We are stuck on Planet Earth for several more generations
with nowhere else to go – to another planet perhaps; one that would be like
Earth or that can be terraformed in a relatively short period of time. Just
think about it, from the decade of the 1960s to that of the 1980s, we really
thought that by 2001, we would be on our way to Jupiter. But here we are in the
year 2014, thinking that we won't send a first manned expedition to Mars before
another two decades.
This means that the kind of economy we shall continue to
have will be restricted to what we know and can do on this planet. It is the
production of goods and services we are familiar with, and whatever else we may
invent that will help realize growth in the economy. The trouble is that every
growth we have achieved so far has required a corresponding increase in the use
of energy. We called it efficiency because it saved on labor, with automated
machines assisting workers to produce more with less labor input.
And since energy is bound to get more in short supply and
more expensive till such time that a breakthrough is achieved ... if this will
ever happen, the efficiency of the future will be measured not by the savings
in labor that an industry can achieve, but the savings in the use of energy. In
fact, this trend is beginning to take root in the countries that are advanced
technically but are poor in energy resources.
Also, the scarcity in energy resources will correspond with
the scarcity in all other resources; the difference being that, unlike energy
which cannot be recycled; the other resources will be to some extent. They will
be with the caveat that they will require more energy to be salvaged and
re-manufactured. This picture, added to the notion that the population of the
planet will increase before it stabilizes at a higher level, says that growth
in the economy will come mostly from what will be called services even if we
would be hard pressed now to recognize them as services. That will be the era
of the hustlers and the self-seekers trying to sell you services you do not
need in exchange for money you have in the account and need even less.
All of that will shape the character of a planet that will
contain an abundance of human resources and a scarcity of natural resources. To
maintain social tranquility, governments will guaranty a minimum annual income
for everyone whether or not they work. In fact, more and more, the work that is
done will be done by people who volunteer for it – as many elderly do now pro
bono in some hospitals.
In the 1960s, when the scarcity of resources had not been
foreseen, we thought that the leisure society was around the corner because
automated machines were going to do the work for us. We were wrong. As it turned
out, making those machines required more labor to produce them and produce the
energy that allowed them to run, than they saved in labor input. In fact, this
is where growth in the economy was coming from. But we have now hit on the
irony that has been in the making without us realizing what was happening. It
is that growth in the future will come not from the use of energy consuming
labor saving devices but from energy saving measures that will be applied to
labor intensive jobs done mostly by volunteers. And that will be a low value
added growth made to look high with the aid of a printing press that will run
at full throttle.
All of that makes it look like we are entering a period
resembling the two centuries separating the European Renaissance from the start
of the Industrial Revolution. It was a grotesque period characterized by
buffoonery where everybody knew a little of something, and a few pretended to
have the secret of something big which they sold to the gullible who bought it
in the belief that it will make them wealthy, and make them live a long and
happy life.
What came after that period was the Industrial Revolution
which transformed the planet. If the same scenario will reproduce itself in our
era, it will have to be in the field of space exploration – more specifically
in a new form of propulsion that will allow spaceships to travel at speeds
equal at least to a tenth the speed of light. And this is about 2000 times what
we have so far achieved.