I wonder about Peak Oil - many claim it doesn't exist. I do know that oil is too valuable to be burned up. But that's for another time.
But Sandman does have some important points.
I do think we have going to have a long, slow collapse. The make-work jobs so many women have will go away. What will they do, then? Have to attach themselves to men, as women always do when things get a little bit hard.
I have mentioned this a few times before - wages stopped going up in January, 1974. Since then, wages have been in a long, slow collapse. Technology, fortunately, is getting better. But marriage has also been in a long, slow collapse. Money and marriage in collapse. What else? The importation of Third Worlders - that is a collapse of civilization, too. A long, slow one since '65.
If I can't predict anything else, I will predict if things get worse and worse, women will always attach themselves to a man. So what's going to happen to all these fat ugly women?
"If I can't predict anything else, I will predict if things get worse and worse, women will always attach themselves to a man. So what's going to happen to all these fat ugly women?"
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I just don't see how women attaching themselves to men is going to happen, if things get worse and worse. When things get bad women resort to bartering their bodies. Just look at the German/Japanese women after WW2. G.I.s were banging their brains out for a can of beans and chocolate bars, and if things are bad, men do best on their own, mobile and without attachments.
Young, pretty women will have a chance, but not a great one - I imagine they'll be pumped n dumped until their looks fade. Fat, plain, obnoxious women won't even have that chance.
We'll assume that married women will wise up quickly, drop unpleasant behaviour and that change of attitude along with children will lock in their support, but the marriage rate has been going down for decades.
What mechanism will single women use to get men to commit to them? I can't think of any. And don't say government support, because men can just stop producing more than they need, at least on the books.
In this world of diversity, and I do not mean in the liberal world view way, but in the biological way, there will always be men who will take a fatty for comfort. Way nature plays the game.
ReplyDeleteRemember, not so long ago, full figured women were the object of desire (look at middle age art for reference), because a woman of means was able to consume more calories, therefore she had a better then normal chance of bearing children and living long enough to raise them. Pluses back in the day.
If it gets as bad as say in the novel "The Road" we will see men disregard thin women and the full figured to semi fat will the "10's" again.
Detroit...coming to a city near you.
ReplyDeleteIf they find a way to economically mine those trillions of cubic yards of methane hydrates off the continental shelves, fossil fuels will be with us in one form or another for a long time.
ReplyDeleteYou're right about that. These engineers are indispensable to modern technological society yet don't get the attention they deserve.
ReplyDeletePeople have been predicting the imminent arrival of Peak Oil for decades. I'm not saying it ain't imminent, but why are today's predictions any better than the predictions over the last 30-40 years? In any case, as we've seen, when oil becomes very dear, the ingenuity of white European men always seems to step up to the plate, if it is not hobbled by government interference. Although these days that is a huge if.
ReplyDeleteSome countries are already past their respective 'peak oil'. Nevertheless,
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_liquefaction and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_(chemistry)
will lend several decades more, after the global peak oil.
If oil becomes too dear, expect the soft ethnic cleansing of America's remaining "inner city" blights to escalate tenfold, if it hasn't already been completed by then. Expensive petroleum will be used only for commercial vehicles carrying highly profitable goods, while normal people will have to walk or take public transit to work. Most long-distance suburbs will empty out and become farmland again. As urban safety regains importance, it will be more necessary than ever to forcibly eject the uncivilized (by definition, of course, an "uncivilized" person is one who is incapable of living in a city- that is, one who is incapable of living peacefully and with large numbers of strangers while respecting their persons and property). Perhaps new laws or subterfuges will be devised to effectively banish violent felons from returning to heavily populated areas after serving their sentences; it's impossible to say.
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