By Mike Folkerth
© 2009

INTRODUCTION:

I could spend every day batting around the symptoms that have brought the American economy to a grinding halt, but in reality, all that ails us stems from the human race violating the physical limitations of a finite planet.

Not so long ago I sat down and attempted to compile a list of the more serious infractions and titled that list “Show-Stoppers.” Each subject on my list is unilaterally capable of bringing our ill conceived exponential growth model to a screeching halt.

The purpose of this writing is to produce arguments that are logical, vivid, provable, powerful, and that will serve as solid anchors for which to debase any counter argument that suggests our current economic model can continue without resulting in severe consequences to America’s Middle Class.

My long stated opinion is that the U.S. will not, and physically cannot, return to our past heyday of unchecked lending and the accompanying consumption as the basis of our underlying economic platform. The past housing bubble has stripped the last remaining wealth from the American Middle Class for the benefit of the social elite.

The United States economy reached its optimum level many years ago. This fact is apparent when the accompanying (and facilitating) private and federal debt accumulation (that began in earnest in 1970) is given proper consideration. We must now deal with the harsh realities that eventually plague all exponential growth based societies. Expecting those who created the problem to solve our ills is a form of madness.

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” ― Albert Einstein

The United States is in serious economic trouble, of that there is little argument. There is however a roaring perpetual debate focused on the differing opinions of just how much trouble we are in and just how long it may take to right the good ship.

And then, there are those such as myself who question whether the good ship can be righted at all without the American people undergoing a massive paradigm shift (a 180 degree shift in the way that we view and conduct our economic future).

That paradigm shift will require abandoning the holy grail of our economic underpinnings; that of exponential growth. How can I quickly convince the reader that exponential growth is the cornerstone of America’s economy? I challenge you to try and remember the last political candidate that did not promise economic growth beyond that of his or her predecessor.

EXPONENTIAL GROWTH:

It is important to begin by first stating the most imposing of all Show-Stoppers and the root cause for nearly all of our economic ills; “Exponential growth in a finite world is both physically and mathematically impossible.” If everyone were able to comprehend this one provable mathematical law, the purpose of this entire writing would be captured in that single statement. But alas, it is not that easy.

“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” ― Kenneth Boulding, English - American Economist

“Exponential growth,” is growth that compounds at a given rate or percentage of the whole over a given time period, such as growing larger each year in respect to the past year. A good example of such exponential growth is, “Our economy grows at the rate of 4% per year.” In other words, our economy grows by 4% and ends the year at 104% of where it began 12 months before.

The 104% then grows by 4% and so on; year after year. In the beginning, this seems harmless enough. After all, growth is good; right? But the exponential function is a sneaky character. It is essential to have a basic understanding of our most powerful adversary before we continue and therefore I will provide the following vivid example to demonstrate the power of the “exponential function.”

The legend goes that a clever engineer was once able to avert a potential famine in India during a severe drought by designing and building a dam and irrigation system. The king was so grateful that he offered the engineer any of the country’s many treasures as payment. The modest engineer declined the treasures saying that he would instead accept only the amount of wheat equal to placing one grain of wheat on the first square of a chess board, two grains on the second square, four grains on the third square, etc. until all 64 squares on the board were filled up. The King readily agreed, thinking that the engineer could be paid off for a pittance. How much grain did the engineer ask for?

Answer: F = P(1+i)n = 1(1 + 1)63 = 9 x 1018 grains, but don’t worry about understanding the complex math, the answer will suffice to shock, amaze, and stupefy.

This is roughly 400 times the 1990 worldwide harvest of wheat, which is more wheat than humans have harvested in the entire history of the earth as calculated in 1991!

The obvious problem then, when planning for exponential growth, is that our planet does not grow, but instead stubbornly remains a constant. The ever growing quantities of non-renewable resources required to support our exponential growth model actually shrink each year by the total amount harvested worldwide.

At the same time, renewable resources such as food crops, forests, etc., consume more and more landmass to pace the constant demand for growth and also require ever greater inputs in the way water, fuel, fertilizer, machinery, transportation and the like which must be obtained from the non-renewable sector. As the above chessboard example displayed, there are limits to such growth.

