When exactly will London be flooded? How long will it take? How long will it last? — Mongrel

Around 2060 -70 if sea level rise does not accelerate, which it might well.

The barrier was originally designed to protect London against a very high flood level (with an estimated return period of one hundred years) up to the year 2030, after which the protection would decrease, whilst remaining within acceptable limits.[18] At the time of its construction, the barrier was expected to be used 2–3 times per year. It is now being used 6–7 times per year.[19]
This defence level included long-term changes in sea and land levels as understood at that time (c. 1970). Despite global warming and a consequently greater predicted rate of sea level rise, recent analysis extended the working life of the barrier until around 2060–2070. From 1982 until 19 March 2007, the barrier was raised one hundred times to prevent flooding. It is also raised monthly for testing,[20] with a full test closure over high tide once a year.[17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Barrier

And London is one of the best protected coastal cities in the world.

There are many unknowns, but not knowing everything does not equate to not knowing shit. It might not happen, It might be worse than I suggest. We might build a new barrier, or someone might bomb this one. But again, what I don't know, plus what science does not know does not add up to an argument. We do know that sea levels are rising and that the rate has been increasing.

I think an important thing to consider that sacrificing your habitat for the sake of a higher GDP is practically unavoidable in a consumerist and competitive economy.

It's really a sort of miracle that countries actually can look past GDP growth for the sake of preserving the environment for higher GDP growth (e.g Paris climate agreement).


However, I believe that we are past the point of no return in terms of climate change. I guess we'll just to adapt and learn how to live in a new environment.

I think an important thing to consider that sacrificing your habitat for the sake of a higher GDP is practically unavoidable in a consumerist and competitive economy.

It's really a sort of miracle that countries actually can look past GDP growth for the sake of preserving the environment for higher GDP growth (e.g Paris climate agreement).


However, I believe that we are past the point of no return in terms of climate change. I guess we'll just to adapt and learn how to live in a new environment. — Question

Personally I don't think matters are that settled. It may very well be possible that the planet has a self-regulating mechanism which is capable to dispose of the warming effect and we just haven't thought of it yet. Us humans are terrible terrible at predicting anything. We can't even predict economic crises - much less how the planet will react to warming.

Ah this one is an absolute gem. Every time someone brings this up, you know they have zero interest in understanding a complex phenomenon such wealth creation.

Every time someone brings this up, you know they have zero interest in understanding a complex phenomenon such a wealth creation. — Emptyheady

Wealth creation (and I'm talking about real wealth creation, not peanuts), just like empire building takes the right circumstances, the right positioning and a bit of luck. If you have all that, it's actually not that hard assuming that you also have sufficient intelligence to approach the situation in the right way.

There are many unknowns, but not knowing everything does not equate to not knowing shit. It might not happen, It might be worse than I suggest. We might build a new barrier, or someone might bomb this one. But again, what I don't know, plus what science does not know does not add up to an argument. We do know that sea levels are rising and that the rate has been increasing. — unenlightened

Add up to an argument? Dude. Sea levels were rising right before the Younger Dryas. There's a 100% chance that everybody alive now is going to die. There's a 100% chance that the next century is going to be different from this one. If you want to dwell in some certainty that the present situation is the worst thing that's ever happened.. ok. It might be.

Is this some innuendo to Ayn Rand and Objectivism?

God no.

Think about what "wealth" means -- without equivocating. How it is calculated/determined. Everybody assumes the colloquial terminology, which makes this report -- provided by the Guardian, what a surprise -- extremely misleading.

Godzilla rises from the Pacific and decides he fucking hates Tokyo.

Why won't it happen?

And btw... if you can't explain why it won't happen, that means it's inevitable.

Well that was all very interesting. I confess my statistics are not entirely up to the job, but allowing a little charity that Mr Autor is not trying to baffle us with his statistics, the point is well taken and I have been somewhat simplistic in joining up disparate dots.

A final point, typically neglected in recent dismal prophesies of machine-human substitution, is that if human labor is indeed rendered superfluous by automation, then our chief economic problem will be one of distribution, not of scarcity. The primary system of income distribution in market economies is rooted in labor scar- city; citizens possess (or acquire) a bundle of valuable “human capital” that, due to its scarcity, generates a flow of income over the career path. If machines were in fact to make human labor superfluous, we would have vast aggregate wealth but a serious challenge in determining who owns it and how to share it. One might presume that with so much wealth at hand, distribution would be relatively straightforward to resolve. But history suggests that this prediction never holds true. There is always perceived scarcity and ongoing conflict over distribution, and I do not expect that this problem will become any less severe as automation advances. — Autor

But distribution and not scarcity is already the problem, and the engine of fair distribution is collective power which is in decline, and inequality is correspondingly rising. The decline in manufacturing jobs is compensated by a rise in service jobs (simplifying as usual). I notice a sudden increase in nail-bar establishments round here. But service jobs leverage little power in terms of the effect of a strike.

