<story><title>Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190218-are-we-on-the-road-to-civilisation-collapse</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>no_wizard</author><text>Perhaps not entire civilization collapse, pending nuclear arsenals unleashed, but I think we are edging ever closer to massive social upheaval, what shape of this I am unsure about. To quote an adjacent article that was mentioned in this one: &lt;i&gt;How Western Civilization Could Collapse&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the elites due to the absence of labour. The inequalities we see today both within and between countries already point to such disparities. For example, the top 10% of global income earners are responsible for almost as much total greenhouse gas emissions as the bottom 90% combined. Similarly, about half the world’s population lives on less than $3 per day[0][1]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is from 2017. This has gotten, in my view, much worse and is not continuing to alleviate itself, and I believe climate change is only making this worse over the next 5-10 years as wealthier nations and their wealthiest citizens try to insulate themselves further from its effects at the expense or perceived expense of the poor. I don’t think the current political climate is going to prove its sustainable.&lt;p&gt;Couple that with serious economic pressures as in part, a result of globalization and coming shortages and issues of natural resources and it’s a recipe for real disaster&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;future&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;future&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;20170418-how-western-civi...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;academic.oup.com&amp;#x2F;nsr&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;4&amp;#x2F;470&amp;#x2F;2669331&amp;#x2F;Modeling-sustainability-population-inequality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;academic.oup.com&amp;#x2F;nsr&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;4&amp;#x2F;470&amp;#x2F;2669331&amp;#x2F;Modelin...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Isinlor</author><text>The world is better off today in basically every way than it was 100 years ago, and almost unimaginably better than it was 200 years ago.&lt;p&gt;The worst 10% today do about as well as majority of West was doing back then. And the condition of the poor is improving rapidly. The places were it is not true, it is due to wars.&lt;p&gt;But well, this is perspective of a Polish person. My country lost 25% of the population during wars with Sweden, 90% population of Warsaw. And then another 20% in WWII, and another 90% of Warsaw was lost. My grandmother lived through that. Later, during communist regime she managed to escape Poland right before Martial Law in 80&amp;#x27; to Netherlands. My mother was persecuted after that due to contacts in the West.&lt;p&gt;Now we live in the EU. I have extremely hard time imagining my Swedish or German colleagues trying to kill me. Not everyone is peaceful to the east, but at least their tanks are not in Poland. That&amp;#x27;s progress too.</text></comment>
<story><title>Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190218-are-we-on-the-road-to-civilisation-collapse</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>no_wizard</author><text>Perhaps not entire civilization collapse, pending nuclear arsenals unleashed, but I think we are edging ever closer to massive social upheaval, what shape of this I am unsure about. To quote an adjacent article that was mentioned in this one: &lt;i&gt;How Western Civilization Could Collapse&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the elites due to the absence of labour. The inequalities we see today both within and between countries already point to such disparities. For example, the top 10% of global income earners are responsible for almost as much total greenhouse gas emissions as the bottom 90% combined. Similarly, about half the world’s population lives on less than $3 per day[0][1]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is from 2017. This has gotten, in my view, much worse and is not continuing to alleviate itself, and I believe climate change is only making this worse over the next 5-10 years as wealthier nations and their wealthiest citizens try to insulate themselves further from its effects at the expense or perceived expense of the poor. I don’t think the current political climate is going to prove its sustainable.&lt;p&gt;Couple that with serious economic pressures as in part, a result of globalization and coming shortages and issues of natural resources and it’s a recipe for real disaster&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;future&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.com&amp;#x2F;future&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;20170418-how-western-civi...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;academic.oup.com&amp;#x2F;nsr&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;4&amp;#x2F;470&amp;#x2F;2669331&amp;#x2F;Modeling-sustainability-population-inequality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;academic.oup.com&amp;#x2F;nsr&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;4&amp;#x2F;470&amp;#x2F;2669331&amp;#x2F;Modelin...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wyager</author><text>The quote you inlined strikes me as total nonsense.&lt;p&gt;First, there is no local mechanism by which having too small of a fraction of the total wealth that exists everywhere will cause a group to “crash”. Groups “crash” (assuming a sane interpretation of that word) usually due to local effects, like not having enough money to buy food, and not because they’re poor compared to someone else somewhere else. Obviously relative poverty could inspire a political movement or something, but I’m not seeing the “crash” here.&lt;p&gt;Second, power law distributions for wealth are natural, seem to have existed for all of civilizational history, and are arguably the only kind of stable equilibrium state that is possible with current technology.&lt;p&gt;Third, the appeal to greenhouse gas emissions seems less like part of a coherent economic argument and more of an irrelevant appeal to the idea that wealthy people (90% of Americans, in this case) are bad because they do wealthy people stuff like enjoy abundant food and energy.</text></comment>