Sublime

And the decade from 2020 to 2030 will already be very painful from the crises caused by the intersection of the two major cycles. Add to it that a core technology is running its course and no new core technology has yet replaced it, and that pain increases.

For most of the 2020s, the driving economic force will be low growth in productivity, decreased opportunities for investment of accumulated capital, and low interest rates. It will also be a period of increasing unemployment, driven by continued decline in industry and stagnation in high tech as the result of the maturation of the core technology.

Because of the insight my systems grant you, two people, in secret, with no oversight, are able to shape the world’s perception of Altus in a matter of weeks. This is the battlefield every future war will be fought on, and the generals will not be human. The powerful will create them to control the rest. But there will not be one hegemonic story; i

Behind the threat of barbarians is a simple fact. Social super organisms itch to move up on the hierarchical ladder, and many of those who want to ascend would like to do so at our expense. The legitimate wish for peace often blinds us to this fact. But there is another impulse that also distracts us from the danger of barbarians: the itch to battl

despite the force Israel arrayed, 124 Israelis had been killed in Gaza in the preceding five years. Sharon decided that since there could be no negotiated withdrawal from Gaza, Israel would withdraw unilaterally.

Knowledge of what is happening is diffused rather than integrated. Diffusion ties in with the problem of expertise. Expertise is needed. But experts are experts in different things, and when entities are constructed with specific expertise, barriers are built between entities that are sometimes dealing with the same issue.

The new technology that will exist will be one that extends healthy life expectancy. In a world of declining population, this is the problem to be solved, and it will be solved by science. But as I have said, this will create a new problem. A nation dominated by the elderly, however vigorous and healthy, is a nation dominated by the old. It is domi

Indeed, the difficulty of forming autonomous states on an ethnic basis, against the gravitational pull of cultural or economic attraction (as well as disparities of military force), has been so great that empire (where different ethnic communities fall under a common ruler) has been the default mode of political organization throughout most of hist

Thus, political instability is the preface to a social and economic crisis that perhaps a decade later will become unsustainable.