I'm probably being old-fashionedly ignorant again, but it seems to me that the service industry must piggyback on manufacturing, in the sense that we can all do each others nails and clean each others premises and sell each other goods as busily as we like, but if we do not produce anything, our economy is fucked. This is the problem of declining industrial regions. So the automation of manufacturing becomes a problem of distribution, because the industry, even though it may continue, does not export wealth to its surroundings, but only to its owners. I'm not seeing a lot of will to solve the problem of distribution.

Godzilla rises from the Pacific and decides he fucking hates Tokyo.

Why won't it happen?

And btw... if you can't explain why it won't happen, that means it's inevitable. — Mongrel

It won't happen because the Guardian says that Godzilla is not real, and ebythink the Grauniad sais is ture.

The disempowered masses vote for a return to the industrial age, which they will not get. What they will get is the encouragement to continue the dying industrial past, producing and consuming, until their complete destruction. — unenlightened

Where's marxism when you actually need it, eh?

Oh. Well, 'nuther mystery solved. Carry on.

We could always hunger games each other for the amusement of the weird looking wealthy. It's a living.

I was kind of hoping someone would talk me out of it by showing where I've gone wrong. Pessimism is not my usual mode, nor politics my usual concern. I think it was the combination of Trumpery, Putinism, and at home, Corbynism and anti-Corbynism together with Brexitry that got me wondering what is going on.

I'd like to believe it is just a psychological condition I've got stuck in, but you'll have to work a bit harder to convince me. — unenlightened

Ok. So things aren't looking up but I don't think the majority of the rich elite are so detached from the world that they don't care about anybody else. If I look at the giving pledge, for instance, and the amount of good Bill and Melinda Gates do for others, there is hope right there.

But we are living in the entitlement generation. Where the rich blame the poor for thinking they are entitled to social benefits and the poor blame the rich they are entitled to a disproportional share of the profits. I'm in the camp of the poor as I'm always reminded that we drink water from wells build by others. The individual accomplishment is greatly exaggerated and the humbleness of the great men of the 1900-1920, who "were standing on the shoulders of giants" is gone from our societies. Great intellectuals and researchers who advanced society without any profit motive are no longer social heroes, they've been replaced by business men. And those business men aren't evil or bad but the society that worships them just isn't that great.

Godzilla is code for Tsunami, which is code for seismic activity. It looks as though Godzilla has been woken up.

Thinking about it Trump looks uncannily like Godzilla.

The sort of "left hand" of commodification is that since anything can be commodified it also does not matter what real-world value said commodity might have -- every commodity has a use-value, ala the steel, cars, bullets of classical industrial production, and there are relative use-values (such as bullets vs. services). But then every commodity has an exchange-value as well, and it is this which the abstract economy of capital cares about.

Insofar that any firm can produce profits -- has a flow of value -- and requires human operators within that flow (whether they be employed by the specific firm or not -- they can fall anywhere in the line of production) then there exists labor-power.

Walmart as of late has had workers organize within it and even though Walmart could go the route of Amazon, replacing their workforce with robots, the organizing within Walmart has brought about better working conditions for Walmart employees.


Labor still has the potential to organize and gain power through where they've always had power, regardless of what commodity they produce -- at the point of production. If that be acrylic nails, hoagies, or back massages then the fact that profits can be made through any of these commodities gives labor that potential to build power and leverage it.



I'd say that this doesn't mean your scenario won't play out. Only that it might not. It really depends on to what extent working class people can be organized not just within national parties, but across national barriers -- as capital is not limited to nations, labor can't, strategically speaking, limit itself to nations. At least that's what I think.

And honestly while capital has slowly dismantled labor, labor orgs have played their role too -- within the U.S. at least. It's been labor's increasingly parochial vision for the labor movement. Where communists were active in the labor movement and understood these general principles they had been expunged and replaced by petty bureaucrats who have moved the labor struggle from the point of production, where workers have power, to the negotiating table, where bosses do.

This will be accomplished by global warming raising sea levels to flood major centres of population and most of the arable land

Could start making more rock to counter this: http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-are-again-turning-co2-into-solid-rock-to-fight-climate-change

supplemented by repressive government and war.