The possibility of exponential growth as the basis for any nation’s ongoing economy could, in a micro example, be compared to fully stocking one’s home pantry and then expecting to eat from the stores for the remainder of your life. After which your children and their children plan to exist indefinitely from the same finite stores.

Micro examples are much easier to consider than those of global macroeconomic examples. The vastness of global resources may appear to be infinite, however, I assure you that they are not.

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I’m not sure about the former.” ― Albert Einstein

Exponential growth can also be stated as “geometric growth,” like a snowball rolling downhill, with each revolution requiring more and more snow to continue the next revolution. A grasp of general mathematics is sufficient to realize that at some point, there simply will be insufficient resources to expand the necessary consumption to the next level.

We reached that level when compared to balance some years ago, which I will demonstrate later in this writing. Our economy is foolishly and impossibly based on the absolute necessity for exponential growth. Each year we must grow in relationship to the past year. To accomplish this, we must increase population and consume resources in ever greater amounts. This is then similar to the grains of wheat on the chessboard; doing so has now proven impossible.

When one considers the problems of traffic, congestion, pollution, crime, and employment challenges for cities such as New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Denver, Washington DC, and Chicago, and at the same moment, considers that growth is the ultimate plan for their survival, the immediate thought should be; that’s insane!

Insane, delusional, a fool’s paradise; regardless of what we may call this misguided quest for growth, it remains a mathematical impossibility in a finite world. “Exponential growth is the plan; it ain’t possible is the problem.” ― Mike Folkerth

Social Security and Medicare are good examples of the fallacy for a plan that requires never ending growth. By government accounts, Medicare is slated to be insolvent by 2017 and Social Security by 2041. Count on these failures coming much sooner, as the government provided dates for depletion are predicated on a growing economy, not a protracted recession.

The question for this section is then, “How could we have ever based our entire economy and our children’s futures on exponential growth, when it is provably found to be both physically and mathematically impossible?”

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” ― Dr. Albert Bartlett, Professor of Physics, University of Colorado

GOVERNMENT GROWTH:

Much of our fabled growth has been in the form of the lopsided expansion of government as compared to that of the actual economy. This fact can be witnessed in the graph below that was graciously provided by Michael Hodges in his excellent Grandfather Economic Report. http://mwhodges.home.att.net/

I now challenge you to name the last president who grew the real economy at a greater rate than the growth of debt over that same period. If you said, “Bill Clinton,” you would be very much mistaken. This writing in not about Republican or Democratic trickery; it’s about hardcore math and sustainability.

Growth of government as a substitute for a real economy is not limited to our Federal employee’s. Local and state government has grown at an amazing rate as can be witnessed in this next chart, again, from Michael Hodges.

Continual growth is most definitely the plan and I will attempt to explain why such a plan is physically impossible; and always was. The exact sciences of physics and math are never wrong. The manmade political/social sciences are rarely correct.

DEBT:

Our skyrocketing National and personal debt levels did not begin their stellar climb in just the past few years. The last truly balanced budget came in the year of 1969. Coincidentally, or perhaps not such a coincident, in 1970, the United States hit peak domestic oil production (maximum oil production on American soil).

Since that pivotal year of 1970, our funded National Debt has climbed from around $371 Billion to some $11+ Trillion in early 2009. This is an increase in funded debt of more than 2964% over 39 years. That does not include Social Security, Medicare, government pensions, etc. that add some $53 Trillion in additional unfunded liability.

This also means that with the 1970 debt remaining as a constant, our National Debt has risen an average of 76% per year over that 39 year period. However, America hasn’t experienced real growth in our economy for years; we have instead, substituted real economic growth, with growth of government and growth of debt. We all understand how such a plan works out in our private lives.

In 1971, the U.S. was forced to abandon the gold standard forever. It was impossible to continue to back our exponential growth model with gold, therefore rather than admit that the U.S. had reached zenith for balanced growth and to therefore make the difficult but necessary adjustments, the decision was made to back exponential growth with exponential debt which is backed by nothing more than our government’s ability to borrow and tax. In short, we began borrowing against the future; a classic Ponzi scheme.

