History Future Now

By Tristan Fischer

History Future Now investigates some of the big questions that concern us today such as migration, food security & climate change, middle class jobs, the rise of China and instability in the Middle East, through the twin lenses of history and the future. How do these issues compare to similar issues in the past and what impact will these issues have in the future?

"Masterpiece puts crisis in historical context!"

"I learned a lot of history. Have you thought of being a History Don, possibly with a TV program? You would knock the spots off all the poseurs and madmen who occupy that TV slot."

"Wow. Wonderfully written. Great analysis skillfully put together."

"This is an absolutely fascinating article both from an historic comparative perspective but also in terms of future projections."

"A most perceptive approach to a pressing problem. What sort of existence will we leave for our descendants?"

"Interesting article. I always find myself listening to your podcasts more than once!"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781326560928

Book preview

History Future Now

History Future Now

Tristan Fischer

This edition published in 2016 by

FischerBooks

www.historyfuturenow.com

Copyright © 2017 by Tristan Fischer

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, sorted in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

The right of Tristan Fischer to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 

ISBN: 978-1-326-56092-8

For all our children, whom shall inherit the Earth. 

May they leave it in a better state than they received it.

Readers’ comments from History Future Now

This is essential reading for Telegraph/Daily Mail readers worried by costs of #renewable subsidies  James B

Masterpiece puts crisis in historical context! "(Explanation on the origins of the decline of the West) Patrick V H

You ask big questions Tristan!! Michael M

I learned a lot of history; thank you! And just my ticket, no damn detail. Have you thought of being a History Don, possibly with a TV program? You would knock the spots off all the poseurs and madmen who occupy that TV slot.  Simon M

Wow. Wonderfully written. Great analysis skillfully put together. Remco de G

This is an absolutely fascinating article both from an historic comparative perspective but also in terms of future projections.  Kevin B

A most perceptive approach to a pressing problem. What sort of existence will we leave for our descendants?  Donald P

A fascinating potted history and so well set out with cogent conclusions along the way. The thought of future physical barriers had not really occurred to me. I liked the ‘did not end well’ touch! Pericles

Interesting article. I always find myself listening to your podcasts more than once! Eric F

Excellent article, I honestly congratulate you, and very good blog; good way to give hands between History and Economy, from a practical outlook.  Ricardo S

Tristan, another interesting article. I hope everyone reads it. Michael H

Thanks Tristan – extremely well written and very illuminating. Nick E

Great article. Malthus, David Ricardo, even parts of Marx are useful in balancing supply/demand equilibrium. Corey W

Thank you Tristan. Very good history lesson.

T.O. S

Tristan, another good article. Current agriculture is unsustainable. Food, energy and water are all connected. Another reason we need radical change now!  Michael H

Tristan these are great observations around the manner in which theories can be simultaneously informing and misleading.  Peter B

Very informative essay! As things are going at present, it is certain that Europe would be swamped by Muslims from Asia and Africa as well as Non-Muslim African tribes. The modern Europeans would be an extinct species like the Neanderthals.  DDMisra

It’s very very interesting. Prathik M

Very interesting ideas, too bad our lawmakers and judges are owned and operated by short-sighted moneyed interests. Our poor descendants…what sort of world will we leave them ???  Disgvnv

Brilliant!  Nick

I enjoyed your article on China and Taiwan-China.  Brian G

Nice article. Not the usual rot about China attempting to economically crush the USA and the west. China is just another big player in an evolving world economy. The more economically interdependent we become the less likely it is that we’ll dash it all over some ridiculous, overblown political squabble.  James M

This is terrifying, but the human race has proved to be adaptable before. Billb

Scary stuff. Adam N

"Great article and a lot of good research, Tristan. Hope it is controversial and sparks some discussion. Michael H

Glad you posted this article, thank you! Regional economies, not global and sooner, please.  Gulnara T

An interesting article! I fear that solutions, which were good a hundred years ago, are not necessarily right nowadays. The biggest problem, I believe, is the ridiculous low interest rate. This encourages more lending and less saving, both private and public (government). The whole Western world has spent tomorrow’s wealth yesterday. Buy now, pay later is the worst advice one could ever get. It should be replaced by Save first, buy later.  Paul B

Interesting article Tristan about the different models of city states, colonisation and colonialism. Lambros K

Tristan, I really like the historical overview you provide. Thomas C

Great summary. Kimberly D

Very good article, I have been telling a number of people about this for a while now, it’s amazing how oblivious the general population are. Adrian T

Great topic for discussion Tristan. Peter B

An absolute must-read on renewable energy. Hopefully this will enlighten deniers and motivate supporters. Scott H

A great piece on the reality of renewables subsidies.  Sun Gift Solar

Great discussion. I think the original article is interesting in that a superficial detail — identifying the left with red and the right with blue — demonstrates how quickly the dialogue devolves from assessing the issues and presenting solutions to placing the players into categories that we can name as good or bad depending upon our perspective. Leslie M

Introduction

Most current events are just noise and will have very limited impact on our lives in the future.  Some events, however, are significant and will have an impact for centuries to come.  Separated into four main sections -  Natural Resources, Global Balance of Power, Jobs and the Economy, and Society - History Future Now puts these significant events into context.