Not sure science can help with this though...

The model changes. Robots don't make stuff for workers to consume because there are no workers. Non workers become non-consumers and have no value to capital. Robots are capital and produce products for capitalists. Everyone else fucks off and dies.

The flexible labour market is just the beginning of the end of labour power. Its not a betrayal, but the operation of historical necessity. This is a neo-Marxist analysis - do you not recognise it? — unenlightened

I'm a Green leftie and once knew a fair amount about economics. I don't think the future looks at all rosy but I don't think it looks like your vision in all sorts of ways. One fundamental thing is that yours is indeed a neo-Marxist argument and just like many of them, it's very weak on understanding the 'demand' side of macro-economics. 20th century capitalism defied Marx's predictions by thriving because (a) the nation-state spent a great deal more on non-transfer payments for welfare than in previous centuries, on transfers like pensions, and on the military; and (b) mass markets opened up, in a virtuous circle where better-paid workers bought everything from Henry Ford's cars to Amazon's books. These were the two fundamental sources of vastly-increased aggregate demand that made a lot of people richer than their forebears.

I don't see why there won't continue to be mass markets. As China and other countries advance, their growing middle-classes provide a bigger market. (They're buying up quite a lot of resources in northern England, for instance, where we might have made Manchester great through the invention of graphene) Perhaps short-sighted elites like the British will make their fellows poorer, they look pretty incompetent at the moment, but even on a falling global market, I'd expect a large middle-class to carry on doing well. The end of the Soviet Union, for instance, caused terrible, largely unreported poverty, and a steep fall in life expectancy, especially among men, but it furthered a burgeoning bourgeoisie, brought St Petersburg if not Moscow back into the great European cities, and no collapse of civilisation was reported, even though the effect on the rural poor was in my view disgusting.

If you look at economics through an ecological lens, which I've taken to be the better lens as I've got older and understood more, then there are profound (as apo would say) constraints, and it remains to be seen how they will be dealt with. Fossil-based energy gradually runs out, rare metals get rarer, so you can't keep making toy phones in such quantity, and you can't drive this many cars on solar power, so major structural change will occur. Climate change kicks in so there will be big climate events, though I think poor Bangladesh is in bigger danger than London, the metropolitan elite are quietly spending a fortune on making London safer (see this on how the South East has most flood defence spending). I daresay other metropolitan elites are doing the same.

What's to be done? Me I'm just plugging away, putting Green leaflets through doors (though it always seems ironic to use leaflets), doing my bit for civil society, conscious that long-term predictions are usually our present fears or hopes writ large, and bugger all to do with how things will turn out. And really, my lifetime has been pretty good: relatively peaceful, affluent, free. If we can pass some of that down the line to our grandchildren, that's the best we can do. Alarm stokes up populism and motivates only despondency.

20th century capitalism defied Marx's predictions by thriving because (a) the nation-state spent a great deal more on non-transfer payments for welfare than in previous centuries, on transfers like pensions, and on the military; and (b) mass markets opened up, in a virtuous circle where better-paid workers bought everything from Henry Ford's cars to Amazon's books. These were the two fundamental sources of vastly-increased aggregate demand that made a lot of people richer than their forebears.

I don't see why there won't continue to be mass markets. — mcdoodle

I haven't explained that very clearly. The virtuous circle came about because of labour power, not the efforts of capital. Organised labour was able to demand better pay and redistribution by governments. Now if I am right that the source of wealth is production, which means agriculture, mining, manufacturing and so on, then the automation ofthose processes, and never mind that lawyers and janitors are not going to be robotised, means that 1. wealth is not being distributed through wages, and 2. labour demands for redistribution lose their power.

So one sees the roll-back of worker protection, of progressive taxation, and so on. My local economy is almost entirely service industry. The product is holiday services - bed and breakfast, shopping, entertainment. This works fine as long as the holiday makers have money, which they get ultimately from production somewhere else. Robot production cuts off the source. Now that source could easily be replaced by a basic income, say, financed by a capital/wealth tax. But I don't see much sign of it, or of any power that has the interest to demand it.

What's to be done? — mcdoodle

The question is more so, 'who is going to do it?' The what is easy; good environmental policies and strong redistributive policies. The problem is that governments are national, and capital is global and we are going to become the tragedy of the commons because of it. And the rise of nationalism is exactly the wrong way to be going.