I graciously thank babylontoday.com for the following charts. Please look at 1970 and you will gain great understanding for the true beginning of our current decline. A picture is worth a thousand words.

To demonstrate the insidious nature of exponential growth, in the first 204 years of our nation (1776 - 1970), there had been approximately $500 Billion issued in Fed M-3 money stock. While the Fed quit publishing M-3 values in February of 2006 (for obvious reasons), it is estimated that today there is approximately $12 TRILLON in M-3 money stock and counting!

M-3 money stock should not be confused with actual physical dollars in circulation, as the greatest share of the Federal Money Stock exists as credit and balance sheet entries only.

This may be a good time to consider just how much a Trillion dollars is. If you were to start counting at the rate of one dollar each second, and count continually night and day to a Trillion, it would require doing so for 32,000 years!

As late as 1980, America was the largest creditor nation on earth; today we are the largest debtor nation on earth. In 1980 our National Debt for the first 204 years as a nation had yet to eclipse the first Trillion dollars. Yet, in just the past 29 years, that debt has risen to more than $11 Trillion and is expected to double in the next eight years! This, my friends, is not the product of political persuasion, but is instead a real time and stark example of the long term consequences of a system that depended on exponential growth for our very survival. I remind you, the exponential function is a worthy opponent.

Anything that can’t go on forever; doesn’t.

The question for this section is then, “If we were unable to collect sufficient taxes to pay our debts during the best economic years that this country has ever experienced, and if it were necessary to increase the federal debt by 2964% (in constant dollars) over the most recent past 39 banner years; how then in today’s world of foreign competition and diminishing resources could we possibly grow our economy to pay for the additional Trillions of debt that are accumulating annually?

Did no one really understand the consequences of massive personal and National Debt? Not hardly. A couple of our old friends, Mr. Washington and Mr. Jefferson, understood oh so well.

“No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence.” - George Washington to James Madison 1789

“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.” ― Thomas Jefferson

COMPOUNDING INTEREST:

This is an extremely difficult subject to get one’s mind around and therefore I will do my best to simplify the process. But in the end, I assure you that compounding interest is a genuine Show-Stopper.

The overall societal acceptance of compounding interest follows the false rationalization so eloquently stated by Thomas Paine’s 1776 phrase in ‘Common Sense,’ “Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”

The above statement can be applied to our entire impossible economic structure. We fail to question whether our economic basis is fair or even mathematically sustainable on the grounds that it has been in place for a very long time. “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”

Both the Federal Reserve and the IRS were created in 1913. Both have been accepted through custom and not that of personal intense examination. I subscribe then to Thomas Paine’s statement, “Time makes more converts than reason.”

I do hope to appeal to your logic and reason and the following statement is based on just that.

“Society is seriously handicapped because its two most important intellectual underpinnings, the science of matter-energy and the historic system of finance, are incompatible.” ― M. King Hubbert, American Geophysicist - October 5th, 1903 - October 11th, 1989

Dr. Hubbert went on to say, “Money, being a system of accounting, is, in effect, paper and so is not constrained by the laws within which material and energy systems must operate. In fact money grows exponentially by the rule of compound interest.” [Emphasis added].

This brings us right back to the impossibility of exponential growth, which most certainly includes paper money. Compounding interest is a phantom growth of money that occurs 24 hours per day, seven days per week, and 365 days per year. The growth of the paper money supply that is dictated by compounding interest is not booked, nor earned, against any physically growing asset, but rather a fixed asset, such as home. One can see that such an arrangement should be mathematically impossible…and it is.

Dr. Hubbert made the above point much more eloquently than I can by saying, “A reasonable co-existence (between the monetary and physical systems) is possible when both are growing at approximately the same rate.” That, Hubbert says, “has been happening since the start of the industrial revolution but it is soon going to end because the amount the matter-energy system can grow is limited while money’s growth is not.”