History Future Now started in 2012 as a website devoted to putting current events into a historical and future context. This book contains a number of the most popular of these articles plus a number of chapters not available online. 

When we look back in time we have the benefit of seeing how each historical event laid the foundations of the next historical event. History looks neat and later events inevitable.

This neatness is an illusion. Past historical events had thousands of possible outcomes which could have set us on a radically different path and there is a whole cannon of alternative histories that look into these outcomes in more depth.

Nevertheless, there are major themes in history that result in inevitable outcomes. This book, and the website (www.historyfuturenow.com) looks at these themes and tries to project them into the future, referring to the present as nothing but a continuation of the past and the future as nothing but a continuation of the present.

This book is divided into the four main themes that are the focus of History Future Now. 

In Part 1: Natural Resources, we focus on the issue of resource depletion.   Many of the key natural resources that humans depend on are declining, largely due to more people wanting more things. The world’s population jumped from 2 billion people in 1930 to over 7.3 billion in 2015, and the world’s middle class population doubled from 1.2 billion in 2000 to over 2.5 billion in 2015.  One of the main observations is that while humans know that these problems are severe, we are unable as a species to deal with them effectively.  This is partly due to wishful thinking – things will get better and science will solve all our resource issues – and religious and political dogma which states that there is no problem because God would not allow bad things to happen to us or that a desire to conserve the environment is a left wing conspiracy. 

In Part 2: Global Balance of Power we turn our attention to the shifting balance of power in the World. For nearly half a millennium the West has dominated most of the planet.  We look at the causes of the rise of the West and how it has allowed itself to relinquish its power.  A great deal of attention is devoted to changes in Europe’s demographics and the threat from North Africa before shifting attention to the spectacular rise of China since 2000 and its implications on the entire World.

In Part 3: Jobs and the Economy we start by looking at the impact of trade policies on employment over the past 150 years and look forward to a jobless World dominated by robotics and artificial intelligence.  What will be the impact on society?  We also look at the impact of some of the great economic thinkers from Smith and Ricardo to Marx and Engels to Keynes and Hayek on economic policies today. 

Finally, in Part 4: Society we look at changes in society over the years with a special emphasis on the impact of mass surveillance of Western governments on its own citizens.  We also look at changes in family dynamics and how that will impact on the way we live, including changes in sexual orientation and how this could result in childless societies.

For more articles and to see readers’ feedback go to www.historyfuturenow.com.

Part 1- Natural Resources

Many of the key natural resources that humans depend on are running out, largely due to more people wanting more things.  There is less top soil, less fresh water, less arable land, less forest cover and less fish in the sea.

Population size is the key deciding factor on the amount of resources that we use.  The world’s population jumped from 2 billion people in 1930 to over 7.3 billion in 2015, and the world’s middle class population doubled from 1.2 billion in 2000 to over 2.5 billion in 2015. 

This section starts with Malthus Was Wrong. Is He Still Wrong? in which we explain why Malthus, writing in the late 1790s, got his predictions of widespread famine caused by population growth so badly wrong.  In Standing On The Shoulders Of Toddlers- Why We Have Never Grown Up And What This Means For Our Future we look at some of the fundamental issues that confront our planet and how we ignore them at great risk. In Feeding 9 Billion: Is It Possible? we ask a simple question about our ability to feed our ever increasing population and in Drying Up. What Happens To Farms If There Is No Water? we look at the the shocking dependency of aquifer water, a non renewable resource, on food production.  In the next chapter, Why Land Deals In Africa Could Make The Great Irish Famine A Minor Event, we compare British policies in Ireland in the run up to the Great Irish Famine in 1845 to the purchases of land in Africa over the past decade. In Dealing With The Consequences Of Climate Chance Inaction: The Impact Of Food we look at the impact of climate change on global food dynamics, will significantly affect world trade in food, requiring a higher level of national self sufficiency.

We then shift focus to look at changes in energy markets in Who Are The Losers In The Energy Revolution? and Establishing A Price Floor For Energy. 

