Why The System Will Fail

Article by Anon

The Technological System is often viewed as an omnipotent entity;  a god that you cannot escape. However, this perception is nothing more than an illusion. In reality, the Technological System is not all-powerful and it is not nearly as durable as it appears. The System relies on multiple key factors to maintain its survival, those factors being its greatest weakness.

The System no longer works as a decentralized body with a multitude of independent structures. In the modern age the System has evolved to work akin to a multicellular organism. All parts of it are interconnected and if one piece of it is harmed in some way the rest will also be affected. Due to this centralization a clear vulnerability presents itself: the entire body of the System relies on the same variable and largely chaotic factors. Some of the most important of these factors are, but are not limited to:

-       Abundance of fossil fuels

-       Stability and cooperation among the global self-prop systems

-       A functional economy and chain of supply

The System relies on all of these factors, among others, for its survival. Each of these factors  by their nature are largely chaotic, unpredictable, and highly variable.

The shift from the usage of fossil fuels to “renewable” energy sources, in the eyes of the public, is largely seen as being motivated by a desire to mitigate environmental impacts. However, the actual reason for this shift is due to the fact that the amount of fossil fuels left is dwindling. According to the Energy Institute, fossil fuels are consumed globally at 140,000 Terawatt Hours (TWh) which has risen dramatically from the estimated global level of 20,139 TWh in 1950; the United States alone consumed 21,102.2 TWh in 2023.[1] “Our World in Data” states that as of 2020, coal will run out in 139 years, oil 56 years, and gas 49 years, based on known reserves and present annual production levels.[2] As it stands, the System cannot sustain itself purely on its current level of non-renewable energy consumption, and the System's consumption hasn’t even reached its peak--it's demands for energy continue to grow as it expands. This is why there has been a push towards renewable energy, but at a rate which does not seem rapid enough without a substantial and forceful transition. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2023 renewable energy only made up around 9% of total U.S. energy consumption,[3] only around a mere 1% increase since the year 2000.[4] The only place where transitioning to renewables has been successful is in the European Union, where in 2023 around 24% of total energy consumption was renewable,[5] however the goal of 42.5% renewable energy consumption by 2030 seems unfeasible at current rates, which is approximately only at a 0.71% increase per year (from the years 2013-2022).[6] Furthermore, there seems to be a growing “anti-green energy” movement in the U.S. spearheaded by the current Republican party who have made it their objective to revert the shift towards renewable energy sources and to increase the combustion of fossil fuels.  It is clear that the system will most likely be unable to convert to renewable energy before it is too late, which will result in either the complete collapse of the System suddenly or over a period time, or would result in the survival of the System in an extremely fragile state where it would be forced to abruptly transition to relying entirely on renewable energy. Even if up to 75% of all energy consumption were renewable at the point of complete fossil fuel depletion, the System would likely be at a point where the sudden disruption caused by such an abrupt "transition" would so weaken the stability of the system that systemic collapse would be far easier to force, if not naturally inevitable. 

The fierce competition between global self-propagating systems is one of the most tangible features of the Technological System, and also one of the most potentially destructive. A self-propagating system ("self-prop" system for short) is a collective entity which seeks above all its own survival and growth; corporations, governments, and the Technological System at large are all examples of such systems.[7] Within such systems there are subsystems, such as a political party within a government.[8] Much of the foregoing has been more thoroughly discussed in Kaczynski’s Anti-Tech Revolution: Why & and How, however here the Technological System’s dependence on several self-prop systems cooperating will be the sole emphasis. The rapid growth in transportation and communication technology in the past two centuries has allowed for the rise in only a few global self-prop systems which all encompass the world system.[9] As in the nature of a self-prop system, these global systems will continue to compete with each other for survival and for their own benefit, disregarding long-term consequences.[10] Disregard for long-term consequences is a baked-in and unalterable feature of self-prop systems: (a) they must disregard long-term consequences for the sake of survival, and (b) prediction and control of long-term consequences is fundamentally impossible.[11] However, with modern technology and new sophisticated tactics, a significant conflict between global systems would mean catastrophic consequences for the world-system (the biosphere), and thus the Technological System that depends on the world-system. The consequences of a conflict becomes only more disastrous as time goes on, ”As technology progresses and globalization grows more pervasive, the world-system becomes ever more complex and tightly coupled, so that a catastrophic breakdown has to be expected sooner or later.”[12] With this in mind, a global large-scale conventional war could have the potential to completely break down the Technological System. It's important to remember that the Technological System works as a centralized body, and unlike the last global large-scale war (World War II), where the system was not near the complexity, interconnectedness, and technological level it is now, a global military conflict among the world's predominant self-prop systems would cause catastrophic shockwaves felt across the entire Technological System, such that if it doesn’t collapse outright, would make it severely prone to natural or forced (through revolution) collapse.