In other words, the matter-energy system is confined by the diminishing finite supply available on our planet, while manmade printed money is only confined by the world’s supply of paper and ink! The two are incompatible.

It should also be understood, and certainly obvious in today’s economic storm, that compounding interest occurs regardless of whether the physical economy is growing or contracting. Compounding interest also continues to accumulate regardless of the borrower’s diminished ability to earn as the physical economy stalls.

There are no safeguards, no checks and balances against the continual accumulation of compounding interest during failing economic times. That is, none other than bankruptcy. This should be abundantly evident in today’s sobering elevated losses of homes, autos, businesses, retirement accounts, and rising bankruptcies, as the shrinking job market eliminates the American public’s ability to pay the ever growing compounding interest.

Regardless of the state of the economy, compounding interest accumulates with every tick of the clock. Think long and hard about that statement.

In fact, the inclusion of compounding interest in any base monetary system, mathematically guarantees the failure of that system when both exist in a finite world. This is precisely what is occurring in the United States during our present recession.

Compounding interest is earned, re-deposited, and the former interest then earns interest in an ever growing vicious cycle. Our entire funded National Debt experiences compounding interest each and every day. The current interest payment on the National Debt (June, 2009) is $1.23 Billion per day or $51.4 Million per hour! This is the power of compounding interest and more correctly, the power of the exponential function.

Our National Debt since September 28, 2007 has grown by an average of $3.91 BILLION per day. The existing solution to this unstoppable phenomenon is to add $Trillions to that debt. Trillions that will then become subject to additional interest payments!

Our constant daily increases in both national and private debts are in large part created by the inclusion of compounding interest. This interest is built into our system and automatically creates monetary inflation by requiring the printing of phantom dollars to cover the growing interest. This represents inevitable automatic inflation which grows exponentially over time. Our economy on the other hand is constrained by impenetrable physical barriers.

No administration, regardless of the continual introduction of ever more drastic measures comprised of social science remedies, can reverse this fatal mathematical certainty; not without revamping our entire monetary system and eliminating the phantom growth of compounding interest.

The long and the short of this subject is that it will eventually become an impossibility to print (or book) the interest that is earned in a single day! The phantom manmade financial concoction of compounding interest is mathematically impossible to continue in a finite world.

The questions for this section are then, “Where does the money earned by compounding interest come from? How can it simply just appear? And, how can it possibly continue compounding?” Now you know how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” ― Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States of America and author of The Declaration of Independence.

You cannot permanently pit an absurd human convention, such as the spontaneous increment of debt [compound interest] against the natural law of the spontaneous decrement of wealth [entropy]. ― Frederick Soddy

EMPLOYMENT:

The basis for the United States economy and also the source of the underlying tax collection is that of stable employment. In the back to back years of 1994 and 1995, President William Jefferson Clinton signed first the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and then the World Trade Organization Agreement (WTO) into law. The promise was world prosperity; the reality was the guaranteed loss of the most important Middle Class jobs in America and the eventual loss of Middle America itself. In keeping party line politics at bay here, it is important to realize that both Bush Presidencies supported NAFTA and the WTO.

The suggested method for arriving at global prosperity was for the U.S. to shift from an agricultural and manufacturing basis to that of a “service economy.” Unfortunately for Middle America, there is no such thing as a service economy. Rather than reap the suggestive status of lounging around the pool drinking banana daiquiri’s, Middle America has now found themselves, cleaning the pool and serving the drinks.

It is important to realize that jobs are not simply created out of thin air to match our growing population and the increasing need for tax collection. “Real jobs materialize by filling real needs; not from the social whims of mortal man aimed at producing unlimited growth.” ― Mike Folkerth

“Most employment now is merely pushing paper around. The actual work needed to keep a stable society running is a very small fraction of available manpower.” ― Dr. M. King Hubbert, American Geophysicist, October 5, 1903 – October 11, 1989

Acting contrary to sound economics, the entry into NAFTA and the WTO sought to “level the global playing field.” The entire proposal of competing with nations whose workers average incomes are 60 times less than those of their American counterparts was delusional. The scheme amounted to nothing more than greater profits for American Corporations and provided a legal exit for our elite to escape the fate of our failed growth economy. Middle America had plainly outgrown their usefulness in a developing and mobile global economy.

