> When energy runs out, or becomes significantly more expensive, it's game over for developed countries.

Western society is inefficient at a macro level, even though it may seem efficient from the financial perspective of a single company or an individual. People cover huge distances to work. Companies are moving goods, components and people from all over the world. People change jobs (losing focus) and their residence often, companies go bankrupt because of competitive market forces. This means a lot of wasted resources and duplication.

You can decrease the energy consumption significantly without affecting the quality of life in case of adopting a new political philosophy which considers these realities.

> wasted resources and duplication

This is 19th century zeitgeist.

It failed to recognize fulfillment of human needs as an evolutionary process. "Waste and duplication" -- trial and error -- is necessary. You can't design for what you haven't discovered.

Here's a picture that always humbles me, representing one infinitesimal aspect of human thriving.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions#/m...

> You can decrease the energy consumption significantly without affecting the quality of life in case of adopting a new political philosophy

Does it involve telling people what constitutes "quality of life?" Why does this "new" political (in fact: economic) philosophy so often devastate so many lives?

Even if you presume to run human civilization as an ant colony (How dare you?), even with honest intentions, centralization is a bad idea. It lets you pretend you're making informed decisions based on a complete model, and not just running an experiment with global risk.

>Does it involve telling people what constitutes "quality of life?" Why does this "new" political (in fact: economic) philosophy so often devastate so many lives?

No it doesn't. It involves abolishing inflation and unemployment, inequality and endless runaway debt growth while simultaneously increasing wages, lowering the cost of living, discouraging corruption and rewarding long term thinking and human effort.

>Even if you presume to run human civilization as an ant colony (How dare you?), even with honest intentions, centralization is a bad idea

Well, good thing the solution doesn't require more centralisation but rather the opposite, extreme decentralization of power and decision making in the hands of everyone rather than the privileged and special interests groups.

> It lets you pretend you're making informed decisions based on a complete model, and not just running an experiment with global risk.

We've been running the same failed experiment over and over again and it has always resulted in the same predictable outcome. We should instead face reality instead of sticking our heads into the sand.

How would you propose to realize that utopian vision? And please don't waste our time with any cryptocurrency BS.

Planned economy. It did wonders! Just look at the USSR.

> even though it may seem efficient from the financial perspective of a single company or an individual

The national highway system and 1950s’ surburbanisation are top-down policy choices, not emergent behaviour.

The national highway system was a military not economic or social policy designed to allow for easy transport of troops in the event of a way. That is why many cities have large beltways that surround them, the idea being that if a city is nuked the highway is outside the blast radius.

It can be all of those things.

The existence is a military policy. The fact that many of them cut through and decimated minority businesses and neighborhoods rather than just solely going around cities in a beltway fashion (as is done in Europe and was Eisenhower's original intention) was an intentional social policy to remove "blighted" areas.

That was part of the sales pitch. The main reasons were to improve travel speed into and between cities, and to open up much more land for development.

Source? I've heard this, and I've heard it's a common myth / urban legend. There's a lot of similar myths, like that "interstates have a lot of straight sections to allow for an airplane to land in an emergency"

I did read a well researched book (The Big Roads by Earl Swift) on the US highway and interstate system's creations, and I don't recall that being mentioned as a primary motivation. The main motivation for beltways and such really was just "alleviating congestion"

I didn't bother looking this up yet again to reconfirm I'm not misremembering, but I think the onus is on you here since it's a weird claim even if oft repeated.

Edit: I immediately looked it up anyway. Military thinking did factor in in early planning/rabblerousing regarding highway construction, but this was very abstract and DECADES prior to the main effort of highway construction. There is not really a strong historical connection, and the military did not play a leading role or even much of a supporting one, at the time the interstates were actually built much later.

At the time most interstates were built, the main justification for Congress to spend the money was civilian use for alleviating congestion, which is why (Eisenhower famously was baffled by this) the focus was on intracity expressways, not intercity ones.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Plan...

