMers go, I’m pretty milquetoast. I expect things to get bad, but the boring grinding poverty and petty crime kind of bad, not the cinematic bad. Like Spengler, I assume that every civilization rises and falls. Like him, I think Western Civilization is falling. It will not be the glorious cinematic decline you see in video games and movies. It will be a dull violent poverty that lasts until our Putin arises from the chaos with his quest to Make America Great Again.

Might I be caught by surprise by some great technological breakthrough that gives us Zero Point Energy, warp drive, and electricity too cheap to meter? Certainly. I would have been skeptical about airplanes before the Wright Brothers and I certainly tend to err on the side of pessimism. If the DOOM Don’t Cometh, no one will be happier than me at being proven wrong. I’m well aware that every day somebody wins the lottery. But I don’t want to make the lottery my retirement plan.