We finish off by asking why conservatives are so suspicious of the environmental movement and climate change policies in Green Is Not Red, But Blue: Environmentalism And The Mystery Of Right Wing Opposition and Roots: A Historical Understanding Of Climate Change Denial, Creationism And Slavery – 1629-1775.  Finally, in Cassandra: Time To Give Up On Predicting Climate Change? we look back at Cassandra, the daughter of King Priam of Troy, who had the gift of prophesy but was cursed by the god Apollo who ensured that non of her prophesies would be believed. 

Like Cassandra, we know exactly what our problems are, but we are simply incapable as a species from dealing with them effectively. 

Malthus Was Wrong. Is He Still Wrong?

In 2004 History Future Now went on a mission to read the most influential books on economic and philosophical theory. Books selected were deliberately from all spectrums of economic thought and included David Ricardo’s The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, John Galbraith’s The Affluent Society, Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, John Maynard Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Karl Marx’s Capital and many others.

One volume which stood out in particular was An Essay on the Principle of Population, by the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus.   He famously predicted that food production increases would not keep up with population increases, resulting in gigantic, inevitable, famines.

Malthus lived in a world of about 1 billion people.  Today there are over 7.3 billion people, so his prediction was clearly very wrong.  History Future Now will try to understand why he was wrong and then asks a critical question: is he still wrong?

Before we go into that it would be useful to provide some background on Thomas Malthus and the core ideas that he explored in his writings.

Thomas Robert Malthus

Malthus was born in a country house near Westcott, Surrey, England in 1766, the sixth of seven children in a land that was fundamentally agrarian, but buzzing with ideas and innovations.  He died in Bath, England, aged 68, in December 1834 just as the industrial revolution was picking up steam. He was initially home educated, went to Dissenting Warrington Academy and then up to Cambridge University where he studied Latin, Greek and mathematics. In 1798, he became an Anglican curate back in his home county of Surrey.

In 1798, he published An Essay on the Principle of Population which he then updated six times, the final version emerged, after years of additional research and responses to feedback, in 1826.  One of the reasons for his writings was due to his objection to some of the more utopian works on humanity by William Godwin (Enquiry concerning Political Justice in 1793) and the Marquis de Condorcet (The Future Progress).

Malthus is most famous for a passage in which he writes that:

The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.

While this inevitability of overpopulation resulting in premature death due to war or famine makes him well remembered today, one of his central concerns was about the fate of the poor in society, and he claimed that there would always be a poor underclass.

He describes a cycle whereby an increased population would depress the value of labour, causing poverty and hardship.  The population would stagnate for a period, but the resulting cheap labour would encourage agricultural expansion, resulting in more food and thus cheaper food, thus encouraging the population to increase and the cycle would continue:

The food therefore which before supported seven millions must now be divided among seven millions and a half or eight millions. The poor consequently must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to severe distress. The number of labourers also being above the proportion of the work in the market, the price of labour must tend toward a decrease, while the price of provisions would at the same time tend to rise. The labourer therefore must work harder to earn the same as he did before. During this season of distress, the discouragements to marriage, and the difficulty of rearing a family are so great that population is at a stand. In the mean time the cheapness of labour, the plenty of labourers, and the necessity of an increased industry amongst them, encourage cultivators to employ more labour upon their land, to turn up fresh soil, and to manure and improve more completely what is already in tillage, till ultimately the means of subsistence become in the same proportion to the population as at the period from which we set out.

This population expansion, stagnation and expansion cycle is very reminiscent of the boom and bust cycles in an economy and so it is not surprising that Malthus was so influential on other thinkers ranging from Keynes, Marx, Wallace, Mao Zedong and even Darwin.

Malthus believed that to stop this cycle of scarcity workers should be encouraged to postpone marriage and practice celibacy whilst in marriage to keep population numbers in check.  If they did not keep their numbers in check by their own measures, they would be kept poor, or even worse, the positive checks of war, sickness and famine would kick in, bringing even greater misery.

Many contemporaries, who included Godwin, Marx and Ricardo, strongly disagreed with his views on restricting population or that there would be a permanent underclass.  Friedrich Engels, the German-British industrialist who funded Marx, was particularly scathing as he believed Malthus ignored the power of science to increase food production.  Admittedly, it is worth noting that Engels was born in 1820 and so was far more aware of the transformative power of coal and industrialisation than was Malthus, who lived in a primarily agricultural society. Others were horrified at Malthus’ view that small pox vaccinations were a bad thing for society as it just enabled more people to live, bringing in greater catastrophe in the future.

So why was Malthus wrong?

