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Read this interesting essay written by DEREK THOMPSON
For centuries, experts have predicted that machines would make workers obsolete. That moment may finally be arriving. Could that be a good thing ?
The end of work is still just a futuristic concept for most of the United States, but it is something like a moment in history for Youngstown, Ohio, one its residents can cite with precision: September 19, 1977.
For much of the 20th century, Youngstown's steel mills delivered such great prosperity that the city was a model of the American dream, boasting a median income and a home ownership rate that were among the nation's highest. But as manufacturing shifted abroad after World War II, Youngstown steel suffered, and on that gray September afternoon in 1977, Youngstown Sheet and Tube announced the shuttering of its Campbell Works mill. Within five years, the city lost 50,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in manufacturing wages. The effect was so severe that a term was coined to describe the fallout: regional depression.
Youngstown was transformed not only by an economic disruption but also by a psychological and cultural breakdown. Depression, spousal abuse, and suicide all became much more prevalent; the caseload of the area's mental-health center tripled within a decade. The city built four prisons in the mid-1990s—a rare growth industry. One of the few downtown construction projects of that period was a museum dedicated to the defunct steel industry.
The future will tell us whether or not this pans out as he envisions. What does SN think will happen ?
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @04:30PM
Much of our future depends on energy, but fossil fuels are important in other ways too. It is true that you can "make fossil fuels" if you have enough other energy to spend on it, but that's where physics kicks you in the shin: Efficiency seems unimportant if you have energy sources like the sun, wind and nuclear power, which are practically infinite, but wasted energy mostly stays in the system as heat, and that creates a limit not to "making" energy but to using it. So synthesizing enough hydrocarbon fuels just to keep using them like we do today is unsustainable, and with fossil fuels running out, we will have to find other ways of doing things, before people starve. It takes a real optimist to think that we can replace a century of using hydrocarbons for practically everything by the time that stuff becomes too expensive to burn in engines.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 26 2015, @01:34AM
Of course you cut the current use of hydrocarbons out of the loop. Photovoltic solar panels and good batteries are currently making a bite out the incumbent electricity networks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @08:47AM
You forget that hydrocarbons are not only used to burn them for energy.