I would guess the biggest reason for this myth is they were built under the executive sponsorship of Eisenhower, who at some point mentioned the anecdote that as a young man he had coincidentally been involved as a junior officer in an experimental military convoy from coast to coast in the 1910s. Ironically, Eisenhower's connection to both was peripheral. In one he was just one of many cogs in the machine, in the other, decades later in life, he was just the guy who did the politically expedient thing and signed on the dotted line for plans that had been developed and advocated by others. But there was no causal relationship between these two events.

Of course, people love a good story, so this quickly mutated into "General-turned-President Eisenhower remembered how bad the roads were for the military and masterminded the interstate system to fix that problem" which is a complete mischaracterization. He was a very, vey popular figure in his day so modest mistakes like that that made him look better were not likely to be corrected. For one of the main generals who "won world war two" it would have been a believable claim, as well as something one would _want_ to believe.

The reality is the big roads came about for the boring reason that cars were becoming more popular.

> who at some point mentioned the anecdote that as a young man he had coincidentally been involved as a junior officer in an experimental military convoy from coast to coast in the 1910s

Eisenhower whipped votes for the ‘56 Act on the basis of military mobilisation. It wasn’t a military project per se. And there were plenty of other motivations and votes. But the logic is far from urban myth. The 1910 convoys spurred the ‘21 Act, which was more limited and civil in nature.

That being said, highways are terrible for mass mobilization, mostly because they also represent pretty easy targets to bomb (for either attack or defense), and also because of how quickly they become congested.

They were amongst the first targets of the war in Ukraine, for instance.

I suspect that is what people wanted as well (not only governments).

Europe has the resources to produce cheap energy they just decided to not exploit it and import their energy from Russia and others.

Exactly, it's not like the energy supply decreased overnight due to natural scarcity.

Peak oil might be a reality, but it's not the cause of current problems in the EU.

Also, per capita energy consumption in the EU is 1/2 compared to the US due to more efficient commuting and buildings (still far from optimal though).

Per capita energy consumption in the EU is lower than the US mostly because they are poorer (on a GDP per capita basis). Europeans would consume more energy if they could afford it.

Mostly incorrect take. Two points for your consideration:

1. All European countries tax gasoline far more heavily than the US, usually to the tune of 100-200% of the wholesale price. That is an intentional policy to lower gasoline consumption, governments could easily remove it if they wished for more energy consumption.

2. Not all European countries are "poorer" than the US even by a GDP measure. Norway which is a petrostate has about half the energy consumption of the US (measured by per capita carbon emissions), Switzerland about a quarter! If anything richer countries in Europe are better than the poorer Eastern neighbour as well as better than the US in minimizing energy waste -- better-insulated housing, better rail and subway networks.

Shutting down all the nuclear?

The conflict between Russia and the west is deeply rooted on the hegemony of rampant worldwide liberalism which creates the problems I described. It's a meat grinder which consumes not only excessive energy but people's livelihoods, too. It is certainly not a world I would want my son to live in.

The interesting thing isn't even your assesment of "west", but what values you assign to russia. They are absolutely wrong. It's (for someone, paradoxically) extremely individualistic slave nation with very deep hierarchies of power.

>He refers to this ideology as a 'timeless, non-modern theory' valid for all time.

Rubbish.

I can't tell if this would be the motivation of a Metal Gear Solid villain, or the motivation of a multi-disc JRPG final boss.

The conflict between Russia and the West is that once upon a time they represented competing similar power spheres of influence with the most important singular difference being which country would sit at the top and all other ideological differences being secondary.

Their ecomic and military power collapsed but their ambitions did not. In a more rational world they would do what other former great powers do and talk shit but actually align their actual behavior with their factual strength because it doesn't pay to pick fights you can't win. Because their leadership has a unrealistic idea of their actual power they are locked in an immoral and unwinnable struggle to subjugate peoples and lands over which they have no moral or legal rights because that is what Moscow does they subjugate people that ethnically aren't Russian enough loot their treasure and use them as cannon fodder to murder other people they would like to subjugate.