Edit: This is too cryptic even for my taste: "The problem is that governments are national, and capital is global and we are going to become the tragedy of the commons because of it." The worker/consumer is the 'commons' that producers all make use of but none has an incentive to invest in. It's a twist, but I think it still bites.

One has to realize that the more money in fewer hands will cause the economy to collapse or at the very least to stagnate due to reduced demand.

A simple example is whether a 60 year old with 1 billion contribute more to growth an prosperity, regardless if you believe in trickle down, than say ten 30 year olds with 100 million?

This is beside the fact that, who the hell needs 1 billion? Let alone 100 million?

My lack of reply doesn't mean I'm not thinking of this, but that I don't know what to add. I think I have more belief in creative capitalists but otherwise we're thinking similarly

I don't know what to add. — mcdoodle

I'm not sure either. But perhaps I could just direct attention to the title of the thread, for a last thought. The economy is not a person, and does not treat people as persons. In this respect it is like the weather (or the climate). If it had a psyche, it would be psychopathic, in having no empathy or consideration for another. And perhaps here can be seen the connection with my other recent threads. The economy is being put above humanity by humanity.

It is as if we are playing a giant game of monopoly, and are close to the end of the game. The eight richest have more wealth than the poorest 50% we are told. Well when all the wealth is in one place, the game is over. There is nothing for it but to collect up the pieces and do something else, or redistribute and start again.

This is the moment to awaken to the fact that we are not talking about tokens on a board, but people on a planet. There is no getting up and walking away, we go bankrupt and die, or we change the game. But I am not expecting the incredible winners to be changing it, not even the clever and philanthropic ones.

The best way to have a revolution is to pretend it has already happened. — Jerry Garcia

The way to awaken people is to talk to them as if they were awake, to respond to them as if you were awake, to reclaim the authority of the subject, and reject the objectification of the other. I don't think politics can help if we don't do this. But once we are awake, the solutions are almost trivial.

I agree. It concentration of wealth coupled with unsustainable growth in debt that consistently leads to extreme social unrest. This has been the case throughout history. We are witnessing the beginning stages of this unrest everywhere around the globe and it is impossible to suggest where it may ask lead but historically speaking it is usually war.

The perspective of a fellow world-citizen: you've never been like me. When I was in my 20's I was thinking all the same things you are now, but I was so angry about it, it was tearing me apart.

You've never been that angry. You were never driven to try to understand why the world is the way it is. That's why you now act like you just discovered Marxist alienation. Your answer to why it's this way? Everybody is asleep.. except of course for you. To my mind, that's little more than mental masturbation.

You know me so well. Too well in fact. The problem I have with you in all these discussions is that you don't respond to what I say because you are too busy pathologising. Whether I am awake or not is entirely beside the point. My self congratulation is beside the point. Your critique of my personality is beside the point. Talk to me as if I'm saying something that might be right or wrong and stop treating my posts as symptoms all the time. It's particularly ironic that your doings so exemplifies the objectification I have been criticising in these last 3 threads.

I invited you to suspend judgment of the world for a few seconds and try to understand how it comes to be the way it is.

Instead you berate me for berating you. Awesome.

I wish I could find it but there was an article titled something along the lines of runaway capitalism where it talked about since the cold war just ended that the industrialize world would assume that 'capitalism worked' instead of socialism working and such an assumption was bound to create an unbalance economy (since there was no other ideology to contrast capitalism to) until there was another economic paradigm to put everything back into perspective.

In reality (or at least my interpretation of it), capitalism is really kind of a feudalism 2.0 where the rich and powerful are able to use their resources to take advantage of the poor and the working class to better themselves. Without anyone in authority to challenge the 'status quo' and cronyism (since the people in charge of that kind of thing answer to the rich themselves), nobody can really do anything.

Without any real checks and balances, 'democracy' reverts to 'might makes right' and plutocracy which seems to be the real model of government for Western civilization for the past several hundred years.

If you have a chance watch some of the following clip on YouTube and skim some of the other links:

Poor Us: an animated history - Why Poverty?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxbmjDngois&t=0s

It's the Inequality, Stupid
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

Why Screwing Unions Screws the Entire Middle Class
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-labor-union-decline

Overworked America: 12 Charts That Will Make Your Blood Boil
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts

... try to understand how it comes to be the way it is. — Mongrel

I tell you what. I'll do my best to completely ignore you in future. What the fuck do you think I'm doing with this thread? That's a rhetorical question; I'm trying to come up with an understanding of how it comes to be the way it is.

Thanks for the links. It's nice to know that I am not entirely alone in my lunacy and ignorance.