Unfortunately, the jobs were gone long before the reality of the situation was realized. A false tech boom that collapsed in 2000, followed by a phony housing bubble that folded in 2007, masked the true consequences of globalization for the period of time necessary to accomplish the wholesale destruction of base Middle Class employment.

At the same time, export nations with near slave labor, few labor laws, little to no environmental controls, and top down governments; benefited immensely. To such a degree in fact, that Communist China has now become our primary lender.

Had it been suggested not so long ago that Communist China would be loaning the most powerful nation on earth the money to continue to tread water, that proposal would have been laughable. We now understand that there is nothing funny about it.

China, India, South Korea, and other low cost export nations have benefited tremendously from both the American job losses and greatest U.S. trade deficits in our history. Interestingly enough, Japan and South Korea are fast becoming the new victims of a world where cheap labor is king.

At the same time that America is losing jobs by the millions, we are simultaneously incurring the greatest amount of debt creation in the history of this nation. To repay that debt will require increases in tax collection beyond anything ever experienced in our nation’s history.

To increase tax collection to this new level would necessarily require job creation at a pace that will not only put the millions of currently unemployed and underemployed back to work at higher wages, but at the same time, it would also be essential to experience additional job growth at hyper levels. Remember, “Real jobs materialize by filling real needs; not from the social whims of mortal man aimed at producing unlimited growth.”

Bear in mind, we couldn’t pay our previous debts while at full employment. We are now simply and shamelessly supporting our personal prosperity by borrowing against our children’s futures.

“All attempts to reduce the deficit, balance the budget, or pay off the national debt are futile. The deficit and the national debt represent the subsidy the government has paid in its attempt to keep growth and unemployment at the level of social tolerance” ― Robert L. Hickerson, March 1, 1995

Another sobering reality that has materialized from our so called “service and information economy,” is the very real and easily verifiable fact that nearly 50% of Americans today no longer have sufficient income to be required to pay income taxes. This means that we certainly can’t count on that half of the folks to help us out with the tax collection problem stated above.

It also means that fully half of Americans have little or no disposable income (income left over after paying for the essentials) to spend into the greater economy. This group of non-taxpaying people continues to grow in numbers by leaps and bounds. We have reached the sad statistic, where through transfer of wealth, the lower 60% of the population now own only 4% of total American wealth. The bottom 40% own less than 1% of the wealth! Wealth disparities of this magnitude are absolutely unsustainable in a free market economy.

The only three sectors of our economy that have grown over the past few years are education, medical care, and government. Note the commonality of these three growth sectors; all are tax based.

The president’s new economic plan calls for unprecedented growth in all three of the above mentioned sectors, which would then necessarily anticipate unprecedented tax collection to support that growth.

Add to this the reality that the combination of legal and illegal immigration adds a conservative 1.6 Million new job seekers to our already jobless society each and every year. These newcomers then compete against the current millions who are unemployed and underemployed. The dog is now in full pursuit of his tail.

There is yet another issue that will continue to affect employment in the United States, that of technical innovation. The combination of continual labor reducing technology, coupled with tariff free world trade, has thrust the United States well beyond the potential for maximum viable employment.

It is my stated opinion that the U.S. will never again realize full employment while at the same time attempting to pursue the false economic promise of globalization. This possibility is further challenged by the constraints of a so called “service and information economy” that constantly experiences elevated job competition through liberal immigration policies and a surplus global workforce. You can write that on the wall.

So the question for this section, while considering the above facts, is, “From where will the real job growth materialize that could possibly drive our economy and job base to the necessary hyper levels?”

“The promise of competing in the global economy is a hoax perpetrated upon the working and unemployed people of this country because over time a nation needs to buy and sell overseas in roughly equivalent amounts. Increasingly desperate means will be used by those who think we can continue to have business as usual.” Robert L. Hickerson ― in a paper published March 1, 1995

NONRENEWABLE NATURAL RESOURCES:

Nonrenewable natural resources are finite in nature, while our ability to consume those assets is infinite. So there it is, the world’s easiest problem to comprehend. It’s not if we run out, it’s merely when. The very best way to rid ourselves of all of those pesky life giving resources, and at the same time, to end life as we have known it, would be to promote greater resource usage prior to having a viable replacement.