The global COVID-19 pandemic showed how a simple virus holds the potential to break down the entire Technological System. Supply chains were greatly disrupted, the economy brought to a halt, and authoritarian policies put in place, spelling social unrest and economic chaos. If a single flu-like virus could cause this much pandemonium, how much more is really needed to bring the whole thing down? At any rate, the Technological System’s fragility was starkly exposed. The system relies on its consistent supply chains, production facilities, and a thoroughly ordered, trained and docile working population to stay afloat. If even one of these are obstructed, it could mean the end of the Technological System. It's important to note that as the system continues to grow more interconnected and more complicated it becomes all the more delicate and vulnerable to singular disruptive events, such as the outbreak of a potent virus, that can spell systemic collapse. COVID is an example of such a singular disruptive possibility, showing how a singular virus could break down the Technological System as much as it did.

Assuming that humans remain the primary means of work in the future, the system's collapse would have been all the more likely if COVID hit later, at a point in which the system has become even more tightly coupled and complex (and therefore vulnerable to singular disruptive shocks). However, the risk of waiting—of allowing the Technological System to continue to grow—is tremendous. At some point machines will likely have replaced the majority of the workforce, and will have automated the functions of the critical components of the economy, freeing the system of its dependence on humans and the corresponding risks it would face with wide-scale disruptions in human society.[13] However, based on historical and current technological trends, the replacement of humans with machinery in the workforce would entail a significant complication of the Technological System, which would likely lead it to collapse by causes unrelated to the employment of human beings (such as lack of renewable energy). An example of a threat to a mechanized and intensely complicated System would be the possibility of an electrical grid failure, which could occur through various means, such as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). In short: a CME is a significant explosion of plasma from the Sun into space. CME’s occur frequently, sometimes multiple times a day.[14] While the majority of CME’s aren’t a considerable threat to the electrical grid, it's not uncommon that one is: in 1989, a CME reached Earth’s atmosphere, infiltrating power grids all over North America and Northern Europe, and also destroying a transformer for a nuclear power plant in New Jersey.[15] Furthermore, in an article by Scientific American, that same year"...at about 2:45 A.M. local time on Monday, March 13, Canada's Hydro-Québec power utility's grid crashed when safety systems sensed a power overload caused by the currents pulsing through the ground. The failure knocked out electricity to six million people in northeastern Canada for as long as nine hours—the biggest outage ever caused by a geomagnetic storm.”[16] Phil Plait, a professional astronomer and science communicator stated in a Scientific American article, “In 2012 a monster storm at least as powerful as the one in 1859 erupted from the sun…. Happily it was not aimed at Earth; it missed us by tens of millions of kilometers. Had it hit us, though, well, it would’ve been very, very bad.”[17] Plait also states that it was at least as powerful as a CME that hit in 1859, ”The first solar storm ever detected, called the Carrington Event, occurred in 1859 and was incredibly powerful; if something that big were to hit our much more wired-up Earth today, it would cause widespread blackouts and chaos as transformers blew up and satellites got zapped.”[18] With the probability of a CME of a high-enough magnitude being presumably likely in the next century, if the workforce shifted primarily to the utilization of machinery rather than humans, it's highly probable, if not certain, that a CME of a large-enough magnitude would mean the end of the Technological System, factoring in its increasing interconnectedness and complexity in mind. Moreover, with the other factors in mind which spell trouble for the Technological System (i.e. lack of renewable energy, global tension, etc.), it’s foreseeable that it will be incapable of survival.

In this piece we've given only brief consideration of a few key vulnerabilities and potential causes or co-factors of collapse for global industrial civilization.  A more detailed study of all of the vulnerabilities and their implications is obviously beyond the scope of this article.  But we hope to have highlighted that the system is far more fragile than it would first appear, and that it will become all the more fragile as certain elements such as increasing mechanization, complexity and interconnectedness are projected to continue with future technological progress.

 
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NOTES:

[1] Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado (2017) - “Fossil fuels” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels' [Online Resource]

[2] Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data

[3] U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, April 25, 2024; preliminary data

[4] U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, Appendix D. 1, and Tables 1.3 and 10.1, April 2024, preliminary date for 2023

[5] European Environment Agency. (2024). Share of energy consumption from renewable sources in Europe.

[6] Eurostat. (2024). Share of energy from renewable sources.

[7] Kaczynski, J. T. (2016). Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2nd ed). Fitch & Madison.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Zahidi, Saadia. (2023). Future of Jobs Report 2023. World Economic Forum.

[14] Crocket, Christopher. (2023). What are coronal mass ejections? Big burps of sun-stuff! EarthSky.

[15] Hadhazy, Adam. (2023). A Scary 13th: 20 Years Ago, Earth Was Blasted with a Massive Plume of Solar Plasma [Slide Show]. Scientific American.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Plait, Phil. (2024). The Threat of a Solar Superstorm Is Growing–And We’re Not Ready. Scientific American.

[18] Ibid.

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