Making this a response to liberalism is just complete nonsense. It's a last power grab by an immoral and acquisitive power who sees theirs draining away.

The conflict is between one-person/one-vote and a cartel that has hijacked a nation.

> It is certainly not a world I would want my son to live in.

What world? The one where Russia is shunned?

What does liberalism mean in concrete terms and why is it bad?

I guess the world you want your son to live in is one of planned economies and great leaps forward. I for one do not. I would rather that innovation and competitive forces lead into the future of societies. As Stalin used to say: no people no problem.

The options are not as pure as you make it sound. There is a considerable amount of planning in the free market economies. This ranges from developing transportation networks to deciding upon funding for scientific research. Businesses that control a disproportionate amount of the market also make planning decisions to shape the market. When they make the wrong decisions, there are negative consequences. Arguably, that is what we are seeing at the moment with the supply chain problems. The question is how do you ensure that no single actor gains too much control over a segment of the economy? In many cases, the fallback is central planning. For example: one of the greatest reasons for public highway networks was to diminish the role of railway barons. In other words, centrally planned infrastructure supported a less centralized economy.

It’s not a planned central economy. It is self-reliant local communities within regional bounds, like a fault-tolerant distributed system. They would trade primarily with adjacent regions stuff that they don’t or can’t produce locally. Knowledge, information and education should flow freely everywhere, enabling peace. People should feel comfortable living in their birthplace and should have no motivation for economic migration.

How do you produce airplanes and silicon chips exactly?

Why do you need an airplane in a local community? Also, silicon chips aren't exactly the type of thing that you constantly need to buy every single day nor are they expensive to ship. Using the same phone or laptop for years instead of buying a new one every single year is highly viable.

Your present local community relies on massive quantities of silicon chips and other specialized goods that are ultimately brought in by planes trains and automobiles which themselves depend on specialized goods.

What's the better alternative?

A better alternative would be to have localised production and localised consumption of food and most basic goods. Stuff like not having foreign-cuisine restaurants and not buying salmon from thousands of kilometers away. Cloth production should follow the same idea. People should feel more attached to their birthplace and the goal should be to develop their skills locally with one company preferably. Strong bonds with the local extended family which provides an additional safety net. If your region produces cars, you should be more likely (through education and culture) to become an automotive engineer and live there for your life. Trade for more advanced goods should still be there, but it would be more inter-region and less inter-global.

> not having foreign-cuisine restaurants and not buying salmon from thousands of kilometers away. Cloth production should follow the same idea

These isolated communities exist. Their quality of life is lower. But anyone can join them. From hippie communes to Amish communities, Luddism has a long tradition in modern society. (I’m ignoring the ethno-racial undertone in implying there can be an objective arbiter of what counts as true local cuisine and culture.)

The point is not in absolute isolation, but trading away some optimization in global economic output for increased self-resiliency. Yes, overall we would be poorer on average, but we would a lot less likely to see catastrophic events and a bit more equity among members of the same community.

> point is not in absolute isolation, but trading away some optimization in global economic output for increased self-resiliency

You’re arguing for something reasonable. The commenter I’m replying to quotes Dugin and alludes to something resembling a hermit kingdom. (Attachment to birthplace. Going into the local industry, skills be damned. Blood thicker than water and no “foreign” food.)

This is a recipe for nationalistic poverty. North Korea and Russia are going down this path. They’ll be poor and uninfluential. But if makes them happy, as long as they keep it within their borders, it is difficult to advocate for a shift from outside.

> North Korea and Russia are going down this path.

While I'm not sure which side of the argument I stand on, I do think it's pointing out that even if certain societies / countries do do the things, they unfortunately bare of the costs of others' decisions. A third of Pakistan being flooded is more likely a consequence of the West's energy usage and not due to their own doing. So it's a global effort to make these changes or limited benefits are seen.

