FRIDAY, DEC 13, 2019: NOTE TO FILE
Our Faustian Bargain
It was all good for a time
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: SHORT-TERM, FROM THE WIRES, SELF-INTEREST, LORD MAN
Abstract: The deal of a lifetime, one you (or someone not unlike you) cannot refuse.
COOS BAY (A-P) — Here's the deal—the fulfillment of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. Sign the offered agreement and tomorrow you will own a controlling interest in all banks everywhere in the world. The content of Fort Knox will be yours. It is the least the world can do if you agree to be its leader, sole potentate on the planet. The peace dividend will be unimaginable prosperity such that even the poorest of the poor, who will have to live like Americans (circa 1900 CE), will still be happy consumers (for a time).
The not so fine print of the contract clearly states that in one hundred years after it is signed, 96 percent of mammalian life and most other biomass on the planet will have been converted into crops, feedstock, livestock, pets, and humans. Then in fifty years, all humans will be dead, with a few possible exceptions living in perpetual filth, darkness, and misery, But some pets will survive. You don't have to do anything, just sign.
Do you sign? If you don't, someone else will. The Faustian bargain selects for its outcome and anyone who refuses to pay (later) and play self-selects out of the game.
If when the agricultural life of toil was offered, 95 percent of hunter-forager-gardeners refused it and viewed the hardworking (for their elites) farmers as fools, the 5 percent would soon increase ten fold in population, take any lands they 'needed' (wanted), build more villages, towns, then a marvelous city called Omelas, and soon all humans in a region would be farmers, slaves, soldiers, merchants, palace builders, or those who had to live in the palace or temple to serve the people and tell the soldiers who to conquer.
So do you sign? If you don't sign (oh, and the year is 1919), then the world economy will collapse, nation-states will fail, all empire-building will stop, and humans will go back to living in groups of less than 50 people except around a few high energy sources and material flow gates where they will live in supportive neighborhoods of less than 50 people to minimize the effects of the urban behavioral sink.
If any urban residents wish to reproduce and raise children, they may do so only by moving to a low population density area. And there won't be any TVs, smartphones, or cars for personal use. There will only be up to 60 Wh/person/day of electricity for personal use (the poorest get 40 Wh and the richest, the most privileged humans, get 60 Wh with those demanding more being put to death if they cannot be reeducated. And the nightmare scenario only gets worse.
Not everyone needing a kidney transplant can have one. There will only be six places on Earth that can do kidney transplants and air travel is too limited to serve personal wants or needs, so transportation is limited. Those judged to maybe live significantly longer if they receive a transplant (or other above baseline and therefore rationed medical care) may enter a lottery or refuse possible treatment by not entering. Some 'beautiful' people will, by chance, not get what they want, and some 'despicable' people will.
So sign NOW as it is in your short-term self interest to do so, and doing so can easily be justified. Once you are hyper-wealthy, wordsmiths will line up and compete to see who can best explain to the masses why you are so important. Departments in all universities will devote themselves to the study of you and name an era after you, Lord Man.
PS: As I am an extreme cornucopian optimist (fideist) who foresees humans living prosperously on an abundant Earth, is there an alternative? Well, the deal has already been signed and sealed. The global complex society (the Euro-Sino Empire) will collapse as have all before it. Does that mean that 'all humans will be dead' per contract? Well, all Anthropocene enthusiasts will be, but all humans are not hu-mans of NIMH wannabes. Even in the 'best of times' not all serve with equal enthusiasm. If some hunter-forager-gardeners withdrew away from technoindustrial society to the Heart of the World, wherever that may be, then they might persist when the Anthropocene hu-mans of NIMH's enthusiasm falters and they go extinct. Some, though products of industrial society and dependent on it, realize one cannot serve both Nature and Lord Man. Some may vote with their feet and not go down with the ship of fools.