The world’s population had been growing by about 100 million every century since 1500 and was at around 700 million shortly before Malthus’ birth in 1766.  While Malthus recognised that the population had slowly been increasing, he was not in a position to anticipate three major changes to the amount of food available that occurred shortly after he made his predictions.

World population stood at 1 billion by 1804 and 2 billion slightly over a century later, 10 times more than the pre industrial revolution average increase of 100 million per century.  From 1900 the pace accelerated, from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6.1 billion in 2000.   Since 1960 the world’s population has been increasing by about 1 billion per decade.

The three major changes were mechanisation and fossil fuels, food imports and increased land for food, and improved yields per acre.

Mechanisation and fossil fuels

Fossil fuels, first in the form of coal and then in oil and gas, revolutionised farming and its productivity.  When societies relied on human and animal power there were significant limits to how much surplus food could be generated per farmer.  With mechanisation, first with steam-powered devices and then with vehicles using internal combustion engines, farmers were able to significantly increase the food output per farm worker.  In developed countries, 2-4% of the entire population is now able to provide enough food for the rest of their country, mainly thanks to mechanisation.

Fossil fuels are not just used for power, however.  Natural gas forms - with nitrogen – the raw ingredient for the creation of ammonia based fertilisers, thanks to the industrialisation of the Haber process in 1913.  This process helped to significantly improve yields of food on agricultural lands all over the world.

Increased area of land under cultivation

Malthus grew up in a country that was isolated from a food perspective from other countries.  The bulk of the food that England consumed was grown domestically.  International trade was very vigorous, but was mainly confined to very high value products that could be transported on ships – like sugar, coffee and tobacco.  Bulk transportation of food, such as grains, was relatively uncommon at the time of An Essay on the Principle of Population‘s publication in 1798.  By 1815 it was sufficiently common that Britain introduced Corn Laws restricting grain imports, which caused riots in towns.

This has clearly changed.  The colonies in the New World were relatively unpopulated and when Europeans brought over European style farming to these areas, combined with mechanisation, it resulted in the massive increase in the amount of land available for farming.

Food is now transported in bulk all over the world, ensuring that any surplus food is sold into a web of interconnected markets.  This helps drive down food prices and helps increase the availability of food for all, even allowing for the impact of bad harvests in one area to be mitigated by good harvests in other parts of the world.  America, Argentina and Brazil, for example are now major food exporters for the entire world.

Interestingly, Malthus supported the Corn Laws that were introduced in 1815, restricting corn imports to England, while most free trade economists argued for its abolition.  He argued that the more foreign corn England imported the more dependent it would be on foreign imports.  This would mean that England would be increasingly held captive to foreign politics and vulnerable to trade restrictions that would emerge in the event of a food shortfall in another country.

Improvements in yields per acre

The third major change is an improvement of yields per acre.  Yield has gone up due to better equipment for ploughing and monitoring the soil, artificially selected plant strains, fertilisers, pesticides and other improvements to the science of crops.  Hybrid and genetically modified plants promise to further improve the yield from a given patch of land. Improved water pumps, have also massively increased yields in arid parts of the world such as the US, China, India and Saudi Arabia; places that were originally unsuitable for farming but are now highly productive thanks to irrigation from water 1-2 miles below the ground’s surface.

Does this mean that Malthus will always be wrong?

Unfortunately, just because Malthus was wrong 200 years ago it does not mean that his theories will always be wrong. The three main drivers of agricultural growth are stalling and many of them are one offs, never to be repeated again.  What is changing?

First, improvements in productivity due to mechanisation are now relatively marginal. When Malthus was young, 90% of the country would have been involved in farming. In most developed countries that number is now between 2-4% of the population.  Even if you had a 50% improvement in farming mechanisation and productivity per person, this would mean that the numbers involved in farming would drop to 1-2% of the population.  An improvement that is irrelevant in the scheme of things.

Second, the world saw a huge increase in new land available for agriculture thanks to New World colonies in North, Central and South America.  That land was a one off and we are not anticipating the discovery of a new continent any time soon.  As the population of the world increases, the amount of new land is not expected to expand, but rather contract.  This contraction is due to the fact that most cities are located in proximity to prime agricultural land.  As cities get bigger they expand over this prime land.  Sea level rises are also likely to impact agricultural lands around the coast, with particular impacts around deltas.

Third, improvements in yields per acre are also under threat.  Much is made about genetically modified crops, with the anticipation that they will radically increase yields over and above existing modern strains of crops.  This is mainly true.  But even Monsanto does not see huge productivity growth in idealised locations and more land is no longer ideal.