"Yes, overall we would be poorer on average"

You first.

Already did it, twice. First time by leaving my (relatively rich and comfortable) upper-middle class life in Brazil and moving to the US. Also have absolutely zero regrets about leaving the US and coming to Europe. Salaries are lower, the tax burden is greater and I'm losing the opportunity of "wealth" generation, but the amount of money I left on the table will never be enough to buy the quality of life my family and I have here.

Now, your turn.

God, I’m glad I wasn’t born in the designated car production region, what a horrible thing to be forced to devote my life to.

You are describing a world of slaves. How many people are you willing to sacrifice to achieve you vision?

Is participating jn an Amish village "slavery"? An Israeli Kibutz?

An amish village is a laughable anachronism that only exist in the context of a much larger whole that is antithetical to the very values and way of life it practices because no larger scale society so constructed could exist or compete with other societies practicing opposing values.

It's not a healthier better way to build a city its a tiny park on a corner lot surrounded by pollution and traffic.

First: yes, it is healthier for those living inside the park, compared to the alternative.

Second: the point is not to build "a larger scale" version of those societies, but actually to replicate the idea of localism in many different places. Less EU and one-world government and more independent nation-states, if you will.

Third: you can oppose the lifestyle and philosophy all you want, but it still is not slavery.

Can it survive against a larger-scale opponent that wants to take its resources, though? Without a friendly superpower enforcing peace with an extraordinarily powerful military, that is.

Switzerland managed to do it for centuries already.

Switzerland's wealth is built on plunder and money laundering. That's not a model we should want to replicate anywhere else.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nazis/reading...

Thats a primitive way to look at things, and incorrect on so many levels it would take few pages to list them all. To sum it up - their wealth is based on precise high quality manufacturing, and secondly on tourism. Banking is not even up there in top revenues for state.

Or, to put it in similar fashion - the wealth of US is based on plunder. The wealth of all western Europe is based on centuries of plunder.

See, the way you frame your posts leads down the conflict immediately. I've checked some of your posts, and kudos to consistency - you are not interested in rational discussion, just consistent trolling and largely baseless conflict.

Well, good thing that I am not using them as example of "how to get rich", but only on "how to keep yourself small and still avoid being invaded by a stronger power".

But even if you want to talk about wealth of the countries, I'd be extremely eager to hear any example of any wealthy nation with a comparatively better moral ground than the Swiss.

There certainly aren't many, but Finland would certainly qualify.

Switzerland isn't by the prior analogy a park its a normal modern nation. It's a complete non sequitur

It's a modern nation that had very mighty expansionist empires on their borders. It's also the only country in Western Europe that never intended or desired to join the EU.

Yes but lest we entirely lose track of the thread its not an isolationist nation that foregoes the fruits of globalism or corporatism its merely been willing to do business with everyone including letting nazis bank the gold literally yanked from the mouths of murdered jews.

It's neutrality even in the face of abject evil has nothing whatsoever to do with any topic being discussed.

And this is how you arrive at needing walls and guns to keep people in - because we tend to vote with our feet and leave such sick authoritarian "utopias" at the price of risking our life - freedom is worth it.

Pretty much how all similar communist experiments had to change their country into a prison so that a "dreamer" such as yourself can have his "perfect" society.

You are still arguing the extreme version of a position of the argument, when I was arguing for the less radical side.

I am arguing for localism. Democratic governments that give more power to its people and their representatives in the lower spheres of power. People can (and should) vote with their feet, and communities can (and should) collaborate with each other.

Then nobody prevents you having what to want even today. This is the beauty of capitalism: it’s perfectly fine to have other forms of organizations inside it. There are communes and kibbutz you can join right now.

No, there aren't. I am not Amish nor Jew.