It seems that Americans have a knack for picking just the right leadership for shinnying further out on our precarious limb. Our past presidential selections from both major parties enjoy the commonality of promising both unprecedented and unending growth under one simple mantra; print more money, borrow the printed money under a compounding interest arrangement, and buy more stuff. There’s nothing to this economics mumbo jumbo that a person totally devoid of science and math can’t fix; temporarily. It’s the “temporary” part that will come around to haunt us.

Not only is our young President Obama going to boost the U.S. level of consumption to new record highs, he is demonstrating the magic of “Fed printing 101” to all of the G-20 nations who collectively control 85% of world GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Mr. Obama is encouraging every country in the world to produce a false debt based stimulus plan in order to spur economic activity, which will in turn consume greater resources, which will then supposedly grow the world economy.

There are actually 195 countries in the world and yet the G-20 nations control about 85% of global wealth. This is similar to the U.S. distribution of wealth where the top 20% of citizens control 85% of the wealth.

So, back to “growth is the answer,” massive growth requires massive resources; let’s clear a few things up about resources.

At this point and time we have no viable replacements on this planet for clean water, clean air, iron ore, copper, aluminum, manganese, tin, coal, oil, natural gas, fertile farm land, and I can go on for pages. Yet, the plan is to grow our annual usage of all the above for the sake of making additional profits and providing for unchecked population expansion.

Profits drive our entire lives in the United States and there is a total disconnect between profits and the impact on the physical system necessary to create those profits. We have flatly maxed out the physical system for providing greater profits in a world that now hosts 6.77 Billion humans!

If you only take one thing away from this entire Show-Stopper presentation, please let it be the following statement. If China alone were to consume at the same per capita rate as Americans, they would require 100% of all current resource production on earth and would experience shortages!

China has every right in the world to aspire to U.S. standards of living and they currently work night and day to achieve that end.

And, our assurance against such a happening is simply that, “they won’t?” Not so, Mr. Obama is encouraging not only China, but the entire world to behave more like Americans and consume their way to utopia. Do the simple math, because I promise you, your leadership is not capable of doing it for you.

Yet another grave reality and a very real and verifiable fact is that in 1970 the U.S. hit peak oil production. Our oil production continues to decline to this day and we now produce 40% less oil (even with the Alaska Pipeline) than we did 39 years ago. Yet we utilize some 40% more oil today than in 1970. That makes us more than 60% dependent on foreign nations to provide us with a resource that is absolutely critical to our survival.

Just last year, (2008) the world bumped up against maximum global oil production and we witnessed the resulting fuel prices and the toll that that occurrence had on the world economy. If anyone wants to argue that there are viable alternatives ready to go that could replace oil, or that there is an unending supply of oil in the world, or even that they will come up with a palatable solution; please verify the sources that led you to such delusion.

Rather than me asking the question for this section, I’ll allow the esteemed Dr. Albert Bartlett, professor of physics, University of Colorado, to have the honors.

“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?”

TIME:

My final argument is based on the importance of “time” as an essential element when considering the lunacy of a world economy that is hopelessly dependent on exponential growth.

Most of the pundit’s that support the belief that there is no end to growth simply eliminate time (as they do the word finite), as an element for consideration in their less than convincing arguments; do not allow them to do so. Time, may in fact, be the most misunderstood element of our lives.

I’ll preface the following by first drawing attention to the habit of many politicians and economists of predicting population patterns, lifestyles, or technology as they will exist in 2050 or 2075 or some other distant date. The very nature of such long term projections demonstrates a total disconnect with time as it applies to sustainability.

Humans have inhabited the earth for more than 30,000 years. Recorded history began some 4000 years ago. Yet it was just a little more than 100 years ago, or the single lifetime of some living humans, that we gained the ability to extract and transport natural resources in quantity.