There are multiple issues. One is that improvements due to improved strains are not that fast. Second is that land quality is deteriorating due to soil erosion and salinisation so any improvements from new strains are likely to be offset by deteriorating land quality. It is also worth noting that if GM crops were very successful and planted in large quantities it would produce a dangerous monoculture.  Monocultures are more susceptible to disease and thus it would increase the likelihood of disease wiping out that entire global crop.

Huge irrigation schemes in the US, China, India and other parts of the world are also under threat as much of the water comes from underground aquifers.  These aquifers get replenished over thousands of years and current levels of extraction significantly exceed the replenishment rate (see article).  Many countries rely on glacial melt to feed their river systems and monsoon rains to water their crops.  Changes in climate are already affecting weather patterns which in turn makes these natural watering systems less reliable.

Finally, as countries get richer, access to variety of foods improve and people want to eat more protein.  Growing crops like alfalfa, soya beans and maize for animal feed reduces the food available for direct human consumption. Growing corn for biofuels will clearly have to stop.  Perhaps also the production of animal fodder.

This is a bleak assessment of food availability: land availability is declining, not increasing, mechanisation is producing diminishing returns, yield improvements due to genetically modified crops are lower than hoped for and are likely to be offset by declining soil quality and water availability.  Malthus would be nodding his head in sad agreement: famines are more likely than food abundance.

So what about Engels?

Frederich Engels was particularly critical of Malthus and believed that man’s ingenuity and science would solve the world’s food shortages. So what are the wild cards that might make Engels right and Malthus wrong in the future?  Here are some possibilities.

Factory grown food crops

When you think about it, growing food in fields is a very inefficient use of space and resources.  There are a number of companies that are developing factory farms with high value crops being grown in nutrient mixes that are perfect for the plants being grown.  Some even have rotating growing levels, which allow for vertical farming.  This allows for more food to be grown in a given area and for diseases to be controlled.  Will this ever be as productive as growing food on millions of acres of land? Probably not, but it might make a difference.

Improved irrigation

A lot of water is wasted in irrigation. Some of the water is absorbed by the plants but much of it evaporates leaving minerals behind which cause  salinisation of the soil.  Improved irrigation that gets more water to plant roots and nowhere else is of great benefit – but installing those systems will be expensive and will increase food costs.

Africa and Siberia

African soils are, in most places, not ideal for intensive farming.  Weather patterns make it especially difficult, though parts of Africa could be farmed more intensively in the short term.  However, Africa is expected to be especially vulnerable to climate change (see US Department of Defense report).  As global warming accelerates, however, it may be possible that much of the frozen tundras of Canada and Siberia might thaw out, releasing not only millions of tonnes of methane, but also unlocking much of that area for agriculture.

Star Trek Replicator

Finally, and on a more optimistic note, we have Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical Physics at CUNY, who says that Star Trek style replicators, which build products from an atomic level, are not that far off in the future:

… we have nanotechnology, and with nanotechnology, perhaps, who knows, maybe in 100 years, we’ll have something called the replicator.  Now the replicator is something you see in Star Trek.  It’s called the molecular assembler and it takes ordinary raw materials, breaks them up at the atomic level and joins the joints in different ways to create new substances.  If you have a molecular assembler, you can turn, for example, a glass into wood or vice versa.  You would have the power of a magician, in fact, the power of a god, the ability to literally transform the atoms of one substance into another and we see it on Star Trek.

And that, lets face it, sounds pretty great!

Standing On The Shoulders Of Toddlers- Why We Have Never Grown Up And What This Means For Our Future

Once upon a time, you were a toddler. By the simple act of covering your eyes with your hands the people around you would cease to exist.  By lowering your hands they would, miraculously and to great amusement, reappear.  More terrifyingly, your mother’s disappearance from the room could result in howls of anguish: had she disappeared forever?

As we grow older, we learn that just because you cannot temporarily see something it does not mean that that something has permanently disappeared.

Of course the person is still there – your fingers have just hidden them. Of course your mother is going to come back – she has just stepped out of the room.

And yet despite what we have learned, our minds are still hardwired to ignore what is not directly in front of us. We have not really grown up and our adult minds are standing on the shoulders of toddlers.  Like our other hard wired instinct, fight or flight, this simplistic reflex can cause us problems in managing some of the great issues of today.

Wherever your beliefs on the religious or political spectrum, there are a number of things that, on reflection, appear to be true.

Population

The world’s population has grown from 2 billion people in 1930 to over 7.3 billion in 2015.  By 2050 population momentum should take us to 10 billion people.  Some people think that this is not only a good thing, but we should grow our populations even more and restrict access to birth control.

The toddler brain may ignore this fact or respond that more is good and I will have a lot of friends, but at some point a question needs to be asked: Is there a limit to how many people can live on Earth?