Anyway, that is besides the point. No one is arguing against "capitalism". The argument is against Globalism and Corporativism. Capitalism, by itself, is amoral. The problem is, e.g, Disney and the NBA kow-towing to the Chinese because of the "Chinese market".

There are many secular intentional communities you can join, right now. I used to live on one; it was great!

But you can’t actually achieve what you call localism for the majority of the population without severely constraining the options for that majority.

And it’s exactly those constraints, which you seem to repeatedly ignore in this and other threads, that people are objecting to. It gives people actually working towards a satisfying localism a bad name, being associated with involuntary ideological constraints.

As it happens, I would be happy to argue against capitalism. I agree no one should argue against markets, but capitalism isn’t markets, it’s entrenched power assigned to those who have accumulated capital for themselves, often justified by “it’s just markets!” when in reality the laws are helping the big capital holders more than is required by just “markets”.

But I won’t argue for localism as a power structure. More local control, OK, maybe, but you seem to think that would lead to more local self reliance. I doubt it.

If you're not allowed to leave, YES.

They are allowed to leave, dude...

You appear to be ignorant of basic economics such as Ricardo's law of comparative advantage.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/comparativeadvantage.as...

What you have proposed is worse than what we have in every way. Transporting food and basic foods over long distances is cheap and very energy efficient. In fact it's more efficient than having a bunch of tiny factories in every city. People shouldn't be stuck living their whole lives in one place working for one company making shitty cloth or whatever.

Please edit swipes like "you appear to be ignorant [etc.]" out of your posts to HN. They break the site guidelines, and you can make your substantive points without them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: we've had to ask you about this many times:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30120252 (Jan 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29598017 (Dec 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25935223 (Jan 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18774141 (Dec 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16175756 (Jan 2018)

Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN in the intended spirit? We ban accounts that keep breaking them. I don't want to ban you, but we need you to fix this.

It is cheaper, but less robust. One ship blocking the Suez Canal means that billions of people are not able to get their food and medicine on time, because everyone is too specialized to do anything that is not a desk job.

>the hegemony of rampant worldwide liberalism

You gonna define "liberalism" precisely? It's overloaded with mutually contradictory meanings.

Ha? This is even dangerous! You're basically yearning for an authoritarian regime. With simplistic argument and some false assumptions you conclude it's more efficient bcz it does not waste basically trial/error. However, this has been proven times after time that such "alternative political philosophy" will defeat its purpose and become highly corrupt. Furthermore, we're in a incomplete information game, evolution is a must, and you can not 'design' things apriori.

Western societies, at least when it comes to political philosophy, are far more efficient than their eastern counterparts if you meant it.

> adopting a new political philosophy

No thanks, I'd rather let market forces make that decision eventually.

All imposed political philosophy that run contrary to market forces and human desires will run into massive inefficiency and grift.

The market forces won't make many nice decisions if you don't let them. No negative interest rates mean companies and workers need to create artificial scarcity to pay the artificially high costs of financial capital.

By simply knowing in advance what to do and how to do it, and what will come, we could make a fortune of all fortunes, outcompete everyone and create a perfect utopia. Good to know!

That is a very naive viewpoint. You might think that economic central planning could allow us to maintain quality of life while increasing efficiency, but in reality that approach failed everywhere it was tried. That is historical reality, not mere political philosophy.

The benefit of this political philosophy is its fractally-flexbile. If we've solved every problem and the most efficient of everything is found, then "fully-automated space communism" is the most "efficient" because everything is directed rigidly in exactly the most efficient way.

That's exactly its fatal flaw though: it's so rigid (and what you call inefficiency is called autonomy by others). People change jobs for many reasons, often because they want something better. Companies go bankrupt often because they are less effective. On a macro level, when the terrain is unknown (as it is for our reality), more autonomy means more flexibility and finding efficient solutions faster.

Let me guess what your alternative proposal is: everyone should live how you want them to live.

