re: #81 Targetpractice

My overall dystopian view of our future is enhanced by stories such as you relate.

As the wealthy continue to accumulate ever increasing share of the land in this country, the rents will be continually pressured upwards, and the poorest will be homeless.

This was the nature of our past (serfs living on the dirt floors in the corners of stables) and I suspect that is to where we are returning.

It may take a couple of centuries but the end result of landlords is, well, Lords.

Unrestricted, wealth accumulation is biased by the powers that be to continually flow into fewer and fewer hands.

With the unraveling at the end of fossil fuels I do think that societies will struggle to make renewables work.

Not that we can’t electrify our lives. We can, and are trying to do that.

I just doubt that the masses on this planet can wait until such is accomplished.

Until then we are walking a tightrope: land barons and serfdom on one side, left-wing anarchy on the other.

I feel that I, tail end of the boomers, have lived during the golden age of America. Vast national riches poured out on untold luxuries that humans have never before experienced.

13 centuries from now I expect people living in what was once the US will be a mix of 40% serfs/indentured slaves, 50% tenant farmers, 9% commercial/clerical/military class, 1% elite land owners.