Prior to that time, excavation and transportation of mined or otherwise harvested natural resources was extremely limited. A hundred years ago, in 1909, the first commercial flight was five years into the future, autos were a rarity, horses were still very much in use for basic transportation and farming, and electricity was available only in large cities. It is paramount to comprehend these core facts in order to clearly understand the implications that time has on determining what is sustainable or even mathematically feasible and what is not.

Consider that in just 80 years, those between 1950 and 2030, with all things remaining constant, we will have extracted the majority of earth’s non-renewable natural resources. Looking at it another way, those of us who will spend just 2 percent of recorded mans total time on earth will use the majority of all known natural resource reserves on this planet.

Unfortunately, it gets worse. While the majority of resources were used in less than 100 years, the lion’s share of that number occurred in the latter stages of the period. The usage is not linear, but exponential in nature. The more we use, the more that is required the next year to continue our growth based economy and to support our ever increasing population.

It short, should Mr. Obama be successful in his quest to convince the world that greater use of resources is the natural path to prosperity; the time period required for total depletion of many critical resources could easily be reduced to a span of less than 20 years!

At the time as this writing, the Chinese are buying up massive quantities of metals and other natural resources to ensure that they will have the majority of physical capital in the years to come. Those who currently own these critical resources are more than willing to sell for the single purpose of making short term profits.

The importance for the inclusion of time as an element of consideration for all future social planning cannot be overstated.

“You may delay, but time will not.” – Benjamin Franklin

CONCLUSION:

The points that I have made throughout the various Show-Stopper’s are all tied to one common denominator; exponential growth in a finite world is both physically and mathematically impossible.

The consumption necessary to sustain our current exponential growth-based economy, has since 1970, been largely supported by exponential debt accumulation. That debt is then continually driven higher by the inclusion of compounding interest.

No amount of political and social manipulation produced by mortal man will change the above stated facts. Growth has natural limits and the laws of natural physics will prevail. As population rises above the optimum level, the per-capita share of wealth and resources are diminished resulting in a reduced standard of living. This diminishing share of the American pie will be disproportionately levied against Middle America.

At the time of this writing, Japan is paying their non-native foreign workers to leave their country with the caveat that those who accept the payment will never again apply for work in Japan. Japan may well be the first industrialized nation that is forced to abandon the false foundation of exponential growth.

Is there a way out that does not include returning to pre-industrial standards? The short answer is yes. For the United States and Canada, if we act prior to total resource depletion and unmanageable population levels, we could adopt a steady state economic model that would insure our long term survival.

That being said, many studied opinions, including my own, believe that human population in many parts of our world is already well above sustainable levels.

Perhaps the only feasible path to a non-catastrophic future was best stated by the American Geophysicist, M. King Hubbert. While Dr. Hubbert is best remembered for his accurate predictions of peak oil, I believe that even more brilliance can be seen in his following statements.

“We are not in the position we were in 1929-30 with regard to the future. Then the physical system was ready to roll. This time it is not. We are in a crisis in the evolution of human society. It’s unique to both human and geologic history. It has never happened before and it can’t possibly happen again. You can only use oil once. You can only use metals once. Soon all the oil is going to be burned and all the metals mined and scattered.”

Hubbert continued, “We have the necessary technology. All we have to do is completely overhaul our culture and find an alternative to money. Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know.” [end quote].

I must be honest regarding my personal belief regarding the U.S. voluntarily returning to balance. We will not. We will pursue our failed growth model to the point of total collapse at which time the same people who led us to that collapse will create a new system that continues to benefit the rich and powerful.

Only a catastrophic event of epic proportion will alter our long established pattern of electing our leadership from the social science sector who promise the physically impossible; for it is the physically impossible that we most crave.

Therefore, if I am correct, or perhaps more pertinent in this case, if mathematics are correct, personal choices will become your only defense against our continuing incompetent leadership.

When choosing a career field, do something useful with your life and do something that is beneficial to society. Perhaps a caveat to the former statement is in order; “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” ― Steve Jobs

Live simple, live free, and live well.