Thanks but no thanks. Even ignoring the untold riches & quality of life improvements that free market capitalism has produced, it's just a more free and thus moral system.

Edit: also you don't need to be a philosopher or genius to see that. Pretty much everyone moving out of free Western societies is rich or getting rich (e.g. paid well tax free in Dubai), and most of them keep a backup plan (Western citizenship to be able to come back).

Don't call it a free market. It is anything but free.

> becomes significantly more expensive, it's game over for developed countries

This is wholly unsustained. Yes, marginal luxuries will become less accessible, though not inaccessible. Flying, food variety, et cetera. But the sustainable cost of clean energy, and industrial processes running at those levels, is within traditional fuels’ long-term error bars [1]. The discrepancy in access to that energy will persist between the developed and developing worlds.

(EROI is difficult to calculate. Once you take into account shipping costs, the EROI of PV approximates that of oil.)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricit...

LCOE does not take most important thing of renewables into account - when the energy is actually available. Turns out it's extremely unstable, not only in the day/night cycle, but also around the year. December is black hole in Poland, less than hour of sunlight a day and weak wind.

Nitrogen Fertilizer production is a base for the modern world that billions would die without, and with no identified economic replacement. It relies on fossil fuel to be produced. It is produced in the 100s of millions of metric tons a year.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nitrogen_fertilizer_con...]

The closest non-fossil fuel alternatives are various types of hydrolysis, which at current natural gas prices on the US are 3-10x more expensive per kg of hydrogen produced.

If you want world population to drop precipitously, make it expensive to produce THAT.

>The western way of life is totally dependent on an abundance of cheap energy

Eastern too

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fo...

All life is dependent on cheap energy. It's the currency of the universe.

The Warlock series had this as the intergalactic currency - the kwaher or kilowatt/hour.

Recommended read?

The one by Stasheff? I didn't remember that detail, but haven't read it in a while.

Not just countries, inside the United States. It's amazing how Americans will turn a sympathetic eye and ear to other nations but not other states.

> The western way of life is totally dependent on an abundance of cheap energy.

Western?! What about cities like Tokyo, Dubai, Beijing, Johannesburg, Singapore?

Tbfh, he's wrong. The modern (read: based on electricity and fossil fuels) way of life is dependent on cheap energy. China is currently the biggest emitter in the world. Not because they're particularly wasteful necessarily, no. Surprise, an enormous amount of energy is required for a modern society to sustain itself, especially when that country is home to 1.4 billion people. They've built more nuclear reactors than all other countries combined in the past decade, and they're still heavily reliant on gas and coal (62% coal, 5% nuclear). Nobody knows how to efficiently and cleanly generate that much energy.

For comparison, France, which produces 78% of its electricity with nuclear, only generates about 380 TWh per year with nuclear power plants (2019). China generates ~350 TWh/year with nuclear. 5% of their energy production produces as much as close to 80% of France's energy sector.

And before anybody chimes in with "but they produce everything for everybody in the West": Only around 10% of their production is exported. They have the biggest domestic market in the world and they have the largest middle class population in the world. They have money too and they consume like any other economic actor.

And all this is before considering things like how energy-intensive producing fertilizer is, and fossil fuels are a required part of getting the necessary ingredients.

This can't be solved by consuming/producing less unless a part of that solution is wiping out a significant part of the human population and getting rid of modern civilization. Solving the energy issue (and by extension poverty, resource conflicts, etc.) requires us to actually figure out how to generate enough cheap and clean energy for 8+ billion people.

EROI is a physical measure, it doesn't deal with price at all so I don't get what it has to do with your first paragraph?

It is rather an economic measure to my understanding. Lower EROI will tend to raise energy prices. According to the Wikipedia article, it has been argued that falling EROI has been responsible in part for the collapse of the Roman empire. It has also been linked to inflation.

EROI doesn't tell you how much total energy you can extract nor how fast you can extract it, it just tells you how much of the energy you extract is usable.